Sets & Props Archives - Dramatics Magazine Online

Set Strike 101

Andrew Koch — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 16:35:18 +0000

The curtains may have closed, but your work isn’t finished! The last step for most theatre productions is the set strike, where everything from the show comes down. While your theatre teacher or director will help guide you, if this is your first strike, you may have plenty of questions. Here’s what you need to know.

What is a Set Strike?

After the final performance, oftentimes the cast and crew come together to pack up everything that was created for the production. At strike, you’ll essentially return the theater to how it was before the show. This leaves a blank slate for other groups using the space, including your troupe.

According to the American Association of Community Theatre, the word “strike” has been used by theatre groups for at least 100 years. Sailors from as early as the 1300s used “strike” to mean “lower a mast or sail,” usually when preparing to drop the anchor (such as at the end of a journey).

Set strike generally takes place immediately after the final performance, but (depending on the venue and other factors, such as school schedules) it may be held a couple of days later.

What Will I Do at Strike?

Your theatre teacher will assign tasks to make sure everyone’s time is being used efficiently. A “strike plan” collects their notes in an organized document that might be shared with cast and crew before strike day. The crew will likely work in their respective departments, with cast members assigned tasks where needed.

During strike, you might:

Deconstruct set pieces.
Determine what set pieces, props, and/or costumes will be kept.
Move items into storage.
Take down lighting and sound equipment and return them to their rightful places.
Remove posters, banners, and other promotional materials.
Recycle any leftover programs, tickets, and so on.
Tidy up and sweep/vacuum the wings, green room, and any other common area (possibly including the theater’s lobby and house).
Return borrowed costume pieces.
Collect scripts/librettos to be returned to the licensing agency.

Safety is paramount! Listen carefully to instructions and be aware of your surroundings – especially around power tools, ladders, and sharp objects like loose nails and screws. Not to worry though, you’ll always have an adult nearby if you have any questions or concerns.

What Will I Need for Strike?

Because you’ll be moving around quite a bit (and likely on the ground), you’ll want to wear closed-toe shoes and comfortable clothes that you don’t mind getting dirty. Depending on the job you’ve been assigned, you’ll be provided tools (screwdrivers, drills and bits, etc.), work gloves, sewing essentials, or trash bags.

Also, be sure to bring some refreshments to stay energized and hydrated, although this will likely be coordinated by the teachers.

You’ll also need to bring any materials that you rented from the licensing company, including scripts and scores. Follow your director’s instructions on erasing any marks you’ve made from them—licensing companies may have rules about this.

What Will the Theatre Department Keep?

Your director, producer, or technical director likely has ideas about what materials should be saved for future productions and what can be discarded.

Items designed specifically for a show (say, a bejeweled handheld magic mirror from Beauty and the Beast) probably can’t be used in other shows. But they might be saved and loaned out if a nearby troupe will also be putting on that show soon.

Here are some factors your company’s decision-makers might consider:

What shows your troupe will be doing next, if known.
Other uses: Basic items like stairs, platforms, or simple furniture can easily be adapted for other shows.
The item’s condition: No need to save splintered wood, costume pieces that have holes (although your costume shop will likely want to make repairs), or paint splotches.
How difficult the item was to find or make.
How much storage space you have (and how tricky a piece is to store safely).
Your troupe’s typical budget: some troupes keep each and every screw for reuse in future productions as a way to cut costs.

The troupe will also obviously need to return anything that was borrowed from cast/crew members, costume shops, or other theatre groups.

Should I Expect to Attend Strike Even if I’m Not on Crew?

Yes! In school and community productions, strike is usually an “all call” for everyone involved: cast, crew, and directorial staff.

Even if attendance isn’t mandatory, you should help your cast and crew mates. It’s very rare that a theatre teacher will pass up unsolicited support. In addition to being the right thing to do, your enthusiastic participation will leave a lasting good impression if you want to work with the troupe again.

Plus, this will likely be your last opportunity to see most of the cast and crew in the same place. Over the course of a production, cast and crew can become a kind of family. Cherish the remaining time you have with each other.

Theatre is a team sport. Roll up your sleeves, grab a hammer or drill, and pitch in!

Andrew Koch is a writer and editor from Cincinnati.

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Storyboard Scene Changes

Sean O'Skea — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 15:00:01 +0000

STORYBOARDS HAVE been used in motion pictures for decades, but for the movies they are mostly about planning the camera movements required for each shot. Storyboards can also be powerful development and communication tools for theatrical scenic and lighting designers, especially for shows with multiple locations and many changes of scenery.

A typical musical or Shakespeare play might have a dozen or more scene shifts and lots of moving actors and props. Keeping track of all those moving parts can be a big challenge for a designer. Storyboards can help you visualize the flow of movement required for your show, as a tool for designing your set. Once your set is designed, storyboards can help check that those moving parts work. “Blocking” the show on your set can help you make sure your design will meet the needs of the play. If you share these schematics with the director, it can convince her your scenic solution will function.

Your drawings will communicate to a director how you envision the set being used and why you included certain elements. For example, if you created a particular platform in your design to be used for a key moment in the play, and you don’t express that idea to your director, you’re gambling that she will guess what you had in mind. Don’t be heartbroken if the director makes other choices.

Once you and your director come to an agreement on the movement of scenery, then your storyboards become gold for the stage manager. Always provide (director-approved) copies of your storyboards to your SMs. Not only will it help them remember where scenery is in rehearsal, but it will also be an invaluable aid to create their tracking sheets and to assign jobs for the run crew. Tech will always run smoother if the stage manager has your storyboards in advance.

Lighting designers can use storyboards to visualize light angles, shape, and intensity of the major cues throughout the show. Some designers use charcoal pencils or ink to create a series of value studies for each major scene, while others might use watercolor, pastels, or design markers to create full-color storyboards. Either way, a good set of cue-to-cue storyboards can be a lifesaver for a tired designer sitting in a dark theatre at midnight trying to remember all the grand ideas they had for cues. But just like scenic design storyboards, lighting studies can help a designer visualize where they want to put lights to achieve looks as they build their plot. Of course, lighting and set designers will want to share their sketches with each other.

There is one drawback to storyboards — they take time. Drawing the set over and over can be tedious, even for a quick and confident sketcher. There are a few tricks that can help.

Tracing paper is your friend. Instead of drawing the theatre and the fixed set pieces repeatedly, you can draw them once on a sheet of regular paper. Then place a sheet of tracing paper on top and draw only what changes in the cue. For example, a production of Romeo and Juliet might have several moving units but a fixed set of stairs and arches onstage for every scene. These pieces, along with any theatre architecture — the proscenium arch and thrust, per-haps — can be drawn in ink on a sheet of regular paper. Tape this down to a drawing table and place tracing paper over it. The 12-inch rolls of tracing paper are perfect for this as they are cheap, and you can make a scroll of your storyboard panels so that you don’t have to worry about getting them out of order.

