Mr. Wopsle plays Hamlet in a small metropolitan theatre.
This big picture took me three abundant weeks to nish and is lled with to the brim
with little details. Starting from the stage a pitiful attempt of a graveyard is visible,
which is reminiscent of Plan 9 from Outer Space. A boy, who makes faces and is stand-
ing in an opening, where he hands Hamlet the skulls, plays the gravedigger. The scene
is Act V, Scene I, in which Hamlet says the famous line: "Alas, poor Yorick!". Behind
the scene you can see the director and some actors watching Mr.Wopsle, as well as some
theatre operators elevated on a balcony. The stage
oor is speckled with nuts thrown
from annoyed members of the audience.
Right next to the stage you can see a small excuse for an orchestra, where the players
are chatting among themselves, because I couldn't really imagine any music that would
t this scene. While the violoncello player is shaking his hand to signify the mediocre
acting of Mr. Wopsle, the father violinist is reminding her daughter of some di cult
passage in the score.
The audience is anything but in harmony, consisting of members paying attention, other
sleeping, like the two children on the mother's lap in the left bottom corner, other chat-
ting between the rows and again other throwing nuts at the obnoxious gravedigger, as
can also be seen in the left bottom corner. Herbert and Pip are seated in the second
row, fourth and fth from left.
The facade of the loge depicts different stellar constellations, but it didn't came out as
well as I planned. This entire picture went through several stages of redesigning, includ-
ing two vastly different 3D models, which begs the question, how much of the original
idea and the rst depiction of the scene in my head were realised in the nal picture. I
can say, that a lot less architectural frippery and more black, sombre walls would have
occured, if I drew the scene straight out of my head. But I resolved to distance myself
as much as possible from plain black parts in a picture, because they mainly destroy the
overall harmony of the drawing.
Originally I thought to draw something like Degas's L'Orchestre de l'Opera and Musi-
ciens a l'orchestre, but then I had in mind to depict as many people as possible, and since
the orchestra couldn't be very big for a small metropolitan theatre, I had to include the
audience. This procedure sort of deadened the dynamic composition of the picture by
putting the viewer into a central place in the room, as opposed to a very close position
in the midst of the orchestre, watching the stage actors from a lowered position.
No comments:
Post a Comment