Winter 2014
22
photo: craig schwartz
Norman Frisch Dramaturg. Former Project Specialist for Public Programs, The Getty Villa Prometheus Bound was a text that Travis knew well, having staged it as a young director in one of his earliest professional gigs. And the Chorus—composed of young “women,” innocent water nymphs (“the daughters of Ocean”)—during the course of the play undergoes one of the most profound transformations in all of Greek drama: in essence, from princesses to revolutionaries. One of the strengths of our partnership was that CalArts has the ability to train and mobilize a fully-sized Chorus (which is rare for any theater school or company nowadays), and the Getty has been long frustrated by its inability to deploy a large Chorus in its outdoor productions (for both economic and artistic reasons—the length of rehearsal periods, etc.).
The art of choral speaking is no longer taught in most conservatories for theater training–indeed, even the sort of stage presence and “muscles” required to perform unamplified in a large theater space are no longer a focus of many academic theater programs. CalArts is one of the increasingly rare exceptions to that trend. Its students and alumni are fantastic artists, well trained, and highly professional—and its faculty even more impressive. Shelby Brown Education Specialist, The Getty Villa Prometheus Bound was unusual even in the 5th century b.c. in its immobilized protagonist, depiction of physical torment onstage, and representation of Zeus as an unyielding, self-serving tyrant… The wheel is perhaps the most unusual solution in two-and-a-half millennia to the problem of staging the desolate cliff.
Travis Preston The idea of the wheel was related to the thematic.
Prometheus is a God and as such cannot die. However, being bound, he experiences time in an entirely different way. He is literally bound to time. So, the idea of a clock became important. But I would be unhappy if it was read merely as a clock, and I began to think about many other associations. One was to the Wheel of Dharma. One was to the astrological signs and the wheel as an image of the cosmos. The physical structure of the wheel is related to a clock in Prague, where a second wheel moves around the outer rim, indicating the position of the sun. I thought that if we had a smaller wheel within a wheel, I could bind Prometheus to it and rotate him up to the height associated with a mountaintop. Efren Delgadillo Scenic Designer. CalArts faculty: School of Theater. Alumnus: Theater mfa 03 The challenge Travis gave me was this: “How do I move a guy without moving a guy?” He stays in the same place, but he moves. Once Travis had the idea of a wheel, he gave me the time and freedom to explore it. It was a long process, five months of research, in which I looked at wind tunnels, water wheels, Leonardo’s drawings… There were 15 different wheel designs, and the final one was revised 11 times—the main concerns being safety and cost. The one we originally decided on had more surface area. We skinned it down to a skeletal version, the bare essentials, marrying form and function. The wheel serves the play really well, placing the actors on a vertical plane precipice. The final design features a wheel inside a wheel, which is attached to a third, counterweighted wheel. The whole piece sits on a base that allows the actors to move it.