As you all know, last Friday two teams from Gulshan-e-Maymar campus went to the KDA campus as participants in the competition, Destination Imagination. We were instructed to choose a topic, e.g. Fine Arts and were given a task to present in the form of an eight-minute play. The two teams were called Pinball Heroes and Fine Arts, In Motion. However, behind that eight-minute play was more than two months of hard work, with valuable contribution from all team members.
THE TASK:
The subject my group chose was Fine Arts. The task was called In Motion, in which we had to take any piece or example of Fine Arts, e.g Literature, Architecture, Fashion Design, and Painting, and present its history in the form of an engaging play. Our team chose a painting named The Anguished Man.
The story behind the painting is that it was painted by an unknown artist who mixed his blood with the paint and painted the Anguished Man with it. A few days later, he committed suicide. Now the painting is rumored to be haunted, because the current owner of the painting has reported strange things happening in his house ever since he came into possession of it.
According to the instructions, we had to have a piece of kinetic art, and a piece of reimagined art. The kinetic art was that we had to make a prop which used a science like mechanical engineering, computer science, etc., that had to be actively used in the play. The reimagined art was that we had to use a type of art, such as dance, music, spoken dialogue, etc., that had to be used in the play. A few restrictions were that we were supposed to make everything by hand, no one outside the team was allowed to help and everything must be done by the team.
THE SCRIPT:
Our script was loosely based on the painting; it contained 5 characters: Detective Eleanor (Rameen Amin) Reverend Jameson (Irza Siddiqui), painter Victor Hartman (Iruj Fatima), young Officer Jenkins (Brishna Gabol), Brush maker Naoko Okada (Alia Ahmad), and lastly Victor’s subconscious, the Devil (Asma Ahmad). Our supervising teacher was Ms. Sobia. The plot of the story is that Victor Hartman, a famous, yet mentally ill painter who kills people and uses their blood to paint. Victor is schizophrenic, and his subconscious goads him into killing people for his paintings. In the play, his subconscious is a prominent character, named the Devil. Eleanor Hymes is an ambitious and intelligent detective investigating the murder of well-known Reverend Jameson at St. Mark’s church. With the help of Officer Jenkins, she finds out that Victor Hartman is behind the murder. She confronts him at his studio, but said confrontation turns gruesome when Victor’s Devil forces him to kill Eleanor for her blood, which he uses to finish his painting. In the play, the painting in question was a printed copy of the Anguished Man which was factored into the play, as a prop.
The Set:
The set was our kinetic art. Our idea was to make a revolving cube which had four scenes from the play painted on it. The cube was made from two pieces of 8 x 4 plywood, both of which were cut in half to form squares of 4 x 4. There was a wooden base which was mounted on four wheels, one at each corner, which enabled it to turn around. With the extensive help of Sir Kanwar, we joined the pieces of plywood with hinges and metal wire and fixed them to the wooden base with metal pegs. After that, all we had to do was paint the sides of the cube with scenes from the play (which took a lot more hard work than I thought), and we were finished with the set.
The Final Presentation:
On 5th January, Friday, our team went to KDA campus to present our project. Our slot was second last, so we had plenty of time to put on our costumes and do some last-minute rehearsing.
The presentation went really well and all of us gave our best.