PTT Program 6 Days 01-03.txt

When the house lights dim, the curtain rises, and the lights come up on the stage in a live theatrical performance the first thing the audience usually sees is the set for the play. And before the first actor says the first line the set, props, lights, costumes, makeup, and sound give the audience v...

When the house lights dim, the curtain rises, and the lights come up on the stage in a live theatrical performance the first thing the audience usually sees is the set for the play. And before the first actor says the first line the set, props, lights, costumes, makeup, and sound give the audience visual and auditory impressions about the world the play's characters inhabit. The lighting and sound for this set for Richard the 3rd has a very different feel than this scene from later in the play. Same set, different lighting, different mood. The set, lights, set props, and sound show the audience the physical environment in which the characters live. The costumes, hand props, and makeup further help to tell the story of who the characters are. Every technical element has one purpose, to help tell the story of the play. Hi, I'm Marty Fowler, and I'd like to welcome you to this second edition of Set Design. I'm here with my husband, Bob, and our good friend Kurt Nadelsieder. You may notice that we're using some of the sections from our first edition of set design in the second edition. You may notice that I look and sound different in some sections of this program. Several years ago, I had to have surgery and radiation. I lost weight and my vocal qualities changed somewhat. I just didn't want that to be a distraction as you watch this program. At the different sets a few seconds ago, you probably had reactions to the sets. Where are the locations of the plays? What time in history does the play take place? What time of day is the play? What time of year? Did you get a certain feeling about the play? Take a few minutes and jot down the first things that come to your mind when you take another look at the sets you just saw a few minutes ago. For example, my impression of this set could be, wow, whoever lives there has really fallen on hard times. Is that place from the 19 fifties? That reminds me of my grandma's house. There are no right or wrong answers here. Jot down the first things that come to your mind as long as it's not rude or obscene. What are some of the impressions you jotted down about each of the above sets? We'll ask your teacher to pause the program here to allow you time to share your reactions to the sets. The most important thing designers can do is to create an environment on stage that helps the actors tell the story of the play. This goes for sets, lighting, props, costumes, makeup, sound, projections, special effects. Everything the audience can see is called the scenic envelope. The set is often the largest, most visually dominating aspect of what helps create the environment of a play. The set can help tell the socioeconomic status of the characters in the play, what time of year it is, if the play takes place outdoors or indoors, what the weather's like, and in general, what kind of world the characters in the play inhabit. A great set, lighting, costumes, props, and sound can also help create the mood of the play. Spooky and ominous, Cheerful and bright. Formal and classic. Or any feeling in between. It can take you back to a time a 150 years ago on a Mississippi River steamboat, a neighborhood that's fallen on hard times, or the wheat fields in the middle of Kansas. A good set and other design elements help create an environment in which actors perform and help them really get into their roles. It can also help the audience get lost in the play. It can help the audience forget they're in a theater and help trick them into believing, at least temporarily, that what's happening on stage is actually happening in real life. The audience can willingly play make believe for a couple hours. This is called willing suspension of disbelief. When an audience walks into a theater, they know that they will be seeing actors performing in a play, and that what is going to happen on stage is not real life. They instinctively disbelieve, but great performances and technical work help the audience temporarily forget that they're in a theater seeing a play so they can peek into what is going on in other people's lives and spy on the characters. A good set contributes to this willing suspension of disbelief. This program on set design is going to walk you through the basics of designing a set within the scenic envelope of your stage. While very few educational theater programs have the facilities, budget, and professional designers and technicians to put up sets like the ones you just saw from the Repertory Theater of Saint Louis and other professional theaters, your school can put up some pretty amazing sets. We're going to divide sets into 2 major groups, interior sets and exterior sets. Interior sets are any set that's set inside a structure. It can be a house, a barn, a bunkhouse, or any other kind of place that is enclosed, protected from the forces of nature. What in real life would be a 4th wall of a structure is removed from an interior set so the audience can peek into the structure. An exterior set represents the outdoors exposed to the forces of nature. Many plays have both types of sets in the same play. We are also going to examine how the set designer works with the director and other designers, like the lighting, costume, props, sound, and makeup designers to make sure all the different technical elements of the play work together. The objective of all of the designers is to create an environment on stage that helps the actors to do their best work and helps tell the story of the