Set Designing Script

Introduction

Hi.  I'm so glad that you are interested in learning about theatrical stagecraft.  Before we dive in to the information, I thought I would tell you a little bit about how a high school theater production works from the perspective of the set designer. 

A high school theater production is very similar to a clock.  There are many moving parts and gears that are connected to each other and they must all be working properly to achieve one goal. Within a theater production, a whole group of individuals must work together to tell a story.  So as the set designer, you are one of those individuals that is responsible for your moving part to work in line with the rest of your collaborators.  The purpose of this course is to give you some familiarity with how a set is developed, think of it like a crash course in design.  Author J Michael Gillette, in the book Theatrical Design and Production, says that “designing is a process more than an art, the design process is a method for finding answers to questions.”  Throughout the process, he says, that design is not linear, meaning that as you go forward in your planning, you must constantly look back and check your tracks, making sure that you are headed in the right direction.  Also, as a stage designer, you must also incorporate your design with the work of the sound designers, lighting designers, the properties department and wardrobe personnel to make sure that everyone is on the same page and the overall design makes sense.  Make sure that you are on good terms with these people because you will be in communication with them often. 

So your main challenge is to answer this question with a set design, “How do we get the stage to tell a story?”  Does that seem like a daunting task?  It’s not that bad.  If you start by answering other, smaller challenges, your set will take shape all on its own.  Think of each challenge like a set piece or design concept, the sum of all the parts will work toward completing the big picture.  Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was any set.  If you work through this course, following the steps of understanding the story, your space, and a few design concepts you will get you on track for designing your very own set design.  As a guide, I will take you through my design process for the show Little Shop of Horrors.   

First things First-Reading the Script and Starting a Concept

The first official step is going to be reading the script and analyzing what challenges that we come across.  For my own practice, I read it through completely twice.  The first time I read it through I become introduced to the story and the second time I read it and take notes.  So what am I doing?  I am accomplishing two tasks.  The first is to gather information that will clarify and refine the definition of the challenge that I'm facing and two, identifying the areas that will require further research.  Look to answer these three questions as you familiarize yourself with a show.  What is the time, location and mood in the story.  After I take some notes, I talk to director of the show and see if he has a specific direction he would like to go in.  Following that conversation, I start to develop some rough concepts.  The make up of the stage has items that are called set pieces.  These set pieces can be anything large that describes the space, like trees, walls in an apartment, or any other strutures necessary to tell the story.  Your designs can take shape in sketches or just written notes.  Sometimes, you can think of some concepts come pretty quickly, I put it on paper, and move forward to refine the idea.  Other times, coming up with concepts is a little difficult.

In that case, I do some searching online.  The two ways that I can jump start my creative process is seeing what other people have done for a design and what do the real life environments in the show look like.  So that is what you are doing at this point, looking for ideas and developing the roots of your concepts.  Once you can begin to answer some of these challenges, take your notes to one of your collaborators and exchange your ideas.  After you talk about your ideas, feel free to go back to the computer to flesh out your ideas some more.  I like to use Google Image searches to help me get a clearer picture of what different environments look like and start to take close notes on the subtle features of the real locations.   

So after reading your script and doing reserach, here is an idea of what you should have.  I’ll quickly go over some basic information as it pertains to the set of Little Shop of Horrors.  The show is about a struggling, Skid Row florist shop that has a turn in luck when the main character, Seymour, discovers a new species of plant that happens to be a man eater.  Skid Row can be described as a run down, gritty urban environment and the set revolves around Mushnicks flower shop.  The show, which was originally based off a movie made in the 60's, takes place in the same time.  The mood changes through the show and is mostly comical with site gags and includes some light gore and horror like scenes.  The cast is small, never more than 10 people or so on stage at once, and the florist shop needs to be transitioned quickly from the inside of the shop to the outside of it.  If we were to simplify it, we can say that this show takes place in three locations, the inside the flower shop, outside the shop on the street and a dentist office. 

At this point, I'd like you to do a little research and get develop your own feel for the set.  Open up your internet browser and look up a few key words in the google image search:  interior florist shop, exterior florist shop, skid row, new york city 1960.  See what you come up with.  If you can think of a few more words that pertain to the story, type them in too to get some inspiration.  A good idea is to save your photos in a folder on your computer so you have them for reference.  The more familiar you are with the set, the better your design will be. 

