For my first project I have decide to use Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians; The Lightning Thief and turn it into a theatre production. With the book being already adapted into a movie and also a musical, I liked the idea of creating it into a magical, adventure theatre production, showcased to a large theatre audience. The production will take place in Greece, amongst the ruins of an ancient Greek amphitheatre that once was the venue of many religious festivals that held up to 18,000 spectators. I feel that this venue will be visually exciting and will work well alongside an array of exciting costumes to bring the magic and adventure of the script alive to the audience.

 

Looking at the history of Ancient Greece, I delved deep into the world of Greek Mythology and the many Gods, Goddess’s and legends worshipped by the Greeks. I mainly focused on the Olympian gods as these are the ones mentioned in the book. Each god has a chosen purpose they adhere too to keep the balance in the world, such as Poseidon; God of the Sea or Hermes; God of Travel and trade and so on. To allow the audience to easily identify each god throughout the performance I will incorporate elements of their work into the costumes, from the ocean to the sky each will be represented.

 

For the aesthetics of the costumes, As the venue for the production is open air it will allow me show the gods in an unearthly form, larger and greater than any human. I will also use light to help over exaggerate the scale of their costumes. With both Greek and roman mythology consistently crossing over I would also like to add representation of this throughout the costumes as well, I will do this by using the planets that is associated with the roman names of the Greek gods through colour and textiles. I would also like to use projection and shadows, onto the ruins of the amphitheatre to turn it into the different scenes of the production.