Scenery
No scenery should be built when the stage is first erected. If a regular scene painter furnishes the conventional exterior, interior, and woodland scenery, the stage equipment is almost ruined for all time. It is ridiculous that a lecturer, a musician, a school principal, and a student speaker, should appear before audiences in the same scenery representing a park or an elaborate drawing-room.
The first furnishings for a stage should be a set of beautiful draped curtains. These can be used, not only for such undramatic purposes as those just listed, but for a great many plays as well.
"No scenery should be built when the stage is first erected."
No scenery should be provided until the first play is to be presented. Certain plays can be adequately acted before screens arranged differently and colored differently for changes. When scenery must be built it should be strongly built as professional scenery is. It should also be planned for future possible manipulation. Every director of school dramatics knows the delight of utilizing the same material over and over again.
Here is one instance. An interior set, neutral in tones and with no marked characteristics of style and period, was built to serve in Acts I and V of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hangings, furniture, costumes gave it the proper appearance. Later it was used in Ulysses. It has also housed Molière's Doctor in Spite of Himself (Le Medecin Malgré Lui) and The Wealthy Upstart (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme), Carrion and Aza's Zaragüeta, Sudermann's The Far-Away Princess, Houghton's The Dear Departed. The wooden frames on the rear side were painted black, the canvas panels tan, to serve in Twelfth Night for the drinking scene, Act II, scene 3. With Greek shields upon the walls it later pictured the first scene of The Comedy of Errors. With colorful border designs attached and oriental furniture it set a Chinese play.
A definite series of dimensions should be decided upon, and all scenery should be built in relation to units of these sizes. As a result of this, combinations otherwise impossible can be made. Beginners should avoid putting anything permanent upon a stage. The best stage is merely space upon which beautiful pictures may be produced. Beware of adopting much lauded "new features" such as cycloramas, horizonts, until you are assured you need them and can actually use them. In most cases it is wise to consult some one with experience.
"Beginners should avoid putting anything permanent upon a stage."
In considering plays for presentation you will have to think of whether your performers and your stage will permit of convincing production. Remembering that suggestion is often better than realism, and knowing that beautiful curtains and colored screens are more delightful to gaze upon than cheap-looking canvas and paint, and knowing that action and costume produce telling effects, decide what the stage would have to do for the following scenes.