Assignment:  Copy and paste pictures that you find online of concepts that you would like to utilize or any other ideas that might be inspiration in your design for Little Shop of Horrors.  Tutorial of copy and pasting pictures in a word processor or paint program. 

Fitting to Your Stage

Now that you have an idea of what needs to be done, you need to be sure that you understand the space you are working in.  There are basically three types of stages that you would encounter in contemporary theater and consideration of their layout is important as you create a floor plan for your set pieces.  The first is the most common of all and I’ve yet to see a school theater much different that this one.  This stage is called the Proscenium Stage and its most noticeable element is the framed in appearance it has, called the prosenium opening.  Ultimately, outside of a small apron you may have close to the audience, the stage is fairly flat, meaning that it has a lack of depth.  A positive aspect to that is when you are designing set pieces, there is no need to finish them on all sides as the audience is mainly right in front of your stage. 

The second type of stage is called a thrust stage, named for the large platform, or thrust that comes out into the audience.  This stage design inherently has more depth than the proscenium stage but with the increase in viewing angle for the audience, the set pieces need to be finished on more sides. This stage is good for the action on the stage coming at the audience but offers a greater challenge in terms of design. 

The third type of stage is called the arena stage and it is far less common than the other two in high school theater .  This stage has the destinction of being in the middle of the audience, meaning that in terms of design, all set pieces must be finished on all sides to maintain the desired illusion.  The stage is directly in the middle of the audience and they are seated all around, creating the absolute necessity to finish set pieces on all sides.  For our purposes, we will design our set with the proscenium styled stage.

Space Considerations

When you are evaluating your space, remember how much floor space you have and the constraints of walls.  You have to make the space that you have work for you.  In the ideal situation, you would want a stage that is sized just right, like goldy locks and the three bears, not too big and not too small.  Small stages have the unfortunate disadvantage of being just that, small.  And coupled with the people on stage, you need to make sure there is enough room for the actors to move and walk around.  So if you have a small stage, that means you have to design less pieces in a smaller scale.  Large stages have more than enough space but the disadvantage of being too much space where some set pieces need to be made large to have any kind of effect.  When I plan for a show, I like to take a measurement of the stage space, basically the length and width, which gives me the area in square footage.  If I have a few set pieces in mind, I might even go so far as laying out where my set pieces could go so I have an idea of what the scale will look like.  I will lay it out in tape and be sure that there is adequate space to walk around as well.  It also wouldn’t hurt in your future planning to measure the space you have so that when you make a model or drawings you can create them with a scale and see accurately how they would look.

Stage Directions

Once you have an idea of the rough dimensions of your stage and its layout, you need to become familiar with some basic stage direction.  In relation to the actual set design, we will just talk about the space that is seen by the audience.  Different theaters have different off stage spaces and that is mainly where the production team works.  As far as I'm concerned, it has little to do with the actual design of the set.  On stage, it is important to understand these directions as they will help you communicate location on the stage with the people you are working with.  Imagine that you are standing in the first row of the audience and are facing the stage.  The area furthest away from you is called upstage.  As you move closer toward the audience, you are moving downstage.  The side of the stage that is on your left is called stage right and the area to your right is called stage left.  Just beyond stage left and stage right, in an area immediately off stage where the audience cannot see, are the wings.  The wings are areas where actors wait between scenes when they are not on stage and set pieces are moved when they are not being used in the show. In the very middle of the entire stage is center stage.  As you are designing set pieces, consider that some of your scenery might need to come off stage for certain scenes and remember that the space that these need to exist is in this wing area.  So to add a bit more difficulty, in terms of piece size, keep in mind the space you have on stage but also the space where set pieces reside that are not on stage.The point is, this is the space you are working with and you must design within it.     

Tools - Elements of Design and Principles of Composition

To further aid you in the design process, I’d like to arm you with some tools that will make you a more effective story teller.  This can be a lengthy topic but I would like to quickly go over the some of the elements of design and the principles of composition.  These ideas are similar to the ones you may have learned in fine art classes in the past, but these concepts warrant repeating as they can aid you in your design of a set.  The elements of design we will discuss are line, shape, color, and texture.  These are the tools you have at your disposal.  The principles of composition are the ways in which you can use the tools to craft your story. 

