Role: Media Designer

Director: Andrés Alcalá

Playwright: Eric Coble

Producer: Childsplay

Venue: Tempe Center for the Arts

Summary: The Giver is set in a dystopian future where peace has been maintained by sanitizing citizens of strong emotions, assigning social functions to each person at age 12, and euthanasia. Jonas on his 12th birthday is chosen to inherit the role of ‘Receiver’ which involves receiving memories from before society became peacful. As he receives more memories from his mentor ‘The Giver’ he gains the ability to feel emotions and also see beauty while simultaneously awakening to the horror of euthanasia being carried out to remove the uncooperative. The production called for the virtual presence of several characters as well as a reflection of all the memories Jonas receives throughout the play in black and white, then eventually color.

Two projector system served by Isadora for video processing, mapping, and playback. The play was set in an ambiguous technologically enhanced future featuring architecture built of smart walls that could display any kind of content and also monitor behavior. To enhance the sense of being watched, slowly blinking eyeballs were projected through the production. Scenes moved quickly between dozens of locations facilitated by scenic projection. The majority of design was spent interpreting and visualizing the protagonists first encounter with the novelty of snow, the warmth of a family holiday, physical pain, and war. At the beginning of the play media was deliberately and precisely organized into the boxes of the set, but as the play progressed the media eventually broke from the containers and spread to fill the entire stage.