Clybourne Park
Production and designed by EnasOudat
Gillespy Theater in the building of News Journal would be a great location for this play. Gillespy theatre is located at 221 N Beach St Daytona Beach, FL 32114-3301. I chose this theatre because the seating arrangement style and design literally places the stage amidst the theater’s seating, allowing the audience to surround it and therefore, the audiences are able to see each other and their responses. Another reason would be because its location in Daytona Beach and that leads me to my target audience. There are so many retired people live in Daytona who came from up north in addition to so many different races living in the city. Therefore, my target audience would be elderly people so they can retrieve their memories of the race issues that they lived in, and also, the young people so they can learn lessons from this play about the past and the present of the relationship between different races and community belongings. Since the subject of the play deals with class, race, and gentrification, I believe the city of Daytona would be the right city for this play.
The house would be a two story house and to resemble the late fifties houses in America. The paint would be brown to show some of the family sadness, Bev and Russ, for their loss of their son Kenneth.
For the first Act, I would want the living room, where the play takes place, to look with only just the couches and few items and everything else seems packed with boxes which are placed in the middle. I also would want the trunk that contains Kenneth’s belongings to appear in both acts to be black in its color and seems very heavy. Black color of the trunk would give the audience a sense of creepy and mysterious.
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Kenneth picture would be in a frame with his military uniform. Francine and Albert would wear very simple, but clean clothing to show that they are poor while Francine wears an apron over her skirt.
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In Act two, I would have all performers wear modern clothes, but not classy, and where the audience do not notice any difference in clothing according to race. Tom and Kathy are to be dressed as professionals because they are lawyers. Also, I would put Betsy to play in Act 2 as Kathy but to look younger. In Act 2, I would use the same house with different paint such as green because it was occupied by a black family before and we know that most blacks like to paint their homes with green or blue. The house must show some cracks to show that it is old.
For lighting, I would use dim light in both Act 1 and 2. In Act 1 Bev and Russ were trying to move out and because of sadness of their son Kenneth, for committing suicide on the upper floor of their home after he returned home from the Korean war. I Act 2, the house is very old and the new buyers are trying to demolish it and build a new one.
For the music, I would use sad music in Act 1 for the part when Russ is talking about his son’s suicide to Karl and Jim. I also use creepy music in Act 2 when Lena is talking to Lindsey and Steve about the incident and suicidal death that occurred in the house. Another part I use music is at the end of Act 1 and the end of Act 2 when the radio was on and Kenneth was writing his letter.
The background sound would be simple to get the audience attention of what kind of environment this house is in. In Act 1, I would use sounds such as birds’ sounds in the backyard to show the urban life while in Act 2, I would use some kind of heavier music in the backgrounds such as boom box, which is normal now in any black neighborhood, to show the audience that Clybourne Park is all black neighborhood now. Furthermore, at the end of Act 1, I would use a wind sound to show and demonstrate that there will be some change coming in the following act. This was true because in Act 2, all community now is blacks; blacks are now different and have more rights such as organizations and community housing regulations, in addition to the fact that they are not victims of racial issues as they used to be for many generations.
