THEA 1013 Module 9

What was the first step in the design process?

design meetings or design conferences

In order to make the community plays more accessible during the festivals. The performances were as accessible as possible to the whole community, two different approaches were adopted.

fixed stages and pageant wagons

What are the two special types of mechanical drawing are predominant in the theatre?

groundplan and elevation

Typically, the parts of the building that serve the needs of the audience are given the highest priority from an architectural standpoint, the seating area or...

house being the most important.

The set designer employs, in many ways, uses the same tools as any other visual artists such as?

line, mass, color, texture, space, and composition.

The proscenium theatre is probably the most common and well-known arrangement today. It takes its name from its most prominent architectural feature, the...

proscenium arch, which frames the stage and separates the audience's space from the performers' space. The performance in a proscenium theatre is intended to be viewed from one perspective, the front of the stage, and the arch serves as a kind of picture frame around the dramatic world.

Typically, a theatre will have a master electrician working for them. This person is responsible for...

the physical implementation of the lighting designer's work, making sure all the lighting instruments or fixtures get hung and focused correctly. He or she makes sure everything is working and all appropriate supplies are purchased.

What are the four types of arenas?

the proscenium, the thrust, the arena, and the black box.

All three scenes represented exterior locales and emphasized right angles and straight lines, and all were painted so that the edges of the shapes appeared to converge toward a central...

vanishing point

What is a pageant wagon?

A medieval cart on which scenery was built and moved for performing in villages. Unlike the mansions, the pageants could be quite elaborate, sometimes including a second story or a space beneath the "stage," and particularized to the needs of a specific play/story.

When someone states that a set is realistic what does this mean?

A set described as "realistic" might be a highly illusionistic setting in which walls of a completely furnished room are recognizable, but it might also describe a more theatrical setting in which some carefully selected practical objects only suggest the full environment.

What is a turntable or revolve?

A special kind of circular platform, the turntable pivots around its center, revealing different aspects to the audience at different times. It is a handy scene-change device, and some older theatres have turntables built into their stages

What does line mean in this context?

A vertical, horizontal diagonal, straight, curved or spiral, line helps to define the edges of masses on the stage and to create feelings of movement or distance;

What is revelation of form?

Altering shape is one of the greatest powers of the lighting designer. Figures on stage (and sometimes scenery) must be lit in such a way as to maintain a constant three-dimensional presence.

What is the benefit of using automated lights?

An automated fixture can provide a designer with a wide variety of option in colors, gobos, and focus areas all in one instrument. The designer only needs to know how to program one of these lights in order to do the job that it might take ten conventional fixtures to do.

what are cyc lights?

Are special lighting units made to light up a painted back- drop or cyclorama.

In 1792, William Murdock developed a process for distilling gas from coal, inventing a new form of illumination. Gas lighting quickly gained public popularity and rapidly moved into theatres and other public spaces in Europe and North America which was a?

Great improvement over candles and oil lamps, it provided a brighter and cleaner-burning source of light that was also easily controllable. While gas was a great improvement over earlier methods, it still posed a fire hazard as well as producing a great amount of heat and odor.

What is a fresnel?

Lights a specific area with a soft edge. The Fresnel (pronounced FRAY-nel) is named for the man who invented its lens—August-Jean Fresnel. He originally invented the lens for use in lighthouses; however, a smaller version of the lens has gained popularity. The Fresnel lens takes a plano-convex lens (a lens with one curved side and one flat side) and cuts curved "steps" into the curved side of the lens to reduce its thickness and weight.

What is a wash fixture?

Lights that will east a large, even field of light.

In the early 1600s, theatre practitioners began to use?

Reflectors to intensify the effects of the candles and lamps used to light the stage and audience. Later, theatres also began using candles or oil lamps at the front edge of the stage as footlights.

No single channel can communicate all of the details comprising a set design, and so a designer employs several. The sketches mentioned earlier may be refined, with adjustments made to accurately convey proportions and placements, and color can be added to the sketches. In a finalized form, such sketches become?

Renderings (These become the guide for building and finishing the set)

What is selective visibility?

Selective visibility is revealing what the audience needs to see and the manner in which they need to see it. This may vary from scene to scene. Sometimes only a silhouette needs to be seen. At other times, the audience needs to see all the detail of a scene brightly lit.

The visual vocabulary the lighting designer uses to communicate with the audience. They are as follows:

Selective visibility, Composition, Revelation of form, Establishing the mood, and reinforcing the theme

What is a step unit or stairway?

Short flights of steps or full-height stairways, providing access to or from different levels of platforms

What was one of the earliest theatres in the Renaissance was the?

Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy and it was designed by Andrea Palladio. This late-sixteenth-century theatre featured an audience area arranged as a semicircle open to a broad raised stage backed by a three-story stage front, an elaborate architectural façade found in classic Roman theatres.

