Daunted, yet inspired... part two

In my last post, I talked about how daunting Cirque du Soleil’s ECHO was to watch.

Today I will share how it inspired some thoughts for William Blake’s Inn, aka STEALING FROM THE BEST.

First, in a video being shown out in the lobby before the show, I was struck by how prominently the design team displayed the color palette the show would use, and then, by how that palette played out in the show itself.

So I can spend some of my time poring over the paint colors at The Home Depot and constructing a prototype palette chart, viz:

So in our workshop room, as we propose new characters or ideas, we can make sure that the new costume or set piece will fit in with whatever scene we’re working on. (This implies that we might have a palette chart for every scene/song, which is probably correct.)

The giant rotating cube is not something we can achieve (nor would that particularly make any sense) but it confirmed my desire to have an Inn that can at least roll downstage and split open. [Details in a future blog post.]

Depending on whom I can con into helping us, I think projections may become a major part of the design.

The paper-sculpture animal masks are definitely worth exploring. I don’t want to imagine the ABORTIVE ATTEMPTS and SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATIONS it takes to create those things, though. With any luck I’ll have a team of people who think that’s fun.

The inspiration I came away with that will be the most difficult to put into practice is that I would really like to include as many live musicians as I can, to the point that if I thought I could arrange the piece for two synths and a handful of solo instruments, I would consider it. More work is required.