La Zombiata: An Opera Farce with Zombies
WholeTone Opera, February 2016
Dir. J. Deschene
A zombified spin on the opera classic La Traviata. The director was looking for a quasi-historically-informed, sexy, and over-saturated aesthetic for both the horde and the zombie leaders: her exact words for the show's color pallette were "bad acid trip." I had a blast combining different profiles, gender-bent touches, and obscene color combinations. This was also an exercise in distressing, as well as tasteful placement of some plastic bugs, blood, and tatters for the full "decomposing" zombie look.
The major challenge of this show was working around some body-mounted blood effects. I learned about where these effects would be at the start of the design process so that I could work around them, creating ruffles and carefully-placed rips hid the devices but allow the effect to spray outward.
With all this blood and guts, I also had to put some thought into shoe engineering to prevent the actors from slipping. Textured rubber pads attached to the soles with contact cement largely did the trick, although they still needed careful cleaning after each show.
I'm extremely proud of this one: there are few designers out there who can say that they made a Rococo show happen on a tight budget, let alone a zombie version.
Dir. J. Deschene
A zombified spin on the opera classic La Traviata. The director was looking for a quasi-historically-informed, sexy, and over-saturated aesthetic for both the horde and the zombie leaders: her exact words for the show's color pallette were "bad acid trip." I had a blast combining different profiles, gender-bent touches, and obscene color combinations. This was also an exercise in distressing, as well as tasteful placement of some plastic bugs, blood, and tatters for the full "decomposing" zombie look.
The major challenge of this show was working around some body-mounted blood effects. I learned about where these effects would be at the start of the design process so that I could work around them, creating ruffles and carefully-placed rips hid the devices but allow the effect to spray outward.
With all this blood and guts, I also had to put some thought into shoe engineering to prevent the actors from slipping. Textured rubber pads attached to the soles with contact cement largely did the trick, although they still needed careful cleaning after each show.
I'm extremely proud of this one: there are few designers out there who can say that they made a Rococo show happen on a tight budget, let alone a zombie version.
My sketches, playing with a new drawing style, colored pencils and pastels:
Production stills by Jeremy Ayers:
Photocall and production stills by Hannah Robertson: