7 ACTS OF MERCY-SPECULATIVE DESIGN
In this project we had to design set and costumes for the play The Seven Acts of Mercy by Anders Lustgarten, inspired by the painting of the same name by Caravaggio. The play is set in two different time periods and different locations, one is 1606 Naples, the other is present day Bootle. This presented quite a challenge when designing as I wanted to create a set that combined both worlds.
I decided to focus on the structural elements of each place, I visited a few churches and found myself really drawn to the arches and the structure of the windows. In the scenes in Bootle the biggest theme is a community falling apart and houses being taken, I decided to show this through deconstructed brick walls making the room for the Bootle scenes look fragile. My initial design ideas only had these two main elements but I didn't think it achieved what I wanted effectively enough.
In the play Caravaggio is painting while stood on scaffolding and when collecting primary research around Nottingham a really prominent feature of the streets is also scaffolding. I decided to make this the basis of my set, using it to create levels for dynamic performance but also allowing me to tie the two worlds together.
