Date post: | 24-May-2015 |
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Design |
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BUS STOP
By: William IngeSet Design: Muhammad
H Iqbal
TIME LINE The play was written in 1955 by William Inge.
The 1950's were one of the most prosperous moments in American
History. This is the time period that many of your grandparents
grew up in. Many Americans escaped from the cities and moved to
the suburbs due to an increase in the size of the middle-class.
Bus Stop is a drama, with romantic and some comedic elements.
BACKGROUND
After WWII ended in 1945, the United States experienced a time of economic
prosperity. More Americans were able to purchase homes due to affordable
mortgages. Technological innovation brought about by the war combined with
disposable income allowed families to purchase items such as kitchen appliances
and televisions. People began to see themselves as consumers, buying many of the
products advertised on television and the radio that promised to make lives quick
and easy.
n the 1950s, the American public was also surrounded by crime in the news, and
television and radio often broadcast titillating stories about organized crime and
young offenders. Crime was not just an issue in the big cities, however, and small,
rural towns relied upon their sheriffs to keep the peace and enforce the law.
William Inge, who was born and raised in southeastern
Kansas, once observed that “nowhere can we find a closer
correlation of landscape and character” than here in the
heart of the nation. He saw in Midwesterners a humility and
a quiet, resilient strength that comes from having one’s life
and prosperity depend on the unpredictable extremes of
weather, living under a sky “which can destroy a season’s
crops in a few hours by hail or blizzards or tornadoes, or a
relentlessly burning sun that can desiccate the land like an
Old Testament curse.”
LOCALE
TYPE OF THEATER
A play of this type which
has just one setting, set
inside a local diner, I
would choose a
proscenium stage, which
creates a window around
the performance, giving
the audience a perfect
view.
A freak snowstorm has halted the progress of
the bus, and the eight characters (five on the bus)
have a weather-enforced layover in the diner from
approximately 1 to 5 a.m. Romantic or quasi-
romantic relationships ensue between Grace and
Carl, Professor Lyman and Elma and Cherie and
Bo. Virgil and Will are the older authority figures
outside the relationships.
Environment
“Outside, the powerful, reckless wind comes and goes, blasting against everything in its path, seeming to shake the very foundation of the little restaurant building; then subsiding, leaving a period of uncertain stillness”.
The entire play is set inside a street-corner restaurant in a small Kansas town about thirty miles west of Kansas City. The restaurant serves also as an occasional rest stop for the bus lines in the area.
SET ELEMENTS
It is an old establishment with few modern
improvements. It is 1:00 a.m. on a night in early
March and a near blizzard is storming outside.
Inside, by comparison, the scene is warm and
cozy. Two women, in uniforms that have lost their
starched freshness, are employed behind the
counter.
My view of the Set
THE This would be an ideal set for this play. The diner is set in a small town outside of Kansas from the 1950’s. Since the diner is set in rural Kansas, the lighting building fixtures will be a little rugged. Dark walls, with less light illumination would set a perfect tone for this setting
SET DESIGN OF THE DINER
Chrome and dark colors are essential design elements in
a retro-style kitchen.
The walls and fabric used for window treatments should
also be dull and dirty looking. Color schemes for 1950s
diner would compromise of light wall colors and dark floor
tiles.
Appliances were colorful in the 1950s
Kitchen Appliances would include: chrome toaster on
your retro-color Formica counter top, chrome bread box,
tea kettle and vintage electric percolator to your kitchen
accessory display
The floor themes
in diners from the
50’s were bright
and square multi
colored tiles. For
my production I
have chosen to go
with black and
white tiles since our
diner is set in a
rural area with
wood furniture
SET APPLIANCES
While this impression of a spotless diner with chrome fixtures, twirling bar stools, and a polished counter may have been accurate in some parts of the country, the diner from Bus stop is more old fashioned with a raggedy look with modern improvements.
SET FURNITURE
SET FURNITURE
A wooden table is a major
part of a retro kitchen
design. striving for a retro
diner décor, I will place
wooden tables across the
diners to give it more of a
diner-like appearance in the
rural areas.
On those chrome tables, we can place a chrome
napkin holder, chrome toothpick holder, vintage salt
and pepper shakers, a sugar shaker and old
fashioned straw dispenser