Sharon Ott, direction: The design process for this production took about two years. All of the designers were professors and students from the departments of production design, sound design, motion media, film and animation at the Savannah College of Art and Design—where the show premiered in March 2011. It was a huge departmental collaboration. My idea was to use various forms of media to illuminate Ray Bradbury’s world, to update the script and give it a contemporary feel. I believe that when Bradbury first created Fahrenheit 451 in the ’50s, he didn’t realize how prescient his tale was going to be. The set design was inspired by the BP oil rig that exploded in the Gulf, and represented the brutal strength of the military industrial complex. It had two levels, five projection surfaces and rested on top of a pile of burned books, which you can’t fully see in the photos.
Michael Jackson Chaney, live action film segments: Sharon and I decided that a couple of segments in the play should have a cinematic focus. There’s the end in the forest (above), the hound chase sequence, the multiple shots of the library and the fire footage—they run throughout the entire project. There’s a lot of blocking involved, especially with the forest sequence, in terms of positioning the figures in front of the camera, when and how the camera is going to move, and getting the audience to engage in the action happening on screen. But cinema has an uncanny ability to suspend our disbelief and transport us into that place of dreams. When the actors emerge from the film sequence onto the stage, there’s a beautiful blend of cinema and the tangible world of the stage.
Alessandro Imperato, motion media: I contributed to the backdrop scenes of the play, including the Hudson fire scene (above). It’s a five-minute scene that starts with a small flame that ignites and spreads, and includes falling books and book burning. I had certain sections that were filmed for me, and then I processed that footage so that it became more stylized. As the fire rose, there was a mechanical screen that would come down to meet the bottom screen, and the fire would expand, so the actors would appear in an immersive environment with flames all around them. One of the challenges was making it work with the set—we had to deal with the logistic of setting up the top half and then setting up the background for the actors to speak. But the video gives you flexibility—you can go from fire, to outside, to a game show. It’s freeing. That’s one of the beauties of working with video.
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 ran Sept. 7-Oct. 9 at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Md., in collaboration with the Savannah School of Art and Design. The play was directed by Sharon Ott and featured production design by Hal Tiné, costume design by Dawn Testa, lighting design by Ruth Hutson, music and sound design by Steve LeGrand, live action film segments by Michael Jackson Chaney, motion media design by Alessandro Imperato, animation by David Wardell and motion graphics by Brad Matarazzo. Erik Trester was projection engineer.
