Scenography and the Theatre: Analyse the contributions of the set designer in regard to a number of specific local productions to monitor the current

Introduction:

Since the post Independence days of Singapore English language theatre, set design has taken a considerable evolution. The set designer’s contribution to the set has become increasingly crucial to the play, a stark contrast to plays staged in the past such as Robert Yeo’s Are You There Singapore trilogy or Goh Poh Seng’s Elder Brother, where the set seemed merely functional to providing a reference to the location and setting. Today’s set designs are more complex and dynamic, and are so crucial to the play, that they are almost becoming an art in itself. Today’s set designs appear to be catalytic in determining whether or not the play is a success or failure.

A set design’s success is measured usually by its aesthetics as essential to establish an overall visual appeal. But most importantly, it may be significant in adding yet another layer into the play’s meaning.


Facades
The Physicists – Luna-id

Luna-id’s recent set of The Physicists by designer Sebastian Zeng showcases in the first act, a claustrophobic hall of an asylum for the mad. As the play progress we are drawn into the mysterious murder story. This mystery at first seems like another “whodunit”, but with the set walls being so close to the downstage, we feel as if a more insidious, somewhat scheming truth lies behind the walls, hidden under the facade of a predictable murder story. The Scratcher’s sudden silent movement to the centre stage after a long period of being in the corner of stage, almost forgotten, is intense. But more essentially, he pushes down the vertical walls of the set, symbolically gesturing an ending of one part of the story, to reveal another. And the set crashes, thundering onto the stage floor, with perfectly timed lighting, to reveal for a split second, the sinister prison, a deeper level into which the story beyond the interlude, would soon unfold. More than just indicating the location of the sanatorium interiors, the set takes an actantial role and functions as the “move” in the formalistic concepts of dramatic plot construction.

Set designs, once just playing a supporting role in theatre productions, with the bulk of the action coming from acting itself has evolved significantly over time. With the increasing use of factors such as multimedia and other technological advances, the set has increased in the value it adds to the play.

In Act One of The Physicists, we realise while the peculiar design of the set walls on one hand, served as symmetrical multiple doors into the inner sanctums of the asylum, on the other hand with its collapse, in Act two they innovatively transform into perfectly symmetrical prison cells for the patients: Mobius, Newton and Einstein. The lack of space in Act I had been kept as reserved for greater dynamic movements as the story increases in complexity after the interlude, and to accommodate the marching in of the asylum guards; giant titan monstrosities for uniformed women. Suddenly we see the supposed ‘assailants’ themselves becoming the victims of the madness of the prison asylum. The set not only topples the façade, it also topples our original identification of the characters, by means of inverting the identities of the ‘victim’ and the ‘victimiser’. The set design on The Physicists clearly set new standards for scenographers to follow, and it is an indication of a maturing Singapore’s theatre scene.

Dangerous Liaisons - Toy Factory

To continue with the theme of multimedia use in set design, the next example is Toy Factory’s recent production of Dangerous Liaisons. Dangerous Liaisons is adapted by Christopher Hampton from a novel by Choderlos de Laclos – Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The novel was originally written in the form of letters but later transformed into a dramatic plot by Christopher Hampton as well. Dangerous Liaisons can be categorized under comedy of manner, whereby the play itself portrays and satirizes the facades that exist in the society and thus also poking fun at the standards set in society. The setting of Christopher Hampton’s play reflects a society where reputable aristocrats are associated with high social, moral and also economic standards. Such simplistic and rigid standards thus imply that status quo of society can be easily breached. Thus, the main protagonists of the play – Merteuil and Valmont are aristocrats who seemingly fulfill the criteria set by society. However, as libertines, (a person who is unrestrained by conventions and morality) both are thus supposed to be in absolute self-control at all times which allow them to play a gallant, insidious game, however without breaching the conditions of society and also to appear acceptable by society. Thus this game of scandalous behaviours and affairs is made rationalized as normal and acceptable as society-at-large is also doing so. Thus the idea of how successful one is as a libertine depends heavily on how well one can conceal, and also the degree of value and respect that society places on one as a respectable individual. Hence to summarise the underlying themes, it should be noted that facades and deceptions are hence more serious and sharp, which emphasizes on the highbrow and witty quality of the play.