Write the name of the scene somewhere on the cell. It might be “Act 1, scene 1,” or “the prince’s entrance” or even a particular line, lyric, or phrase of music — “There are giants in the sky!” For our Romeo and Juliet example, you might sketch Samson and Gregory lounging on the steps, then indicate where the Montague servants will enter and how they will confront the Capulet men. That’s all you need to draw on the tracing paper for this moment — some simple figures, arrows, and labels explaining movement.

Then slide over to a fresh piece of tracing paper. This cell might show where the brawl will take place. Next you need to get the prince onstage. Here’s where you might learn something about what your set needs. Maybe you had a left and right archway leading onto the stage. That’s fine; the Capulets can come from one side and the Montagues from another. But where will the prince enter? He can’t use one of those arches, as it would suggest he has a connection with one household more than the other. Plus, he is the authority and needs to break up the fight. He needs somewhere powerful to stand to deliver his fateful edict. You might conclude that you’ll need an up-center entrance at the top of the stairs so he can enter from center stage and stand above the fray. So, add it.

After we meet Romeo, we need to move to the Capulets’ house. How is that transition achieved? Does something fly in or out? A revolve move? A curtain open? Whatever action makes that transition, draw it out with more arrows and labels explaining what’s happening. Are the three Capulet women revealed by the scene shift or do they enter afterward? Continue like this until you have a simple graphic novel of your entire show. Probably you’ll discover and solve a few problems along the way.

When you’re ready to share your storyboard, you can simply invite your colleagues to join you at your table to watch you explain the show, swapping out sheets of tracing paper. But a little technology can help greatly. If you place your tracing paper cell on a flatbed scanner and your background on top, the tracing paper itself will be barely perceptible in the resulting scanned image. You can then swap the tracing paper and scan the next moment, repeating until you have all your sketches scanned. Remember to number them as you name the files. Then drop the images into a word processor or presentation software. You can type captions for each moment if you want to add more information. Once you’re done, export as a PDF or save the file and share. That way you can email your storyboard to all who want it, and they can easily scroll through your document. Lighting designers can even use the slide timing and transitions tools in PowerPoint to suggest the tempo of a cue shift. That way the director can get a sense of your cues before you’ve hung your lights.

Of course, if you have access to Photoshop or other image software you can import your scanned images and enhance them. If you see a moment picked out in a stark circle of light, you can simply fill another layer with black, then use the eraser tool to burn light into the darkness, exposing your sketch underneath. You can skip the tracing paper altogether and use Photoshop layers as virtual tracing paper on top of your set sketch.

Even if you don’t have access to a scanner, you can do the same trick with a photocopier. Of course, you’ll lose the color, and you may have to adjust the contrast until you get the transparency of the tracing paper right, but with a little effort you can achieve similar effects. The copier can help in the other direction too. You can make a stack of photocopies of your blank space and draw your storyboard on top of the copies. Nothing stops you from cutting out bits of paper and gluing them down onto the copy to hide areas of the default set that might be obscured by moving scenery.

There are plenty of tools and tricks that can help you quickly create storyboards, both to create your design and later to explain it to others. It does take some time, but it will save you hours of frustration, confusion, and perhaps disappointment later.

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Props Drive Plots

Patrick Stone — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 13:09:52 +0000

PROPS DRIVE PLOTS. Whether it’s a plate of sardines in Noises Off or a sword in Romeo and Juliet, props give characters choices, movements, and consequences. It’s hard to believe such crucial pieces often get last billing in theatre. A great prop cannot save a mediocre scene, but a bad prop can ruin a great one.

To serve this vital production role we need a vital person: the properties master. Good props masters wear many hats. They often require hands-on skills such as carving, woodworking, papier mâché, wiring, casting, blacksmithing, welding, crocheting, and stitching. They also need planning know-how to prepare budgets, schedules, and research. There are few theatre skills that don’t eventually get applied to props to bring out the best in your production.

When attacking a production’s props list, start with an important rule of the trade. Props must fit a production in at least three ways: style, read, and function.

The backstage props table from Parkland High School’s 2019 International Thespian Festival production of 26 Pebbles. Photo by Susan Doremus.

STYLE

The style of a prop needs to match everything else onstage. The director and designers have spent hours crafting the look and feel of the show. A prop that doesn’t fit that aesthetic can pull focus from the story onto the thing itself. This is almost always disastrous, since no great play is about a candy box or a telephone. The color palette, time period, level of realism, and even economic resources of the characters must be taken into consideration when selecting props.

Yet it’s important to remember that style and design serve the play, not the props. The prop should blend seamlessly into the story to help the actor make their character real. Take, for example, the concept of anachronism, or something outside its correct time period. In general, props masters select props appropriate to the time a play is set. However, anachronism for props is sometimes necessary to the story. Shakespeare famously wrote a mechanical clock striking the hour in Julius Caesar, and it isn’t the prop master’s job to correct the Bard.

READ

A prop also needs to “read” to an audience. The audience must be able to identify the prop and its purpose from where they are seated. Details matter, but details too small for the audience to note are wasted. A hand sign featuring a clever joke isn’t funny if patrons in the balcony can’t read it.

Take a page from film and television, where items are rarely used without a screen test. If it looks wrong on camera, it is wrong. You can’t be sure a prop is right onstage before dress rehearsals. Until costumes, scenery, and lighting for the scene are fixed, you don’t know if the color, composition, or size of the prop may need adjusting too.

The author built this period couch from scratch to allow for unusual wear and tear onstage. Photo by Patrick Stone.

The foundation of the couch is padded before adding upholstery. Photo by Patrick Stone.

An actor stands on the finished sofa during a 2019 production of Hay Fever at Otterbein University. Photo by Mark Mineart.

FUNCTION

Function may be the most important aspect of prop selection. Unless props are being used as set dressing to hang on the wall, they have jobs to do. When a design calls for a table (and yes, furniture pieces are props), ask whether someone will stand on it and if they will be dancing. Reinforcing furniture often takes priority in the props-building process. If actors can’t stand on the table in rehearsal, blocking may be held up. It is often simpler, though rarely faster, to build reinforced furniture from scratch rather than attempting to make antiques strong enough for the abuses of a farce.

The function of a prop also needs to take actors into consideration. If a flag needs to spring from a stick, the mechanism that allows it to do so must be simple to use. It can’t distract the actor from their primary job of storytelling. Function must also be foolproof. If a phone doesn’t ring on cue, the show can’t move forward. Build better quality props than necessary. When a prop needs to work twice onstage, make sure it could work 10 times.

