Scene Design

206937 Resource 100513 101704 101704 1213712843852 1226944501867 Controlled No Set? No Sweat!

You’ve got the script. You’ve got your eager student actors. What you don’t have is money for a set.

Or maybe just a little… about the amount you’d have if you commandeered the cast’s lunch money.  Which of course you can’t do, since you value your job!What you need here is a concept. Specifically, a concept that costs very few bucks. In 1971 Peter Brook did A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Shakespeare in London, and his set was three white walls. Now, that’s a concept. As Brook said, “A man walks across an empty stage whilst someone else is watching him, and that is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”Here is a concept to help you create a set for almost nothing:  have the audience draw your backdrop! Here’s how it worked for me:When I was part of a children’s theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, known as the “Jack Pudding Players,” we were poor and had too little money to build a set.  We went to a store and bought a 5-foot high roll of brown packing paper.  Before the show started, we gave the kids in the audience crayons and markers and asked them to draw a “dark scary forest” on the first ten feet of the paper. On the next ten feet, we asked them to draw scenes of happiness and sunshine. We secured the roll upstage displaying the forest scene when needed. When the actors left the scary woods, we rolled it out further to display their happy backdrop. The kids loved it—they were invested in the show immediately, and their artwork was displayed throughout. We of course would ad-lib how beautiful and frightening the woods were, etc. They also loved seeing us change the set. Critics called us “interactive,” “original” and “down to earth.” You see, people saw a concept, not the lack of money behind it!From this backdrop, it became quite easy to enhance the set with simple representative props since the audience already clearly identified with the location. Paper bags painted green and weighted with stones became bushes. Stepladders, chairs and small tables also can be disguised as various bits of landscape.Of course, the drawings can be used to depict a meadow, a farm, a city—the possibilities are endless. If you don’t have the time to involve the audience, is there an art class in your school where the kids could draw the set? Each child could even make an individual drawing on a piece of construction paper that you can hang from the ceiling, tape to the back wall or even tape to a coat tree that now becomes a “stage tree.” Likewise, if you need just a brief set change to, say, the woods, bring some kids onstage, holding their drawings of trees, potted plants or whatever and have them become the set. Just make sure you have a dependable actor or two who could handle directing these kids onstage.Instead of worrying about your lack of money, have fun with any number of variations on this simple concept and you’ll be… all set!  9 application/xml false backdrops cheap inexpensive money resouces for set design scene design school set design sets stage set Scene Design The author gives many tips that will save materials and hours of work: choosing among different kinds of sets, constructing flats, making a realistic model, working with colors and much more. http://www.pioneerdrama.com/searchdetail.asp?pc=SCENEDESIG&id=5 The Perfect Stage Crew If you need to learn the nuts and bolts of putting together and turning your backstage workers into ?the perfect stage crew,? this easily readable book is for you. http://www.pioneerdrama.com/searchdetail.asp?pc=PERFECTSTA&id=3 Scenic design - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Scenic design (also known as stage design, set design or production design) is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scenic_design Instead of worrying about your lack of money, have fun with any number of variations on this simple concept and you'll be... all set! Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 mglassman 64.62.58.1 false true false false true 100513 blog blogsite/PioneerDrama/web