This document discusses how a play's design can provide important contextual clues about the work. It notes that design can reveal the time period, location, characters' traits, and mood of the play. Specifically, elements like settings, color schemes, and props can offer insights into whether a play is a comedy or tragedy, the historical era, and personality types of its characters. Overall, stage design conveys a wealth of information about the play itself.

1. THE
DESIGNERS
PART THREE
What does the
design tell us?
Chapter 6

2. What Design Does
• Uniquely creative contribution
• What does it tell us about the
play and the characters?

3. What can we learn about the play and
the characters?
• Time - of day

4. What can we learn about the
play and the characters?
•Time - of year

5. What can we learn about the
play and the characters?
• Time – in history

6. What can we learn about the play & the characters?
Location: Where are we?

7. What can we learn about the play & the characters?
Location: Where are we?
A porch is a porch is a porch!

8. What can we learn about the play & the
characters?
•
Palace?
Or shanty?
2 sets for Sherlock Holmes: Living Room and Basement

9. What can we learn about the play
& the characters?
Ages of the characters:

10. Character’s personality traits
Neat and Tidy
or messy?
Oscar vs Felix in
The Odd Couple

11. The mood of the play
A pink set for Macbeth?
A set in earth tones for a Feydeau
farce?

12. The mood of the play
r
in Her Ea
A Flea )eau
by Feyd
(a farce
• Macbeth

13. The Design gives us a ton of
information about the play.
•We get a sense of the style of the play
•Is it a comedy or a tragedy?
•We get a sense of the time of the play: historical time period,
season, even the time of day
•We get a sense of the characters who inhabit the play
Are they rich or poor, old or young, neatniks or slobs
•We get a sense of where the playwright has placed the play
Are we in Africa…or Iceland!
•And perhaps most importantly, we get a sense of the mood of
the play which suggests how we should feel.