Function applies to prop food too. Many productions require actors to eat onstage. Taking time to make sure food is palatable — even tasty — is well worth the effort. Watching an actor choke down a dry, stale sandwich then pretend to love it is painful for the audience. And if actors like their food, they’ll love their props master.

The joy of handing an actor the perfect prop can only be topped by the joy of seeing the audience experience it in action. Buying, renting, building, and finding these items is an eccentric job, but helping a production soar is worth it, every time.

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Broadway Connections

Anita Martin — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 13:23:05 +0000

LAST SUMMER, Thespian Troupe 5299 of The Colony High School in Texas decided to slate Bonnie and Clyde as their winter 2019 musical. “That show was always kind of in the back of our minds, and we knew we had the perfect kids for it,” said Dwayne Craig, artistic director of Theatre at The Colony. Their main concern was how to build cars for the show. “We had no idea what we were going to do.”

A few months later, The Colony High School owned all four cars, as well as the entire 36-foot set and every costume, wig, prop, and more from the original Broadway production of Bonnie and Clyde — all the way down to design renderings, fabric samples, and understudy costumes. They acquired it all for a fraction of the cache’s multimillion-dollar value. And, for the most part, the costumes fit eerily well, almost as if they’d been custom-made for the school’s Thespians, as if they were meant to have them all along.

If this were the premise to some quirky cinematic heist, or maybe a Glee-inspired ghost story, it might be easier to suspend disbelief. But the real-life experience of a humble drama club trying to wrangle resources for their show?

How did this happen?

WAREHOUSE WEALTH

The Colony lies just 45 minutes north of Dallas, the childhood home of the real Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. It seems to Dwayne and his wife, Ronda, director of operations for Theatre at The Colony, that everyone in town has a tale — tall or true — connecting their family to the infamous crime couple.

It was no surprise that Dallas Summer Musicals, presenter-producer of Broadway shows including Bonnie and Clyde, ended up with the technical production materials after the musical closed on Broadway. What’s curious, according to the Craigs, was how those treasures got buried in a warehouse, then so casually and discreetly auctioned off.

The Craigs caught wind of the auction after asking a local prop master to keep an eye out for the Broadway Bonnie and Clyde cars, which rumor had it were somewhere in Dallas. “Mid-November, she calls and says, ‘Oh, my gosh. There’s an auction, and they have the cars.’ She sent us the link, and we started scrolling. Sure enough, we saw the first car, then we saw the second car, then the third and fourth. Then everything else started coming up: the wigs, and costumes —”

“— the bathtub! —” added Ronda.

“— the cash register, the baptismal tank, the bar, the guns —”

“— badges, handcuffs, hats, undergarments —”

“It was everything,” said Dwayne. “We were going crazy. Turns out, Dallas Summer Musicals got a new staff, and they decided to auction their entire warehouse.” In addition to Bonnie and Clyde, this included Broadway materials from Flower Drum Song, The King and I, and The Addams Family.

The Craigs had never participated in an online auction before. After some digging, they realized the auction was off the radar of the broader theatre community. “People who knew about it seemed mostly interested in selling scrap metal from the sets on eBay, things like that. We told no one, of course.”

The Craigs had a week to prepare. They learned more about how the auction worked, then approached the school booster club for $10,000 — which they got. They had already priced building the four cars at $3,000 each, but here was a chance to get original Broadway set pieces for less. “We went into the auction knowing we had to get the cars. And if we spent $10,000 on the cars, fine. We can make the rest of it work.”

AUCTION DAY

On an otherwise normal school day, the Craigs set up long tables with computers and iPads in front of the stage and turned their daily theatre classes into a remote auction house. Some parents and school administrators got involved, stopping in to help, check on progress, and give pep talks.

From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., a rotating cadre of students and adults worked. Bundled items would come up for bidding in batches, and the team had three minutes per batch to bid. The school got their coveted four cars for only $1,000 each, but that was just the beginning. For perspective, a single handmade Broadway wig can cost upward of $2,000, and The Colony ended up with all 20 Bonnie and Clyde wigs, plus several bonus Flower Drum Song wigs that were mixed in the bags.

During her auction shift, senior Awnna Claire Singleton, who played Blanche Barrow in the school’s Bonnie and Clyde, took charge of updating the team by group message. “Every time I sent out a new message, our phones would blow up: ‘We got the bathtub!’ ‘The BATHTUB!!’ ‘OMG, Jeremy Jordan sat in that bathtub!’”

Ronda described the day as “an emotional rollercoaster. A batch of items would come up and it would get very quiet, everybody whispering to each other, trying to figure out what was coming next and who was bidding against us. For three agonizing minutes it would get so tense, then we’d find out we got it, and everybody would cheer.”

According to senior special effects makeup artist Raegan Thornburg, who also played Clyde’s mother, “Whenever we won an item, we celebrated like we won the Super Bowl.”

In the end, the school faced only two serious competitors: one local theatre, which accidentally used two bid numbers and ended up bidding against themselves, and a few Bonnie and Clyde enthusiasts, who lost interest once they realized these were not genuine relics.

“When it was over, we were exhausted,” said Dwayne. “Then the reality set in that we had until five o’clock the next day to pick up all this stuff.” They hired a moving truck and used three additional vehicles plus a gooseneck trailer. With help from parents, this caravan took several trips, 45 minutes each way, to gather the loot.

“Walking into that warehouse and seeing those original Broadway costumes and sets — for a theatre director, it was such a reverent moment,” said Dwayne. “We knew the true worth of these things and their history.”

MASTER TECH

The first time the cast tried on their Broadway costumes was “a magical experience,” according to Singleton. “The costumes had so much character already. It made it that much easier to connect to the story.”

Senior Fox Elrod, who played Clyde Barrow, felt particularly moved by how closely his measurements matched those of Broadway actor Jeremy Jordan. “I had never done this before, putting on costumes that belonged to someone famous who I admired and looked up to. What if I was too big for them?”

The first costume handed to him was the “bloody Clyde.” He went to try it on, and there were “screams coming from the dressing room,” Dwayne said. “We didn’t have to take up the length, we didn’t have to take up the waist. I mean, it was a perfect, perfect fit.”

“Like a glove,” Elrod said. “It was so natural and strange and exciting.”

Singleton admitted that a couple garments worn on Broadway by Melissa van der Schyff didn’t quite fit. “But we were blessed to have all the original fabric and patterns, plus the swing and understudy costumes and some unfinished ones, which we used to complete the wardrobe.”

