Design and Technical Theatre
Design and Technical Theatre tests whether you can make a performance visible, audible, safe and affordable. You need to move from text to concept to practical specification: scale drawings, materials, cues, budgets, risk assessments and crew plans.
Core rules
- Design for the audience’s sightlines, not the model box. Check sightlines in plan and section.
- Know stage types: proscenium arch, thrust, in-the-round, traverse, black box. Each changes masking, entrances and focus.
- Lighting functions: visibility, focus, mood, time and place, composition and cueing. A “wash” covers an area; a “special” isolates.
- Sound: reinforcement (voices), effects (diegetic or non-diegetic) and underscore. Balance speech first.
- Costume and set must serve movement, quick changes and backstage circulation.
- Paperwork: ground plan, scale (1:25 or 1:50), cue sheet, props list, risk assessment and budget.
Worked example
A school hall has no fly tower and a low ceiling. A designer proposes a tall downstage-right wall for a drawing-room scene. Reasoning: downstage-right on a thrust or wide proscenium will block sightlines from the left and cut off entrances. The fix is to move the wall upstage, lower its height, or replace it with a free-standing screen and masking. The design still signals “interior”, but the audience can see the actors and the crew can set it. The budget also favours canvas-covered flats over solid timber.
Traps
- Designing a beautiful picture that cannot be built or changed.
- Forgetting backstage circulation and wing space.
- Ignoring budget, get-in time and crew numbers.
- Unsafe cables, unweighted flats or unlicensed pyrotechnics.
- No cue sheet, so the tech rehearsal collapses.