play. I've worked with the designers whose objective is to have the audience applaud their set when the curtain goes up at the start of a play. This is just plain wrong. The set designer is part of a team. And just like any team, the objective is to work together to reach the common goal. Our goal is to help tell the story of the play. If the set is so visibly striking that the actors are overwhelmed by it and the actors are competing with the set for the audience's attention, the set designer has not done his or her job well. Now there are some plays that demand the set be large and ornate. For example, the repertory theater of Saint Louis' production of Born Yesterday takes place in an opulent suite in a luxury hotel in Washington DC in 1948. This set by James Morgan is beautiful but extremely functional. Marty and I saw this production, and every inch of the set was utilized in addition to setting just the right mood. If this play had been designed for a place set in an economy hotel, it would have been totally inappropriate. Always get the okay for your designs from your director and technical director to make sure that the designs are safe and doable. Next, we'll go over some tricks of the trade of set designing, like very basic scale drawing, furniture and prop placement, traffic patterns for the actors, sight lines, and visual composition. Since the vast majority of educational performance spaces are proscenium type theaters, we'll be designing for a proscenium stage. We'll demonstrate how to draw a ground plan for a set, that's an overhead view of the set. We'll also do working drawings, which are drawings given to the technical director in Carpenters, and paint elevations, which are given to the scenic artists. Also, we'll build a model of the set for the director. We'll be hand drafting all of our materials since computer assisted drafting programs usually have a steep learning curve. And this is an introductory set design unit, not a drafting unit. But we will also be examining a popular 3 d rendering program that's easy to use and free. We have 2 new units on designing period plays, or plays that take place in times that are very different than modern times. In addition, we have new sections on how the design team approaches a show with an interview with the design team of Hamlet at the Repertory Theatre of Saint Louis. We'll also feature a section on when and how to use scenic projections. We'll finish up with a short section on doing a design portfolio, which becomes part of your resume to get hired and ultimately paid for your talent. Another thing to take into consideration when designing a set is being realistic about your facility, finances, and the ability of your technicians. Some of you will be designing sets for a state of the art theater with a spacious shop area, counterweight system, state of the art lighting and sound systems, generous budget, and tech theater classes to help with the construction of the sets. Other schools will be working in your gym or cafetorium with little budget and sets that are constructed after school and on weekends. It's possible to do great work in either situation. The first thing you need to do when designing a set is to know your theater. Do you have a proscenium or a black box theater? In a proscenium theater, the audience faces the stage and looks through a big opening in the wall between the audience area and the stage. This is kind of like looking at a three-dimensional picture surrounded by a picture frame or a television or a movie screen, except the performers are live instead of being on film or tape. A black box theater can be set up as a proscenium theater, an arena stage where the audience totally surrounds the performers, or as a thrust stage where the audience sits on three sides of the performers. The most common type of theater in schools is the proscenium stage, so that's what we'll be concentrating on in this program. Make sure you have a ground plan of your stage before you start designing your show. A ground plan is an overhead view of your facility. Here is a view of a stage from the audience, and here is the ground plan of the recently renovated theater at LeDoux Horton Watkins High School where I worked for 22 years. As you can see from the ground plan, here is where the audience sits. Here is the stage. Here are the wing areas where scenery is stored when not on stage, and where actors enter and exit during performances. Here is the shop area where scenery is built while preparing for a show and where large scenery can be stored during performances. There's a fly system that allows scenery to be hung over the stage and lowered down to the stage and out again during performances. This is particularly useful during musicals. Boys and girls dressing rooms are behind the stage. In addition to a makeup area and a green room where actors go when they're not on stage for a while. Here is a black box theater for small intimate shows. We will be using footage from this theater to illustrate basic design concepts. Not all educational theaters are this well equipped, but we'll address how to get around a lack of facilities in this program. You also need to consider the number and level of expertise of your technicians. If you have a strong curricular tech theater program where lots of students work on the sets and they also work on the tech crews after school, you can make your set designs more challenging. If you have to do all your tech work after school or on Saturdays and your theater is in the school cafetorium, you may have to scale back your student designs. Another thing to consider when designing a set is your budget. If your school supports the theater program financially, you will be able to design differently than if you are doing your shows in the school