A Two-Story House in a Black Box With $900
The 70-seat black box has a 12-foot grid, a flat floor with no wing space, one upstage door, and a repertory light plot of 12 front-of-house instruments you are not permitted to refocus. You have $900 for the fall production. The script calls for a two-story house: an upstairs bedroom where a character appears at a window, and a downstairs kitchen. A junior who uses a wheelchair plays the grandmother. The fire marshal requires documented flame-retardant treatment on all scenic fabric, 36-inch clear aisles, and engineered sign-off for any platform over four feet. The custodial crew strikes everything the night of closing, and the auditorium hosts a band concert the same weekend. Your principal asks for a design that "looks like a real house," because parents complained last year that the sets looked cheap.
1. Choose and defend a design concept against the two obvious alternatives: build a literal two-story house, or play it on a bare stage.
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Reject the literal house. Anything over four feet needs engineering sign-off you cannot buy inside $900 or inside the build calendar, and with no wing space a two-story facade will sit upstage of everything and block the upstage door. Twelve fixed front lights cannot separate two interior rooms - both will be lit identically - so the audience gets a flat, fake-looking house, which is exactly the complaint from last year. A literal house on this budget reads as a cheap house.
Reject the bare stage. The window entrance and the kitchen are plot-critical; without them the audience loses who is where and who has power in the scene.
Build a unit set with a level change. A 3'6" upstage platform (confirm the four-foot threshold in writing with the marshal), a window frame as a standing flat with a sill, a kitchen table with four chairs downstage, one practical lamp. The script's real requirement is vertical power difference: the character at the window speaks down to the kitchen. A level delivers that meaning; a fake staircase delivers only furniture. To the principal, the pitch is that suggestion reads as intentional design rather than as insufficient money - and intentional is what the parents actually responded to.
2. How do you resolve the window/upper-level requirement, the wheelchair access question, and the fire and strike constraints?
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Talk to the student and her 504 team before the design is locked. Do not decide on her behalf that she will not use the platform.
The access math is the constraint. A 3'6" rise at 1:12 requires a 42-foot ramp - impossible here. An 18-inch platform needs 18 feet of run, still unlikely in a 70-seat box. The honest solution is directorial: stage the grandmother at floor level by choice, so she holds the room's center while the others perch above her. Invert the power reading of the window scene - she is spoken to from above and answers without looking up. If she wants the upper level, the answer is a lower platform plus a ramp built behind the set, which means cutting the kitchen table to pay for it.
Fire and safety. Measure the 36-inch aisles from the furniture, not the walls. Treat every fabric element and keep the receipt and the label in the booth. Nothing over four feet. Handrails on any step run.
Strike. The custodians strike at night and did not build it. Build in bolted modules with labeled parts and a photographed assembly diagram taped inside the booth, so two people who have never seen the set can take it apart in an hour.
3. Allocate the $900 with line items and explain the contingency.
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- Lumber, plywood, and hardware: $370 (platform, window flat, table; bolted, not glued, for strike)
- Primer and paint: $90
- Fabric plus documented flame retardant: $120
- Practical lamp, cable, and a safe tie-in: $60
- Spike tape, screws, labels, gloves, touch-up: $50
- Program and lobby signage: $30
- Contingency: $180 (20 percent)
Why the contingency is not optional. Every school build discovers a missing item in tech week - a hinge, a second gallon of the right color, a replacement lamp - and the choice at that moment is either to spend from contingency or to compromise the design two days before opening. Twenty percent is the smallest number that buys one hardware run and one paint run.
Why nothing is allocated to a staircase. A staircase strong enough to be safe at 3'6" costs more than the platform and consumes the contingency. The level plus the window flat gives the audience the vertical relationship the script needs at roughly a third of the cost, and it survives a custodial strike.