36 Views of Art and Beauty
In theater, there are many elements that help bring a playwright’s dream and message to life. Visual design is one of the many important elements needed to make a play last long in the minds of the audience. Without it, the drama in question isn’t as strong as the playwright wants it to be. The design in a sense is the bait to hook the audience into the show. They set the stage for what the audience has expected to see. Naomi’s Iizuka’s 36 Views seems to draw the audience in for a wild ride that she has written for them. Her play is about the Asian art world as well as the relationships of the art dealers, scholars, and reporters that live inside of it. Iizuka uses the visual design to conjure up this mind-blowing play.
On page twelve of the drama textbook, a scene from the, 36 Views, is present. It depicts a man and a woman in bed together in what looks to be a cage of some sort. The actors are in a passionate-romantic embrace in the scene. It raises the feeling of seduction, love, and treachery at work. One wants to look away because it is wrong, but yet one cannot help but to be drawn into such beauty. The play itself is about finding the authenticity in art and relationships. The drama seems to use beauty as mask for the truth. The message is clear: things are not always what they seem. That is what Iizuka wanted to put out to her audience when the main character, Darius Wheeler, discovers an alleged pillow book. That little book leads to a whole world of chaos and the depths of the human spirit just to find out how much it is worth. Iizuka draws on the themes of deceit and seduction as well as art through the background and the designs to deliver her powerful message to audience and the world.
Backgrounds, costumes, lighting, and props add onto the play’s appearance. The actors can be enough, but one needs visual arts to keep the audience interested. In the picture, the scene draws heavily on an Asian background. A large painting of a red Mt. Fuji in front of an ocean-like sky serves as the backdrop in the scene. The play is based on a series of paintings under the same name by Katsushika Hokusai. The play draws on the beauty of its visual to help get its message across and seduce people into its beautiful yet deceitful world. Most of the stage is also pretty dark. The only things seen are the actors, the cage, and the backdrop. It is as if the darkness is blocking out the truth from the audience in this scene and only directing their attention to the beautiful lie they are witnessing. The dark and light are used pretty well in the picture. This also seems to add onto the idea of the dark truth under beautiful lies.
Drama and art go hand in hand like a married couple. Without each other, the play would probably not be as loud and strong as the playwright wants it to be. 36 Views exercises the use of visual design to help draw the audience into a world of art, beauty, and lies. The design help to show that beauty can lie. Visual design helps to get the message across to the public.