cafeterium with no budget except ticket sales. Now that we're familiar with a very well equipped educational theater, the first thing we're going to do is read a short play and analyze it from the designer's point of view. Let's read this very short play called The Big Break out loud in class, or your teacher may choose to read another short play. The first time you read a play, you just want to read the play for enjoyment, to get the story line and see how the play unfolds. Your teacher may decide to give you a short quiz after this first reading to make sure that you understood the play. Now we will reread the play silently to ourselves and doodle on a sheet of scrap paper as we read. Don't make conscious notes about the play. Just read the play and let your hand doodle and make random notes. Straight lines, curved lines, circles, arrows, colors, materials, feelings you get, anything that comes to mind. You may think we're a little crazy asking you to do this, but trust us, there is a reason. Take a few minutes to read the play and doodle now. The only rule is to keep your pencil moving as you reread the play. And remember, there are no right or wrong answers. Look at your doodles now. Is there a predominant type of line? Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, curved, circular, long or short, smooth or jagged? What kind of words have you written down? Colors, moods, materials. When you were reading and doodling, your subconscious was talking to you about your feelings about the play and talking to you through your doodles. Now let's say you have lots of vertical lines and curves. You might want to consider curved arches on your set instead of regular squared off doorways. You may want to work curved lines into set props like this ottoman. If you have lots of curves, you may want to work a window with a curved top, a fireplace with a curved top, and an oblong heraldic crest on the walls. Horizontal lines can be worked into chair railings and relief patterns below the chair rail. If you have lots of vertical lines, you may wanna work that into a wallpaper pattern. Make a list of any repeated scribbles you have, including words you may have scribbled down, and try to work these things into your set design if possible. You don't have to stick with only one type of line, color, material, or mood, but make conscious decisions about the set you are designing. For example, there should be a dominant line running throughout your set, not just a mixture of random lines. Like one door has a rounded arch while another is squared off, And some of the windows come to a point, some are rounded, and some are square. Take a look at this set from Stages Saint Louis. What kind of lines are repeated in the set? Take a minute and discuss this with your class. There are plenty of horizontal and vertical lines because that's how houses are built. But what other type of line repeats in the set? Let's start at the top of the set with the windows. How about the stairs and railings? Now look at the trim on the walls. How about the wall sconces? What kind of line is repeated in the couch? How about the flower urn next to the stairs? The dominant lines in this set would be curved and vertical. Now compare that set to this set. The dominant lines are vertical and horizontal. The first set has a softer feel, while the second set has a harder edge to it. Consider other things you might have written down during your reading of the play and try to work these ideas into your design concept if possible. For example, if you jotted down the color red, maybe some shade of red is the main color of your set. Maybe your play was set in a rundown area of town, like Little Shop of Horrors. Some of your subconscious notes may have said graffiti, trash cans, trash on the streets, and bare light bulb. Give yourself the opportunity to work these things into your design concept. Some ideas may work, some may not, but give them all a good look before discarding them. Now that you have some general ideas about the play, it's time to start analyzing what this particular play absolutely has to have regarding the technical demands of the play. It's time to reread the play again. Looking for the demands of the set, anything that looks permanent on stage, like walls, windows, doors, stairs and railings, landings, ceiling fixtures, etcetera. One thing to note here, scripts often have directions about where things should be placed based on the first production of the play. Script notations on doors and furniture should be noted, but if the script states their locations like door stage right, you do not have to follow the script. If you feel your design would work better for your production if the store was at stage left, then by all means change the location. During this reading also make note of set props, anything that's on stage and looks movable like furniture, rugs, dishes, table lamps, and so forth. Hand props, anything an actor carries on stage with him or her. Lighting effects, anything to do with electricity and stage lights sound effects, any sound that is recreated on stage, like the sound of a doorbell, a telephone ringing, music from a radio, an airplane flying overhead, and so on. Incidental music, music that is played between scenes or underscoring scenes costumes, anything the actor wears on stage, all of these things help to establish who a character is and his or her professional or socioeconomic status in life. Makeup, which will help determine the age of the character and their physical condition and their socioeconomic status. Also note the time period of the play, the time of year, the time of day, and anything else that is important like the weather outside, what the characters do for a living. If certain characters need special consideration