By working with Broadway costumes and sets, students got a remote master class in technical theatre by Tobin Ost, scenic and costume designer for Broadway’s Bonnie and Clyde. “To see his designs all the way through the process to the final project was amazing for our costume students,” said Ronda. “Even the pockets sewn in clothes for the guns — the smallest details were taken care of.”

For quick changes, students discovered how Ost designed rip-away pants with magnets, and Thornburg learned the art of quick makeup changes. “During one of the scenes, I only had two minutes to add a full bloody latex face prosthetic.”

Junior lighting designer Donna Bonnelle Yancey helped load in the sets. “It was interesting to see how a Broadway crew labeled and organized their abundance of materials, from spike tape to technical terms designating the structure, setup, and locations of set pieces,” she said.

The set was bigger, taller, and more complex — with three movable panels — than Yancey and her fellow technicians had worked with before. “I got to use critical thinking to solve problems such as how to incorporate our stage to work fluidly with the Broadway set, especially with all the moving pieces.” Yancey also honed special effects, including haze, smoke, and specialty lighting for car lights and gun battles.

Thespians of Troupe 5299 with the original Broadway wardrobe for Bonnie and Clyde. Photo by Morgan Craig.

The Bonnie and Clyde set was bigger, taller, and more complex than The Colony High School Thespians had worked with before. Photo by Morgan Craig.

The Bonnie and Clyde costume purchase included original fabric and patterns. Photo by Morgan Craig.

CONNECTIONS

In addition to technical theatre lessons, students researched the historical Bonnie and Clyde and helped put together a small museum of understudy costumes, Broadway production photos, and historical and community photos in the theatre lobby. They also filmed residents telling family stories about the real Bonnie and Clyde for a short documentary.

“We even had an employee of our school whose grandfather was a sheriff in Oklahoma who got into a gunfight with Clyde and the Barrow Gang,” said Ronda.

Between the students and community members, word got out on social media — and garnered the attention of the original Broadway cast and creative team, in addition to media outlets such as Playbill and Broadway World. Actor Melissa van der Schyff emailed the school to wish the cast well. Book writer Ivan Menchell contacted the school through Twitter and retweeted their promotions. The day before opening, composer Frank Wildhorn emailed, “As I always say to anyone working on my shows, go with passion! If you perform the piece and sing my music with as much passion as I had when I wrote it, you can’t go wrong.”

The troupe’s February 2019 production was a hit with audience members, many of whom approached the actors afterward to share additional stories. “After one of my performances as Blanche, a friend came up with his girlfriend and told me the real Blanche was her grandmother’s aunt,” said Singleton. “That was incredible. I could not believe I was so close to Blanche. She was practically standing right next to me.”

With the gorgeous Broadway materials and community excitement, performing Bonnie and Clyde was an unforgettable experience for The Colony Thespians. “This whole production had a different feel to it,” Singleton said. “Knowing that we had all the makings of a Broadway show only pushed us to work harder and be as close to the Broadway actors as we could get.”

Elrod says that Bonnie and Clyde will always hold a special place in his heart. “This story tells so much more than two people who did horrible things. It tells a story of love, family, and living life to the fullest. Bonnie and Clyde were criminals, but they wanted to make a better life for themselves.” Referencing the message from Wildhorn, he added, “What a life lesson for all of us: to go through life with passion.”

This story appeared in the August 2019 print issue of Dramatics. Learn about the print magazine and other Thespian benefits on the International Thespian Society website.

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Rookie Mistakes

George Ledo — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 13:09:50 +0000

WHEN AUDIENCE MEMBERS walk into a theatre, the set is likely one of the first aspects of the production they’ll see. Sets help create the world envisioned by a play’s author, director, and designers. Good ones do this at first glance.

After building models and preparing sketches and shop drawings in school, I thought I would be ready to become a set designer once I graduated from college. But there were many things I was never taught, including the reality of being outside my comfort zone (our school) and working with a client paying me to deliver a professional product. That’s when real pressure manifested, and my lack of experience became obvious. The result was that I, like many of my classmates, made mistakes — the same mistakes other young set designers had been making for years.

Designer Paul Chadwick’s research of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris influenced design elements of the set for Nevada Thespians All-State production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Photo by John Nollendorfs.

I’ll focus on 10 of the most common pitfalls of set design. Five are a factor of simply not having enough time for the design process. The other five generally result from lack of experience or confidence. Fortunately, they’re all easy to avoid once you’re aware of them and why they happen.

1. Starting your design too close to opening night.
Unfortunately, this is one area where designers often don’t have a choice. They’re hired at a certain point, and that’s the amount of time they have. But you can still go through the entire design process if you slow down (yes, I said slow down) and take things one step at a time. Read the script a couple of times, meet with the director, and do some research. Prepare rough sketches and refine your ideas, often a couple of times. Then, prepare the final design.

2. Skipping research in a rush to start building.
This mistake occurs when designers find themselves on a rush schedule with the start of construction looming. The urge to begin shop drawings can be very strong. But don’t skip the research. Take your time and enjoy it. It’s where a lot of inspiration happens.

3. Settling for the first idea that comes along.
Author Ernest Hemingway wrote 47 different endings to his masterpiece A Farewell to Arms. Your first draft is never the end of your process. Once you’ve completed preliminary work, you’ll usually have a good idea of where you want to go, but even then, slow down, and let your imagination do its job. I like to create multiple thumbnail sketches (very small and loose, with just pencil on paper) to explore the space and overall feeling. Then I step away from the project and clear my head. When I come back and look at the drawings with fresh eyes, I often see opportunities I didn’t see the first time. Then I create more drawings and repeat the process.

4. Focusing on details too quickly.
Instead of starting with the overall idea, I used to begin by drawing details. Soon, I would find myself detailed into a corner when those drawings didn’t work out or I ran out of time. Give your overall design (those thumbnail sketches) a chance to develop into something nice, and then work on the details.

5. Creating the final design too soon.
With a tight schedule, rookie designers often move quickly to a final design and think they’re done. Then, when the director needs to make revisions after construction starts, it’s not a pretty picture. The designer, director, and technical director are upset. Discuss your initial sketches with the director, make revisions as needed to fit the story and vision, and make sure you’re all on the same page before finalizing any work. Theatre is a collaborative business. Most of the best designs are the result of great collaborations.

6. Reaching for flats.
For some reason, flats take on a life of their own, as though they are required elements of every set. They’re not. Many wonderful sets have been designed with no flats. This is where thumbnail sketches come in handy to focus your overall idea. When you explore the space and overall feeling with multiple thumbnail sketches, you’re more apt to give the space definition instead of thinking of it in terms of specific scenic elements.