What is an ellipsoidal reflector spotlight, or ERS?

The ERS has more features and flexibility than any other conventional fixture on the market. There are several brands of ERSs on the market. However, the Source 4, designed and marketed by ETC (Electronic Theatre Controls), has become the industry standard.

What is the "fourth wall" concept?

The audience views the action of the play through the invisible wall in front of the stage.

The constructed scenic elements are finished by the painting crew, often under the guidance of?

The charge artists

What is the purpose of design meetings and design conferences?

The decisions arising from these meetings both form the agreed-upon vision and understanding of the play and the production and establish a clear set of standards for the individual artists involved to measure their work against.

What is the second step of the design process?

The design concept

In order to influence the world of the play, the lighting designer works with five basic principles in order to guide his or her work. These are known as?

The functions of lighting

What are PAR cans?

The lamp of a PAR is a self-contained unit. This lamp must be placed in a housing to secure it in place. The term can refers to the round extruded metal housing that absorbs some of the extra light from the PAR fixture. This extruded metal housing looks something like a coffee can that has been painted black. Hence the term PAR can.

What is a light plot?

The light plot will provide three important pieces of information about each instrument- on which part of the stage the light should be focused, what color it should have, and how it is controlled.

What is meant by reinforcing the theme?

The lighting of the scene must support the action of the scene. By doing so, the designer helps to convey the themes of the play.

What is the job of the technical director?

The technical director oversees all aspects of engineering and fabricating the scenic elements and installing them on the stage in accordance with the set designer's intents. The technical director, additionally, oversees the operation of the scene shop, where much of the construction takes place.

What does space mean in this context?

The three-dimensional volume of the stage can be divided into positive and negative spaces, with the scenic elements occupying the positive category, leaving the empty negative space free for the actors

What is the sightline?

The unobstructed view from the audience, can easily be controlled so lighting and sound equipment does not intrude visually into the stage picture, and with offstage and overhead facilities, scenic changes are easily effected in a proscenium theatre

What does the master carpenter do?

They construct and build the set and this can include every step from the selection of raw materials, such as lumber, through the dimensioning and shaping of the materials to assembling the parts into completed scenic elements.

When did theatres start using artificial lighting?

They continued until the sixteenth century. At the dawn of the Renaissance, theatre experienced a rebirth and began experimenting with lighting.

What were the elements of a fixed stage?

They were composed of an open, unadorned playing space surrounded by small scenic units designating biblical locales. The open playing space was known as the platea, and the small scenic units were called mansions. In the medieval pattern, the actors from each story would enter the platea from their appropriate mansion, thereby informing the audience of the play's locale. This sense of place was also reinforced by references in the play's dialogue.

What were the two major developments in the 19th century that challenged the primacy of painted perspective scenery and opened the door for theatrical artists specifically qualified to capitalize on them?

They were the box set and the

What is composition?

This is directing the eye of the audience to a particular place or places on stage. The composition of a scene begins with what the scene designer places on the stage, continues with where the director places the actors, and is completed when the lighting designer guides the audience's eye to what needs to be seen.

What is a thrust theatre?

This theatre has an opening on one wall, behind which might be found scenic and lighting equipment, but unlike a proscenium, the stage projects forward so that it is surrounded by the audience on three sides.

What is an arena theatre?

This theatre, also called theatre-in-the-round, no part of the stage can truly be considered the front, and there is no direct access between the stage and the backstage. It is very difficult to conceal lighting and sound equipment, so their presence is accepted as part of the performance picture.

What is a black box theatre?

This type of theatre has few fixed features. For each production, audience and performance spaces can be arranged into proscenium, thrust, arena, or other configurations. Dressing rooms, storage spaces, and the like are necessarily disconnected from the performance areas, and frequently from the room itself. For example, a true black box is essentially an empty room, with no designated stage area, let alone any "backstage" or "offstage" areas. Sometimes these can be used as a drama classroom.

What is a flat?

Two-dimensional panels, often made of either stretched canvas or thin plywood attached to a wooden frame. Flats are commonly used to create interior or exterior walls or other vertical expanses. They may rise from the stage floor or be suspended from overhead and can be joined together to increase the size of the mass.

What is a backdrop?

Usually made of canvas or muslin and painted to represent almost any locale, backdrops are typically created to meet the particular needs of a play and may be painted many times.

What other areas does the proscenium stage also incorporates additionally beyond the performance area (backstage)?

WINGS, and the area above the playing space is referred to as the fly SPACE or FLIES, where scenery might be raised or lowered through a system of lines and pulleys. One of the key conventions of the proscenium theatre is to prevent the audience from seeing these additional spaces through the use of MASKING.

The lighting designer cannot complete his or her tasks without a support team. Typically, an...

assistant lighting designer helps facilitate communication between the lighting designer and the production team as well as helping to complete some of the required paperwork for a production

What is masking?

