Creative Ways to Stage Theatre on a Tight Budget

It’s a struggle to stage a production with little or no funds, but it’s not impossible! If your program is new or small, chances are you’re dealing with a tight budget. So how do you stage a show when funds aren’t available? Here are some creative ways to stage theatre on a tight budget.

Devised Script

If you’re looking to save money, a good place to start could be the script. Depending on the show, scripts can cost hundreds of dollars to produce. This is a real challenge with a tight budget, because between royalties and rights, you could easily spend your entire budget before you ever start rehearsals. If you don’t have the money to buy both the rights AND the technical elements for a show, work with your students to create a new one! With guidance and supervision, your students can generate a script as a group and then perform it for an audience.

Start by having a group of students brainstorm ideas they might want to explore through dialogue and scenes. Then, through a process of peer feedback and focused re-writing, they can eventually build those scenes up into a devised script. As an added bonus, because you know the scenic limitations of your program, you can steer your students toward creating their work with your particular stage in mind, and only include scenic elements already available to you. That will help keep your production costs in check as well.

Check out these Theatrefolk blog posts on devising:

• Devising Exercises for the Drama Classroom
• Devising in the Drama Classroom
• Devising Exercise: Playing with Change
• Devising Challenge: One Minute Word Association

Theatrefolk also has this Resource on creating a vignette play with your students.

Block Set or Implied Set

If you have rehearsal blocks, consider designing your show to utilize these objects instead of more traditional, realistic scenic elements. You can use blocks for everything from couches to beds to walls, and almost anything else you (and your audience) can imagine. Oftentimes, you don’t even need to build complete “objects” for blocks to be effective. You can use blocks to imply objects such as walls, doorways, furniture, and landscaping, giving shape to your space and boundaries to your performers. Utilizing these kinds of generic objects provides a couple of benefits: First off, you’re not spending any money on a set. Second, and more importantly, you can engage your audience’s imagination by minimising scenic elements and allowing them to concentrate on the actors’ performance.

Light-Based Set Design

Another low-cost option is to eliminate physical scenic elements altogether and only design your sets using light. Lighting is an eloquent way to define space and create mood, and clever directors can utilize it to great effect. Better still, lights can create an even more dramatic landscape when combined with hanging or flowing fabrics. This type of “soft” scenic design can create a dreamlike or ethereal feel to your stage, and allows for scene changes with each new lighting cue. So ditch the lumber and let lights do the heavy lifting!

Here are some tips for first-time lighting designers.

Living Scenery

Finally, consider using “people power” to create your sets. Instead of building scenery, bring your sets to life by incorporating performers as scenic elements. Having performers sit, stand, or pose in strategic locations gives you a wide range of options with regards to scenery. Performers arranged throughout the stage on different levels can represent everything from the members of a royal court to the haunted trees in a cursed forest. Even performers simply standing with their backs to the audience can clearly delineate the boundaries of a specific location, even without a specific location in mind. Again, this type of scenic magic is limited only by the imagination of the audience.

Let your artistic inspiration run wild, and stage your show on a shoestring budget that is tied to the power of creativity and imagination!