5.1: Elements of Theatrical Design

Before anything appears onstage, a designer’s ideas must take form on paper, in pixels, or in a model. These representations allow designers to communicate their ideas to the director and their fellow designers, as well as to the technicians who will transform the design into physical reality. Like actors who execute the plans made by playwrights and directors, the technicians in costume, set, lighting, and prop shops realize designers’ plans. Depending on the discipline, these plans take different forms. Lighting designers may produce a light plot showing where all of the lighting instruments will be hung in the theatre, cue list, or digital previsualization. Sound designers often generate cue sheets, sound maps, or audio samples. Costume designers create renderings of garments, and provide fabric swatches and costume plots showing the costumes each actor will wear throughout the play. Set designers typically draft ground plans (a bird’s-eye view of the performance space), elevations, or three-dimensional scale models. While these materials vary widely, they all serve the same function: translating an abstract idea into a concrete proposal that can be discussed, refined, and ultimately built.

Theatrical designers develop these plans through practical and emotional (or mood) research. Practical research investigates the factual circumstances of a play’s world, including its historical period, geographic location, architecture, technology, and social norms. Each design discipline filters this research through its own lens: set designers focus on spatial layout and materials, costume designers on how people dressed, lighting designers on sources and qualities of illumination, and sound designers on ambient noise and acoustic environments. For example, if a play is set in 1930s Chicago, a set designer might study photographs of the city from that era, storefronts, domestic interiors, and public spaces. A scene set in a high school gymnasium would prompt research into gymnasiums of that period. A costume designer might examine clothing styles. Researching a character who works at a grocery store would lead a costume designer to images of 1930s Chicago grocers. Practical research grounds the design in a believable reality and it ensures consistency across the production’s visual and sonic world.

Emotional research focuses not on what the world looks like, but on how it feels. This type of research centers on the audience’s experience and the emotional impact of the design. Designers frequently draw inspiration from other art forms—painting, photography, sculpture, film, and architecture—to identify colors, textures, compositions, or atmospheres that evoke the desired feelings. In his interview, lighting designer Marcus Doshi cites the photographs of Gregory Crewdson as a key influence on his designs for Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over, noting their heightened realism and overall sense of unease. Costume designer Jeremy Floyd describes browsing art books or museum collections, such as those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, or the Art Institute of Chicago, to locate images that capture an emotional tone rather than a literal reference (Floyd 2025). Designers may draw from hundreds of images and artworks, selectively incorporating elements from both practical and emotional research to craft a cohesive theatrical world.

In The Art of Theatrical Design, costume designer Kaoime Malloy identifies five core elements of design: point/line, shape/form, value, color, and texture (Malloy 2015). These elements serve as the building blocks of visual composition across all design disciplines. Malloy defines a point as “the smallest mark you can make on a surface” and a line as “a path traced by a moving point” (41). Though simple, points and lines can generate complex imagery, as seen in pointillist works like Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. In theatrical design, lines often define silhouettes, edges, and movement—whether in the contour of a costume, the architecture of a set, or the directionality of light. Shape refers to a two-dimensional, recognizable form, such as a triangle or square. Designers frequently begin by considering shape as an outline before determining how that shape will exist in space. Think of how an architect might begin a new building design by using circles, arches, and rectangles. Value describes “the presence or absence of light” (57), which helps establish contrast, focus, and depth, while color, “the element of light that is reflected back from an object to our eyes” (65), carries powerful emotional and symbolic associations and is influenced by lighting conditions. If you have ever watched a classic film noir like The Maltese Falcon or a sumptuous musical like Oklahoma!, you understand how value and color are tied to emotions. Texture refers to both the tactile and visual qualities of a surface—whether an object appears rough or smooth, soft or rigid, matte or glossy. Texture contributes to the audience’s perception of realism and mood, even from a distance. By combining these elements with practical and emotional research, theatrical designers create worlds for actors’ bodies and audiences’ imaginations to inhabit.