Scenic Design Prompts

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In your sketchbooks, copy the rendering as closely as you can. Pay close attention to size, scale and angle.

In your sketchbooks, copy the rendering as closely as you can. Pay close attention to size, scale and angle.

In your sketchbooks, copy the rendering as closely as you can. Pay close attention to size, scale and angle.

In your sketchbooks, copy the rendering as closely as

you can. Pay close attention to size, scale and angle.

In your sketchbooks, copy the rendering as closely as you can. Pay close attention to size, scale and angle.

Read the prompt and draw what the set for this production would look like using the information given.

• Tilghman County, Georgia – 2 hours south of Atlanta.• In the darkness, rain & thunder. As the lights come up, we

find ourselves in what was once the living room of a log farmhouse, now adapted for service as a parlor for paying guests – middle-income summer people, mostly, who come to fish, & swim, & play a little cards at night, & to fill up on Betty Meeks’ away-from-home cooking. We might think it still a living room were it not for the presence of a small counter with modest candy & tobacco displays, a guest register, & a bell. Also, there is about one sofa too many, a small stove and its woodbin, and a coffee-table, on which a bowl of apples rests.

• There must be an entrance from the kitchen, an entrance from outside and an entrance from upstairs.

Read the prompt and draw what the set for this production would look like using the information given.

• The living room of Ronelle William’s house in Brookhaven, Mississippi – about five o’clock Monday afternoon on a hot day at the end of June.

• There is something dreary & suffocating & frightening about the room with its dark oak furniture, its heavy, bright curtains & the endless clutter of nicknacks. An old sppinning wheel sits in a far corner of the room.

• There are three entrances & exits; a front door; a door leading to the kitchen; & a staircase leading to the upstairs rooms.

Read the prompt and draw what the set for this production would look like using the information given.• A small Victorian theatre• The proscenium has its gilding & its cherbus, &

the curtains are gathered at the sides revealing a stage that is unprepared for performance & devoid of scenery. On the stage is a clutter of cloths, boxes and furniture. This clutter will evolve according to the needs of the performance – though should include a couple of chairs, a rocking chair, a high stool, a blanket & a large skip or trunk. A gauze divides the upstage area from the downstage.

• A closed door is placed at the side of the stage.

Read the prompt and draw what the set for this production would look like using the information given.

• The library in a mansion in Chappequa, New York. December, 1940

• The walls of this room are lined with bookshelves, ceiling high. At three places in the room the bookshelves mask entrances to interior passageways in the house. One of these entracnes is Up Left Center. Here a section of the bookcase revolves to reveal the passageway.

• Another passage is behind a sliding bookcase Up Right. And yet another behind a sliding bookcase Down Left.

• As for the set dressing, Left is a desk & chair. There is a bar cabinet build into the bookcase Right. Right Center is a piano & bench. Up Center over doorway hangs a portrait of a German general, circa 1860. Croseed swords are hung beneath it.

• A door Up Center leads to the main hall of the house and French Doors Down Right lead outside to the garden.

Read the prompt and draw what the set for this production would look like using the information given.• Brooklyn, NY. 1940’s. Late afternoon.• The living-room of the old Brewster home. It is just as

Victorian as the two sisters, Abby & Martha Brewster, who occupy the house with their nephew, Teddy.

• There is a staircase UR leading to the upper floor, broken by a landing with a window looking out on the front porch. At the top of the stairs a balcony with a door leading to bedrooms, & an archway beyond which are stairs to the top floor. There is a large window DL below which is a long windowseat. There is a door UC that leads to the cellar, another to L of it leads to the kitchen, & at R the main door of the house, which opens onto the porch, DR.

• There is a tea table w/ chairs, sofa, sitting chair, phone table and various other Victorian furnishings befitting the home.

Read the prompt and draw what the set for this production would look like using the information given.

• The living room of The Cloisters (a resident facility for the mentally challenged) in a town in Massachusetts. The room is large & charmingly furnished, with many deep chairs, covered in flounced chintz. The wallpaper is bright & in good taste. A large square rug covers most of the floor. There is a double sliding-door leading from the hallway stage R. A single door, stage L, leads to the front offices.

• There is a window UC that looks out over the garden, ceiling high bookshelves, a piano & an easle.

Read the prompt and draw what the set for this production would look like using the information given.

• The living room of Monsieur Argan’s house in Paris. 1674.

• There is a door L. leading to the rest of the house & a door R leading to Argan’s bedroom. An immense armchair is C with a small table R of it, loaded with bottles of medicine, boxes of pills & medicine glasses, etc. Slightly L of the chair is a somewhat larger table on which there is a great sheaf of bills & paper, a handbell, a large quill pen, an inkwell, some counters & an abacus, beads threaded on wires, which Argan uses to help him with his sums. There is a spinet & duet stool up L, a three-fold screen up C & a cupboard up R. Upright chairs stand down RC and down LC.