The Comedy of Errors

Pavelka designed this Shakespeare comedy for the all-male Propeller Theatre Company, of which he is a founding member. He used a performance research methodology in which the work of the designer is understood in a collective context.

The production demanded a scenic design that facilitated speed, comic timing and surprise comparable to the farces of Goldoni, Feydeau or Joe Orton. Pavelka formed the footprint of the space by mapping out distances between scenic elements and incorporating Shakespeare’s Globe’s three-door template with a central upstage balcony. The design had to be flexible and transparent enough to allow the viewer to see the ensemble’s choral action when on margins of the action. Pavelka experimented with perforated metal shuttered walls and concealed doors that, when used with precise lighting angles, gave flexibility to the possibilities of performers seeing from off stage and being seen by the audience. Framed with festoons of faulty coloured bulbs, the scenic elements hinted at a contemporary shopping mall – appropriate for a story revolving around commodities and mistaken identities in public spaces.

The costume design drew on 1980’s and ‘90’s iconography, a time that saw a proliferation of cheap holiday destinations where revellers could reinvent their identities. Pavelka exaggerated sartorial images of gender, status and sexual prowess to compliment the performer’s heightened characterisation and physicality. The bottom halves of bodies were clothed in varying shades of blue/green to suggest the shifting sea that surrounded Shakespeare’s Ephesus. Rather than starting the rehearsal process with his previously conceived drawings, Pavelka fully collaborated with the actors on their ‘look’ by trading costume ideas and then created the designs using digital compositing.

• http://www.michaelpavelka.com
• http://www.propeller.org.uk
• http://oberonbooks.com/comedy-of-errors