Research Paper
Fine Arts
E-ISSN No : 2454-9916 | Volume : 7 | Issue : 4 | Apr 2021
SOME TRENDS OF VIETNAM'S THEATRICAL ART DESIGN IN THE CURRENT PERIOD Nguyen Thi Thanh Thuy Ho Chi Minh City University of Theater and Cinema, Vietnam. Theatre is a kind of synthetic art. Theatre contains literature, music, painting, sculpture, dance, cinema...and actors' performance, with the direct participation of the audience, in which theatrical art design contributes an important part. The theatrical art design is independent, at the same time is a part of the overall theatrical work. Thus, it possesses the richness, diversity, with philosophical, aesthetic, historical, ethnographic, sociological, political, ethical, religious meanings...Along with that, theatrical art design also brings about human emotions such as: joy, sadness, love, anger, aspiration, dream and hope. Theatrical art design is a spiritual and material world, expressed by the artists' creativity on the stage in front of live audiences and the audiences also directly make creativity with the artists. The artistic elements when participating in the stage must be dominated by theatrical properties, therefore, they bear a different color to support the performing of the actors. Theatrical fine arts is one of the constituent factors, assisting in making up the visual elements and partly contributing to the artistic effect of the show. Art design participates in the stage with the role of creating space, time, setting, and supporting actors' performing. Therefore, the theatrical art design is the supporting condition for the performing art, in which the scenes themselves through colors, lines and perspectives also contribute to the artistic factors of the play. That means, theatrical art designers must apply theatrical visual arts to the stage to create the stage space. In other words, the art has been theatrical, the art design appears on the stage and adheres to the characteristics of the stage. Art space is created by the artists by lines, colors, space, lay out...with their own methods to create dimensional space for the paintings. Designing theatrical art space basically complying with those principles. However, we also learn that the stage space is immensely, but the specific space of the stage has a certain limit, which is the limit in the architectural structure of the theater, the stage... Along with this, the space in theatre is understood as the place that includes two elements: space and people. The space on the stage must have activities of people and the set design which creates the scenes to express the content - ideas and art of the performance. The space on the stage is designed with the participation of human activities. Lack of either of these factors, space is just a dead space, it will make no sense. To the audience, the space and time on the stage is to convey the life of the characters in the plot. This is an issue given out many challenges to theatrical art designer that needs to be seriously taken. Because it not only creates hints about the space and time of the stage, but also shows the ability of creating the play and is the living space of a play. From the performance of the actors, showing the characters in combination with the scenes to set convention with the audience the spaces that are forming on the stage. At that time, the audience hypothetically figure out and accept those spaces called hypothetical spaces, which are presented concretely, or metaphorically, sometimes abstractly in one way or another on the stage. Theatrical art design also participates in solving the problem of time in the play on stage. As we know, there always exists two kinds of time in theatre: the time of the content realization of the performance taking place on the stage (which happens over a long period of time, this time is reversed and set up according to the director's staging) and the time that specifies the amount of time of the performance (taking place in a short and irreversible time). Dealing with this parallel existence requires art designers to have hypothetical creations, defining the symbolism of theatrical art, stage time in which the play take place. The time in the show is sometimes the moment of dawn, sometimes is late afternoon, sometimes is an exciting summer, or a cold and sad winter, the time of the show can return to the years of history, sometimes is the moment of contemporary life ...The time in the play was variable in accordance with the regulations of the story, the art designer is free to have creation in such diversified hypothetical time. The three basic factors such as dramatic events, dramatic conflicts and dramatic actions have formed space and time of the stage, one of the typical elements of theater. For the creators of a play, space and time are the doors for director and art
designer to open up and discover in order to build scenes and artistic images. The stage space is unlimited, meanwhile the specific space of the stage is limited. Structures for performance in space and time are the stage and performance night. A theater with a fixed structure for every play, either with an almost real decorative structure for each scene, each play, or different schools and traditions, which must be presented on the stage. The art elements of a show includes: performance venue, stage, costumes, make up, props...and even the art element exists right in the characters' lines. In addition, it is necessary to have a synchronous coordination of many artistic and technical components: author, script, director, musician, artist, actor, light designer, sound designer, backstage staff...Each component has his own function but is consistent in the expression method. The role of the art designer is not only depicting the physical spaces through scenes, lights, sounds, sounds...but also evoking psychological space, assumptions in the audience's imagination by voices and gestures of the character as well as the mass (creating spatial lines by body, action, dance), furthermore, costume, props are indispensable elements of art on that stage. costumes, props...through expressing the descriptive, symbolic, descriptive methods...and through which creating a new place, space and time for the show. When watching the show the audience not only see how the actors' performance is but also see the art of the show through the lay out, perspective, the lines and colors...Both visual arts and art design use colors, shapes, lines to create works for the audience to feel and have excitement with aesthetic feelings. If visual art made through paintings is the work of an artist who works independently, when a picture is finished, no matter how big or small, it becomes a complete, independent personal work that can be used for different purposes such as: hanging in the house, sending it for sale, exhibiting or giving to friends...But to the theatrical art design, when finishing a draft design for the play, it can not be called a work completion because the stage is a synthetic form. To have a complete work, sketches on paper must be staged by the director and the actors work on it. That means, the sketch must be made into the set that is presented on the stage. When the play is introduced to the audience, it will become a complete theatrical work. Therefore, the artist must have knowledge of many types of art such as painting, sculpture, architecture, interior decoration, exterior, industrial design, graphics, fashion, and make up... moreover, he must understand backstage technology, system of curtain, lighting... The set on the stage is not a simple still painting of the artist. It's a moving threedimensional work completed by the actors' performance. On the stage, the actor is the "center" who convey the plot of the story to the audience. However, the art on stage plays a very important part to support and highlight the roles on the stage. Apart from the sets as the background, an effective supporter for the actors' performance, the theatrical art design has encapsulated within itself the unity of the creative intentions of the director. Therefore, the art design itself has contributed with the director to create the form for the play. The co-creation process between the artist and the director is turning the words from the literary script into real-life images, filtered by lines, colors, materials... and put on the stage. The theatrical art designer conveys the director's idea into visual language to build the spaces expressing the content the work - the director's intentions by choosing his own methods to express the art that creates the integrity of the content and the art of the show. Vietnamese theatre with two typical types of Tuong, Cheo, from the early stage up to now, has existed for over a thousand years. In the social conditions from the beginning, folk artists all over the country with simple props and costumes have gone to the courtyards, the markets...even at any space that is convenient for both performers and viewers. Along with the development of those two types of art, the theater art design also has progressed every stage, well accepting different cultures. The national theater itself has formed a conception of spatial expression, or in other words, the space is changed thanks to the folk artist's behavior towards objects in the performance environment. It can be seen that, since
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