Currently writing and hopefully directing my first piece of live theater this semester and obviously Leo's interest in theatrics sparked my interest. His visual contribution to Il Paradiso seem to resonate with the audience more than Bellincioni's words. Understanding the effective message of costume, lighting and set design is extremely impressive as most theater used the masquerade as the most effective tool in creating meaning in theater. "It was the multimedia extravaganza of it's day - physically constructed out of wood and cloth, transformed and animated into something ethereal by a combination of colour, lighting, music, ballet and poetry." (259) Theater gave Leo the opportunity to express physical action and emotion that a painting could not. His studies of hideous figures never truly appear outside of his sketch books unless personified on stage or live production. However his style and approach to rendering such images does transcend from theater, to his sketch books and to his paintings.
One can observe this when analyzing Leo's The Last Supper. An obvious moment in time, one could compare this image to a present day screen shot. Action and movement is present and one could not capture such attributes without first understanding why movement and theatrics is effective.
That's awesome that you were able to incorporate this reading into your play! I was just thinking the other day about how in film we can create all aspects of our movie at different times and get a cohesive final result, but in theatre all aspects need to come together simultaneously for the live audience. I think your comparison of The Last Supper is intriguing. The composition of the piece could very easily be compared to stage blocking. Each character is given an action or gesture of some kind to keep them naturalistic, yet they don't distract from what the scene is about.
ReplyDeleteDuring a Leonardo festival in Milan I saw a play based on Leo's life performed right in front of the Duomo. Lots of acrobatics based on the Vitruvian man.
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