Black draperies surrounding the performance area that limit what the audience can see. Masking can also be used to hide lighting and sound equipment and elements of scenery not currently in use, and to provide pathways for performers to enter or exit.

Theatre began to reemerge in the middle of the eleventh century, now called the late medieval period. Seeking new ways to explain the lessons and meanings of...

Christianity and the Bible to a largely illiterate population, churches in Europe began staging dramatizations of particular biblical stories on specific festival days of the liturgical calendar. These dramatizations were included in regular church services in conjunction with the reading of scripture passages, at first as a kind of pantomime performed by priests or monks.

Among the more common scenic elements available in most theatres there are the following?

Flats, platforms, wagons, turntable or revolve, step units and stairways, and drops (Subsection of drops include backdrop, cyclorama, and a scrim)

What are different atmospheric devices that can be used in stage?

Fog machines or hazers can also be used to enhance the look of a scene.

What is a lightboard?

Created around 1975 a specialized piece of computer equipment designed and used to control theatrical lights —it was used on Broadway by Tharon Musser in her groundbreaking lighting design for the musical A Chorus Line. Also called the lighting control console, is a highly specialized computer. Its sole purpose is to control the level, or amount of light, that each fixture puts out.

The responsibility of the technical director is to?

Determine the appropriate materials and methods of construction for realizing the set designer's creation, most designers are intimately familiar with both the catalogue of scenic elements and building techniques.

By 1900, most theatres had converted to?

Electricity and were using incandescent lamps rather than gaslight. With this innovation, theatres slowly started moving into the twentieth century.

What is a wagon?

Essentially platforms on casters, wagons permit the movement of different levels around the stage space. This movement may be integral to the play, like the one used to transport the dead bodies in a production of the Greek tragedy The Oresteia, or it might answer a more practical question such as a quick scene change.

What does composition mean in this context?

How the scenic elements and the open space between them are arranged within the height, width, and depth of the stage space.

What does color mean in this context?

In addition to the "hue" (what is often meant by "color": yellow, red, green, pink), color also deals with the saturation or depth of hue (deep or pale)

What is the purpose of the design concept?

In effect it expresses the production concept as a complete plan for realizing the decisions and choices made.

What can a set establish?

It establishes the style and tone of the production through the colors, arrangement, and qualities of the scenic elements. (In today's theatre, this process begins as the audience enters the theatre and takes their seats. A common practice is to leave the act curtain —the main drape that separates the stage and audience —open, so that the set is in full)

What is a cyclorama?

It is a large, smooth piece of seamless fabric specially made to catch and spread light, often used as a back- drop.

What is a channel number?

It is assigned to a light or group of lights to help the designer identify the purpose of the instrument.

What is a storyboard as it relates to the design concept?

It lays out the playwright by presenting a series of sketches that show the sets changes over the course of the performance.

What was the box set in the 19th century?

It represented an interior space by enclosing the stage with three walls of scenery.

What is elevation?

It represents the stage or object as if looking at it directly from one side.

What is groundplan?

It represents the stage or object as if looking down on it from above.

What is the meaning of the word stock?

It suggests a set design guided by the genre of the play (comedy or tragedy, for instance), and that the appropriate stock set would serve the scenic needs of any play of the genre.

What is a drop?

Large fabric panels filling the entire vertical expanse of the stage behind the performance area, drops can be of the following types: backdrop, cyclorama, and scrim

What is a platform?

Large horizontal units, typically composed of heavy plywood on a frame. Platforms can create various levels. Depending on the height of its elevation, a platform can suggest a raised floor or a second story; spaced far apart, platforms can suggest different locations within the same scene.

What is a scrim?

Large loosely woven expanses of fabric, scrims have the ability, because of their weave, to appear opaque when lit from the front (audience) side, yet fade into transparency when lit from behind.

What does mass mean in this context?

Literally, the size of scenic elements on the stage, or the amount of space they occupy;

What is a gobo?

Metal plate with shapes cut out that slides in front of a light to create texture

What is meant by establishing the mood?

Mood is an inescapable feature of lightcolor, shape, and visibility must be used to establish the tone of a scene.

What is a cyclorama?

Often fabricated of special seamless canvas, a cyclorama, or "eye," is typically white or light blue. It is commonly used, in cooperation with the lighting designer, to create a "sky" behind the set or to present washes of color.

What is the job of a prop designer?

Part of that job involves assisting the set designer, but in many eases the set designer must also include the selection of furniture, carpets, draperies, and lighting fixtures, as well as decorative items like paintings, kniekknaeks, books on the shelves, and "memorabilia."

What does texture mean in this context?

Qualities of smoothness or roughness, as well as variation of materials, patterns, or colors;

Color is created by a gel, which is...

a colored plastic filter placed in front of a lighting instrument in order to change the color of the light it emits. Control is achieved by assigning each light a channel number.