like one of the characters is in a wheelchair, so there needs to be ramps on the set in addition to stairs and so forth. You may be thinking, why do I need to know about props, lighting effects, costumes, and all other technical aspects of the show? It's simple. No designer designs in a vacuum. The costumes, set, props, makeup, sound effects, and lighting all affect each other. For example, if costumes are the same color as the set, the actors will kind of blend into the set and get lost visually. See how Bob's torso kind of disappears when he stands in front of this backdrop? The colors in the pictures on the wall furnished by the props crew have to work with the colors in the set. For example, if you have neon pink and green pictures on light colored walls, the audience may be distracted by the pictures and look at them instead of the actors. The lighting can completely change the colors in the set, the costumes, and what the actors' makeup should be. Phones from different time periods will sound very different. Using the wrong phone ring will ruin the willing suspension of disbelief and even make the audience laugh. I always want to have speakers placed close to the things on stage, like radios and exterior doors. The sound designer can make the sound of a phone or a doorbell come from behind the set right next to where the phone or the doorbell would ring. This is a motivated sound source. Using a phone sound effect from your main speakers really breaks the willing suspension of disbelief. A script may call for an overhead light. Different houses during different time periods would have different styles of overhead lights. This light would work in this set. It's the set designer's job to specify what kind of light fixtures work best for a particular show and then okay that with the director. If there are realistic sources of light on stage that actually work, this is called motivated light. Motivated light helps make a representational show even more realistic. If you can't see a source of light on stage, the lighting is called random light, which is less realistic. It's really important to decide on motivated sound effects and lighting effects ahead of time. If a director decides at tech rehearsal that he or she wants working lights on stage, the props crew has to find appropriate lamps, The electricians have to cable the lamps, and the lighting designer has to change every cue to have different areas of the stage come up when actors flip light switches on and off. And the poor actors have another thing to remember every time they enter or exit the stage. All the designers have to be on the same page, and that page is turned by the director. If there isn't discussion and agreement between the director and designers, you won't end up with a clear cut design concept. All the designers have to be ready to compromise in order to make the entire production work. Now fill out the resource sheet regarding the technical demands of the show. Now that you have some ideas about the show and have a list of technical demands for the show, let's talk a little about types of staging and common design styles before we come back to the script. There are many different styles and types of scenery, but probably the most common type of set is a box set. A box set represents a room or rooms of a house or other type of building with the downstage wall removed so that the audience can kind of peek into the house and into the lives of the people who live in that house. Here is a box set that I designed for the Off Center Theater Company in Saint Louis. The set was for a comedy that was set in the 19 thirties, and I designed it using a realistic style. Realism is when the designer tries to make everything as lifelike as possible. You can see that furniture and props from the 19 thirties period were used, trying to fool the audience into temporarily believing that they were peeking into this family's house. So this is a realistic box set. Normally, a box set is a set behind the proscenium arch. But the director and I wanted to bring the action of the play closer to the audience. So we extended the walls of the set into the seating area and wrapped the seating area around the acting area into a thrust stage configuration. Even with the thrust stage configuration, this is still a realistic box set. These types of sets represent real life and are referred to as representational sets. These are pictures of student designs from Of Mice and Men at Hazelwood West in Saint Louis where Bob taught. It's also a box set, but there are some differences. Notice how in this bunkhouse, there's a suggestion of a roof but not a full roof. And notice how this barn set suggests that there was more to the barn, but we just don't see it. This style is called selective realism. Bob and the director of the show wanted to get the feeling that the characters in the play were trapped in that bunkhouse, and they wanted to get a claustrophobic feeling when the actors were in the bunkhouse. They decided that a roof would add to the claustrophobic feeling of the set, but they didn't want to build a full roof, so they decided on just using the rafters to close in the set on top. The same thing goes for the severe angle or rake of the walls. They wanted the characters to look and feel like they were trapped in this bunkhouse. They forced the perspective of the walls to give the feeling that there was no place to go and that this was the end of the line. They chose to exaggerate those elements in the design. They selected to emphasize these elements instead of going for the total realism of this mock set. This set was mostly a representational set, but the cutaway walls and exposed roof rafters were presentational or, obviously, theatrical. This is also an example of a multiple set