Personalise the site

Choose your exam board

This filters set texts and takes you to the right written-exam guidance. You can change it at any time.
← Back to Main Hub

Imagine, test, justify, refine

Theatre Design Lab

Design is not decoration added at the end. Make a clear choice, test how it works in performance, and explain what the audience should understand or feel.

Start making

Choose a tool

Interactive studio

Build a 3D stage design

Arrange scenery, actors and lighting, compare audience layouts, save versions and export a design sheet.

Open 3D studio All design disciplines

Plan and justify a design choice

Turn an idea into precise practical detail, intended audience effect and a usable written explanation.

Open design planner Costume design and production

Build a costume plot

Track every character and scene, develop visual progression, test practical choices and export annotated design evidence.

Open Costume Workshop

A repeatable process

Five stages of useful design work

  1. 1Read the briefIdentify the moment, context, practical limits and central intention.
  2. 2Generate choicesExplore more than one solution before settling on the obvious answer.
  3. 3Specify the detailName materials, colours, positions, transitions, textures, levels and operation.
  4. 4Test the effectAsk what the audience can actually see, hear, infer and feel.
  5. 5Refine and justifyKeep, alter or reject the choice using evidence from rehearsal or modelling.

Choose your discipline

What are you designing?

SetSpace, levels, entrances, materials, symbolism and actor movement. LightingAngle, intensity, colour, focus, shadow, transitions and visibility. SoundLive or recorded sources, volume, placement, timing, texture and silence. CostumeSilhouette, colour, fabric, condition, period, status and practical movement. StagingAudience configuration, proximity, sightlines, focus and spatial relationships.

Try a short challenge

Practical design briefs

Create your own brief
IsolationMake one character appear emotionally cut off while remaining physically close to the ensemble.Set · lighting · staging Power shiftShow control moving from one character to another during a single scene.Costume · lighting · spatial design Unreliable memoryCreate a world in which the audience cannot fully trust time, place or recollection.Set · sound · lighting Pressure buildingDevelop tension across a scene without simply making everything louder and darker.Sound · lighting · staging Two social worldsDifferentiate two groups while allowing moments where their visual identities overlap.Costume · set · ensemble palette Visible transformationTrack a character’s change across the performance through practical design details.Costume · makeup · lighting

Before calling a design finished

Check that the choice can survive four questions

  1. What exactly changes?Give observable technical detail rather than a vague adjective.
  2. Why at this moment?Connect it to action, relationship, context or dramatic structure.
  3. What does the audience experience?State what they notice and the meaning or response created.
  4. How would you test it?Identify a rehearsal, model, cue run or comparison that could improve the choice.

Choose the right level of detail

One decision or a whole production?

Use the Design Decision Planner for one focused choice. Use Costume Workshop when the design must remain coherent across characters, scenes, changes and practical production demands.

Open Costume Workshop