Gather Ye’ Children
“The only thing we did was die”
Gather Ye’ Children is a new work written by Ithaca College alumni, Aaliyah Warrington. It takes place in a school gym during the aftermath of a school shooting. The characters, who stem from many backgrounds and life stories, are trying to navigate this world of chaos and confusion in order to better understand the situation. They spend most of the play putting each other on trial in hopes of figuring out who is the villain and by the end realize that they are all actually trapped in a space between life and death until their names had been acknowledged by the media and the rest of the world. They are then able to be released from their limbo state.
Violence has been a very prevalent and heated issue in society recently and the way that these issues are portrayed in the media can be hyper focused on the perpetrator and forget the importance of the lives lost. With so many of these violent acts occurring it has become easy for people to become desensitized to it. The playwright wanted to emphasize that these are issues that need to create change rather than depress us for a few days and then have us move on from it.
Research
Sketch Model
Final Model
In order to emphasize the feeling that the characters are trapped in this room, I wanted to make them trapped in the moment of chaos that occurred just before the action of the play begins. Signs of destruction were researched and then exaggerated to make them feel like they were caught in a moment in time, an overwhelming moment that will be there forever, just like the characters. Emphasized blood, and broken glass give the set an eerie and oppressive feeling. The room itself was meant to feel like a quintessential school gym that is new and clean, in order for the destruction to feel very out of place.
Draftings
