Charm

"I hate this dress". This was the first line of the play Charm, by Cathleen Cahill, which dramatizes the life of Transcendentalist pioneer Margaret Fuller. Cahill’s script for Charm, though focusing on specific and very real historical characters, amplifies their depictions on stage to reveal the caricature of each character. Among these historical figures are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau. Margaret Fuller’s interaction with them elicits a very comedic sense of being.

Through my design  of  charm,  I  capitalize  upon  elements  that  reflect  the  work  of  Rousseau.  His whimsical paintings push the boundaries of possibility to create what  I refer to as a  stylized reality. The characters are just off enough for them to stand out in various  ways,  but subtle  enough  that  the  audience  is  not  pulled  from  the  world  of  the  play. Colors, lines, shapes and patterns seen within Rousseau’s paintings as well as a handful of the principles of design are directly implemented within my design for the play Charm to create this fantastical but all too real world for Margaret Fuller and the audience.