Set design is the creation of the physical space
Set design is the creation of the physical space in which the action of a performed event takes place. Primarily used to describe theater productions, it constitutes all the scenery, furniture, props, appearance, and overall look of the stage. Set design is also known as scenic design, theater design, theatrical design, and stage design.
Although these terms are used interchangeably in most instances, set design or scenic design have become more popular in current terminology because they can be applied to television and film as well as theater.
A related and more recent term, scenography, encompasses the sound, costume, lighting, and all other technical designs of a theatrical production. Production design is the term used for the comparable craft in cinema or television (Broadcast Design).
It should be noted that the definitions of the various terms above vary to some extent from country to country based on the degree to which production functions are specialized. For example, in the United States, set designers work in collaboration with a team of other designers including projection, costume, light, and sound designers. This is not the case in other countries, particularly in Europe, where a single designer is often responsible for all of the technical or physical aspects of the production. It is important to understand that the design of the set is not simply functional; it creates an atmosphere that gives the audience a visual feel of the environment of the event. Each craft brings an essential element to the production.
The choice of backdrop, light, sound, props, costume, and, increasingly, projected media impacts the viewer’s experience of the production. In choosing these elements, the set designer’s task is defined by a multiplicity of factors. The general requirements of a set are usually predetermined in the form of a written play, screenplay, or script that specifies the time period, number of performers, number of scenes, types of locations, characters’ movements, and the action that takes place. Even if the performance is entirely improvised, the designer still usually has to work within constraints posed by the director’s concept, limited funding, and the physical attributes of the space. In contemporary theater, the creation of a set is usually approached in one of three distinct ways: as the imitation of reality created to evoke a “suspension of disbelief” in the audience, as a physical and psychological barrier between performer and audience, or as a space in which performer and audience collide.
These approaches can be traced back to seminal movements in the history of theater that broadly altered our conceptions regarding what constitutes “the stage.” The conceptualization of the stage as an imitation of reality was popularized during the Renaissance, and was the overwhelming norm until relatively recently. Set designers working within this realist or naturalist approach go to great lengths in order to create sets that mimic the natural world as closely as possible this may involve backdrops painted to imply depth, historically accurate costumes and props, and so on. The primary purpose of these efforts is ostensibly to “suspend disbelief” that is, to induce a willingness in the audience to accept the performance as believable.
The second conceptualization of the stage attempts to keep the audience at an emotional distance from the performed action a complete departure from the the suspended disbelief sought after by those working within a realist framework. This idea was popularized in the twentieth century, when experimental or avant-garde playwrights (like Samuel Beckett and Bertolt Brecht) responded to the realist tradition critically by ushering in a new kind of theater that featured a focus on subjectivity, critical discourse, and nonlinear or illogical depictions of time, place, movement, and plot. The influence of late modern and postmodernist theater is still apparent today, in spare, minimalist stagings that treat the set as a constructed (nonrealistic) site (Modernity, Postmodernism).
The final approach to set design is one that reconsiders the stage as the space in which performers and audience members interact. In contemporary productions like participatory theater, performance art, and street theater, the physical stage no longer exists in any traditional sense because the distinctions between performer and audience are essentially dissolved. The set designer in this context articulates the environment in which the performer/audience interaction takes place, whether it be a street, a subway platform, or traditional theater. These recent forms of contemporary theater therefore have drastically different motivations from the realist, modernist, and postmodernist forms that preceded it.