7. Making everything realistic.
We’re used to seeing realistic spaces in movies and on television, but live theatre is neither. We don’t always need to be realistic, and, in fact, it’s very difficult to create a realistic space onstage. Besides having to consider sightlines, we also have to allow actors to “open up” toward the audience during their scenes and suggest things that aren’t there. We may have to exaggerate angles, provide raised areas that would not be typical in certain types of spaces, and place rooms together that would never be together. Research ensures we understand the real spaces, but imagination allows us to evoke them in a dramatic manner.

8. Merging conflicting ideas.
Inexperienced designers often show their sketches to several people hoping for positive reinforcement. Instead, they end up with a ton of suggestions that only confuse them and create self-doubt. It’s even worse if they show undeveloped sketches to shop staff, as questions about construction and suggestions for simplification can veer in unproductive directions. During the design process, work closely with the director, who is charged with creating the vision for the production. Learn to take ideas and suggestions from others lightly.

9. Thinking in terms of building stuff rather than creating space.
This is a common mistake among designers who started as technical team members. It’s easy to think of scenery units as just scenery units, instead of as components that define a space to support the story. Even when designing a box set, think of flats as walls. You should deliberately avoid designing a room 12 feet on each side just because that’s easy to do with 4-foot flats. Instead, create the correct size and shape for the room and present the design. If the technical director asks for minor revisions, then negotiate them.

10. Avoiding inspiration.
As designers, we often feel we have to do it all alone. For years I did my research, but I didn’t know how to use it for inspiration, that is to better understand what the designers did and why they did it. I didn’t want to copy someone’s work, but I hadn’t learned how to let the lightbulb go off over my head. People in many careers — architects, painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, and even military leaders — study the work of their peers and mentors. It’s an important way to improve your skills. Study other set designers, but also study designers and artists in other fields, from architecture to sculpture to fashion to furniture. A good art history class is priceless, as are frequent visits to museums and galleries.

You’ll inevitably encounter pitfalls on your path to becoming a set designer. But working to avoid the most common mistakes will save you hours of frustration and make the journey a lot more fun.

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Easy as Pie

Tammy Honesty — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 13:34:46 +0000

MANY SHOWS REQUIRE or suggest the presence of food onstage. Often that food is only seen, never eaten. In those situations, developing your own fake food props can be the most cost-effective and durable option.

Fake food lasts longer than real food and can be preserved and reused for years when stored correctly in plastic storage bags or bins. Additionally, realistic fake food props can be created with simple products found at hardware, grocery, and craft stores for a fraction of the cost of buying commercially made fake food.

Creating fake food is an exciting endeavor for individuals of any skill level. You just need the desire to experiment and explore. Below is a great starter project for creating berry pies you might use in productions of Into the Woods or Beauty and the Beast.

INGREDIENTS

Salt dough

2 cups flour
2 cups salt
1 cup water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons alum
Cooking spray
Amber shellac
Denatured alcohol

Pie filling

Candle gel wax
Candle crème wax
Cranberry concentrated candle dye
Red concentrated candle dye
Fake grapes
Glossy wood tone spray paint

CREATING THE PIE CRUST

Traditional salt dough recipes have less salt and no vegetable oil or alum. This recipe uses both to keep the dough from cracking as it’s rolled into shape. Heating the dough on the stove makes it less sticky and easier to roll.

Heat your oven to 250 F. Spray a 4-inch pie pan with cooking spray.

Mix the dry ingredients for the salt dough in a saucepan. Add the water and vegetable oil. Heat the mixture over low heat until it is the consistency of mashed potatoes, stirring until there are no clumps.

Using a plastic spoon, scoop the mixture onto a lightly floured surface. Knead it until it is smooth and thick. Form the dough into a ball. Use immediately or refrigerate in an airtight container.

Using a rolling pin, roll the dough in a circle until it is less than 1/8-inch thick and roughly 6 inches in diameter. Place the dough in the pie pan, pressing it into the bottom.

Flute the edges of the crust by pushing your thumb from one hand between the thumb and index finger of the opposite hand. Repeat every 1/2 inch. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes. (The dough will puff less when baked at this lower temperature.) When the crust turns white and dry, remove it from the oven.

Once the crust has cooled, coat it with amber shellac to give it a golden-brown color. Let it dry, and flip the crust from the pan. Turn the pie pan upside down on a cookie sheet, and place the crust on the outside so the dough holds its shape. Put it back in the oven to thoroughly cook the bottom for 5 to 10 minutes. If you have time, you can let the bottom of the crust air-dry instead.

Once the crust has cooled again, coat the bottom with amber shellac. Be sure to add more shellac to areas that would have browned more in the baking process.

MAKING THE FILLING

Gel candle wax is tintable, durable, and has a realistic weight for pie filling. When crème wax is added to gel wax, it gives the gel wax more structure and reduces the number of bubbles so that the wax will set faster. Adding a dash of color from a concentrated candle dye will tint the entire wax mixture. If budget is an issue, you can tint the wax with crayons instead.

Melt a 4-inch by 4-inch block (or equal parts) of both the gel wax and crème wax in a saucepan on low heat to create a “cherry” filling. Use a thermometer to monitor the temperature of the wax, heating to a maximum of 220 F.

Once the wax melts, add cranberry and red concentrated dye shavings until you reach the desired color. Pour the molten wax into the crust. Place round plastic grapes in the wax, submerging some and placing some in small groups.

FINISHING THE LOOK

While the wax is curing, place 3/4-inch strips of salt dough on the top of the pie to create a lattice. For a touch of additional realism, weave the strips of dough. Return the pie to the oven. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until the salt dough hardens and turns white. Remove from the oven and cool.

Coat the lattice and filling with a layer of shellac diluted by denatured alcohol: 1 part amber shellac to 2 parts alcohol. To add more definition to the “baking” process, spray glossy wood tone around the edges of the pie crust and lattice. Add more shellac around the fluted edges where more browning would occur during baking.

Add coats of shellac until the pie is hard and can withstand the wear and tear of your production.

For added realism, weave strips of dough on top of the pie to create a lattice. Photo courtesy of Tammy Honesty and Karestin Harrison.

Add coats of shellac until the pie is hard and can withstand production wear and tear. Photo courtesy of Tammy Honesty and Karestin Harrison.

The finished pies look good enough to eat. Photo courtesy of Tammy Honesty and Karestin Harrison.

Safety precautions

Don’t pour molten wax down the drain.
Never leave melting wax unattended.
Don’t overheat the wax.
Keep wax away from open flames.
Always keep a fire extinguisher nearby.
Always use a potholder when handling hot pots.

Additional recipes and photos can be found in The Fake Food Cookbook: Props You Can’t Eat for Theatre, Film, and TV by Karestin Harrison and Tamara L. Honesty.

