Open Forum

I'm teaching a set construction unit, but I have a couple of students whose parents won't allow them to touch any tools. Any ideas on an alternative activity to give them while their peers are building - beyond just measuring, marking, and holding wood for their team?

Thanks!!

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Kristina Cummins
Theatre Teacher / Director
Capital High School
WA
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Here's the ground plan.

Determine how this should be broken up into stock stage units for construction, including best practices for bracing, support, safety measures needed.

Outline the step-by-step procedure to be followed in constructing the set on the stage.

Research and specify all scenic finish materials and methods: colors with paint chips/codes, painting techniques, any stencils, appropriate texturing methods (rag roll v. splatter v. …..).

And could even: here's spike tape, tape out the set on the stage.

For bigger challenge: here's the ground plans for a musical or a multi-scene play - ditto to the above, spike all scenes, specify best method for shifting set elements. Diagram choreography of scene changes. Create diagrams to show how all scenic elements will be stored efficiently backstage.

And an even bigger challenge: start from premise that set will be totally built from scratch. Creat materials  and cutting schedules that detail all supplies needed — right down to every screw, bolt, fastener, gallons of paint, etc. — and the how everything has to be cut for maximum use and least waste and then order of assembly as well as pricing it all out with the concept that it must be realized by building stock scenic elements that can be reused for future productions.

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Douglas Fox
Theatre Educator, retired.
NC
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You could have them make scale models of whatever you are constructing.  (I assume their parents are OK with them using scissors, glue, rulers, and cardboard.) 

Having 1/2" = 1' or 1" = 1' models of all the set pieces you are constructing, plus any stock items you are using, would help the cast visualize it before the set is in place.  And if you are building the set pieces anywhere but on the stage itself, a model is a helpful guide when you move from the building area to the performance space.

I hope you are teaching tool safety before your class starts building.  If you give a test on that lesson, those students should still take it.

  

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CJ Breland
Retired Theatre Arts Educator
NC
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