Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land
Set Design + Build, Project Leader
2022 Spring
Theodore Francis Green Hall, Brown University
Instructor
Alexander Haynes | Sara Ossana
Design Team
Chuyuan Ning | Yuheng He | Chenxi Wang | Qianxue Zhao | Autumn Qiu
Build + Assistant Team
Harbor Bai | Qingyu Huang | Hermione Hsieh | Qinzhi Wang | Karan Wu | Ella Xu | Natalie Xie | Yue Zhou | Yang Zhou
Originally written by Stan Lai (赖声川), this play starts with two drama troupes arranged to have a rehearsal at the same time by mistake; one of the workshops is playing the early-modern tragedy Secret Love, and the other one is playing the period comedy The Peach Blossom Spring based on a classical poem. Since they have only one stage for their rehearsals, issues and conflicts follow. Secret Love for the Peach Blossom Spring creates a unique experience of stage play by mixing up the costume and modern, sorrow and delight.
As a set designer for a student production with very limited resources, the most important thing is to ensure the integrity of our work within the constraints of technology, equipment, safety hazards, etc. During this project, I start to understand the impact of each design decision on the overall success of the project and the opportunity to utilize my skills and knowledge to support other teams.
The script of "Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land" offers a bold-structured, captivating storyline with intricate time and space elements. However, the text with specific imageries presented a challenge in finding opportunities for creative expression.
To overcome this, we streamlined the design to the big branch across and altering the hanging objects to enhance the scene's visual cues.
The gesture of hanging a huge tree branch in the blackbox has proven to be simple yet impactful, activating the space immediately.
The language of "Secret Love" is depicted realistically with romantic lights and historical backdrops, while "Peach Blossom Spring" is portrayed with exaggerated and humorous features like off scaled peach blossoms.
The distinction between on and off stage is blurred in this play due to its metathearical nature, as the set changes and the crew becomes a part of the ongoing performance.
The use of steel pipes, long poles, and iron hooks provides a flexible and interchangeable system, transforming the black box into a more approachable installation-scale space.
The concept of "rehearsal" was emphasized by incorporating spontaneous marks on the ground, inspired by the imperfect state of the production two days before opening night.
The high interactivity of each scene is also emphasized by the exaggerated movements of the actors and the man in black. The mad woman, a meta-existence in the original work, becomes a more active character through immersive choreography, lying on a hospital bed, or menacingly approaching the audience with a knife asking if you are the long gone lover who betrayed her.
