Preliminary Designs for Costumes, Part IV

Below are preliminary costume design renderings by designer Jonathan Southwell. These preliminary renderings came out of a two-pronged research process. Jonathan was inspired by clothing from the time period in which Mozart lived (especially for the members of Mozart's family) as well as a more fantastical version of elements of clothes from the period for the Cloud Chorus characters. These preliminary design ideas were shared on November 10, 2010.
Preliminary design rendering for Mozart.
Preliminary design rendering for Wagenseil, the Court Composer.
Preliminary design rendering of the three Musicians, Maestro Staccato, Maestro Legato, and Maestro Fortissimo. See below for a colored rendering of Maestro Fortissimo.
Preliminary design rendering for the Cloud Chorus, emphasizing the ease of movement needed for these characters.

Preliminary Designs for Costumes, Part III

Preliminary costume design renderings by Jonathan Southwell. Here are the designs for Mozart's family.
Preliminary design rendering for Mozart's father, Leopold.Preliminary design rendering for Mozart's mother, Anna Maria. Note the fabric swatches that give a sense of the colors and textures envisioned for these costumes.
Preliminary design rendering for Mozart's sister, Nannerl.
Preliminary design rendering for the character Constanza.

Preliminary Designs for Costumes, Part II

Here are preliminary designs for the costumes, designed by Jonathan Southwell.

A rendering of the costume for Maestro Fortissimo, one of the 3 Musician characters.
Preliminary design renderings for the women in the Cloud Chorus.
A preliminary design rendering for part of the Cloud Piano Trio, the Candelabra.
Preliminary design rendering for the Hairdresser characters. Note the exciting hair!

Preliminary Designs for Costumes, Part I

Here you can see the preliminary designs for the costumes. Jonathan Southwell is the designer. Costume designers use inspirational images as a way to brainstorm the style of clothing, the colors, and the textures they will use as they create a look for each of the characters. A next step in the process is to create renderings, or drawings of the costumes, as you see below.
Preliminary renderings of the Cloud Queen and King.
A preliminary design for the Empress.
A preliminary design for the Emperor.
Design ideas for characters who make a brief appearance on stage, such as the Palace Physician.
Preliminary design renderings of the men in the Cloud Chorus.

Preliminary Designs for the Set, Part II

Here you can see the evolution of the preliminary design for the set by Cara Tougas.
The shapes are shifting in their size and location. Here the proscenium arch has shapes incorporated into it.
This next generation shifts focus away from the arch, onto the shapes in space.
This version incorporates one of the backdrops that will be an important part of the show. The backdrops will allow for the use of slide projections designed by Dominic Abbenante.
Here is the preliminary design as it was presented to the director and the rest of the designers and technicians in early November 2010. Note the use of color on the shapes and the scale of the shapes compared to the figure.

Preliminary Designs for the Set

You are looking at photographs taken of a preliminary scale model of the setting, designed by Cara Tougas. The images were taken as if you were sitting in the audience looking at the stage. Often designers do some sketches of their ideas for the set, but when they want to see how their ideas will look, they use a model to get a feel for how it will look on stage.

One of the challenges for this setting is that the play's scenes take place in several different locations and the changes in location happen frequently and quickly. Because of the Hermetic quality of the play, it was not possible or desirable to create a setting that was static or realistic.
Above you can see an early version of the set in which the designer was exploring the use of large shapes to define the playing space.
Here is the next generation of thinking about the set. You can see that the abstract images have a color treatment on them in this model. Also notice the figure that is used to give a sense of how an actor would look on this stage.
Here the color treatment is different.
This third generation of design came after conversations with the director, Margaret Larlham, and the Setting Advisor, Ralph Funicello. These shapes define the space but are smaller and some are movable by the actors.

Inspirational Images for the Set

After reading the play and meeting with the director, Margaret Larlham, set designer Cara Tougas began her process by finding images that served as the inspiration for her design. These two images were especially potent to her as she thought about creating the space for the Symphony of Clouds.

Cara is a first year design student in the MFA program at SDSU.