show where these sets were built on wagons or big platforms on wheels so they could be changed rapidly. Another good example of selective realism is this set for A Streetcar Named Desire produced by the Tennessee Williams Festival of Saint Louis. This play is set in a working class neighborhood in New Orleans just after World War 2. Notice the realistic kitchen with working water in the sink, a 19 forties refrigerator and stove, and other extremely realistic aspects of the set. But there are no solid walls, So characters can be seen crossing behind the set as if they were on a sidewalk outside the apartment. To establish the fact that the apartment is in the middle of this blue collar area in New Orleans, There are windows from buildings across the street hanging upstage of the apartment and clothes hanging out to dry on clotheslines. This helps close off the stage. So one of the main characters in the play, Blanche Dubois, feels trapped in this apartment where her sister and brother-in-law live. Having the suggestion of buildings in the background helps close in the set on Blanche who has a tenuous grasp on reality anyway. This set for Little Shop of Horrors by Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville was very realistic, but had cutaway walls so selected areas of Skid Row were seen by the audience, and a wagon with just part of the dentist office was rolled on for one scene. Notice the stylized background of the building's upstage of the set. This is another example of selective realism. Another use of wagons to change scenery was used in the production of the mad woman of Shio. During the production's intermission, the stage right unit, which was on a wagon, turned around, while the stage left unit, which was on a revolve, turned in the opposite direction. A revolve, sometimes called a turntable, is a special wagon that turns in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. They used fixed casters and have a center turning point. Up to 3 different scenes can be set on a revolve like we see here. This is a scene design for the production of Oliver that makes use of a revolve to change the set. The revolve rotated, giving a different look, creating many of the different locations needed for the show. The production also used jackknife platforms. These are platforms with fixed casters that hinge in and out to change the scenery. Some of the scenes from Of Mice and Men were exterior scenes set by a riverbank at different times of the day. Students painted a backdrop that looked like the sky and used bamboo thatching attached to floor stands to suggest reeds by the riverbank. As the time of day changed, they simply changed the color of the lights to suggest daytime, a brilliant sunset, and nighttime. Backdrops are a wonderful way to suggest time and place. This set of backdrops represents the inside of a palace. At first glance, this looks like a three-dimensional set, but it's really a series of painted backdrops called a wing and drop set. Wing and drop sets were popular in the renaissance and are still used today for plays from that period. Only highly skilled scenic artists can paint drops like this. Everything you can see is painted on canvas. The proscenium is dressed out and painted to look like columns and walls. Upstage is a drop called a portal or a wing which consists of 2 skinny pieces of canvas painted like columns which sweep into a long piece across the top painted like a ceiling in perspective. Upstage from the portal, a larger drop with an arch cut into it is painted to look like walls and the ceiling of a palace. Nothing is three-dimensional on this set. Everything is painted on canvas. To change scenery, these drops can fly out of sight as drops for the next scene are flown in. This can be done in around 15 to 20 seconds on most stages. As long as you have available traveler tracks or a counterweight system to hang backdrops, they can provide quick and easy scene changes. Some shows really lend themselves to using drops, but many shows use a mixture of drops and three-dimensional scenery. For example, while a scene was being played in front of this sky drop, the set crew was changing the wagons from the bunkhouse to the barn interior. Nothing will break the audience's willing suspension of disbelief faster than having to sit in the dark for long periods of time while the scenery is being changed. Carefully planned scene changes using drops, center stage, or downstage can really speed things up and help keep the audience's willing suspension of disbelief engaged. Some plays call for a stylized set. A stylized set is the opposite of a realistic set. Where a realistic set tries to recreate real life on stage, a stylized set avoids realism and often elicits a gut reaction from the audience. Here's an example of a stylized set for the production of Rowing to America, the immigration project. The set consisted of platforms with flags from all of the countries that the characters immigrated from. Backdrops can also help create a stylized setting. Using these backdrops could say to the audience that a play takes place in a fantasy world of 19 seventies disco with a major city in the background, a country cartoon world with a road leading off in the distance, or some exaggerated distorted version of the real world. Stylized sets are generally more presentational or obviously theatrical. Again, it's up to the director to decide what style works with his or her vision of the play. Often, a director will decide to do a play based on how plays were produced during the time in which they were written. These are called period plays. The architecture of a specific location can add to your design of a period play like this set for I ought to be in pictures, which takes place in Hollywood, California and use