Presentation covering a four hour design project for GCSE Drama linked to the study of the play 'The Crucible' by Arthur Miller

1. Component 3 Theatre Makers in Practice
Learning Intention
A03 Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how
drama and theatre is developed and performed
A04 Analyse and evaluate your own work and the work of
others.
SBS: Resourceful (Questioning, Making Links, Imagining)
SBS: Reciprocal (Collaboration, Empathy & Listening, Imitation)
SBS: Reflective (Planning, Revising, Distilling, Meta-Learning)
SBS: Resilient (Absorption, Managing Distractions, Noticing, Perseverance)
How will you use these skills to help you achieve the success criteria?

2. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Directing and Designing the Play
Production Teams
Decide on the Director for the group
Decide on your roles and remember to work collaboratively
together to support each other with the tasks – you are a
team!
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 Group 5 Group 6 Group 7
Lewis Fran Hannah Inti Josh Sam Sophie
Katie-May Niamh Nicole Danni India Holly C Orla
Cameron Jaymz Harry Theo Seb Zack Charlie
Cieran Sean Ben Ed Kaydian Josh Beatriz
Emily Holly S Saskia Geogie May-Li

3. The Crucible DIRECTOR VISION
by Arthur Miller
As a Director you will need to explore some of the key concepts, characters and themes that are central to the play
and consider how you would take these key ideas from the play and communicate them from ‘Page to Stage’
You must work as GROUP to pitch your idea for the production to the class. You must decide on your overall
theme/concept/vision.
In each group you must have:
• A Director
• A Set Designer
• A Costume Designer
• A Sound Designer
• A Lighting Designer
• The Director must question each designer to develop a creative concept.
• It is important that you have an overall vision for the play in performance before you start to work on your
presentation. Remember that audience impact is key
• The Director will need to work with the group to organise the presentation and display

4. The Crucible Directing and Designing the Play
by Arthur Miller
Success Criteria
• Know how performers, directors and designers influence performance style,
design elements and staging to communicate meaning to an audience
• Understand how designers use set and props to create impact and meaning
• Understand how designers use lighting and sound, including colour and music, to
create impact and meaning
• Understand how designers use costume and make up to create impact and
meaning
• Understand how directors use the stage space and spatial relationships to create
impact and meaning
• Develop appropriate interpretations of the text from the perspective of designer
and director

6. Knowledge Line
I can talk with confidence about my overall Director’s VISION for the play
Agree Disagree
SBS
• Resilient –Perseverance
• Resourceful – imagining
• Reciprocal – collaboration
• Reflective - planning

7. The Crucible DIRECTOR VISION
by Arthur Miller
Consider your vision
• As a Director you have to make some important
decisions about your approach to staging The
Crucible before you go into rehearsal.
• The design concept for the production and the
framework for your exploratory work with actors in
rehearsal will flow from your overriding idea for
the play.
• You need to show your awareness of how all the
production and performance elements come
together under the guiding hands of a director to
create a piece of theatre.
Where will your set your play?
• The play was written by Miller in 1952 and he based his
play on events which happened in America in 1692.
• Miller intended to draw parallels between the events in
1692 and what was happening in the USA in the 1950s and
make his audience aware of the comparison.
• Many of the themes of the play remain relevant to modern
audiences.
• You could research incidences of witchcraft in England or
other places around the world for your vision. Examples
included Pendle Hill or The Fairy Trials of Sicily
• You could decide to have a more modern vision. E.g. The
Blair Witch Project. You cannot change the text or dialogue
but you can influence the ‘vision’ of the play
• Either has the potential to reflect the universal themes
from the play such as
Power
Intolerance
Respect and Reputation
Fear and Persecution
Secrets and Deceit
Justice and Religion
Hysteria

8. Discuss your VISION ideas
• Use homework to research your
overall vision as a group before
you start your individual tasks as
designers.

9. The Crucible set design
by Arthur Miller
• Staging is the term used to describe
the layout of the stage space.
• Staging describes the format, or
layout of the performance space in
relation to where the audience is
sitting. There are a number of
standard formats used in theatres.
Some performance spaces are always
fixed whereas others can be flexible to
suit a number of different formats
depending on the production.
• The Set is everything on stage that the
actors stand, sit on, move across and
exit and enter through.

10. The Crucible set design
by Arthur Miller
• To help designers, directors,
technicians and actors understand
each other when working onstage; we
call different parts of the stage by a
different term.
• The part nearest to the audience is
known as downstage.
• Further away from the audience is
upstage.
STAGING & SET KEY WORDS
Traverse Location
End On or Proscenium Arch Time Period/Era
In the Round Scene Changes
Thrust/Apron Symbolism

11. The Crucible set design
by Arthur Miller
• Set design is hugely influenced by the style of the performance.
• You may see a naturalistic set which tries to reproduce a ‘real’
environment, with a feeling that the ‘fourth wall’ has been removed
for us to look at the characters lives.
• In contrast, an expressionistic set will have obscure angles and be
more dreamlike, and may have a minimum amount on stage.
• Set can indicate for us:
• LOCATION
• ERA OR TIME PERIOD
• REFLECT THE CHARACTERS THEMSELVES
• CHANGES OF SCENE
SET DESIGN TASKS
• What type of staging will you use in the
play?
• How does the set design help to show
where the play is set?
• How does the set design show us what the
characters are like?
• Describe a moment where the set helps to
create an impact for the audience.
• How will you represent each Act? The
Crucible is set in FOUR locations in and
around Salem.
• Using the model box consider how you will
use the space.
• Include sketches and diagrams

