The document provides details about the production of the play "Big Love" including the director, designers, script, casting, style, and designs. The play will center around a proposed marriage between two families and the struggles that ensue. It will feature three younger women as the main characters Lydia, Olympia, and Thyona, along with three younger men and one older man. The style will be naturalistic to portray the wealthy characters realistically. The set, lighting, and costume designs are described to help convey the theme of equality and power struggles through a dark and tragic story.

1. Big Love
Director Andrew Yim
Costume designer Eileen Paek
Set designer Jungmi Jung
Light designer Mouhammad Naboulsi

2. Director

3. The Script
In the play, Big Love, it will
be centered around the
proposed marriage
between two families and
the struggles that come
with it. Throughout that
play the audience should
witness/experience
different emotions such as
love, hate, and tension.

4. Casting
• The Main Cast
For the main cast there needs to be
three younger women to play Lydia,
Olympia, and Thyona. The one playing
Thyona must be strong and stubborn.
(below)
Three younger men to play Nikos,
Constantine, and Oed; with the one
playing Constantine to be being
controlling and intimidating. (above)
Finally one older man to
play Piero. (left)
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5. • The Supporting Cast
There should also be two women to
play Bella and Eleanor. The actor that
plays Bella need to be older in age and
have a mother presence. (below)
There needs to be two men to play Leo
and Giuliano. The actor to play Giuliano
needs to be young, handsome, weak and
useless. (above)

6. The “Spine” of the Play
This is also referred as the main action and can
be determined the primary objective of each
scene throughout the play. In this particular
play the “spine” can be stated as “to be equal”.

7. In the scenes many times actors will allude to
equality and the power struggle between men and
women, which becomes the theme of Big Love. Actors will
express the struggles of being a man or being a woman
and the beliefs against each gender to help portray the
theme.

8. Style
In order to correctly portray the play the production of the play
is in a realistic style, more specifically similar naturalism. The
style used will be similar to naturalism in that the props used will
be an exact copy of items used in our daily lives.

9. The set will be extravagant, luxurious to portray the power and upper-classness of the
characters. The actors will also look sophisticated, wealthy to further exemplify their
power and wealth.

10. Directorial Concept The play will be performed on
one stage with each scene in a
different portion of the stage.
The lights, costume, and set
should all work together to
convey the theme and spine
to the audience. During the
climax of the play should be
the murders of the grooms
and the and only one couple
finding love. In the scene the
audience should find the
couple that overcame the
conflict in the play.

11. Set Design
by Jungmi Jung

12. General Settings
The black box is used to make costumes, set, and
lighting stand out and to put the mood of darkness, the
play’s theme, as a background to guide the audience to
explore their creativity as the play goes along.
As a theatre space, the thrust space is used within the
black box. By having three sides for the audience,
emotions and movements of the performers would deliver
to the audience immediately and strongly.

13. Ground Plan
Back Stage
Audience
A
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n
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e
A
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di
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n
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Table
for
cake
Table
Table for
wedding gifts
Pendant light
on the ceiling
Enough space for
actors to express
their movements
for dance and fight
scenes
Back stage is
considered as a
waiting area for the
actors to make their
turns and for
changing
door
Flag

14. Location
The main role of set designing is to let the
audience know the location where the play
will be set. Having the flag of Italy on up-right
of the stage will help the audience to indicate
that the location of the play is Italy.

15. Visuals
Crystal pendant lights with red
decorations is set on the center of
the ceiling to give the audience the
visual of darkness. The color red has
meanings of aggressive, fearful, and
rebellious.
Bathtub is located on up-left of
the stage, as located on the ground
plan, because it appears only in the
beginning of the play. However, it is
important because it comes out in
the opening scene when Lydia sees
Giuliano for the first time.
The color of a table and chair
in Bella’s scenes is dark brown and
the shape is dull to give the audience
feeling of intense. The color solid
dark brown will deliver the dark
mood of the play to the audience.

16. On the left side of the stage, as seen
from the audience’s position, the door is
located for the performers to enter and exit
as they appear in each scenes.
The color of the door is black to fade in
with the background as the black box.
In the scene where the sisters’ cousins
arrive via helicopter, there should be a sound
effect of helicopter from speakers to give the
audience more realistic imaginary.

17. In opposite to other objects in the play
such as bathtub and Bella’s table and chair,
wedding gifts and the table for the gifts are
clear and shiny to indicate how marriage is
commonly known in society, as pure and
beautiful. A wedding is suppose to be
blessing, but the set that is dark as whole
makes the wedding gloomy and dull.
As wedding flower decoration, fifty black
roses are used to symbolize unhappy brides who
are forced to get married. The color black may
also illustrate the tragic ending for the grooms
who end up being murdered. There is one red
rose, which symbolizes Lydia who is the only
bride who does not kill her husband chooses love.

18. Special Effects
One of the special effects that is used to make the
fight and murder scenes more intense is fog. Fog
creates horrific mood and helps the audience to realize
that this scene is the climax.
Additionally, as a set design, the light will be also
set on the floor of the stage and light on the
performers. This technique designs horrifying effect by
creating shadow under the eyes of the performers.

19. By lighting the bathtub from below in
the beginning of the play, the audience may
foreshadow the tragic ending for the grooms
and the unforgettable actions that the brides
take to save themselves. With this light
special effect in the beginning of the play, the
brides who go in or sit down on the bathtub
can be spotlighted from the audience.
This special effect makes the theme
stronger and the mood darker.

