Exercise: Create a World

Students often get hung up on the notion that in the theatre, sets, costumes, and props all have to meet the standard of the movies. The world of the play has to be three-dimensional and real. A car must have four wheels and move. A house must have two levels and different rooms. 

But the truth is that a theatre audience is very forgiving. If you let them know what world the play inhabits (a car is established by two people sitting side by side on cubes, one holding their hands up as if holding a steering wheel), they will believe. They will go along for the ride. A single object can be so many different things — a chair can be a chair, or a car, or a mountain. The possibilities are endless.

Try this exercise to encourage students to create worlds onstage with little to no movie realism:

• Divide the class into groups. Each group is going to stage a location.
• Privately, give each group their location. Some possible locations include: jail, haunted house, emergency room, amusement park ride, library, underwater, war zone, family room, tanning salon.
• Each group must stage their location using only the following pieces: two cubes, one chair, a garbage can, and a music stand. (Change the pieces to whatever you have available. Keep it to five, and keep them simple and easily available.)
• The groups do not have to use all five pieces, but they can’t add anything.
• The groups can move and talk in their location, but they can’t give away the location (“This haunted house is really scary”).
• Encourage students to use physical choices such as movement and levels to help communicate their location. 
• Each group performs their location in front of the class. The others have to try and guess the location based on what they see.
• Discuss afterward. What was it like to create a world without realistic sets or props? ***