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The inverted periaktoi

Jason Robert LeClair — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 14:56:31 +0000

EARLY IN MY CAREER as a designer, I was challenged many times with the need to create multiple settings for a production while taking up minimal space. Many young set designers are most familiar with the traditional three-walled set, which features a back wall and two side walls on angles. This model and its variations work well for shows requiring a unit set, where all of the scenes take place in the same location. You can design a convincing and lovely room or set of rooms to give the audience a sense of space and time.

However, for a play with multiple locations — pretty much any classical piece or musical — the scene changes will require set designers to make a choice. You can use the theatre’s wings or fly space to store alternate flats and wagons that augment the unit set. You can create something simple and suggestive that relies on the audience’s imagination to generate the specific details for each individual location. Or you can design in a thematic manner, adding props and furniture while asking the audience to suspend disbelief for a while. All of these options are viable methods for creating a fantastic set.

A problem remains when using multiple wagons and flats: How can you change the set when you’re working with little to no wing or fly space in which to store large pieces of additional scenery? The answer lies in Greek theatre history with the periaktos.

WHAT IS A PERIAKTOS?

This aerial view depicts a standard periaktos. Image courtesy of Jason Robert LeClair.

A simple device, the periaktos — or plural periaktoi — is a revolving, three-sided flat with a different scene painted on each side. It is basically a billboard stating, “Imagine we are here.” The periaktos can be traced as far back as 14 B.C., when Vitruvius described the idea in his De architectura. It was notably used in Italian and English theatre during the 16th and 17th centuries, respectively.

The periaktos allows for the backdrop of a set to change, but designers are still confined by the diameter of its rotation. A 16-foot long by 80-foot high wall with three sides will take most of a stage’s depth when it is in position, never mind when it rotates. Alternately, you could use several smaller periaktoi in a row and turn them like the letters on Wheel of Fortune, but this becomes a logistical challenge and takes a long time to transition between scenes.

INTRODUCING INVERTED PERIAKTOI

How then do you solve this dubious design dilemma?

I was confronted with the issue by a friend working with a local community theatre. I suggested an inverted periaktoi design. Instead of a prism shape, you design three walls that meet in the middle on an axis, creating a kind of pinwheel. Then, by adding another double-sided flat hinged to each outside corner, that pinwheel can be expanded to create a full three-walled set. Each panel can have whatever specifications you like. I would, however, recommend keeping the doors in the center.

I have used the inverted periaktoi design in quite a few shows, from The Merchant of Venice to Jekyll and Hyde. I varied the concept for the Jekyll and Hyde set, where I designed two giant inverted periaktoi wagons. The versatility of this design is endless. It allows for very clean transitions without requiring tons of space, and you are not confined to one unit set in one location.

The Greeks had the right idea in suspending disbelief by giving their audiences a reference point visually. The inverted periaktos allows designers to expand on the benefits of this ancient theatrical device by immersing their casts inside that visual reference point. With inverted periaktoi, you can design three sets in one, eliminating a major design challenge and opening up numerous storytelling possibilities.

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How to talk design

Sean O'Skea — Sat, 01 Nov 2014 21:39:36 +0000

OF ALL THE MEETINGS you will have over the production process, the first design conference may be the most important. Don’t let this meeting, so far from the stress of tech, be just a casual chat and an exchange of contact info. If you and your colleagues can clarify with a director ten key questions at that first meeting, you will get the production off to a running start.

Top ten questions to have answered by the end of the first production meeting:

1. Why is the director taking on this show?
The reason might simply be pragmatic — the producing theatre needed a director, and she was available. Nothing wrong with that, but make sure you learn early if there are other reasons. Did the director choose this play? If so, why? Does it fit into a larger season with a particular theme? Does it commemorate an anniversary?

2. How does the director feel about the play?
This is a tough one. Here you must listen closely and be part detective, part psychologist. In most cases the answer will be fairly neutral — the director likes the play and is eager to work on it. However, a director might be intimidated by a play, especially if it is a classic or a challenging new work. Or this might be the director’s favorite play and they have been waiting years to get the chance to do it. Occasionally you might work with a director who actually is disdainful of the play. Is the director a scholar of this playwright’s works? Does the script hold personal importance to him? Each scenario brings interesting collaboration challenges.

3. What does the director think the play is about?
What are the themes she wishes to focus on? Most directors should be able to answer without effort. You may spend less time discussing a screwball comedy than Shakespeare, but don’t assume you know the answer. Is Romeo and Juliet about young love, or is it about rash actions leading to disaster? There might be a dozen or more perfectly valid thematic statements about a particular play, and no one design is going to work for all of them.

4. Who is the play about?
This is the script analysis you’ve studied in school — protagonist/antagonist and all that. Again, this is the director’s specialty, and a good one will make it clear, but if you’re unsure you need to ask. This question of “Whose story is this?” has particular importance for costume and lighting designers.

5. What is the director’s vision for the “world of the play”?
In other words, how does the director feel about the mood and tone of the setting? It is essential that everyone leaves the first meeting with a clear understanding of this answer, even if the answer is, “the concept is fluid and may change.” If the director and you and your colleagues all have different ideas about the look and feel of the show, there will soon be headaches.

6. What are the given circumstances of the play, and does the director intend to make changes?
For a contemporary work, it’s unlikely the production will ignore the text’s answers on this — most of us wouldn’t put Hairspray anywhere other than 1960s Baltimore — but for classics, directors frequently adjust time and place. The director will obviously make this clear, but a change of setting makes question five all the more important. For example, declaring that the play will be set in “Victorian England” isn’t enough: Is this a world of velvet and crystal or bricks and soot? If the director is calling for a change of place and time, then you need to ask question 6.5 — why? The answer might be “Just for fun” (unlikely), or that the director believes the change of setting will lend a fresh take on the play or help the audience better understand its themes.

7. What moments does the director see as pivotal or climatic? What is the specific moment of the climax of the play — a scene, a line, a word?
Be careful here, as the true dramatic climax can be easy to miss. It might not be the moment when the gun goes off but instead the moment when the character decides to fire the gun.

8. How does the director see movement in the play?
This covers a lot, from acting style to scene shifts. Is the play claustrophobic or expansive? Is it busy and frantic or slow and stately? What is the tempo of the play? This will obviously affect all design areas. Plays with a lot of comic acrobatic movement will need different costumes and scenery than quiet, intense psychodramas. Sound and light designers must understand this tempo and movement question long before they begin drafting their plots.

9. Is the director concerned about any staging, effects, or content?
Is there a particularly difficult scene shift or costume quick change? Does the text call for a special effect that might be tough to achieve? Is there nudity or a particularly violent scene that should be approached carefully? The earlier these things are discussed, the sooner you can work solutions into your design.

