A different kind of theatre

People queued up for hours to get tickets to see Derek Jacobi do Lear - the production's sold out - I join the frenzy, but ended up disappointed ... I could justify it, but this is not the place for a review. I just guess I've outgrown traditional theatre. There were valuable things I picked up, though, which will feed through to shadow theatre. The theatrical landscape design which sought to integrate stage with theatre auditorium was based on wooden panels painted white and distressed with gaps between them which lined the floor, the back wall and the outside of the boxes. Through the gaps, light shone at particularly dramatic points in the plot. Shadows were cast accidentally and more powerfully than anything else which was going on on stage to my mind through side lighting along the back wall. The most striking effect was of lights being used to illuminate the space underneath the stage which shone through the gaps in the planks on the floor. A world of opportunity revealed itself ... to have a semi-transparent floor that acted as a screen ... now that I find interesting. Instead of doing what Fuerza Bruta did and alter the visual perspective of an audience located at ground level by suspending a swimming pool with a clear bottom above their heads, creating the effect of the audience being spatially subservient to the action, this approach would, in effect, elevate the audience and change their perspective relative to the action, elevating them to an Olympian perspective ... in my view, a far more interesting relationship ...