GARGANTUA - DESIGN CONCEPT
Production design concept for the 2020 Almeida Academy production of Gargantua, by Carl Grose, directed by Jordana Golbourm.
The production was originally planned as a stage performance at the Almeida Theatre in London, but had to be cancelled due to COVID-19.
The production was later esumed as an adapted webseries titled Gargantua Watch in 2021. It was produced and filmed as a collaboration between the Almeida Theatre and the London Screen Academy in June 2021.
Below is the design proposal as developed for the original stage play.
"When Mr. and Mrs. Mungus have a baby it isn’t the bouncing blue-eyed boy they were hoping for. After a two-and-a-half year pregnancy, Mini Mungus gives birth to a monster – one with an accelerated growth rate and an insatiable appetite for anything that moves (including joggers). But when sinister military scientists become intent on cloning an army of giant babies from the giant, he breaks his chains and escapes. The world can only watch in horror as he embarks on learning how to walk and rampant destruction."
1.THE PLAY BEFORE THE PLAY
For the baby‘s international rampage I was thinking it would be fun to build little multi-coloured paper houses onto a long strip of those city/roads play carpet that are often used for playing with cars.
In between these 3D houses we can place 2D cardboard cut-outs of famous landmarks that the baby knocks down. Keeping them 2D rather than attempting to build them would give us greater freedom to add fun baby Easter eggs and make them a little more detailed and recognisable.
I could prepare the drawing of these landmarks in the style of a colouring book and the young people could colour them in. I thought it would be fun to have landmarks across roughly all continents, so I‘m proposing:
- Europe: Tower-bridge, The Shard, a double-decker bus; Eiffel tower, Louvre
- Middle East: pyramids and sphynx
- Asia: Great Wall of China
-Australia: Sydney Opera House
-Oceania: Easter Island Statues
-The Americas: Mt. Rushmore
On the carpet I would order them geographically, going eastwards from London.
2. THE SEE-SAW SET DESIGN
I spent a lot of time thinking about how to get different levels into the set while keeping it playful and easily constructable. At some point I had the idea of this giant see-saw, with a centre beam wide enough that you can walk on it. They are relatively simple to construct with a basic timber frame and would give us three different levels to play with:
1.In balance: a straight wooden plank about 1m – 1.5m above ground. Fixed in position by jamming the centre beam with braces.
2.Left side up: See-saw at maximum incline, kept in blace by tighlty fixing one end of the centre-beam to the floor with rope.
3.Right side up: As above, but the opposite.
On one side the see-saw would connect to a free-standing slide that people can step over to when it is inclined upwards. On the other there would be a little playhouse, hollow on the backside and housing giant Gargantua parts, e.g. a foot.
I also had the idea to combine the model-city Skankton Marsh we talked about with a sandbox. I believe using actual sand would be too messy, but we could build little cardboard houses and clad them in glue and a thin sand layer instead. The mall could be part of the model or separate, using giant Jenga blocks.
Finally, I think the two clothing lines filled with both normal and gargantuous clothes could be a really nice and easy-to-build backdrop. They could also cover any potential other set we might be on top of.
3. THE ADVENTURE-PLAYGROUND ALTERNATIVE
While reading up on see-saw construction and how old tires are the perfect buffer for them, I started to develop a sort of paralel stage-concept where the entire set is an adventure playground, using colourful tires and pallets and centering around some sort of climbing tower. Rather than recreating some of the plays reality (such as the play-house or the mini-city) the stage could be like an adventure-filled blank space that is brought to life by the children playing in it.
Instead of creating places, we could create spaces, up/down/in/out that can be turned from a secret lab into the Mungus‘s house, into the market square in the blink of an eye.
The Mega-Mall could be one giant sand castle, the anti-chamber only accessible through a crawling space.
It would be a way of letting the young people transform the space by power of their imagination in the audience believing it because it feels real, rather than looks real.
I played around a bit with the „piece de résistance, a.k.a the central climbing tower of this design (also as a potential alternative to the see-saw).
4. THE SOFT PLAY ALTERNATIVE
I literally only had this idea in the past couple of days. After weeks of googling children‘s toys my targeted marketing followed suit and so I got an ad for en indoor playground. Which is when I realised that soft play could be the ideal DIY-style, build-your-own-playground base material we never knew we wanted!
I need to have a proper look into how these (and their prices), but I think it could be a really fun, incredibl versatile, cost-effective and easy to assemble set construction. There are even companies that rent out complete sets for £100-£200.
THE FINAL SOFT-PLAY CONCEPT
Based on a subsequent chat with the director, I redesigned the set around the soft-play concept. Since these elements will have to be either bought or rented, I kept/added quite a few cardboard and paper-based section, which the young people can help create and decorate (also for budget reasons).
To not have the two different styles clash and make the set look messy and miss-matched, I propose to position realtively permanent cardboard elements (such as the town, the mall, etc..) towards the edges of the stage, framing the adaptable soft-play centre.
For all the elements to from a coherent little world, rather than a series of lonely set-pieces, I also propose to dress the stage floor with interlocking soft-play carpet tiles. I think this could really add the the overall playground feeling as well.
Notes on...
... The Mega Mall: I think it could be really fun to show the mall as a huge pile of colourful cardboard boxes (all the individual shops). The names of these shops are whatever the young people think should be on sale at that mall.
... The signpost: I had this idea to make a cheeky little sign post with a couple of bonkers direction and a main sign that states where we‘re currently, in the play. Alternatively, we could also make a sign post that already has some (or all) of the plays locations and move it around the stage so that it always points at the correct scene (if that makes sense?)
... The model-town and playhouses: The plan for these is to give the young people a selection of printable folding patterns in various sizes that they can mix and match to create their houses. The landmarks in the play-before-the-play will be positioned among/behing them.
... The soft-play cubes: These are meant to be a completely mobile and adaptable set element that can be easily re-arranged between scenes. Depending on which and how many of the shapes we get, we can decide on a couple of formations that fit the various locations in the play and are easy to switch between.
...The clothing line: For the laundry backdrop as suggested in the last proposal.
