WILD WEST

The Wild West genre can be found in film, television, radio, literature, painting and other visual arts. The genre sometimes portrays the conquest of the wilderness and the subordination of nature in the name of civilization or the confiscation of the territorial rights of the original inhabitants of the frontier. It holds on to visual qualities such as settings 'on the ranch', cowboys on horseback, tepees and open fires (to name a few). Vast landscapes seem to depict the openness and natural setting of the genre.

Father translated as a cowboy on horseback.


If I were to apply this genre to my set design I feel I would need to adapt some of the features of my design to fit. Take for example the castle would perhaps become a large tepee which would have the same focal point as the castle but look different, and therefore reflecting a different feeling for genre all together (in this case symbolising the home of the native-Americans). I could play around with the idea of the cactus plant and make a number of these into a wild west pathway for the characters to travel through.

Set Design
A large tepee (Lion's castle) and over exaggerated cactus's (forest) are the main focal points within this design. Scale is a large element - adding the absurdest qualities into the relative reality of the wild west. Although my aim was to produce a set which was overpowering for the performers translating to the audience a sense of fantasy and fear.
If I were to bring in another element to this design it would be to have smoke machines bellowing out dry ice - in order to cover the stage and give the set an overall sense of the wilderness. As in reality the open fires would produce a smokey atmosphere.
A large distant mountain would be panoramicly produced on a semi circular backdrop - captivating the audience into the wild west setting and overall giving the set a continuous boundary so to speak.

By playing with the process of adaptation I do feel my design has changed in a way that I am not able to communicate the original narrative as successfully in this particular genre. So the choice in subject matter (ie changing castles into tepees) would be an important decision to make when thinking about the communication between the objects and the audience's interpretation.


















Above is my interpretation of the Lion's castle (front and back), in the original script the father discovers that behind the castle is a beautiful garden, to where he tries picking a rose for his daughter. In this genre however I have changed the castle to a tepee and rose bush to a blazing camp fire. Now to keep up with the narrative of the play, I thought why not change the precious rose to a sacred ember from the fire? Developing from this I thought the Lion should be a native Indian to therefore make sense of the embers being so precious.