So first, we have the element of line, which is a mark between two points.  Within the term line, we have different ways to describe it, such as vertical, horizontal, long, short, curvy or straight.  A way we can use line, as in a principle of composition, is to create an area of emphasis.  An area of emphasis is somewhere we want the viewer to look and it can be created easily with line.  For example, by having a field of vertical lines and then one diagonal line in the middle of it, the viewer would be drawn to the stark difference in the orientation of the diagonal line.  Any important aspects of the set should utilize some element of design to emphasize it.  By contrast, if there is something that you would like to fade into the background and become less noticeable, you would use the element of line similarly, without any difference to create unity.  Within the previous example, a unified area of vertical lines would not have the diagonal line in it.  

The next element of design we will discuss is shape.  The concept of shape is very similar to the  concept of line except it is a line that has been enclosed.  As you know, there are many different shapes and as with emphasis and unity, we can either showcase a shape with emphasis or blend something in using our principle of unity.  Another principle that we can apply to our use of shapes is balance.  Balance is the idea of making a composition seem even, like there is no one side of our set that appears visually heavier than the other.  There are two main ways you can balance a composition.  The first way is by symmetry.  A symmetrical balance is going to be like a mirror image, all of the same shapes on one side as the other.  You can also asymmetrically balance a composition, altering the size and number of shapes on either sides to create balance.  Whenever something is out of balance, it is a little displeasing to the eye and you want to make sure that it doesn’t become a distraction in your composition. 

Another element that can be used in your story telling is the element of texture.  Texture is the visual indication of the way something feels.  Things that are bumpy to the touch tend to appear bumpy, and smooth things look smooth.  So like the other elements, texture can be utilized for emphasis, unity, and balance. Here is a quick tip to increase the appearance of how bumpy something looks.  If you want to highlight how rough something is, surround it with smooth things and the contrast, or difference between the two textures will improve the illusion of a rough surface. 

The final element of design that we will discuss is color.  Now this is a lengthy subject, so I’ve condensed it so that you can have an understanding of a few concepts behind color use.  Remember, just like the elements before this, it can be used with the same principles, balance, unity and emphasis, so keep that in mind as we discuss the characteristics of color groupings. 

Before we move on to the element of color, I would like to give an even more realistic representation of how you can use an element of design to create empasis or unity.  Let's say for instance, we have a long palm tree in our design and we want to feature it even more than it already is.  We can place it against a backdrop of horizontal lines that contrasts the vertical nature of the palm tree. 

Question:  Can you think of a way that you could make the palm tree blend into the set more to make it more unified with the set?

Color Discussion

Color to me is probably the most important element of design.  Color within a set is literally the painting that is done on your set pieces and possibly the stage floor itself.  It can be used to create very subtle emotions and tell a story in a way the other elements can’t.  First of all, there are meanings for colors, and while they may change for different cultures, here is a list of some connections of emotions or feelings that people make with colors.  (Insert list)

So within colors, it is best to start with some terminology.  All colors can be derived from three main colors, or primary colors.  The primary colors are red, blue and yellow.  Mixing two colors together can create new colors.  For instance, if we mix the color yellow and blue, we can create the color green.  If we were to mix blue and red, the color we would make is violet. And finally, if we wanted to mix two more  primary colors like red and yellow, we would get orange.  Green, violet and orange are what we call secondary colors.  Moving forward with some more color mixing, let’s say we mixed yellow and orange, a primary color and a secondary color, the color we would get would be Yellow Orange.  The same can be done in combination with the rest of the primary and secondary colors.  Some examples would be Blue Green, Red Orange, Blue Violet, and these colors are called tertiary colors and there are six in all.  The collection of our primary, secondary and tertiary colors can help us create a guide for you to use called the color wheel. 

Looking at the color wheel, we can see that there are some families of color.  These families can be applied with the principles we learned earlier to tell a more accurate story with our set.  The first family I’d like to introduce you to is the complimentary color family.  The complimentary color family is made up of two colors across from each other on the color wheel.  Whenever you use a complimentary color, the principle that is closely associated with it is emphasis.  Complimentary colors, placed right next to each other create a sense of clash and that color relationship will stand out to the viewer.  You can even think of it as two colors arguing and the argument between them makes so much noise that it attracts attention.  I’d advise you to use this color scheme sparingly in your set design as too much use of complimentary colors will make the set seem too busy with too many areas to focus on.  Some color pairings in this family are blue and orange, red and green, and violet and yellow.  You can even use tertiary colors, such as red-violet and yellow-green to create a complimentary color set.   

