With its unusual set design the musical Romeo & Julia has caught the audience’s attention. Modern dance choreographed by former Bounce dancers, great music hits and a magical stage set are some of the signs that the show is bound to be a success.
Visual act delivered the complete stage set for this epic saga: everything from the backdrop, the sliding room dividers, the mechanical construction, to the enormous tree trunks with hundreds of magnolias that magically bloom within seconds.
The tree trunks were built by using similar techniques from boat building. Internal wooden frames were covered by foam then glass fiber and gelcoat were applied so as to obtain the rustic look of a tree. The magical flowers are powered by an intricate pneumatic system fitted inside the trunks.
Romeo and Julia stage design. Photo by Günay Kulbay, Visual act AB.
Below you can read interviews with Lehna Edwall, set and costume designer for ‘Romeo & Julia’ and Adam Gistedt, project manager from Visual act.
As many old cinemas that have been rebuilt to theatres, the stage at Göta Lejon is very shallow and high. I wanted to create an organic stage set with perspective. I always want the audience to first have a physical experience of my sets, to feel the room in their bodies and then in their intellect!
This is the old oak tree that has seen everything; the tree observes all foolishness made by mankind over and over again…
The trunk that grows out from the stage and out on to the balcony was very important, as I wanted the set to join in with the auditorium. I wanted to create a feeling that the tree had grown in to and now were joined with Göta Lejon. They had become one body.
Very early in the design process I got the idea of the magnolias growing out of the tree. The tree would bloom, when Romeo and Juliet fell in love! It had to be magnolias. Earth’s oldest flower!
I wanted a curtain, a veil, with a printed picture of old oaks in a very subtle documentary way. The veil helps to set the feeling of what place we are going to. When the curtain disappears the audience is transported into the story. The reflection from the decorative walls was a way to repeal the reality and the scale. Photographer Mattias Edwall photographed oak branches and modified them to adapt it to a pattern, a mirror. The walls work as mirrors, they reflect the actors and multiply them and in so creating a much larger cast!
My sources of inspiration were a film by Tim Burton “Sleepy Hollow” and my own sculptures from an exhibition called OIR 0800, exhibited when Stockholm was the European Capital of Culture.
Lehna Edwall
Set and costume designer for ‘Romeo & Julia’
www.lehnaedwall.com
Romeo and Julia stage design - Magnolia construction. Photo by Günay Kulbay, Visual act AB.
The set designer Lehna Edwall came to us with an idea of 500 magnolias blooming. We had several ideas on how to carry out Lehna’s vision but we realised that with a wire controlled system the quantity of wished flowers would result in an undesirable weight, in the tree trunks that grow out in the audience room. We chose a partly pneumatic and partly mechanical system; the primary system is pneumatic and applies a force to the mechanical system which the 430 magnolias are attached to.
The tough part was the assembly of the system and the mounting of flowers and mechanics inside the trunks which was carried out under time pressure by the dedicated Visual act crew. The crew put a lot of time and work behind these blooming magnolias, but when seeing the magnolias bloom in real life on stage I think it was all worth it. The result is nothing but AMAZING!
Adam Gistedt
Project Manager at Visual act AB
Romeo and Julia stage design. Detail images and drawing of the magnolia construction. Photo by Günay Kulbay, Visual act AB.
See a photo sequence of magnolias blooming! >>
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