20. Lighting Design
BY MOUHAMMAD NABOULSI

21. Shape and form
In order to provide depth and realism
to the play and enhance the visual
elements of the play, there will be
lights coming from the side, top and
behind the stage. This is quite the
standard in stage lighting as simple
lighting just from the front washes out
the figures and makes them look flat
and not interesting.

22. Focus and composition
Whenever the scene needs to be focused on a few
individuals like one of the brides and one of the
husbands then a spotlight will be focused on the two of
them. Also spotlighting a certain object such as a black
rose or something that represents death, a
foreshadowing of the following events will be made.
(Brides killing their husbands).
Whenever a big scene such as the killings of the
husbands take place the entire stage will be illuminated
instead of a focusing spotlight.

23. Mood and Style
In terms of mood, the color of the lighting play a big role in the mood of the
play at first the play is sad and hopeless, whenever the brides are being
forced to get married, therefore a blue moon light will be emitted.
When the play turns dark, or when the brides plot to kill their husbands
there will be a crystal pendant light in the center of the ceiling
accompanied with a dark glowing red light filling the stage to ensue a
mood of aggression, fear and rebellion, parts of the stage will also be in
total darkness.

24. Time and Place
Since the play takes place in the evening time in the mid-summer, this
suggests that there will little or no light, and since is in a villa indoors the
lighting will be dark throughout most of the play.
The only other times there will be “sunlight” within the play are the scenes
where the brides flee on the cruise ship to Piero’s villa and whenever the
men track them down. Otherwise all major scenes should be fairly dark.

25. Rhythm and Central image
Since the mood of the play and the central theme of the play changes as
the scenes progresses the lights should as well.
To provide this transition there will be a slow fade out of the previous
scene while the next scene can be prepared before the lights reveal it. The
scenes should get progressively darker and aggressive.
As for movement there will be a lot of actors on stage performing at the
same time so a lot will be going on, consequently the lights will be moving
and flashing in the most intense scenes like the murders. All of this should
reflect the central image of rebellion and defiance.

26. Intensity and color
For intensity, light dimmers will
be used to ensure that a scene
that takes place at night is dark
enough and believable to have
taken place at night, the same
goes for lighter scenes and the
transitions between scenes.
The use of colored lights can
transform the stage to just about
any mood and setting, so
scrollers will be used so that it is
easy to transition between
different colored scenes to evoke
different moods.

27. Distribution and movement
Distribution and movement ties into the focus aspect of the play, for
example if one scene is taking place on one side of the stage because the
props on the other side are for another scene then only that part of the
stage will be lit up, and whenever the scene for the other half of the stage
approaches it will be revealed for the audience to see.
The lighting will be from overhead in front of the stage and from the side, a
45 degree angle from the lights to the stage provides an ideal amount of
light for the actor and audience.
The transitions that the lights invoke should be extremely subtle, the
audience members should not know that the lights are making them look a
certain direction, therefore light transitions should be as smooth and
seamless as possible

28. Type of lights used
For the focused spotlights we
will use a ellipsoidal reflector
spotlight and this will be used
when there are only a few
characters on stage to
provide focus on them and
not the entire stage. This
type of light creates a bright
hard edged spotlight.
Soft edged spotlights will
be used for backlighting of
the play and this is how
we will get in depth detail
and define the shape and
form of props and actors.
For scenes such as the
murders of the husbands
where the entire stage is to
be lit with a red color light we
will use floodlights, so that it
is not focused on one person
or one area, the entire stage
should be lit in one smooth
wash of light.

29. Costume Design
“What a costume designer does is a
cross between magic and
camouflage. We create the illusion
of changing the actors into what
they are not. We ask the public to
believe that every time they see a
performer on the screen, he’s
become a different person.”
-Edith Head

30. Lydia In the first scene,
Lydia enters is a dirty
wedding dress, having
just come off of a
yacht, running away
from her wedding.

31. Thyona
Fierce;
Strong minded;
Stubborn;
Wears sharp colors to reflect her sinister
personality.
Olympia
A very fashion forward girl. She is the type of girl who
wears short skirts, paints her nails, and dyes her hair.
She’s . Oblivious to the situation she’s in and follows the
authority of her sisters.

32. Pierro
First impressions
Giuliano
Giuliano, the young
Italian man, who meets
Lydia unexpectedly while
she is bathing. He is
handsome, agreeable,
weak and useless.
Pierro is Giuliano’s uncle. They are very well off,
so I gave him a nice and retro blazer, not too
formal, but enough to make him noticeably rich.

33. Bella
Bella carries around with her a basket
of tomatoes and wears a babushka in
her first scene.
Bella is a very mother-like figure to all
the characters in the play.

34. First Kiss
Nikos and Lydia’s first kiss reflects the
first step in how the two are giving
each other a chance to be in love.
This scene screams out INNOCENCE.
Lydia is wearing a short, flowing white
dress with a headband to expose her
youth.

35. Wedding day
Olympia
Using her soft curls and small twists to
express elegance, Olympia is dressed in
her (“not so fashionable”) Alvina Valenta
A-line gown.
Thyona
With a strong greek goddess influenced sheath
gown,
Thyona is implying authority and power with her
laurel wreath.

36. Wedding day—Murder day
Blood stained wedding dresses, kitchen
knives, and hatred easily sums up the
murder scene

37. Lydia’s Wedding day
Lydia wears a simple white strapless dress
and her pastel bouquet of daisies reflect
innocence.
The complex garter inside of the simple
dress portrays her character with the friendly
daisy to complete her wedding look.