Insights

The Designer’s Role in Production: Bringing the World of the Play to Life

By Ciji Guerin

Dré Slaman and Sofia Molina in Jaffa Gate.

Often overlooked and underestimated, design is a powerful and essential part of storytelling in the theater. From the first production meeting, designers work in tandem with the director to help shape the visual and aural concept of the production and translate the director’s production concept into actual sets, costumes, choreography, puppetry, as well as music, video, light, and sound cues.

Designers turn abstract, artistic visions into visceral worlds that envelop audiences into the heart of a story.

Dan Sweet as an older Yukon Cornelius in Bumblers.

In this article, we continue our exploration on how cast and creative members’ roles affect the feedback they give playwrights during the new play development process. First, we need to get our heads around what designers do in a production.

Production Concept Versus Design

Because it’s a director’s production concept that designers bring to life, it’s easy to miss the design concepts and choices that actualize the production concept as a full production. So, let’s take a minute to define the difference between a production concept and a design.

A production concept is based on the director’s interpretation of the play and how the director envisions their interpretation brought to life on the stage. It’s a conceptual framework that defines the themes, mood, tone, look, feel and overall arching narrative. It guides and focuses the cast and the creative team and unifies their creative efforts into a visceral theatrical production.

Production Concept Example

“King Lear is a reminder of how quickly a country can be destroyed from within by political back-biting, greed and complacency. Lear takes for granted both his responsibility as king and his land’s stability, assuming he can leave the daily running of the country to others while he retires to ‘the good life.’

“Because Shakespeare’s message is appropriate for any point in history, we have chosen to set this production without specific period or culture. We also wanted to create a raw, elemental world where violence becomes commonplace. Fire, wind and water are placed within a steel structure set upon the earth, giving the set a non-realistic, presentational feel, where one does not expect each location to be fully realized visually. This helps to accommodate Shakespeare’s quick and constant scene changes.

“In the background you can see a vague image of the empire that everyone is trying to capture. It is polluted and corrupt, not beautiful. On this land, no one is immune from the desire for power. In our King Lear there are no heroes and there is ultimately no innocence; everyone gets their hands dirty. As the battles both political and personal ensue, the story reveals itself to be actually a quest for love and understanding, and what is truly important in life.”

–Karen TenEyk, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park

Design

A design is a buildable rendering or model. It is the production concept realized in tangible, executable terms. As they follow the director’s lead, designers make countless choices on how to use their talent and tools to create the tangible aspects of the director’s production concept.

In other words, a production concept is a directorial vision not ready for production; a design is that vision actualized in concrete terms that is ready to be built.

Goal During Script Analysis

When preparing for a production, a designer usually begin by undergoing a rigorous script analysis to understand the visual and aural needs of the play: the locations, what objects are used during the action in each location, the theatrical style implied by the text, and so forth.

For example, if a play has multiple locations, the first decision that will be made is how the production will change locations.

Once they have a good sense of the script’s aural and visual needs, designers use analysis to find how the world of the play works; its rules and logic, its social and cultural context, the symbols it uses, and the ideas explored through the characters’ journeys through the world.

This requires an in-depth analysis similar to the analysis undertaken by directors. Scripts rarely directly state, explain, or elaborate about their worlds—even in stage directions. Although stage directions will describe settings and actions, how the world functions is more implied by the actions and events of the play, as well as the characters, their relationships and their interactions.

After the analysis, the design team will work with the director and other designers to help develop the director’s production concept and create the world of the director’s vision. Each designer must work in tandem with every other designer to ensure that the overall look, sound and feel of the world is cohesive.

Design as Storytelling

It’s fairly well understood how design establishes time and place as well as style, tone and mood of the story. When an audience sees a realistic 1950s diner naturally lit and a waitress dressed in knee-length skirts, or dressed with a fitted waist paired with a frilly apron on stage, then hears that the waitress is listeinging to a news story on the radio about Senator Joseph McCarthy alleging communists are in the U.S. Government, a great deal is accomplished on stage.

But design also enhances the script’s narrative with more subtle visual and aural cues as well.

Among tactics designers use to do this:

Sets, set pieces, and decor embody the primary thematic conflict of the story through its use of space and visuals.

Example: Jo Mielziner’s set design for Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. The house where the play takes place is represented with only the house’s frame. It has no walls. From scene to scene, Willy Loman, and the characters that inhabit his memories, walk through walls and take position, without regard to the physical limitations of a tangible house.

Costumes and costume props communicate a character’s gender, age, temperament, occupation, social status, economic status, and the differences between characters and groups.

Example: In a stage production of Pride and Prejudice, groups and social class. The wealthier, higher-status characters might be dressed in deep colors and lavish fabrics and accessories, while the Bennets are dressed in cottons, muslins and small prints to highlight their different social and economic status.

Since costumes aren’t static, they’re often used to reflect a character’s overall development, enhancing the audience’s ability to see the character’s journey.

Example: In the Pride and Prejudice production, Mr. Darcy first appears stiffly dressed in the riding clothes of a young country gentlemen; his tailored jacket restrains his movements. By the proposal scene (about halfway through), his attire has changed. Although still tightly tailored, the fabrics are soft and more giving, freeing his movements and he begins to wear his coat unbuttoned. By the final scene, the fit of his clothes is loose, he begins to take his jacket off, carry it over his shoulder, and he undoes the top buttons of his shirt and leaves them undone.

Sound and music enhance the visceral experience of the fictional action on and off stage. Designers use sound effects to mimic real-world sounds that represent actions on stage like flushing toilets, door slams, phones ringing, gunshots. They use incidental music beneath or behind a scene to add to the emotional tone of a scene. They create atmosphere by adding traffic sounds to a city location, or howling wolves to indicate the wilderness. They use sounds between scenes to denote the passage of time.

Example: In a stage production of a new play called Gnomes On A Hill, the main character has an early morning argument with his boss outside his office building on the busy city street. The scene ends with the sounds of the busy city’s morning traffic, then crossfades into the calming sound of crickets chirping. Lights rise to reveal the main character now at his suburban home with his son in the early evening.

Lighting determines what is seen, when it is seen and what remains in the dark; which is a superpower in the context of storytelling. The use of lights can also shift the mood instantly; simply shifting the color or intensity of the lights from cold dark gray to warm bright yellow will completely change the emotional quality of a scene. Lighting cues can have an illusionistic effect by simulating real light sources like the sun or candlelight or a stylized effect by lighting the stage in a way that could not possibly come from “real” sources; defining the style of the world and important in establishing the rhythm of production as it changes from scene to scene, within scenes, and into intermission and the end of the play.

Example: In a minimalistic production of Waiting for Godot where the set design consisted only of a tree, dramatic lighting was used to confine the space, give it a claustrophobic feel, and control the atmosphere from scene to scene. The shifts in light throughout the play were abrupt, coming across to the audience as turbulent, and highlight Lucky progressively becoming unhinged.

Bringing the World to Life

Once the designer has a basic grasp of the needs of a play and the style of scenery and set changes, production meetings begin. In production meetings designers hear the director’s production concept and help shape the concept as the team refines their design concepts to align with the concepts of the other designers and the production concept of the director.

Once they begin to have a basic design concept, they’ll create a sketch or model to clearly communicate their concept to the rest of the creative team, eventually presenting a final rendering just before build. These final renderings or models are often quite astonishing. Many are considered works of art and can be found displayed in art books and museums.

Of course, audiences rarely recognize the depth and rigor of a designer’s process. They only witness the spectacle of the production, the precision of the timing, and the unique and potent qualities of the world brought to life on stage.