Spanish style architectural details. Most period plays demand that their setting is very specific. For example, a play that takes place on a Mississippi riverboat cruising from Saint Louis to New Orleans in the 18 forties. A play that takes place in a poverty stricken encampment in South Africa during the apartheid movement, or a bungalow in a rundown area of Chicago in the 19 fifties. When directing Shakespeare's plays, many directors like to set their productions in time periods other than Shakespeare's time. Shakespeare Festival Saint Louis set their production of A Winter's Tale in the Regency period and Taming of the Shrew in 19 fifties America. The Repertory Theatre of Saint Louis produced A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Victorian Edwardian period and Hamlet in a modern period using some elements of Shakespeare's world. This is where all the designers need to spend a lot of time researching the architecture, clothing, and way of life of that period. There is no such thing as too much information about a historical period. During your meetings with the director and other designers, you may see something from their research that sparked something in you and the same thing may happen to them with something from your research. For example, when Bob directed A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bob and the student design team wanted to update the production concept to present day. They decided that a forest where Puck works as mischief should be a place where unexpected, extraordinary, entertaining things happen. After looking at amusement parks, concerts, gaming and sci fi ideas, they finally settled on a rock and roll junkyard. Notice the ramps are all keyboards. 1 of the platforms stage center is a snare drum. Stage right had a huge cymbal. Stage left is a huge amplifier actors could enter and exit through. And there are 8 foot guitars in front of a psychedelic backdrop. They hung the lighting instruments lower than normal so the audience could see them to get a presentational concert feel to the scene. Titania's followers were all hippies from the sixties. Appropriate incidental music was used from each genre. Off the Wall? Yes. But a lot of fun for the cast, crew, and audience. Decide what type and style of set you'd prefer for the play you just read and discuss this with your teacher in class. When you're designing a set, first get your ideas out and onto paper as if you had a great facility with an unlimited budget. Don't let the lack of facilities or budget hold you back during the initial stages. Then be honest with yourself and take into consideration your facility, finances, and the abilities of your technicians. A fantastic design that's poorly executed will look awful if a theater doesn't have enough money, time, or skilled technicians to get the job done right. But often, original ideas can be modified to cost less or be done in creative ways to get the original concept across to the audience. There isn't only one way to design a set. One play can be designed in different styles depending upon your interpretation as a designer and the director's interpretation for the production. In the production of Miss Julie, designer Otis Sweezy chose a realistic style for a proscenium theater. The set was so realistic that it had running water coming out of the pump in the sink. And one of the characters cooked a real meal on the stove. Years later, he designed the set for the same play but for a different theater. For that production, he chose to use a selective realism style and had the audience on three sides of the acting area. And remember, just because you're the set designer, that doesn't mean that you have the final say regarding the set design. All the different designers and the director must have input into the design of the show and the director has the final say. You are one of the many creative, talented people, all who have good ideas about the show. This process is often done in several stages, with different designers listening to the ideas of their colleagues and incorporating these different ideas into the entire design concept. I've designed shows where I changed my design after listening to the costume designer or the lighting designer's ideas. Be prepared to be flexible and open minded to different ideas, and your entire production will be better through the collaborative process. Now that you have some ideas about the show and and have a list of technical demands for the show, let's talk a little about types of staging and common design styles before we come back to the script. There are many different styles and types of scenery, but probably the most common type of set is a box set. A box set represents a room or rooms of a house or other type of building with the downstage wall removed so that the audience can kind of peek into the house and into the lives of the people who live in that house. Here is a box set that I designed for the Off Center Theater Company in Saint Louis. The set was for a comedy that was set in the 19 thirties, and I designed it using a realistic style. Realism is when the designer tries to make everything as lifelike as possible. You can see that furniture and props from the 19 thirties period were used, trying to fool the audience into temporarily believing that they were peeking into this family's house. So this is a realistic box set. Normally, a box set is a set behind the proscenium arch. But the director and I wanted to bring the action of the play closer to the audience. So we extended the walls of the set into the seating area and wrapped the seating area around the acting area into a thrust stage configuration. Even with the thrust stage configuration, this is still a realistic box set. These types of sets represent real life and