Costume

Costume

Designing a show is simply designing an environment for an event to occur. A Neil Simon play often involves interiors of homes. Therefore, a living room would be the environment and the words & actions are the event. This school year, we will be devoting a bit...

Painting

Scenic or Set Design

These painting pages are our newest addition to the site. Given time, we hope that they will help you in creating your scenic elements for your productions. We’ve added a link to a site that has sets of instructions for decorative painting techniques. One of the most...

Light Plots

Drawing and Drafting, Lights

This set in introductory instructions in creating a light plot is the result of a request for help from one of our mailing list members. Start with a small ground plan of the theater space you are working in. Add the area, person, set you are going to light. Draw an...

Lettering

Drawing and Drafting

Lettering for architecture and technical theater is basically the same. Lettering can be very pretty and stylized or it can be fairly boring. What it must be, all the time, is clear and legible. For tech theater paperwork we always use capitol block letters. This can...

Paper Layout

Drawing and Drafting

Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great. Drawing: You can do a drawing on almost any smooth flat surface. Be sure the surface is clean. Any debris under...

Paper work

Electrics, Lights

Lighting paper includes: dimmer drafting paper, scale ruler, lighting template for drafting units, pencils, drafting triangles, sketch pads, pads of lined paper, and more. But, what about the computer and some drafting program??? Lighting design has been around far...

Intro to Sound Design

Sound

How The world around you is full of sounds. This makes up the aural field that you are in. Without this feedback, your brain would have a hard time adjusting. The sounds that surround you create a sense of awareness. Pick an area: your home, outside at the park, at...

Intro to Lighting Design

Lights

Donut shop lighting. Hmm. Donut shop lighting? Yup. Sound boring? What does donut shop lighting look like? Bright? Not many shadows? Maybe no shadows? How do you design this? Go to a donut shop and look. Simple? Yup. To a point. Re-creating that lighting on stage...

Magic Sheet

Lights

  This is a copy of a Magic sheet I used for a dance concert. Having a sheet like this at the Tech table during rehearsals is invaluable for creating cues on-the-fly. The entire left column, except to the bottom box, is a vertical representation of sidelight. Let’s...

Getting Design Ideas.

Design Research

Design Research: If you had to design visual environment for a play set in a high school student’s bed room, what would you do? Go home and draw your own room! Easy, right? Your own room would be considered primary research. This research would fully support...