10. Does the director have any specific staging in mind?
If so, get as much information as possible. This is probably the most important, frequently unasked question at that first design meeting. For example, if you ask this question and the director answers, “Well yes, I’d like to see Oedipus bursting out of the palace doors clutching his bleeding eyes and then stumbling down the steps to fall at the chorus’s feet,” then the set had better have palace doors that swing outward and are capable of “bursting through” and stairs wide enough to fall down and a level space at its foot large enough for the chorus. The costume needs to allow for this fall and the stage blood the director has in mind. The lighting designer had better think about backlighting upstage of the doors or at least some kind of special to highlight this dramatic moment. And what sound do those doors make? What sound accompanies our king’s great fall from power?

This last question cannot be stressed enough. If you and the director never discuss one another’s pre-existing visions for particular staging, then there is likely to be disappointment on opening night. The director might have been excited by your set sketches and renderings and given you the green light without ever noticing the absence of palace doors and steps until it’s too late. The director might not even know why she’s dissatisfied with your set once the actors are on it. “It’s fine, I guess,” might be the director’s final judgment, when the only thing wrong is that she didn’t get to stage her “fall of Oedipus” moment, because the question was never asked at the beginning.

Don’t forget to express your own ideas and concerns as well at your first design meeting. If you have staging ideas, now’s the time to share. Use the power of your pencil—a quick thumbnail sketch can do wonders. Listen carefully to your colleagues as well. You might be able to offer an easy solution to one of their problems, and if the director agrees, that’s one less thing to worry about.

You should aim to be a collaborative partner with the director in this process, but you cannot ignore a director’s clearly stated requests. It’s fine to come to the second meeting with images or sketches illustrating your own alternative idea, but only after you have addressed the director’s.

This story was excerpted from the November 2014 print issue of Dramatics.

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Getting Past the College Gatekeepers, Pt. II

Elaina Loveland — Sun, 01 Oct 2017 14:18:42 +0000

COLLEGE-BOUND STUDENTS spend a lot of time on entrance test prep and college applications while maintaining a competitive GPA and extracurricular profile, but those aiming for college theatre programs have extra hurdles to clear. Preparing for acting auditions and assembling design portfolios are no small tasks. Not only that, but the competition is also steep. Here are some tips on how to make your presentation stand out from the lineup of talented applicants

BUILD A PORTFOLIO

A Thespian smiles as she shows off renderings of original costume designs during the college technical auditions at the International Thespian Festival. Photo by Susan Doremus.

Most students who want to study theatre disciplines other than acting, such as design and production, will have to prepare printed and bound portfolios as part of the college admission process. Actors certainly benefit from having one, too. “It is very easy to tell how much time you spent putting your portfolio together when flipping through it,” notes Adam Zeek, resident master electrician and instructor in University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music’s department of lighting design and technology. “A well thought out, well-constructed portfolio shows that you have the respect and discipline to take things you create seriously.”

Most of the time, you’ll want to come to the audition or interview armed with a physical binder, but having a more expansive, multimedia collection of your work online also aids the application process. “At CCM we like a solo digital portfolio such as a website as a part of the application package, to give us a sense of the applicant, and then an in-person, typically paper, portfolio that we can go into more depth with in discussion,” says Zeek.

Zeek advises students to look at portfolios of other students and to ask colleges and professionals for advice on preparing a portfolio. “By viewing the work of others, you can recognize the techniques that you like, as well as the items that you don’t like,” he says. Photographs are usually considered the most important part of a portfolio. “The saying that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ completely rings true here,” says Zeek. “Think of portfolios as an avenue to strike a conversation with whomever you’re interviewing. It is the conversation that will ultimately land you the job — or admission in this case — in addition to your talent in your chosen field, as demonstrated by your portfolio.”

Some students wonder if portfolio components should be arranged in chronological order. Zeek says not necessarily. “Always put your best work up front,” advises Zeek. “It is possible that during the interview we will not make it through your entire portfolio. Make sure we don’t miss your best work, because it is hiding in the back!”

Choose portfolio elements carefully to best represent your abilities. “A portfolio is pivotal to admission in the top theatre programs,” says Zeek. “It helps the interviewer to get a sense of who you are as an individual. It tells us your artistic and personal aesthetic, and it provides us with a glimpse of your training and natural talent.”

Lighting Design Student’s Portfolio Journey

Ethan Fleek, a lighting design student at the University of Cincinnati, began preparing his portfolio at the end of his sophomore year in high school. At the time, his work was focused on lighting design. He landed a job with a local lighting company and continued to work there throughout high school. Paperwork in his portfolio showing his lighting design skills included cue sheets [list of lighting cues], patch sheets [outlining relevant electrical data], magic sheets [graphical display of lighting system], etc.

“For some shows in my portfolio, I even included a script with lighting cues in it,” he says. “I recommend at least one musical and one play; photos included final and in-progress [shots] of lighting, if I did some custom wiring, which I did for Seussical and Jane Eyre.”

After that summer, Fleek began working in stage design as well. Portfolio paperwork for his set designs included drafts, final plots, and 3D renderings; photos included final full stage shots and in-progress images of construction. While still in high school, Fleek began to volunteer at local theatres helping hang plots, watching the designer program, and running follow spot. “This led me to so many contacts,” says Fleek. “I also started to get lighting experience other than theatre; I started to do lighting for bands at venues all over Cincinnati, and just kept growing from there.”

Once Fleek turned 18, he began to go out on all kinds of jobs with the lighting company: weddings, corporate shows, concerts, and musicals. “I also reached out to professional designers,” says Fleek. “Earlier this year, I shadowed the lighting designer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers from the load in to the load out — I learned so much and made some amazing contacts for down the road.”

See some of his designs on his website at www.efleekdesign.com.

This story appeared in the October/November 2017 print issue of Dramatics. Subscribe today to our print magazine.

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Read, render, realize

Christopher Dills — Sun, 01 Apr 2018 17:46:26 +0000

A SCENIC DESIGNER is the member of the creative team charged with developing the environment used to tell the story of a play, musical, or performing arts piece. Other members of this collaborative team include but are not limited to the costume designer, sound designer, lighting designer, and director.

Scenery provides a playground for the director to use in telling the story of the piece. A scenic designer works with the director in exploring how and why each item — platform, flat or wall, table, chair, cube — is or could be used.

A scenic designer uses many tools to create a set: a visual script analysis, thumbnail sketches, detailed sketches or renderings, and scenic models. Below is a breakdown of one approach to the creative work of scenic design. Not everything works for everyone. These steps are a guide to help you develop your personal process.

