12 thoughts on “Amelia Callen

  1. Love the idea of storms and sunsets to represent their marriage. Beautiful reference and rich source for inspiration.

  2. To get the full affect of a storm or a sunset, I think of open wide spaces. I would lean on this sense of openness (exposure even?) to help represent the staging of the play. There’s a sense of this in some of your images on your board “places.” What happens if you take the images of these places you have and envision what you want the sunset and storms to be? It’s a great way to start a very interactive conversation with lighting (& possibly projections) and beautiful staging for the director to play on…

  3. Hi, I’m Wendy Dann, I’m a freelance director and I teach directing at Ithaca College. I’m responding to your research on brick and stone here…although I wish I saw more of your emotional response to the play…

  4. Hello, my name is Badia Farha and I am an actress. This brought back an immediate familiarity, because I performed in this play in college. I really liked you’re aesthetic, and your use of colors. During this time period, maybe you want to flirt with the idea of a little bit of sand. I really liked all of this, and saw your vision clearly.

  5. Hi Amelia – Paul Miller here.
    I really love that you’ve gravitated to storms and sunsets as a lunching pad (that would be the lighting designer in my speaking of course) – if we had some time to spend together I’d probably pick your brain a little bit to how and why that particular imagery informs your thoughts for the play.

  6. Hi Amelia, I’m Jennifer Werner (Director/Choreographer). Your imagery and symbolism of using sunset/storm brewing is wonderful. Something I would reel the lighting into a larger discussion. Its a great envelope and departure point for the setting. Also love your courtyard–gives the staging layers of use, gives an illusion of open air/freedom while really maintaining a confining space for the story.

  7. Hi Amelia,

    My name is Pam Berlin. I’m a director.

    I found your dramatic and bold images of the sky wonderfully evocative. I’d like to hear more about how both the images from the temples and ruins of Greece as well as the skies inform your interpretation and feelings about the play and what it stirs in you.

  8. In its infancy, I can see and feel the world you are trying to capture in your research. From a Scenic Art perspective the sky imagery is bold and exciting and would be a fabulous translucency.

  9. Hi Amelia
    I teach design/pop culture at the University of Regina and have worked as a freelance designer across western Canada for some years.
    The storm imagery does capture the inner and the external turmoil of the play but I might suggest that your storms have to get uglier (think tornadoes barreling across the mid-west plains or storms at sea which turn the entire ocean and sea black). Similarly, the symmetry found in a lot of your research is strong but now you need to go in and shake it up…symmetry is fine for Aescheylus and even Sopholes but Euripides challenges everything (including the aesthetics) of what came before…he argues that the comforting world that Greek once knew is gone and so the environment needs to reinforce that world view. Connected to this notion of asymmetry I would also suggest that you push yourself out of the ancient world and into a place where you are uncomfortable. For example, keep the look and shape of the ancient world but rethink it in terms of materials (galvanized steel instead of mud brick is an extreme example but again a connection between then and now makes us all complicate in Medea’s story. As designers, one of the hardest things we can do is push ourselves into a place that makes us uncomfortable but that’s often when our most exciting work happens. Working with video and making things messy…you’ve got the beginnings of a strong production.

  10. Hi Millie!

    The first thing that struck me when looking at your research images was the saturation of all of the colors. Right off the bat, basing your production around a stormy sky at sunset gives you so many interesting places to go in terms of color and texture, and I think it was a really great choice. For me, it also brings up a very interesting parallels with her grandfather Helios, but I interpreted it slightly differently than how you put it in your reflection. For me, sunset signals the waning of Helios’ power as the sun disappears. In a similar way, as we watch the play, we watch Medea try to fight back as others diminish her power. It is almost like watching a sun who is trying not to set.

    When it comes to your research for place, a common thread between all of the images for me was a sense of forced perspective and regimented geometry. I think it contrasts with the chaos of a storm cloud in a very interesting way, but I feel like choosing an inner courtyard as your main playing space diminishes somewhat the awe-inspiring power of standing in an opened, outdoor space during a storm. That being said, I really liked your choice to lean heavily into the mythological/magical nature of the play, and the image of a woman crying gold really struck me. I would be interested to hear how you plan to work this theme into other aspects of your production.

    Overall, you found an inspiring aesthetic and carried it through every aspect of your work, and the result is a very cohesive, visually interesting design!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *