The Stage is a Dangerous Machine

Page 1:
• George Typsin: Russian émigré, American Designer
• 1990 he single-handedly designed films
• The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez
• Mr. Jelly Lord
• 1989: staged a one man show with his sculptures at Twining Gallery, NY
• 1989: awarded an Obie for design work
• He mixes the beautiful with the ugly
• Steal is his favorite material
• His work has to do with the decay of the beautiful
• Some of his designs are displeasing to people’s sense of symmetry
• The stage is a dangerous machine because he must be precise and careful with it
• 1984 (at age 30) he got an MFA from New York University
• He feels freer than other designers because he doesn’t concern himself with “periods”, therefore he can mix and match his favorite elements
• Don Giovanni set in Harlem
• Ajax combines bloody stage with a glass booth
• The Count of Monte Cristo in a set with moving Napoleonic armories
• Tanhauser in the crystal cathedral
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• This freedom is the hallmark of postmodernism
• Embrace a lot of worlds and explore them interacting spiritually, psychologically, or historically as well as visually
• Henry IV in a gothic cathedral
• The height of the set pieces captured the spiritual dimension
• The Screens used an overhanging net to represent all of the characters that died in the story

p.3&4
- what was important was to create an architecture of physical world that is almost immaterial, nonexisistent
- In Russian constructivism, its all about structure or destroying that structure.
- Islamic architecture is trying to diffuse the structure and make an understanding of how a building is put together impossible. It melts into the air, and there are layers and layers of patterns that prevent you from understanding where the building starts and where it ends.
- Tsypin "If you work by yourself all the time, you repeat yourself or your train of thought tends to become fixated on something, while a conversation with the director could jolt you into something else.
- Shakespeare is difficult becuase it has been done so much, its difficult to see with fresh eyes.
- The original film is famous because of the design; to do something like that now is out of the question. Not only has it become the norm, but it is also trite and banal-wide angles and all. How do you deal with that? All you have to do is define a way of looking at it.
- Only in being a tourist you can experience a place.
Page 5:
• Main things are space and color
• Locations are strange empty places and space becomes very charged
• Films aren’t satisfying creatively because they take so much time
• Film scenes have to look too “realistic”
• Tsypin is more interested in sculptures
• “Models” are bewildering since performers don’t perform on them
• “Bases” are made of warped steel and contain the models
Pgs 6-7
-Typsin states, “I find that if you like a model and really work on a model, the more energy and kind of love you give to the model, it will all transfer to the real work.”
- Typsin writes that he tries to find a balance between “real danger and theatrical danger,” and that one of the reasons he moved away from theater production in the US is that the productions are too safe.
-“Theater does not exist without danger,” he so boldly states.
Pgs. 8-9
Representation is a big part of the theater. Being able to take something and make it represent something completely different. In this example from Tsypin, we see that he uses glass to represent fire. Glass is such an amazing material. It lets light through it, but in not exactly the same way. Glass lets light through it and distorts the image slightly, while still retaining its meaning. Tsypin continues to proclaim the importance of design and representation. What would the world be like with no people, so no actors or directors. How would the set look? If you could design the world, how would you show our lost existence.