During the past few months, I’ve seen a fair number of posts in the Educational Theatre Association’s Open Forum asking for help with designing a set because the posters don’t feel they are knowledgeable in the subject. Now, as much as I try to help out with links and ideas and such, I also feel that I need to make a case for at least considering the possibility of hiring a professional set designer in these instances. Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of excuses for not doing so, and many of them start out with “we can’t afford it.”
So here are a few thoughts to consider:
“We can’t afford it”
You don’t know until you ask, and asking is free. If the current budget won’t allow it, this might be the time to make a case for a future budget to do so. More on this below.
“The set will cost too much.”
Again, you don’t know until you ask. One of the first issues I bring up during an interview meeting is the budget: how much can they afford to spend on the set? Most real set designers will do this rather than design something without a figure in mind and then realize it can’t be built.
Another question I always ask is, what are their resources? Do they have a shop and a qualified carpenter? Who’s going to build and paint it? And a third question is about the schedule: how much time do they have to do this?
All of this is so I can figure out whether it’s feasible to do that set for that company within their parameters. Doing a set for Annie or My Fair Lady, for instance, would probably cost more, and require more extensive resources, that Fiddler on the Roof or maybe Oliver!
At this point, if I feel I can’t do a good job for them given the givens, I will very politely turn down the show. It’s not personal: it’s business. But at least we met and discussed the project, and it didn’t cost the production company anything. And, hopefully, they are also interviewing a couple of other designers anyway.
“We can just go to the local community college and get a student.”
As I said in A word about set designers, not all of them are trained the same way, and some don’t even have formal training. The idea that giving a college kid a chance is fine and noble, but not all of them are ready for a real show. In my case, and that of many of my college friends, I didn’t feel I was ready for a real show until much later in my training. If nothing else, be sure to take a very close look at a prospective set designer’s portfolio before you hire them. What you see in that portfolio is what you will get.
More on this in my posts “Hiring a set designer,” part 1 and part 2.
“We don’t need it. It’s only high school.”
This one really gets me. Schools are for learning and for getting ready for the next step, and students deserve the best they can get from a school. Sports teams, in many cases, are very well funded, and coaches, especially in college, are often very well paid. It’s just another investment in the education the students receive.
BTW, I did a post on this subject some time back: Theater and sports: an editorial.
“We can just muddle through it.”
Hiring a professional set designer can be a great investment not only in the show but also in the educational experience. By arranging with the designer, up front, to make himself or herself available to answer questions, explain the process, share sketches and drawings, and so forth, the students will be able to watch the design develop from start to finish. It might even get some of them interested in pursuing the subject as a career. A college I’ve worked with for years always asks me to do this, and they find that the students really like it and appreciate it; the college has even asked me to build or paint a piece or two myself just so I can hang out in the shop and talk to the students.
Professional set designers are just individuals who are trained in, and practice, a specific set of skills, but a lot of people don’t know all that much about us because we tend to stay in the background and just do our jobs. That’s where a lot of assumptions come into the picture. So feel free to look around and talk to a few of them. We’re friendly. 🙂
Set Design and Tech 