In relation to Toy Factory’s production of Dangerous Liaisons, an attempt will be made to analyse how and what aspects of the play, the set design highlights or inadvertently disregards.

The opening of the play with a white, translucent screen with 3 garden swings behind it, hints slightly that there is a façade. The use of the mobile garden swings and metal slides paints a playground scenario. Contrary to the playground in Roman Tham and the three bears – Everything but the Brain, the use of colours in Dangerous Liaisons for the set is less colourful which still portrays the image of a playground, but for adults. In Dangerous Liaisons, the set design actually draws attention to an interesting point that, the white translucent screen is used to separate the audience who are supposed to be implicated in this play, representing the society. And behind this seemingly thin and easily broken façade, lies the playing grounds for the libertines. The opening thus sets up the atmosphere that what is seen on stage may not be what it actually is at surface level.

It is highly similar to The Singapore Repertory Theatre’s Immaculate Misconception, which also ingeniously used giant blinds that worked like scrims, in allowing for the screening of the e-mail conversations between the lovers Tam and Turner. The blinds here, is essential in two levels: first, to accentuate the romantic long distance relationship between the Tam and Turner. Secondly, in providing the audience a chance to witness the actual procedures of the mechanical reproduction in which Tam performs in her lab. In being able to see the images of the sperm being inserted into the ovary, the animations and other images, Immaculate Misconception’s set design now becomes a medium for which the play is able to extend itself into a deeper level in story telling.

This play provides a very interesting comparison to The Physicists, which also utilizes an image of a façade; whereby the brilliant set design manages to convince and bring across the fact that the front office is a façade to cover the sinister claustrophobic sanatorium when the wall collapses later in the play. The collapse of the wall creates a symbolic suggestion that probably the safety net of society can be easily broken. And as it breaks, ‘the collapse’ revealing the truth that have been hidden safely from the eyes of the audiences, who are the society at large, that the supposed ‘assailants’ are in fact the victims. Such a sudden change in identities thus causes the audiences to interrogate the standards and conventions set by society, in the play as well as their perceptions of our modern-day society. As the set design of The Physicists successfully brings out the underlying themes and also allows audiences to engage and interrogate, the set of Dangerous Liaisons on the other hand fails to create such an impact. The collapse of the wall in The Physicists worked by itself as an act to successfully create the lasting impact on the idea of the façade, whereas the set of Dangerous Liaisons required the actors/actresses to support and fully realize its potential, which unfortunately did not achieve its desired effect, thus undermining the effect of the excellent idea behind the set design.

Other than the façade, Dangerous Liaisons also has other fascinating factors in its commendable set design, which as mentioned earlier is let down by the lack of effective acting. The use of the metal slides, where the actors/characters enter, may imply that one may enter this game but not be able to get out of it, creating the sense that everyone has no choice but to be implicated, including the audience. The garden swing operates only when a person applies force to it; or 2 persons sitting opposite each other apply alternating force. On a deeper level, it can be illustrated as the swing represents the game, whereby it requires 2 to kick-start the game, and thus setting the pace of the game. And in the first few scenes of Toy Factory’s play, it becomes established that the 2 main players or masterminds of the game is Merteuil and Valmont. And the use of the swing allows Merteuil (acted by veteran actress Tan Kheng Hua) to climb atop of it on several occasions, though with difficulty technically, to show and assert her overall dominance. The mobility of the swings and slides may hint how the game progresses or changes but generally, as an audience, one can’t really see any significance except that it is to facilitate scene changes.

