So You Want To Be A Theatre Designer?

Michael Pavelka

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781780015613
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

The definitive guide to designing for theatre - by an award-winning designer with over 160 productions to his name. With a Foreword by Alison Chitty.

A theatre designer needs to be able to draw on a wide spectrum of skills, work collaboratively with all the different members of the production team, and deliver designs that work in the testing conditions of performance.

This book guides you through everything you need in order to become - and ultimately to succeed as - a theatre designer, including:

The various aspects of design - set and props, costume, masks, make-up. The applications of design - opera, dance, site-specific, lighting, video and more. The skills you require, and the training available. The journey of a design from page to stage, from your first reading of the script, through research, first sketches, storyboards, technical and costume drawings, and on to the model. The people you will collaborate with - directors, producers, actors, writers and more - and how to work effectively with each of them

Finally, there are sections on landing your first production and furthering your career. Also included is a production timeline to guide you through the mechanics of contracts, copyright, costings, and what you need to have ready at each stage of the process. It is illustrated throughout with designs, by the author and other leading designers.

Written by an experienced practitioner and teacher, this book will be an essential guide for any aspiring or emerging theatre designer, as well as anyone seeking a greater understanding of how designers work.

'A comprehensive introduction and guide to the world of the professional theatre designer, a key book for anyone contemplating entering the profession' Alison Chitty, from her Foreword

PART ONE

What is Contemporary Theatre Design?

1

Theatre Design or Scenography?

Increasingly, British and American theatre designers are also describing themselves as ‘scenographers’, although the word still doesn’t sit comfortably in the profession and remains tinged with academic or at least overly conceptual ways of approaching theatrical ideas and production. On continental mainland Europe, theatre design is scenography: the term is more widely and comfortably used, so it can be defined lucidly by theatre-makers on the job in the context of a noun or verb.

Its origins are in mid-seventeenth-century France: scénographie. That word evolved via Latin, which, in turn, came from the Greek skēnographia (‘scene-painting’, or the art of portraying objects or scenes in perspective). Of course, scene-painting has a far longer tradition than theatre design. Many a designer honed their skills doing just that, Jocelyn Herbert for one, but the dictionary definition goes only a small way to describing the scope of scenographic practice – particularly in a contemporary context – which is probably why it is an unstable word in a continual state of flux.

Pamela Howard’s book What is Scenography? is an excellent way for you to start unpicking the language of scenography and give you some real substance to hang your opinions on. Everyone has a nuanced definition of his or her own, and through making work you, the reader, will have yours. In the main, as a designer, I avoid using the term on a daily basis as it tends to create a twinge of panic in directors (because they might perhaps think you’re stomping through their intellectual space), in a design team (because it smacks of pulling rank and could sound pretentious/competitive) or to technicians (because they probably don’t care what you call what you do… and they’re probably right!).³

If, by the time you’re a designer in the field, you are asked by family or friends, ‘…and what do you do?’ I challenge you to say, ‘I’m a scenographer.’ Watch their eyes glaze over, and then breathe a sigh of relief when they realise, or you mercifully tell them, that it means you’re a theatre designer. My advice is to use the label that a non-specialist recognises and you’ll have a far easier and rewarding conversation. Chiefly, you’re unlikely to argue the toss about all this unless you’re in a scholarly situation, in which case you may (or may not) find the following passage useful. I’ll attempt to describe how, in my view, the two terms jostle for position in the knowledge that as soon as I do, there will be a hundred more alternatives from others, and probably ten from myself before long; but here goes:

Scenography describes a context in which theatre can be made, and hints at a method of achieving it. This can be applied to a full range of phenomenological circumstances, from grand opera to making a meal at home in your kitchen; the scenography itself is not theatrical until it’s presented as such. If, as spectators, we’re focused on any such mundane action through the ‘lens’ of theatrical representation, scenography will have captured and shaped the moment.

Theatre design puts the human need of storytelling first. A theatre designer’s craft is to position the audience’s visual and spatial relationship to the actors, singers or dancers who are central to the narrative. If the furniture designer Charles Eames’ definition of design is close to the mark, that it’s ‘a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose’, then ‘theatre design’, in performance terms, ‘does what it says on the tin’.

Scenography is a set of circumstances; theatre design shapes them. Both terms harmonise, or at least overlap, through making things. What we do in our profession is, above all, tested using practical methods, in tangible (even if virtual) spaces, with real people. We make, reflect, and make again, collaboratively. Josef Svoboda uses a rather more holistic term for the aim of the activity itself, rather than the means by which we get there:

We don’t promote any [particular] artistic discipline. We synthesise, that is we choose the artistic principle that corresponds to our theatrical concept… priority on stage belongs to the ‘theatrician’ and only then to the designer.

In the UK, theatre designers will usually design all the visual aspects of a production: settings, properties and costumes. Designers abroad will usually specialise in one or two of these elements. Occasionally, European or North American designers might couple both set and lighting design, and in doing so may be more comfortable with the defining themselves as the production’s scenographer. For the purposes of staking out what a designer has responsibility for in each of these distinct but integrated disciplines, there now follows a thumbnail sketch of the principle elements of theatre design and what designers usually focus on when tackling their particular challenges. The checklist for each area is unpacked more fully in later chapters, but it’s worth saying here in the first instance that in each case the specialist designer needs to have a general appreciation of literature, visual culture and contemporary social concerns.

2

Set and Prop Design

Scenic design usually involves creating and harmonising both the space and the objects within it. It invariably means that designers in this area have to be most acutely aware of the form and function of both architecture and product design in all its variations. Composition (incorporating aesthetics), as a primary aspect of design, underpins the arrangement of all things in both a conceptual and physical frame. Like all practical subjects, knowledge of a range of materials is important, although it’s also crucial that an appreciation of a material’s properties doesn’t constrain a good idea – but rather supports or enhances it.

Set design used to be underpinned by needing to know a range of construction and treatment techniques that ‘faked’ the real thing. This was chiefly for reasons of budget or transportability. While it’s always useful to make your designs as practical as possible in a range of circumstances, such as touring, the fact is that the relatively lower cost of materials today such as steel, aluminium and its fabrication has liberated the designer from ‘artifice’. Special effects can now be used for particular purposes and are usually ‘read’ by the audience as a layer of theatricality in a world of more familiar actual structures and objects.

Drawing practice is essential – it is a way of making your thoughts material that also helps you look, plan and communicate. Obviously drawing spaces is paramount both in terms of measurable accuracy (technical drawing) and offering an impression for fellow theatre-makers (imaginative and observational drawing). The combination of these is drawing in one- or two-point perspective, which is useful, but something of a dying art as software now makes such views, and the ability to fly through them, increasingly easy. It’s always useful to know what the computer is doing with your data, however, so learning the rudiments by hand gives your use of computers an authority when your design leaves the screen and becomes real, full-scale and in need of adjustment with the naked eye as the audience will see it. Drawing a sequence of moments in a narrative (storyboarding) is also important – you can do this by mimicking the artistry of a graphic novel or strip cartoon, or maybe taking it to a further level with slide shows, animatics and animations.

Architecture is often misleadingly thought of as being the design of structures and partitions for bodies to inhabit, rather than framing the air around people: actors and audiences are no different. Manipulating spaces and rudimentary ergonomics are essential to the set and property designer. Although drawing in a technical scale is key to accurate design, the human scale of the work is fundamental. Stage designers cannot afford to forget that storytelling is a primal, human activity and that the audience will probably need to be focused on that ninety per cent of the time. Performers have to feel supported both physically and conceptually in order to be able to do their work, and inappropriately distracting design can be counterproductive to the quality of a complete theatrical experience.

Having said that, there are always exceptions: an obvious one is the overture or entr’acte of an opera. These often lengthy passages of music introduce themes and motifs that will leave plenty of scope for the designer and director to make a string of rolling powerful visual statements. The music fills the space and immerses the audience with sensations that can be more extravagantly matched by movement and design. Other specialist considerations can impact on design, such as the classical ballet’s need for plenty of floor space with the design chiefly providing a context for the dance, around and above the space.

But, by and large, a chair is a chair, and if the designer has not taken into account that it has to be able to get on stage by fitting through a door, to be light enough to be carried by a performer whilst acting, and to be the right height to comfortably sit on (e.g. the length of the lower part of the human leg), then the story could be compromised, and the design will be noticed for all the wrong reasons.

Top tip: Never underestimate the power of domestic detail – the smallest everyday object aptly chosen and perfectly placed, either singularly or repeated to make huge visual impact, can echo William Blake’s poetic maxim of helping the audience ‘see a world in a grain of sand’.

Set- and prop-design reference checklist:

•	Architecture.
•	Painting.
•	Sculpture.
•	Geometrical drawing.
•	Observational drawing.
•	Storyboarding.
•	Interior design including furniture and other domestic objects.

3

Costume Design

In many respects, a costume designer’s process is similar to an actor’s in rehearsal. It starts with the text and looking for clues in the writing that help build depth to the characterisation when brought to life on stage. Sometimes that can be what the character themselves says and sometimes what other characters say about them. The most common and simplistic mistake that design can make is to describe the character, leaving no scope for the actor or, worse, ‘telegraphing’ what the character is about to play out. For example, whether we previously know the story of Macbeth or not, why would he be dressed in anything signalling his slide into evil (e.g. black leather) before he gets there – we wouldn’t need the three witches’ prophecy in Act One for a start! Other sins include upstaging a performance with an outrageously flamboyant shape or colour that overwhelms both actor and character. All this sounds like a recipe for tame naturalism at best and mundane sloppiness at worst, but the job of the costume designer for drama is to take the recognisable and shape it into a convincing context for the story.

Actors sometimes have a temptation to invent a backstory for their character that has no substance in the author’s writing. The deeper these intricate inventions pervade the actor’s ‘method’, the harder it is for the costume designer (and indeed often the director) to track and respond to. Quite often, however convoluted the path an actor takes, it will rightly lead them back to the face-value story, so both patience and diplomacy are high on a successful costume designer’s credentials en route. Whether it’s the designer or the actor who runs away with their own ideas about the text, the best policy is a transparent process of show ’n’ tell so that ideas have the best chance of coming together and a third, collectively made, idea can surface.

Jocelyn Herbert’s costume design for Dandy Nichols as Marjorie in Home at the National Theatre.

The continually shifting impression of a costume on stage is fascinating and exciting. Actors use clothes in unexpected ways, and lighting can change a material from a dull sack to vibrant couture.

When embarking on a project, an early question might be whether you will be designing what are essentially regarded as ‘clothes’ or what could be more aptly termed ‘costumes’. Of course, under presentational stage conditions, clothes philosophically become costumes, so the definition may describe the designer’s attitude to realising the work, rather than the product itself. Likewise, if the framing of a production is convincing to the eye and mind, costumes can become accepted as the character’s clothes for an hour or two. The reality is that often these decisions are shaped by budget: shopping is often far less costly than making from scratch, while hiring falls somewhere in between the two depending on how long the production will run for. There is no doubt that, usually, the costume designer’s preferred choice is to have full control of the fabrics and cut – to fully realise a drawn idea within a fully considered idea.

Like the set designer’s need to keep the story moving through a sequence of changing spaces, so the costume designer has to be aware of the journey a character makes through the arc of the narrative. This may result in the character making a gear-change, literally and metaphorically, as their story develops. For example, clothes may have to go through a process of ageing as stage time ‘fast-forwards’ over months or years, or ‘jump-cuts’ in film. Also, as with set design, there is a tussle between imagining a big concept or scheme for the world of the play, and the logic of individual parts. One of the earliest decisions the creative team can make is whether the production can be framed by and exist within an overall colour palette or historical period. Sometimes a tightly designed aesthetic is very satisfying for the audience to ‘buy in to’ and on other occasions it can be seen as overbearing and overblown. The truth is that this may not be revealed until it is too late and all you can do is put it down to experience. The main thing is that, collaboratively with the actors, everyone has pursued their ‘look’ with the same purpose and that the costume idea will be robust enough to sustain the shifts a performer might make in the development of a role.

The extremities of the body are crucial for an actor. Heads, hands and feet frame an actor’s physical presence and are critical not only to the power of their silhouette in a theatrical image, but are also a key to defining their gestures and posture. This in turn comments on what they say as a character or influence how they feel as a performer in the act of performance. For these rea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Epigram
• Foreword
• Prologue: Theatre Design in the Modern Age
• Part One: What is Contemporary Theatre Design?
• Part Two: What Skills Do You Need and How Do You Get Them?
• Part Three: Education or Training?
• Part Four: What’s in a Design?
• Part Five: Who Do You Work With and How Does Design Affect Them?
• Part Six: How Do You Land Your First Productions?
• Part Seven: A Theatre Designer’s Production Timeline
• Part Eight: Help! Agents, Unions and Societies
• Part Nine: Your Workplace
• Part Ten: Promoting Your Future and Building a Legacy
• Epilogue: Where Does Theatre Design Go from Here?
• Appendices
• About the Author
• Copyright Information