are referred to as representational sets. These are pictures of student designs from Of Mice and Men at Hazelwood West in Saint Louis where Bob taught. It's also a box set, but there are some differences. Notice how in this bunkhouse, there's a suggestion of a roof but not a full roof. And notice how this barn set suggests that there was more to the barn, but we just don't see it? This style is called selective realism. Bob and the director of the show wanted to get the feeling that the characters in the play were trapped in that bunkhouse, and they wanted to get a claustrophobic feeling when the actors were in the bunkhouse. They decided that a roof would add to the claustrophobic feeling of the set, but they didn't want to build a full roof, so they decided on just using the rafters to close in the set on top. The same thing goes for the severe angle or rake of the walls. They wanted the characters to look and feel like they were trapped in this bunkhouse. They forced the perspective of the walls to give the feeling that there was no place to go and that this was the end of the line. They chose to exaggerate those elements in the design. They selected to emphasize these elements instead of going for the total realism of this mock set. This set was mostly a representational set, but the cutaway walls and exposed roof rafters were presentational or, obviously, theatrical. This is also an example of a multiple set show where these sets were built on wagons or big platforms on wheels so they could be changed rapidly. Another good example of selective realism is this set for A Streetcar Named Desire produced by the Tennessee Williams Festival of Saint Louis. This play is set in a working class neighborhood in New Orleans just after World War II. Notice the realistic kitchen with working water in the sink, a 19 forties refrigerator and stove and other extremely realistic aspects of the set. But there are no solid walls, So characters can be seen crossing behind the set as if they were on a sidewalk outside the apartment. To establish the fact that the apartment is in the middle of this blue collar area in New Orleans, There are windows from buildings across the street hanging upstage of the apartment and clothes hanging out to dry on clotheslines. This helps close off the stage. So one of the main characters in the play, Blanche Dubois, feels trapped in this apartment where her sister and brother-in-law live. Having the suggestion of buildings in the background helps close in the set on Blanche who has a tenuous grasp on reality anyway. This set for Little Shop of Horrors by Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville was very realistic, but had cutaway walls so selected areas of Skid Row were seen by the audience, and a wagon with just part of the dentist office was rolled on for one scene. Notice the stylized background of the building's upstage of the set. This is another example of selective realism. Another use of wagons to change scenery was used in the production of the mad woman of Shio. During the production's intermission, the stage right unit, which was on a wagon, turned around, while the stage left unit, which was on a revolve, turned in the opposite direction. A revolve, sometimes called a turntable, is a special wagon that turns in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. They used fixed casters and have a center turning point. Up to 3 different scenes can be set on a revolve like we see here. This is a scene design for the production of Oliver that makes use of a revolve to change the set. The revolve rotated, giving a different look, creating many of the different locations needed for the show. The production also used jackknife platforms. These are platforms with fixed casters that hinge in and out to change the scenery. Some of the scenes from Of Mice and Men were exterior scenes set by a riverbank at different times of the day. Students painted a backdrop that looked like the sky and used bamboo thatching attached to floor stands to suggest reeds by the riverbank. As the time of day changed, they simply changed the color of the lights to suggest daytime, a brilliant sunset, and nighttime. Backdrops are a wonderful way to suggest time and place. This set of backdrops represents the inside of a palace. At first glance, this looks like a three-dimensional set but it's really a series of painted backdrops called a wing and drop set. Wing and drop sets were popular in the renaissance and are still used today for plays from that period. Only highly skilled scenic artists can paint drops like this. Everything you can see is painted on canvas. The proscenium is dressed out and painted to look like columns and walls. Upstage is a drop called a portal or a wing, which consists of 2 skinny pieces of canvas painted like columns, which sweep into a long piece across the top painted like a ceiling in perspective. Upstage from the portal, a larger drop with an arch cut into it is painted to look like walls and the ceiling of a palace. Nothing is three-dimensional on this set. Everything is painted on canvas. To change scenery, these drops can fly out of sight as drops for the next scene are flown in. This can be done in around 15 to 20 seconds on most stages. As long as you have available traveler tracks or a counterweight system to hang backdrops, they can provide quick and easy scene changes. Some shows really lend themselves to using drops, but many shows use a mixture of drops and three-dimensional scenery. For example, while a scene was being played in front of this sky drop, the set crew was changing the wagons from the bunkhouse to the barn interior. Nothing will break the audience's willing suspension of disbelief faster than having to sit in the dark for long periods of time while the scenery