Production Design
What's covered
Key facts
Deliberately anachronistic costume signals that a production is recontextualising the text, inviting the audience to read it against a different time or setting.
Backlighting comes from behind the performer, creating a silhouette or halo effect that separates them from the background.
A box set is a three-walled set representing the interior of a room, strongly associated with naturalistic theatre.
Background music that only the audience hears is non-diegetic sound.
In Brechtian (epic) theatre, costume can break realism — worn partially, layered over everyday clothes, or visibly changed in view of the audience — to expose theatricality and the character's social role.
Warm light (amber/red) feels intimate; cool light (blue/white) feels cold or eerie.
A Brechtian production may use a minimalist or bare set so the audience is not absorbed into a believable fictional world, keeping them critically aware.
Sound effects that the characters in the play can hear are classified as diegetic sound.
Bunraku is a traditional form of Japanese puppet theatre using large puppets manipulated by visible puppeteers, accompanied by chanted narration.
A floodlight washes a large area with even, undirected light and has no lens to focus the beam.
Sample questions
A taste of the 79 questions in this topic, answers marked. Sign up to practise the full set with spaced repetition.
What can costume communicate to an audience before a character speaks?
- •Costume confirms that the performer has rehearsed the production thoroughly
- •Costume conveys the director's personal aesthetic preferences to the audience
- •Costume signals that the production has a sufficient budget for its design
- ✓Social status, period, occupation, personality, and relationship to other characters
What is a PAR can (parcan) used for in stage lighting?
- •Creating subtle follow-spots that track moving performers
- ✓Producing a powerful, oval-shaped beam — often used for rock concert-style washes
- •Projecting patterns (gobos) onto the stage or cyclorama
- •Providing a soft key light for close-up acting moments
What is a 'truck' (or wagon) in set design?
- •a hanging frame lowered from the flies to suspend a painted backcloth
- •a raised rostrum fixed to the stage floor to create a level performance area
- •a sliding panel in the stage floor used to trap performers below stage level
- ✓a wheeled platform to move large set pieces on and off stage
What is diegetic sound in theatre?
- •sound created live by the performers using their voices or instruments
- •sound heard only by the audience to comment on the action from outside
- •sound recorded in advance and edited by the sound designer in software
- ✓sound that exists within the world of the play
What is the costume designer's role in a production?
- •creating identical costumes for all performers to reinforce ensemble unity
- ✓designing costume and accessories to communicate character and support the production
- •selecting outfits from a hired wardrobe that match the actor's measurements
- •sourcing period clothing from museum archives for historical authenticity
What is a floodlight used for in stage lighting?
- •creating a tight, focused beam that highlights a single performer
- •producing a narrow shaft of coloured light from a single source above
- •projecting a sharp-edged pool of light onto a specific part of the stage
- ✓washing a large area with even, undirected light
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