Stage Proposal

  In transferring the story My Love My Love to the stage, I would like to express the theme of fate and magnify the gap between the rich and peasants through the play.  
  First of all, the stage would be divided into two parts and a “nonexistent” third part. The left stage is where the peasants live and the right stage is where the rich live. Thus, there will be two background boards at the back. On the left side, the board would be painted with arid land, the winds, and the bare hill in the distance. Those actors who play the peasants would wear loose and torn sweaters with tucked into pants, and pretend to be farming at the beginning of the play. In contrast, on the right side, which is the second part of the stage, is where the rich live. There will be a painting of glorious, brilliant and magnificent on the background. The stage would be set up in the dinning room where Daniel Beauxhomme and his father is having an extravagant meal. The concept of the whole decoration at the right stage would be gold, bright and luxury. Start with such huge contrast, it will give the audience a shock at first. The audience would immediately get the information of the insurmountable and unfair gap between the rich and poor in the first time. Otherwise, if the rich and poor were not put on the stage together but separate scenes, the contrast would not be very intense to the audience. In addition to these, there is also another important third part. Instead of directly shown on the stage, the third part would be presented by sounds, the sounds of the four gods. Gods absolutely play a very significant role in the text, which refers to the theme fate. They have different powers with controlling different things in the world. If there is a social level in the society of My Love My Love, I would say they are at the highest level. In order to show their sacred and unapproachable image, I would not let any actor to play them but only tell the audience their existence through the sounds. Therefore, the play would start with such image: peasants are farming very hard at the left stage; the rich people are enjoying a fantastic meal; the gods are talking about the past sins which had done by human “outside the stage”.  
  More than that, costumes and lightning are also very crucial elements of the play. As what I have mentioned a little bit above, for the peasants, they would wear some kinds of old, torn and loose sweaters or shirts at the top with tucked into their same old and loose pants but without wearing shoes. The colors of their clothes would mainly be brown, yellow or dark colors. However, the protagonist Désirée would instead wearing a white dress. But the dress is also very old and torn with many patches. In contrast, those rich people, Daniel Beauxhomme and his father would both wear a classic suit, a watch and a pair of shinny loafers. Daniel’s father also can wear a pair of god-rimmed glasses. In terms of lightning, such contrast would be presented as well. The light at the right stage would absolutely be very bright but the light at the other side would be darker.  
  From the stage design to the costumes, all of these would strongly heighten the gap between rich and poor.