is being changed. Carefully planned scene changes using drops center stage, or downstage can really speed things up and help keep the audience's willing suspension of disbelief engaged. Some plays call for a stylized set. A stylized set is the opposite of a realistic set. Where a realistic set tries to recreate real life on stage, a stylized set avoids realism and often elicits a gut reaction from the audience. Here's an example of a stylized set for the production of Rowing to America, the immigration project. The set consisted of platforms with flags from all of the countries that the characters immigrated from. Backdrops can also help create a stylized setting. Using these backdrops could say to the audience that a play takes place in a fantasy world of 19 seventies disco with a major city in the background, a country cartoon world with a road leading off in the distance, or some exaggerated distorted version of the real world. Stylized sets are generally more presentational or obviously theatrical. Again, it's up to the director to decide what style works with his or her vision of the play. Often, a director will decide to do a play based on how plays were produced during the time in which they were written. These are called period plays. The architecture of a specific location can add to your design of a period play like this set for I ought to be in pictures, which takes place in Hollywood, California and use Spanish style architectural details. Most period plays demand that their setting is very specific. For example, a play that takes place on a Mississippi riverboat cruising from Saint Louis to New Orleans in the 18 forties. A play that takes place in a poverty stricken encampment in South Africa during the apartheid movement, or a bundle in a rundown area of Chicago in the 19 fifties. When directing Shakespeare's plays, many directors like to set their productions in time periods other than Shakespeare's time. Shakespeare Festival Saint Louis set their production of A Winter's Tale in the Regency period and Taming of the Shrew in 19 fifties America. The Repertory Theatre of Saint Louis produced a Midsummer Night's Dream in the Victorian Edwardian period and Hamlet in a modern period using some elements of Shakespeare's world. This is where all the designers need to spend a lot of time researching the architecture, clothing, and way of life of that period. There is no such thing as too much information about a historical period. During your meetings with the director and other designers, you may see something from their research that sparked something in you and the same thing may happen to them with something from your research. For example, when Bob directed A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bob and the student design team wanted to update the production concept to present day. They decided that a forest where Puck works as mischief should be a place where unexpected, extraordinary, entertaining things happen. After looking at amusement parks, concerts, gaming and sci fi ideas, they finally settled on a rock and roll junkyard. Notice the ramps are all keyboards. 1 of the platforms stage center is a snare drum. Stage right had a huge cymbal. Stage left is a huge amplifier actors could enter and exit through. And there are 8 foot guitars in front of a psychedelic backdrop. They hung the lighting instruments lower than normal so the audience could see them to get a presentational concert feel to the scene. Titania's followers were all hippies from the 60s. Appropriate incidental music was used from each genre. Off the Wall? Yes. But a lot of fun for the cast, crew, and audience. Decide what type and style of set you'd prefer for the play you just read and discuss this with your teacher in class. When you're designing a set, first get your ideas out and onto paper as if you had a great facility with an unlimited budget. Don't let the lack of facilities or budget hold you back during the initial stages. Then be honest with yourself and take into consideration your facility, finances, and the abilities of your technicians. A fantastic design that's poorly executed will look awful if a theater doesn't have enough money, time, or skilled technicians to get the job done right. But often, original ideas can be modified to cost less or be done in creative ways to get the original concept across to the audience. There isn't only one way to design a set. One play can be designed in different styles depending upon your interpretation as a designer and the director's interpretation for the production. In the production of Miss Julie, designer Otis Sweezy chose a realistic style for a proscenium theater. The set was so realistic that it had running water coming out of the pump in the sink, and one of the characters cooked a real meal on the stove. Years later, he designed the set for the same play but for a different theater. For that production, he chose to use a selective realism style and had the audience on three sides of the acting area. And remember, just because you're the set designer, that doesn't mean that you have the final say regarding the set design. All the different designers and the director must have input into the design of the show and the director has the final say. You are one of the many creative, talented people, all who have good ideas about the show. This process is often done in several stages, with different designers listening to the ideas of their colleagues and incorporating these different ideas into the entire design concept. I've designed shows where I changed my design after listening to the costume designer or the lighting designer's ideas. Be prepared to be flexible and open minded to different ideas, and your entire production will be better through the collaborative process.