Metaphor -- Style -- Practical Considerations
Areas of Influence

1. Develop a list of basic questions which must be answered before the designer can begin work.

1. Where does the play take place? Country? City? Interior or exterior? Place: Cottage, House, Castle? Forest?...
2. When does the play take place? The period? The year? The season? Night or day?
3. What is needed to stage the action? Doors? Windows? Furniture: Chairs, tables, shelves?
4. What is the style of the play? Is it realistic or presentational?
5. What is the tone of the work? Is it light or dark? Warm or cool?
6. What scenic image (metaphor) does the script suggest?

2. Briefly discuss the "action-documentation-metaphor" approach to scene design.

The "action-documentation-metaphor" approach to design was developed and taught by New York designer Mordecai Gorelik (1900-1975). At the end of World War II, in the fall of 1945, the US Army opened a university for American service men and women in southern France: the Biarritz American University. One of the Fine Arts courses offered was Scene Design. The professor was Mordecai Gorelik. Ten year later he was conducting 12 week workshops in New York City for designers, directors and playwrights. Twenty years later the class was called The Scenic Imagination, in homage to Gorelik's mentor Robert Edmond Jones, and was being taught by Gorelik at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Link to Mordecai Gorelik's production credits in the Internet Broadway Database (www.ibdb.com)

Action: Provide those elements -- doors, windows, steps, furniture -- needed by the director and the actor to stage the show.

Documentation: Locate the action of the play in a specific place -- London, Berlin, New York -- and a specific time period -- 1890, 1936, 2000.

The Metaphor is Gorelik's trademark and is used to assist the designer in developing a specific tone, mood, style, or feel for the play. According to the Free Dictionary, a metaphor is "A figure of speech in which a word ... that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison..." For example: "All the world's a stage,..." (William Shakesepare, As You Like It, Act II, scene 7). In less poetic terms -- the world is a stage. (Note:A simile would add the word "like:" The world is like a stage.)

For example, after an analysis of Moliere's The Miser, the designer may decide that Harpagon's home, the primary set, is a gold coin. The metaphor -- home is a gold coin -- can suggest to the designer a color (gold), a shape (round), a texture (metallic)... How these elements are used depends on the designer's creativity.

2. What is the difference between a representational and presentational style?

From the Cambridge Guide to Theatre:

Representational theatre tries to create an illusion of reality. Presentational theatre emphasizes theatricality and acknowledges the theatre as theatre--there is no illusion.

A representational set gives the illusion of reality. Generally it is a realistic representation -- a box set with three walls and a ceiling -- of an architectural interior-- a living room, parlor or kitchen.

A presentational set is often a wing-border-backdrop set, a "painted drop" behind the performer. Presentational designs are used in multi-set musicals, plays with an exterior location, and the classical dramas of Shakespeare and Sophocles.

3. What is a box set?

An interior set which uses flats to create the back and side walls, and often ceiling, of a "realistic" room.

    How does it differ from a wing-border-backdrop set?

The side flats in a wing-border-backdrop set are placed parallel to the front edge of the stage. In a box set, these "side walls" are turned so they run diagonal from up stage to down stage.

Box Set

Wing-Border-Backdrop Set

4. Briefly define...

1. Naturalism is characterized by a meticulous recording of detail. It is photographic in nature and like so many photographs taken with no thought to selectivity, often contains material that is unnecessary and distracting.

2. Realism is based on authentic source material but the details have been carefully selected. Some of the elements have been exaggerated for greater effectiveness.

3. Suggestive Realism allows a part of the set to stand for the whole. It is the simplification of a realistic design by the elimination of unnecessary detail.

4. Stylization involves the exaggeration of color, line and mass in the treatment of realistic objects. The designer adapts and arranges the source material to conform to a particular visual style rather than faithfully recording nature.

5. Formalism seeks to create a setting that is pictorial but not representational of period or location. The designer creates an interesting arrangement of "playing spaces," often attempting to return to a completely functional theatre.

   Note: The scenic styles differ only by the degree in which they vary from reality -- meticulous recording of detail to not representational of any period or location.
   (A. S. Gillette, An Introduction to Scene Design, Chapter 12: "Styles in Scenic Design.")

5. List five practical considerations a designer must face when designing a set for a play or musical.

1. The play,
2. The director,
3. The theatre and its physical facilities,
4. The budget (in both time and money), and
5. The experiences and abilities of the crew.

6. According to Darwin Payne (The Scenographic Imagination), what are the scene designer's five areas of influence?

1. The stage floor -- ramps, steps, platforms...

   To resolve the stage floor into appropriate acting areas is the first major step in designing a production.
   (Darwin Payne. The Scenographic Imagination, pg.46.)

2. The general background -- walls, wings and borders, backdrops,...

   While the actors do not necessarily involve themselves with the background, they will always be seen in relation to it....This background can be, therefore, at one time, the least important part of the design to the performer and the most potent visual element in terms of what the audience sees. Actors simply cannot compete with a background that is too bright or distracting. This is potentially the most dangerous area in which the scenographer works...
   (Darwin Payne. The Scenographic Imagination, pg.46, 49.)

3. The specific units of scenery -- doors, windows, rocks, trees..., and

   These units may be part of the general background but what separates them into a different category is that they may, in fact often are, used directly by the actors and therefore become much more important to them. Doors, windows, platforms, steps, rocks, trees, etc., can be used by themselves, that is separated from their surrounding background, to create the sense of a particular place without the connecting material -- such as a wall -- that would be found if the scene were completely realistic in conception.
   (Darwin Payne. The Scenographic Imagination, pg. 49.)

4. The furniture and/or set props -- chairs, benches, beds, tables, shelves...

   These elements are one step nearer the actor, both in physical proximity and usefulness to him as an artist. Although there are only a few major categories of furniture that man devised, there are innumerable variations and permutations on these basic forms; he needs something to sit or lie on (chairs, benches, stools, beds), something to hold objects and materials for his immediate use (tables in various forms), and storage units, something open, often with lids or doors, in which to keep his needs and possessions (chests, boxes, shelves).
   (Darwin Payne. The Scenographic Imagination, pg. 52.)

5. The hand and personal props

   In many instances, as with a piece of furniture or a set property, a prop is the external focus for the actor's attention; in other words, he uses it to expose what he is thinking when he has been given no words to express these thoughts.
   (Darwin Payne. The Scenographic Imagination, pg. 57.)

Darwin Reid Payne: The CrucibleThe Barn Scene

On the right is the virtual model of Darwin Payne's design for the "Barn scene" in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Note ... The rectangular stage floor which extends beyond the front edge of the stage; The general background-- the black back drop, the rear wall, V beam and rough timber portal; The specific units of scenery-- the two up stage doors and the center post and The set prop-- the center stage bench. Below is a computer generated rendering of the virtual model.

Darwin Reid Payne: The Crucible (Wake Forest University, 1996)

Images © 1996 by Darwin Reid Payne