Step 1: Read and analyze the script

A scenic designer takes a different approach to reading a script than actors and directors do. A scenic designer does not focus on objectives, motivations, subtext, or tactics of the characters but rather takes interest in the visuals and stated needs of the production. Below is a brief outline of the steps for a scenic designer to break down a script.

First, read the script for enjoyment. Read it all the way through — without stopping. Unlike a novel, theatrical performances are meant to be experienced uninterrupted. When seeing a live performance, the only time the show is interrupted is at intermission. Give yourself plenty of time to read the entire script from beginning to end. Time your bathroom break to when you get to the written intermission break. Do not think about what your specific version of the show might look like. Do not draw anything. Do not take any notes. Just experience what the playwright has written. If working on a musical, try to have the soundtrack to listen to as you read the script.

Second, read the script for sensory and physical needs. The purpose of this step is to identify all of the production’s sensory elements. Break down what the show needs for the story to be told. Use the following categories to organize your thoughts: sets, costumes, lights, sounds, props, colors, imagery, and “other.” Pick one color of highlighter for each category and use a red pen to underline props.

Thumbnail set design sketches for Boston University’s Roméo et Juliette. Photo courtesy of Christopher Dills. View larger image.

Take your time to mark everything having to do with these categories. The color-coding system helps you to quickly see each element and any repetition in imagery, metaphors, symbols, and colors — which will aid you in exploring how this repetition might affect the production’s story. While color-coding your script, take an opportunity to write notes in the margins. Write anything that comes to mind: things, questions, names of visual artists, etc.

Finally, create a list of what you found. You have created a multicolored script full of notes and scribbled thoughts and observations. Organize this into a clear list. Everything you highlighted or underlined should be categorized as a set need, prop, costume, etc.

As you create these lists, pay attention to where the information comes from. Did it come from the lines spoken by the actors or from the stage directions? Items that come from the spoken lines are more important than those that come from the stage directions. With some exceptions, people associated with the original production (usually, the stage manager) write the stage directions. It is important to know what was done in the original production, but if someone does not speak it onstage, then it does not necessarily reflect the playwright’s original intention or idea. It is most important that the playwright’s intent be the primary focus of what is created and told.

STEP 2: REFINE YOUR IDEAS WITH THUMBNAILS AND ROUGH MODELS

What did you find in your breakdown and analysis of the script? What visuals stood out to you? Why is this story important? What is the best way to tell the story?

This rough model explores the church scene from Boston University’s Roméo et Juliette. Photo courtesy of Christopher Dills. View larger image.

Theatre is a visual medium. A scenic designer needs to be able to describe to the creative team what the show might look or feel like. Early in your design work, sketch small, quick drawings of various ideas for the show. These are “thumbnail sketches,” no larger than a few inches across. Each sketch should only take you a few minutes to complete. They do not necessarily relate to each other. Sketch anything that comes to mind and move on to another.

Once you have six to eight thumbnails, identify what you like and what you dislike. What helps you and your collaborators to tell the story the best and provides the best opportunity for the director and actors to succeed and connect with the audience?

Take your favorite thumbnail and construct a three-dimensional rough model, with scale and proportion in mind. Like the thumbnails, this model should be quick and a response to your feelings and reactions. A rough model is usually built in one-quarter-inch scale.

Use construction paper, cardboard, printer paper, cereal boxes, and the backer board of legal pads. Cut the materials with scissors or a hobby knife. Use craft glue, hot glue, or tape to secure the pieces together as needed. Do not think too much about what you are creating. Rip, tear, glue, and repeat as many times as necessary.

STEP 3: COLLABORATE AND REVISE

Design is a team effort. Schedule a design meeting with the creative team. Use the thumbnails and rough model you created to start a conversation about the production. During that meeting, be prepared to alter your sketches and model — in front of everyone. By doing that, you invite everyone into the creation and show that you are open to everyone’s ideas. A good scenic designer recognizes that the best ideas are developed through the input of many.

STEP 4: DRAW AND RENDER

A rendering of the street scene from Boston University’s Roméo et Juliette. Photo courtesy of Christopher Dills. View larger image.

Drawing can be the scariest part of being a scenic designer. A fear of inadequacy traps many designers. They fear that what they draw will be considered subpar and not what the set will look like. This feeling is normal and healthy, because it inspires us to better ourselves as visual artists. These drawings, sometimes called “renderings,” are communication tools — not exact representations of the scenery. Do not worry about color; draw using shades of gray.

STEP 5: DRAFTING, PLANNING, AND WHITE MODELS

Until now, measurements and dimensions have not been as important as feelings and imagery. Now is the time to make measured plans and draftings. How tall is that door? How wide is that window? Where is the couch located? Items have to be built, and furniture has to be bought or found.

A white model is a very detailed rough model all in white. Photo courtesy of Christopher Dills. View larger image.

Use your measured plans to flesh out a “white model,” which is a rough model that does not focus on color. You can construct a white model using the same construction materials you used to build the rough model, but you should include as many details of your design as possible — like door molding and window styling — to provide a more complete visual aid of what the final scenic design will look like.

The white model and measured plans are the final opportunity to revise your design before construction begins. Whether you are building your design yourself or it is being built in a professional shop, design changes cost both time and money. When making your white model, it is common to discover opportunities to better your design. You may find yourself making two to three different white models.

STEP 6: FULL-COLOR, SCALE MODEL OR RENDERING

The final step in your design is creating a full-color, scale model or rendering. A rendering is a perspective drawing of what your design will look like. The rendering and the model should include as much detail as the white model — plus color and texture. The model can be built in either one-quarter-inch or half-inch scale. Full-color, scale models and renderings are used as presentation tools. They are perfect to bring to the first rehearsal to show the cast. Having a scale model available for reference during rehearsals will help the director with their blocking and creative work.

STEP 7: REHEARSALS AND DEVELOPMENT

Just because rehearsals have begun does not mean the scenic designer’s job is finished. Directors and actors will always discover things in rehearsal that no one had anticipated. A scenic designer must be open to such discoveries and be able to adapt their scenic design. These discoveries often provide an additional creative layer to the production you are working on.

STEP 8: TECHNICAL REHEARSALS, OPENING NIGHT, AND PERFORMANCES

The entire vision comes together in the week or two before opening night. What you have spent weeks to months developing is finally built onstage. This is the only time to make sure that everything fits together onstage just as you envisioned in your mind. You should move around the theatre, viewing the set from as many different seats as possible. Does the wall color clash with an actor’s costume? Can the audience see offstage? Do you need to add additional masking? Changes and alterations to improve the production can and should be made as long as time allows. The production is not finished until the curtain rises on opening night.

This story appeared in the April/May 2018 print issue of Dramatics. Subscribe today to our print magazine.

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