Creative Research

External Research

1. Period of the play
   1. Date of the play's composition
      No matter what the date of the play's action, it is always a good idea to know when the play was actually written.
   2. Date of the play's action
      This date, along with the above, gives the designer a specific period of time to research.
2. Location of the play's action

   It is self-evident that the geographical location of a play will dictate much of the detail of its setting. Even when a play is produced in a style other than realistic, there is usually some attempt to manifest the geographidal spirit of the actual place. This might show only in the basic colors of the production -- golden yellow and brown for the desert, cold blues and greens for northern climates.
   (Darwin Payne. The Scenographic Imagination, pg.175.)

3. The Artistic Climate of the Time
4. The Religious Climate of the Time
5. The Political Climate of the Time
6. The Author's Commentary on His Own Time
7. Style of Production of the Play as Originally Produced

Internal Research

1. Explicit Directions by the playwright
   1. Factual description of the set-- for example from The Mousetrap...

      There are tall windows up center, a big arched opening up right leading to the entrance hall, the front door and the kitchen; and an arched opening left leading upstairs to the bedrooms.
      Copyright © by Agatha Christie

   2. Poetic description of the set-- for example, from Tennessee William's The Glass Menagrie...

      The Wingfield apartment is in the rear of the building, one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living-units that flower as warty growths in overcrowded urban centers of lower middle-class population and are symptomatic of the impulse of this largest and fundamentally enslaved section of American society to avoid fluidity and differentiation and to exist and function as one interfused mass of automatism.
      Copyright © 1945 by Tennessee Williams

   3. Stage directions in the acting editions.
2. Deductive evidence gained from direct and indirect references by characters in the play.

Source of Research Material

1. Libraries. Books on the history art, architecture and interior decoration.
2. Museums. Many museums, such as New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Aberdeen's Dakota Prarie Museum have accurately researched period rooms.
3. Local Community. Explore your home town. The perfect model for your set may only be a couple of blocks away.
4. The Internet. I would begin my research using Google and AltaVista images.