The reliance of technology, social media and the growing online fascination with identity within JumpCut theatre is one that has filtered into the staging of the piece. In order to create and show the increasingly narcissistic society, we are using a variety of different technologies. The set is made up of two large projector screens, one hand-held camera, two TV monitors, two large clothing rails and one mannequin. This decision consequently allows us to play around with the idea of how humans are becoming more obsessed with appearances in a technological driven society. As the designer of JumpCut Theatre I have taken note from several theatre companies and visual artists.

Gob Squad 

German-English Gob Squad arts collective have influenced my approach to set design. This organisation experiments with new technologies and new pathways of communicating. The company believes that film and TV are the main cultural language of our time. Shaun Pattern Gob Squad member claims, “only a tiny minority of people go to the theatre, so it makes more sense to speak the language of film and TV: (Gob Squad, 2015).

This is something we wish to explore throughout the set design and content of our piece. “Experts are now finding through clinical studies, [how this narcissistic society] is being further exacerbated by the introduction of hand-held technology and the ability to upload an image to a ready-made crowd of voyeurs in a matter of seconds” (21^st Century Wire, 2014). We will highlight this issue through the use of IPhones, hand-held cameras and prerecorded voice audios.

Jorgen Leth – The Perfect Human

The Perfect Human is a short film lasting 13 minutes. It depicts a man and a woman; both labeled ‘the perfect human’. It contains many characteristic zooms to indicate the bodily parts of the perfect human being. Similarly to this artist, Stacey our stage manager will be giving demands and narrating Username through a series of live and prerecorded voice recordings to show the control that technology has over us. In the scene ‘sculpting the face’ Stacey with be highlighting and stating how the makeup should look in order to achieve the ‘ideal face’. To aid this visual image on stage the performers will use the hand-held camera to show close-ups of their faces and of them constantly trying to achieve this unattainable beauty. The zooms of the face will be projected onto the TV monitors at either sides of the stage making it more accessible for the whole audience.

As the costume designer for our piece, I have become increasingly fascinated by the research I have conducted regarding the concept of dressing for your body type. “The concept of dressing for your body type feeds into the idea that looking slim […] according to today’s societal ideals is much more important than wearing clothes you personally like” (Anuschka, 2015). It appears that in our generation a growing number of people are making fashion choices in order to fit into a category.

“I don’t like high-waisted jeans but I have to wear them because I’m a pear shape” (Anuschka, 2015).

This whole fascination seems so absurd to me and is something that I have strongly considered when selecting the costumes for Username. I want to highlight how we are becoming brainwashed by believing what these articles and how-to-guides on various body shapes are telling us and how they are making us overestimate the effect that clothes can have on us. At the start of this process, I envisioned the stage to look organized and have a sense of structure. Similarly to Forced Entertainments piece 12am Awake and Looking down we wanted to have numerous amounts of clothing on the rails position either side of the stage and all make-up in a row DS.

As the show progresses we want to give the audience a sense of growing exhaustion and destruction from continually trying to achieve this societal ideal body image. Through the use of costume and make-up, we want to present idealised beauty and show how this can potentially become a grotesque/maniacal procedure to obtain. The stage will start organised and gradually become messier throughout the piece.

Works Cited:

Anuschka. (2015) Why I Don’t Believe in Dressing for my Body Type. [online] Available from: http://into-mind.com/2015/03/25/why-i-dont-believe-in-dressing-for-my-body-type/ [Accessed 28 April 2015].

Chase, R. (2015) Username. [Performance Night] Lincoln 19 May 2015.

Chase, R. (2015) Username. [ScenicDesignWork] Lincoln 2015.

Chase, R. (2015) Username. [TheFinalSet] Lincoln 19 May 2015.

Forced Entertainment (2015) ’12AM Awake & Looking Down’: Some Production Images. [online] Available from http://www.forcedentertainment.com/notebook-tag/12am-awake-and-looking-down/ [Accessed 20 April 2015].

Gob Squad (2015) Why do you work with video and technology? [online video] Available from http://www.gobsquad.com/faq/Gob_Squad_FAQ/Why_do_you_work_with_video_and_technology___Themes_and_Concerns___Gob_Squad_FAQ.html [Accessed 20 April 2015].

Leth, J. (2010) Jorgen Leth – The Perfect Human, 1967. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9kls6bMkRo [Accessed 13 May 2015].

21^st Century Wire (2014) The ‘Selfie’ Obsession: A Chronic, Narcissistic Mental Disorder. [online] Available from: http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/12/13/selfie-obsession-a-chronic-narcissistic-mental-disorder/ [Accessed 25 April 2015].