Design Reflection 1

I have already used so many of the concepts and ideas I learned in this class last summer in Advanced Theatre and Tech Theatre this year and I have an entire second semester of plans for design with my students.

We started off this year in Tech Theatre by participating in the UIL Theatrical Design contest. I have 5 students in this class and they were all required to submit a design for consideration of entry in the contest. We studied Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express adapted by Ken Ludwig. We researched the historical context and applied some Dramaturgy skills to creating a design that was period accurate.

I taught my students to make a scale model and groundplan for the contest. I submitted the best work and, fingers crossed, that design will take us to state. Images of these scale models can be found in the Design Research and Works section of my portfolio.

We have also already used a modified version of Kevin Rigdon’s Script Analysis twice this year in Advanced Theatre to study our Winter Production and prepare for our UIL One Act Play.

I intend to do a modified version of the set design project that we did in class with my Advanced Theatre students when we return from break. I’m looking forward to this method for a couple reasons:

1) As soon as I have assigned any design work in the past, I have at least three students who complain and feel defeated because they “can’t draw.” Using magazine images as a jumping off point eliminates this feeling and obstacle.

2) This approach to design really forces these students to think abstractly. This is one of the greatest challenges that I have as a Fine Arts teacher. Students do not know how to think outside of the box. They want a table to look like a table. They want the wall of a house to look like the walls of the houses on television or in their own homes. I am excited to see if these students can wrap their heads around a less concrete idea to create something they would never have thought of before.

I’m not sure if we will be able to use a student design exactly as presented for our UIL One Act Play, but I do hope that I can share a design or two with the company and let that serve as an inspiration for something that we can do within the limits of the contest, the limits of our budget, and the number of people that we have available for setup and strike.

I am the most excited about these upcoming lessons because I have noticed that my students really struggle with written communication. This will be one of the first units all year without any written component. They will use images and oral communication to express their ideas. This seems to be what they are most comfortable with and the best use of their skills at the moment.

-December 2021