Will these hands ne’er be clean?
December - February 2024
Role Advised by Scenic Support
Designer, Implementer Designer, Implementer Hazel Froling, Louise Cutter
Who is worse: you or Macbeth?
It feels obvious to say Macbeth, but as the dramaturg for Macbeth, by William Shakespeare and adapted by myself and director, Sofia Osborne, I wondered how I might be able to make the audience answer themself.
In this 18 ft fabric installation, conceptualized, designed, and built by me, I offered a giant hand and activity for audiences entering and leaving the Purnell Center of the Arts. In the lobby, the giant hand invited audience members to share a bad deed in an anonymous confession booth and have a bad deed written on their hand.
The Hand
I had never built anything to this scale – let alone sewed anything – so creating the hand was a process of learning from mistakes; trying new things and seeing what truly worked. Below, you’ll see my process of going from sketch, to model, to better model, to final product:
The final hand stood at a whopping 18 ft.! The base was 4ft. x 5 ft.
The Interaction
The user’s interaction was an anonymous confession of a terrible deed. The user would first confess a bad deed by writing it down on a piece of paper and submitting it. Then, the user would put their hand through a box which I designed, where I would write down a bad deed that had been confessed the night before. The confession was written in invisible ink – only existing within the confines of the box. I was interested in exploring the feeling of touch, paralleling the famous scene in Macbeth, where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth try to scrub their murder’s blood to no avail.
A unique allowance of an installation in the lobby was not being able to have a power source – especially when my interaction was reliant on light. My solution was using portable chargers which I was able to connect to UV lights that I modified to have a USB port.
Digital Interface
Although the primary objective for this installation was the interaction portion, which was reliant on my facilitation, it’s also true that the installation needed to serve some purpose when I wasn’t able to factilitate an interaction.
My solution to this was creating a micro-site in which some of the juiciest confessions could be viewed by anyone, even after the production ended.
This digital interface also featured some of the graphics I used in the print artifacts that I designed for the introduction of the installation and the instructions to the booth.
Final Product
After hours (and callases from rigging wires), the hand was up! The installation was up for one week and the booth was open for the full run of Macbeth.
The micro-site recieved 400+ page views.
The installation was covered by the School of Drama’s Instagram account and Lemon.
Takeaways
Usually in my projects, I stay in my comfort zone: writing and design. However, this brief prompted me to create something that would get people’s attention and help them understand the play they had tickets for, in other words, to think BIG! Thinking big entailed learning new skills: installation designing, sewing, rigging, web design, and carpentry. This installation was a process of trial and error, but I think learning the skills I wouldn’t usually have made my job as a writer better – it forced me to always communicate with the goal of the installation in mind.
Even though I will never make another 18 ft. hand again, I will continue to learn the skills that a writer might need to have, but certainly will benefit from.
Home Next Project