Module Overview: Scenic Design

Introduction

You are sitting in a theatre, about to watch a show. The main act curtain is down at the front of the stage, its red folds and golden accents sparkling in the light and obscuring everything behind. The house lights around the audience slowly fade to black and the curtain rises. What do you see first?

Odds are, it is the set design: the physical objects such as walls, windows, furniture, and backdrops that create the actors’ surroundings on-stage.

Working in collaboration with the director and the other designers, the Set Designer has a tremendous opportunity and responsibility: their design will be the first visual statement that the audience will receive about the show and the world of the play. As a result, their work can carry tremendous weight. In a literal glance, the set needs to:

Suggest the style and tone of the whole production
Provide a sense of context for the play (time and place)
Offer the feeling of possibility and a story to unfold

The Set Designer is responsible for the visual appearance and function of all the scenic elements used in the production. Not only do they need to create a concept that is in line with the director’s vision and the story itself, but they also are responsible for deciding how it will be built, decorated, and painted, how it will move on and off-stage (or whether it will move at all), and where it will it all fit and store in the wings or the grid. And to add to that, all while they need to provide exciting visuals to the audience and give the director opportunities for creative blocking and movement around the stage.

So how do they do it? How to they even begin to take a script and create a visual but also functional world from it?

That is exactly what we will be looking at this week.

Purpose and Objectives

The purpose of this week's module is introduce you to the basics of scenic design: the process, considerations, and tools of the trade.

Upon completion of this module, you will be able to:

Identify and describe the process, tools, and materials used by set designers in their design process.
Identify and define the Elements of Design and the Principles of Composition.
Identify and define the differences between the major scenic drawings (Ground Plan, Section, Elevations, Detail).
Identify and define the differences between a rendering, white model, and scale model.
Examine a given scenario and develop a short design concept for it by thinking like a set designer.