Scripting a New Story: Drama and Design Unite

Dramatic Arts and Design intrinsically hold hands. This insight was channelled into successful collaborations between the Drama and Design departments on two recent creative projects at Herschel Girls School.

Theatre relies on the technical principles of design to bring new worlds and imagined realities alive on stage. Naturally, Drama can ask for the fantastical when dreaming about what theatre might look like on stage, but it needs the practicality of Design to make it a reality.

Both subjects blend the demands of critical thinking and creative problem solving, but Design takes ideas to their practical end: what an audience finally consumes must be well-designed and functional if it is to work.

Theatre design supports and is necessary for performance. Skills such as harmony, balance, symmetry, scale, emphasis, context, atmosphere, practicality and spatial dynamics are all used as principles in both Drama and Design. Collaboration is therefore a natural meeting point.

Herschel Girls School’s Design and Drama departments have collaborated on two recent creative projects: The Things We Left Behind in 2023 and Unboxing in 2024. The idea of bringing our worlds together evolved from our recognition of the parallels between our respective curricula and a desire to break down the silos between our learning areas.

But another key factor within this process was the human one: as staff, we admired each other, found each other’s experience and expertise exciting, and we were energised by the opportunity to bring our students into collaboration in a real, practical way.

The Things We Left Behind focused on the 20th Century ‘isms’ that form a core part of the Dramatic Arts and Visual Arts curricula. The Design students took up the interpretation of the ‘isms’ through the vehicle of Product Design, focussing on design for the stage.

For the Design department, the process centred on interpreting the ‘isms’, exploring a chosen thematic idea and then working with the nuanced constraints of their allocated performer: could they move and articulate within the costume? How did the costume move on stage? And how did the costume reflect that particular ‘ism’ visually? The Design students then honed their skills in the design, development and construction of the garment.

The Dramatic Arts department aimed to devise performances that allowed the students to explore the stylistic demands of the ‘isms’ that have influenced some of the 20th century movements that they would explore in Grade 11 and 12, such as theatre of the absurd, epic and postmodern theatre. They collaborated in small groups to create programmes of dramatic items and extracts. Some were written in or adapted to the style of the ‘ism’, and some devised in collaboration with their teachers and facilitators.

The pacing of the task in both departments was shaped by necessity: Drama needed to wait until the style of Realism had been covered in Term 1 to explore the anti-Real ‘isms’, and Design needed Terms 1 and 2 to conceptualise and manufacture garments that could be worn for the performance at the start of Term 3.

Our process thus ran contrary to what one would expect in the traditional theatre design timeline: ordinarily, you start with the story, the characters and the world of the play, and Designers then bring the conceptual idea for that world to life. In our process, our design students took up three of the most visually exciting ‘isms’ – Dada, Surrealism and Symbolism – and worked with partners to create a three-element garment that consisted of a top, bottom and headpiece.

Designers were paired with one actor in each group for the Drama ‘ism’ performance, taking their measurements and crafting costumes for them. Collaboration and communication were the building blocks for this process.

Design students did their own research on their given ‘ism’, and then met and shared ideas with their Drama partners, coming to a compromise between their initial idea and the idea of their partner and creating a collective concept in which each garment item worked cohesively.

As the Dramatic Arts students began their leg of this process, they met with each design team to understand their ideas and to interrogate the thematic meaning behind each design choice. This further extended the design work as the visual ideas were deepened to clearly express the themes of the ‘ism’.

With these themes in mind, the Dramatic Arts students then sourced, reimagined and devised performance items that could be built around each garment. A wild, exaggerated Blue Pinafore Frock in the style of Surrealism was paired with an extract from Laura Wade’s Alice in Wonderland; the Dada ideals of calculated madness were crafted into a devised piece in collaboration with physical theatre specialist Ilona Frege, or a piece from Eve Ensler’s, I am an Emotional Creature was staged using symbolic image, tableaux and movement, and was spoken in choral verse.

Each piece was worked into the group collective as the other actors in the group supported the performer on stage as additional voices or characters in the piece, or through creating physical images or movement to support the performance.

The final showcase had the audience brought onto the stage itself and seated in the round, as actors performed in the centre of, around and within the audience to draw them into the immersive experience. Lighting, sound and visual projections enhanced the overall mood and meaning.

Our 2024 collaboration took the form of a Packaging/Realism performance. The process began in the Drama department, where each student was given the opportunity to choose between two monologue options that had been selected for them by their teacher based on their strengths as a performer. Basic information on the character they chose was then handed over to the Design students, who were tasked with creating a life-size ‘box’, much like a doll’s box, designed to hold each actor and character.

The focus for the Design students was to engage in visual communication through packaging design and the use of scale. Designers had to do research into and analysis of their character to inform their packaging designs. They investigated the deeper context of each play, deciphered themes and symbols and distilled them into products that were both visually striking and conceptually rich.

Crafting life-sized packaging presented a novel challenge, requiring the Design students to conceptualise designs that vividly portrayed the essence of each character. The large scale of the boxes provided a canvas for creativity, demanding meticulous attention to typography, colour and detail from the Design students.

They took inspiration from the characters’ personalities, the narrative, and the visual aesthetic of the play to craft their thought-provoking designs. Here, they honed their problem-solving skills, as the products also addressed the logistical challenges of maintaining the original playwright’s vision while still providing practical functionality.

The Dramatic Arts students began their parallel process by unpacking and developing their understanding of Realism performance techniques through the theories of Konstantin Stanislavski. They applied these concepts to the interpretation of their characters, understanding the characters’ motivations, emotions and relationships. Research into the play as a whole, understanding the socio-historical and cultural context, themes and symbols further enriched their creative interpretation.

The evening was staged in a large open hall, with each box occupying its own space on the floor, lit by single bulbs, overhead lamps inside the boxes, and desk lamps or candles, depending on the mood and desired feeling of each monologue. The audience travelled from space to space as each character ‘came to life’ in their box, moving in and out of their boxes to tell their story. The actor grew their understanding of performance space and their use of movement or stillness within the boxes added layers of meaning to their characterisation.

Interestingly, the portrayal of these characters within confined boxes sparked discussions and created something of a paradox: a character written in the style of Realism, in which the audience suspends their disbelief to accept a three-dimensional performance of a believable human being is placed within the confines of a packaged object, designed for mass-production and consumption. This created further commentary on the objectification of and commodification of the female body and identity in our society.

Overall, these collaborative projects exemplified the power of interdisciplinary learning and creative collaboration, not only deepening students’ understanding of their subjects but also preparing them for the nature of real-world creative industries.