The document evaluates the set design for "High School Musical" that the author was responsible for. Some key strengths included fitting the social context of the school focusing on basketball, using appropriate trophies, and including basketball equipment to show the school's bias toward sports. Lockers were divided to identify different social groups. Minor weaknesses included crash mats under the stage that stood out. Overall the set successfully incorporated both geographical and social context of the school.

1. GC5: Evaluation of High School Musical
Introduction
The area of the set for “High School Musical” that I was responsible was the interior for the
“School”. The interior breaks down into the back half of the set and the corridor area of the
set.
Pros
A pro of my piece is that it fits in with the social
context of the play. “East High” has a high
basketball pedigree and within the play they
compete in the “championship game”. Also it
tells the audience that the school is very much
focused on basketball rather than the “arts” or
science. Also, I am pleased with the selection of
trophies we used. Because we sourced the
trophies from the cast and crew people had football and cricket trophies. But those trophies
didn’t work because the audience would notice that the trophies didn’t match the play. So
we picked trophies that either looked like basketball trophies or they were neutral. Finally,
we picked trophies that had colour because “High School Musical” is an all dancing and
happy musical so the colour of the trophies would have indicated that to the audience.
Looking at the whole set in general, I think the sports equipment was a good idea because
this further shows the schools bias towards
sports rather than the other disciplines such as
drama and chemistry. If you compare the
scenes in the chemistry lab or drama studio
they had little, if any equipment whilst the
basketball team had basketballs, cones, a net
and lots of basketballs.
Another idea that worked is the floor. We
used laminate to give the idea that it was
a basketball court but when we rolling it
out we didn’t have enough. So, we spread the laminate out across the space to give the
illusion that there is more than there is. Also we put a white E with a red border to show
the audience that it is “East High’s” sports hall. This fits in with the social context of the play
that the popular group are the basketball team or “Jocks”.

2. A good point about the set is the
lockers. There is 4 blocks of lockers
which each identify each social group.
The Jocks, Brainiacs, Thespians (the drama group) and the skater group. The locker with the
trophies on it is the Jocks locker. The locker with the pink locker (Sharpay’s locker) is the
thespians locker. The locker with the science decathlon posters are they Brainiac’s locker.
And the locker with notice board is the Skater group. This isn’t clear to the audience
because the Skater group don’t have any main roles.
Finally, a strength about the set is the
flags on the flats at the back of the set.
This shows that the whole school is
cheering on the basketball team which
seems to be the main focus of the
show. This backs up my previous point
on how the school is very bias towards the basketball team.
Cons
A weakness of this set is that there is crash mats under
the staging. Now, I can why we used it to show the
audience that the school is sports orientated but since all
the equipment is all basketball the crash mats stand out
a little. If were to do it next time I would replace the
mats with more basketball equipment .
Conclusion
To conclude I think that the set is very good and it takes in both geographical context and
social context into account. If I was to change anything for another production I would think
about changing the crash mats for maybe some lockers or some more gym equipment. But
all in all a good set.