3 minute read
"LOOK AT THIS PLACE" SETTING THE SCENE FOR FAMILY DRAMA
from Appropriate
Set Designers Mark McEntyre and Tony De Goldi (who together form G.O.M Arts Collective) have created the perfect frame for the dysfunctional family get together that is Appropriate. This space is “not just a backdrop - it is part of the action. It is an actor and contributing to the text” says Mark.
Tony and Mark have endeavoured to bring not just the house, but the histories of generations of the Lafayette family to faded, jaded, multi-layered life by creating a visual ‘under history’ - objects and visual elements that subtly hint at all that has occurred in this house and on this land.
All the mementoes and remnants of the family’s past are hoarded here. But it is not chaos. “The set reflects the turmoil of this family and its history. The overwhelming clutter in the space is a type of cataloguing of the histories this house holds” Tony says.
Each element has been carefully chosen to enhance our overall experience of the play and to contribute to the narrative in some way. “You could take away the walls and the props would nearly hold the space. Every element is doing its job” Mark notes.
That attention to detail sees the props include legal papers, referencing the father’s life as a judge, military memorabilia, and fur coats, alluding not only to the Lafayettes' dead mother, but the early history of Arkansas as a French Settlement. These elements also hint at the whiteness of the inhabitants and their history.
“The house is a holding place of a lost white society” Tony says. “The house is a memento mori of this White Culture in a way. The reminders of this life are still there but the next generations struggle to acknowledge that this has shaped them.”
The set was constructed to reflect this disappearing act, says Mark. “There is a ghosting aspect to the set, an ephemerality about it. It’s quite architectural, but we wanted it to feel as if it could evaporate out of the space.” Elements such as an old TV hint at the idea of the old patriarch, sitting and watching TV, living his last days watching life vicariously through his Trumpian lens, while gradually disappearing, evaporating into the walls of the Lafayette family homestead.
Because photos are a central focal point of Appropriate, Tony and Mark have added multiple prop cameras to the set. “This was a way to capture the idea that cameras are a form of power - they catalogue views and ideas” says Tony. But there can be multiple viewpoints - who is capturing the image, and for what purpose? The found images are the one thing of actual monetary value in the house and “some of the family want to sell them off” says Mark. “They are unfazed by the horror of what they are seeing because they haven’t acknowledged the influence of their own history. The set is the last decaying remnant of this thinking. It helps to make the audience question their history and ethical dilemmas.”
And, in the end, it is the set as ‘performer’ that gives us the final word on all we have seen.
