History
In comparison with the history of Western theatre, the history of scenic design is short. Whereas the golden age of Greek theatre occurred more than two millennia ago, the intensive use of scenery in the theatre did not begin until after 1600, and the position of scenic designer—the individual responsible for the visual appearance and function of the scenic and property elements of a theatrical production—did not become a commonly credited production position until the mid-1920s. Robert Edmond Jones is generally acknowledged as among the first credited scenic designers, for a 1915 production of The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife.
The term scenery can include any noncostume visual element used in support of a production. In the context of this article, however, it will be defined as any nonpermanent two- or three-dimensional background or environmental element that is placed on the stage so as to suggest the historical period, locale, and mood of the play being performed. While properties—e.g., set props (sofas, chairs, draperies, and so forth) and hand props (any noncostume items handled by the actors, such as glassware, cutlery, or books)—do the same, they generally are not considered to be scenery.
There was very little scenery used in Western theatres before the early 1600s. While Greek and Roman plays were performed outdoors in elaborate and imposing structures, there is little physical evidence to suggest that scenery, as defined above, was used on these stages. Medieval European drama used standardized scenic elements called “mansions” (representations of heaven, hell, the Garden of Eden, and so forth) to depict the various locations needed in the liturgical drama that constituted the bulk of the period’s plays. Mansions were often mounted in the nave of a church, on a platform in front of a church, or in a town square. They were also used in combination with pageant wagons, which usually held between one and three mansions, were pulled from location to location, and were arranged to create the appropriate setting.
The Renaissance was a time of development and experimentation in the arts. This creative reawakening affected the design of theatre structures as well as scenery. Some theatres, such as the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy, had permanent sets built as part of their theatre architecture. Others, such as the Globe Theatre in London, had bare, open stages with no permanent scenic elements. Between the mid-17th and the mid-19th century, numerous theatres were built in cities and towns and on private estates throughout Europe.
Opera houses were frequently among the first municipal buildings erected in the new towns and cities that were springing up in the American and Canadian landscape during the 19th century. The overwhelming majority of these theatres had proscenium (picture-frame) stages. The manner in which the scenery was created for these theatres was generally determined by the extent of the production program of the producing organization. Theatres with permanent companies and expansive production programs—La Scala in Milan, Covent Garden Theatre in London, and many European court theatres, for instance—employed resident artists to build and paint the scenery. Producing organizations with less-extensive production programs, such as traveling troupes, either employed itinerant artists and craftsmen or ordered stock scenery from manufacturers that existed in almost all major and many medium-sized cities in both Europe and North America by the middle of the 19th century. The stock sets produced by these manufacturers were not tailored to the specific needs of any particular play but instead depicted locations that were standard to most: a nobleman’s library, a courtyard, a forest, and so forth. If a script called for a specific location—for example, a street scene—a producing organization would order the “street scene” stock set, which usually consisted of a drop (a cloth hung behind the stage) and wings (cloths hung parallel to the drop, at the sides of the stage), from the list of available scenes depicted in the catalogs of many scenic production houses. After the play closed, the set was put into storage until another play required a street scene; the set would then be reused, usually with little, if any, modification.
In the mid-1800s a movement that was to reshape the theatrical world began. This movement, realism, which began partly as a reaction to the melodramas of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, produced some of the first plays that focused on social issues in the lives of ordinary citizens rather than on the actions of the aristocracy and monarchs. This shift of thematic focus caused a major innovation in scenery. Realism demanded sets that more faithfully reproduced everyday life. Beginning in the mid-1870s, realistic interior and exterior sets proliferated, and the level of spectacle seemed determined only by the scenic budget.
The realism movement of the 19th century had brought realistic details to scenic design. But this focus on historical accuracy resulted in scenery that too frequently became more important than the play itself. It was not until the early 1900s that scenic design began to move beyond the period, country, and locale of the plays’ settings to focus on the socioeconomic status of the play’s characters and environment as well as the mood and spirit of the play. Modern European and American scenic design tries to help the audience understand and connect with a play by visually reinforcing all of these aspects.
By the start of the 20th century, the design and production of stage scenery had become fairly standardized. The producer and the director—along with, sometimes, the playwright or the lead actor—created a ground plan of the required settings and contracted with a scenic production house to make the scenery. The staff of the scenic production house then created painted models of the sets and, after final approval, created scale drawings from which the scenery was built. Frequently the scenery was constructed by one company and painted by another. Permanent producing theatres with active production programs often employed in-house carpenters and scenic artists to create the scenery. By the turn of the 21st century, however, most scenic production studios—whether in-house or independent—had become all-inclusive, in that they built and painted almost all the scenery and many of the properties needed for a production. Specialty items—such as elements that needed engineering (trusses, elevators, and so forth), as well as period furniture and complex items that required specialized fabrication techniques and equipment—were frequently subcontracted to appropriate businesses.
