Creative and Successful Set Designs

Book excerpt: Filled with dozens of photos, illustrations, and technical diagrams, Todd Muffatti’s Creative and Successful High School Set Design guides theatre teachers through the preparation and design steps necessary to build an appropriate and effective stage set. Using his 40-year career as a professional set designer and university professor, Muffatti shares tips from his creative process and offers practical ideas about how to approach and accomplish imaginative set designs for high school theatre. Creative and Successful High School Set Design discusses the spatial relationship of the auditorium and stage, the factors to be considered when choosing a script, and the research necessary to arrive at a proper visual metaphor for a production. Muffatti covers many design style options and creative approaches that don’t require extensive building expertise, large amounts of time, or great expense. He shows how a small stock of basic scenery can be used to creatively serve multiple set designs with minimal additions. Muffatti outlines the skills involved in the design process — from sketching and drafting, to set dressing and model building — and provides illustrations to offer further guidance. Creative and Successful High School Set Design instills in high school drama teachers the imaginative, practical, and safe set designing habits that will help lift their students’ dramatic performances to their highest levels of achievement.