Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

98 Chapter 5 Designers and Technicians
Mark Wendland’s highly theatrical 2007 setting for Richard III, directed on the thrust stage of New York’s Classic Stage
Company by Brian Kulik and Michael Cumpsty—who also played Richard (seen here being crowned)—was largely made
up of hanging chandeliers, which rose and fell to change the varying locales of the play. “Day, yield me not thy light;
nor, night, thy rest!” cries Richard, which may have sparked interest in Wendland’s design motif. © Richard Termine
Sound is also considered by the scenic designer, who
must plan for the actors’ footfalls as well as for the visual
elements around them. The floor of a Japanese nō stage,
for example, is meant to be stamped on, and it must be
designed and constructed to produce a precisely “tuned”
vibration. The European scenographer Joseph Svoboda
designed a stage floor for a 1997 production of Faust
that could be either resonant or silent, depending on
the arrangement of mechanisms concealed underneath.
When Faust walked upstage, his steps reverberated;
when he turned and walked downstage, his steps were
suddenly silent—and we knew that the devil Mephistopheles
had taken his body.
Properties (props) and furniture are often handled
by separate artists called prop masters, who work
under the guidance of the scene designer. They are
crucial not only in establishing realism but also in
enhancing mood and style. Although furniture often
functions in the theatre as it does in real life—to be
sat on, lain on, kicked over in a fit of anger—it also
has a crucial stylistic importance. Often properties
such as ashtrays, telephones, letters, and tableware are
functional in realistic plays, but they can also have aesthetic
and symbolic significance, such as the poisoned
“union” (pearl) that Claudius throws into Hamlet’s
drink, or the map of England that King Lear divides
to give his daughters. How these props are designed
helps shape the plot and the audience’s perception of
the characters. Some props are even raised to titular
importance, such as the glass figurines in Tennessee
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