12. The Crucible sound design
by Arthur Miller
• For the purpose of this exercise we will include Music as
well as Sound. Sound therefore allows us to understand
things such as
• LOCATION – where the scene is taking place
• ERA – when the play is taking place, such as a historical
piece.
• MOOD/ATMOSPHERE – and any change to that taking
place
• EMPHASIS on an important moment, such as a flashback,
or a ticking clock, a slamming door.
• CHANGE OF SCENE like lighting, sound is often used to
cover the sound of a scene change
• DRAMATIC CLIMAX – helping to build tension
SOUND DESIGN TASKS
• How will SOUND help you to understand the action in a
particular moment on stage? Describe what happened to
the sound in your key moment.
• How would the sound help to create a particular
ATMOSPHERE or IMPACT for the audience?
• Why do you think sound is important in this play?
Exploring different music and sound effects for key
moments is another effective way of considering how
design can play an important role in the development of a
key idea or theme. Choose an example from the play to
support your ideas
• For example, consider the sounds of the Parris household
or John Proctor’s farm that might punctuate the narrative
and support moments of tension or revelation.
• Do music or sound effects underscore key speeches like
John and Elizabeth Proctor’s in Act Four, or the ‘yellow
bird’ incident in the court anteroom?
SOUND KEY WORDS
Volume Background Sound effect
Mood and
Atmosphere
Live or
Recorded
Genre of Music

13. The Crucible lighting design
by Arthur Miller
• Lighting is the most modern production
element, being developed from when the art
form moved into purpose built theatres using
candlelight, and later with the invention of
electric lighting. Lighting can help to show us
• TIME OF DAY – through colour and the intensity
(brightness) of the lighting
• LOCATION – for example a bright hospital or
dark forest glade
• ATMOSPHERE – again through colour and angle
of lighting
• WHERE TO FOCUS – such as a spotlight on an
individual
• A CHANGE OF MOOD – by altering any of the
above, often with sound.
• A CHANGE OF SCENE – often by dimming the
lights to allow for movement of set and props.

14. The Crucible lighting design
by Arthur Miller
LIGHTING DESIGN TASKS
• How could the lighting help to create a particular
ATMOSPHERE or IMPACT for the audience?
• How could the lighting suggest a time of day, or a location
(place where the scene is set) to you?
• How would a CHANGE of lighting help you to understand
the action on stage? Describe what happened to the
lighting at that moment.
• If you have access to different lighting effects, it might be
useful to explore key moments in different lighting states.
Miller makes some reference to light – in Act Four, for
example – and it would certainly be useful to attempt to
recreate this or, indeed, to go completely away from it and
look at more abstract lighting at this and other moments
during the play.
• Because the play is set in four indoor locations, how will you
consider lighting states to reflect each of these?
• Research into previous productions and lighting designs to
see how other theatre makers have used lighting to create
impact?
LIGHTING KEY WORDS
Colour Mood Intensity
(brightness)
Fade up, Fade down
Spotlight Shado
w
Angle Dim
Blackout Focus Atmosphere Scene

15. The Crucible COSTUME DESIGN
by Arthur Miller
COSTUME DESIGN TASKS
• Research is key, and this will help those who are initially daunted about the
thought of ‘designing’. Look at the time of the play and develop ideas for
performance by sourcing and designing potential costumes that either reflect
the puritanical society of 1692 or that deliberately move away from it.
• You don’t have to be great artists to create great designs. The main thing is that
you approach the design of the production in a holistic way. Is their costume
design expressionistic, representational or more naturalistic?
• What is your aim and intention? Does your costume design root the production
and performance in a particular time period or style? How does the
performance of an actor playing Elizabeth change when she wears a long skirt,
blouse, shawl and bonnet, for example, and how would this costume be
matched by those of male characters? It is always interesting for designers to
interview performers and discover how costume can reveal insight into
characterisation and interpretation.
• Design a costume for AT LEAST TWO characters using a template
• Use the template to draw the clothes worn by your character and label them.
Consider the size, colour, type of material and condition the clothes are in and
how that is suggesting meaning to the audience.
• Describe how the costume helped you to understand the character and how
links to the overall VISION.
Costume KEY WORDS
Material –
cotton, silk,
rough, smooth
Size – well
fitting, too
large, too small
Colour – and
how that is
important
Condition –
new, worn, etc.
Status, Class,
Importance
Rich, Poor,
Detailed, Basic

16. Knowledge Line
I can talk with confidence about my overall Director’s VISION for the play
Agree Disagree

17. The Crucible production meeting
by Arthur Miller
As a Director you will need to explore some of the key concepts, characters and
themes that are central to the play and consider how you would take these key
ideas from the play and communicate them from ‘Page to Stage’
You must work as GROUP to pitch your idea for the production to the class. You
must decide on your over all theme/concept/vision.
In each group you must have:
• A Director
• A Set Designer
• A Costume Designer
• A Sound Designer
• A Lighting Designer
• The Director must question each designer to develop a creative concept.
• It is important that you have an overall vision for the play in performance before
you start to work on your presentation. Remember that audience impact is key
• The Director will need to work with the group to organise the presentation and
display
• 1. Summarise your
design concept for your
group in your books
• 2. Stick in a copy of your
presentation in your
book
• 3. Stick in your feedback