The next family I’d like to introduce you to is the Analogous color family.  This family is made up of three to five colors right next to each other on the color wheel.  The principle that you can use with analogous colors is unity.  These colors can create a sense of unity because they share a similar color makeup.  Where the complimentary colors create a clash, analogous colors are calming and often fade into the background.  An example of this color grouping is red-violet, violet, blue-violet and blue.  The common demoninator in this group which creates the harmonious feel is blue, as it is present in each color. 

Our final family of colors that I would like to discuss is very similar to the Analogous color scheme in terms of the creating a sense of unity but is different because it is only made up of technically one color.  Monochromatic color schemes are a color and the tints and shades of that color.  The concept behind creating tints and shades is really quite simple.  A tint is when a color is added to white and it gives us a lighter color.  An example of this would be the color pink, which is a tint of red.  A shade is when black is added to a color.  An example of a shade of red would be maroon, or a dark red.  Mixing tints and shades can also give us a nice variation in our design of colors.  Tints and shades can also be used in conjunction with the other color schemes like using tints of complimentary colors for a lighter effect or using shades to create a more serious and darker mood.

Using these vocabulary terms within the elements of design and the principles of composition, you will be able to communicate quickly and effectively with your collaborators. 

Putting down your ideas-Drawings and Models

Once you have some understanding of these concepts and have an idea of what you think you would like to do, start cementing your plans by doing some sketches of some set pieces and an overall design.  What things will you include in your set?  How big will they be?  Both of these questions are issues you can work out in your drawings and don’t be afraid to make notes on your drawings.  Remember when I said to take note of the space that you have to work with?  Now is the time to apply those measurements on a page and try to keep everything in a scale so that you can more accurately understand how things will look.  Drawing something to scale would be something like a line of a 1/4” on the paper representing a line equal to 6” in real life.  I like to use graph paper when I do this kind of drawing because the squares make measuring easy and straight.  On the graph paper I will lay out how large the space is, giving myself rough dimensions in which to design.  Then I will draw some set pieces within the containing box and make sure that I do not design anything outside of it.  The more information you put down, the better.  Everything you do in this planning process will allow you to be better prepared when construction begins.  Another focus of this work should include consideration for the layout and consider how balanced something looks, how you can create emphasis and what structures you can create to highlight important pieces of your set that tell the story most of all. 

Another planning step that I would highly recommend is building a model.  In building a model, or a small, three dimensional representation of your set, you can really understand how the set pieces interact with each other and you can freely move things around to see what works and what doesn’t, something you can’t really do in a drawing.  Remember, try to keep things in a scale the same way you did it with your drawing.  You want your planning to be as accurate as possible with size relationships.

As far as what you should use to make the model, I would suggest using a light cardboard, something like what you would find in a cereal box.  You can cut it out fairly easy and it can be quite sturdy.  The way you would attach things together would be with a hot glue gun, just be careful not to burn yourself.  If you would like to plan further, you can also put some color on your model to see how that would look.  An easier time to test color schemes may be in the drawing phase because you can photocopy your design and then see how different color schemes work together. 

Material Consideration

Once you have an idea of what you want to build, start thinking of the practicality of your set pieces.  Make sure you know which ones will move and plan your materials accordingly.  We will get to material choice later in this program but it is good to take note of some characteristics the set pieces need.  For example, you can say that I would like to make a table that is strong enough to sit on but needs to move.  Coming up with these descriptive phrases would help you later on in making the appropriate material choices.

Conclusion

So that is it for now.  Hopefully at this point, you understand the importance of planning and some of the tools you have at your disposal for making an effective set, capable of telling a story.  I would compare the preparation you make here to taking a test.  Going into a test, you want to make sure you not only know the information, but understand how it works, the concepts behind the information.  That is what you are doing now.  You are studying the show, learning the script and understanding how to tell the story of the script visually.  It is very important to feel comfortable with your material and have a concrete idea before construction starts to avoid wasted time, money and frustration that can occur.  Also remember that you are not in this alone, there is a team of people that are ready to work with you and give you input on your designs.  Feel free to talk to them whenever you have an idea or are unsure of something.  They all have ideas too and sometimes they can help you work through difficulties.  You also have to refer to them to make sure that the things you want to do work with their plans.  Everyone working on the same page is definitely good for business.  So, you are now a gear in this watch that we call a theatrical production and its time to, well, its time to tell a great story!