In Roman Tham and the three bears – Everything but the Brain, though the set is less mobile with spatial constraints, i.e. the ladder and the swing, it still allows very fluid movements of the actors/actresses.On the overall of the few plays discussed, it reveals that spatial configurations and organizations have become increasingly flexible. I.e. Ma:Moment, avant-garde practices.

In Dangerous Liaisons, the use of roller blades for messengers, together with phallic (penis-shaped) torches appear to be extremely out of place and hilarious (based on audiences responses) And also, the use of the fake poodle, the attempted subtle advertising for Moët & Chandon when Emilie makes her entrance, the use of the seashell-like bed, added on to the comedic effect rather than to underline the main themes of the play proper. As based on Hampton’s play, the duplicity, the facades of the society is only established in the opening scene of Toy Factory’s production, which without further emphasis as the play progresses would be gradually left out of sight. The unaccounted use of roller blades and phallic torches have counteracted on what was discussed and established previously, which have inadvertently reduced the degree of seriousness that should be taken into account.

The set design, excluding unaccounted use of certain props, overall attempted to hold the play as a playground for the respectable aristocrats, and to show how one plays the game. However, the acting of several actors/actresses did not fully bring out the idea of the façades, the deceptive nature of this playground. Instead of showing how the characters can conceal, deceive and play the game (against the setting of a playground) of upholding a respectable and moral reputation yet live a scandalous life under the conditions of society, what was brought out was that the characters were literally having fun. Meaning to suggest, the stage picture showed no signs of any underlying game, everything was upfront, no hypocrisy, no deception. Overall it is a matter of subjectivity, but the acting overall did not bring out the once established idea of façade of the play, nor did it attempt to further emphasize and bring out the main themes. In short, it failed to complement the set design which by itself is an interesting concept that allows space (i.e. the acting) to realize its potential of holding and emphasizing the main themes.

The play was staged at the Victoria Theatre using the proscenium arch. The use of the proscenium arch, especially when the opening scene implicates the audiences as the society at large, works very well with the set design to imply that the society (the audiences) is watching the characters/actors, waiting for the characters/actors to breach the conditions of society. Which apparently, as mentioned above, there was nothing to be breached since everything was upfront.

Technologically, the set used for Toy Factory’s Dangerous Liaisons was kept simple and mobile. There is minimum use of the multimedia, probably to account for the fact that the play was set before the French revolution. And also, as discussed, the set design required the actors/actresses to realize its full potential, rather than to work on its own to fully bring out the main themes. Set designs indeed play essential roles, either by its own as in The Physicists, or it is dependent on other theatrical aspects to determine the extent of the production’s success.

Technology: Multimedia (esp. Video)
Ma:moment - Theatreworks’, Ang Tau Mui – Wild Rice,

The advent of technology is a distinct trend in Singapore’s English language theatre scene. An increasing number of productions have seen the need to incorporate visual complements of video and multimedia into their productions. The set designs today are made to accommodate the use of these new media. Theatreworks’ Ma:moment uses a large and encompassing muslin scrim to facilitate the repeated screenings of scenes from a black and white Chinese film, 'Mother's Grief', in which Bai Yan (described in the programme as "the Greta Garbo of Hong Kong cinema") experiences anguish and finally dies for the sake of her daughter. One medium, we are invited to see, can comment on another – here the film is used to great effect to show the changes in Mei Ling's feelings about life and motherhood.

In 2002, Wild Rice’s production of Ang Tau Mui sees a large flat panel functioning as part of the set, used to screen images of Hong Kong movie queen Lin Dai. These images work to show the obsession of Ang Tau Mui towards her idol. Casey Lim's videography provides a well-integrated backdrop to the action, particularly in a scene where Ang Tau Mui dances with a backwall projection of Lin Dai.

In Between Chinas – Action Theatre

In In Between Chinas stage setting is minimalistic with only a few wooden blocks. Simplicity of the set may have been designed so as not to distract the audiences from the screen behind. On the screen in the background mentioned, there is a collage of images including that of King George “Old Georgie”, scenery of the park and Roman Tham. This use of multimedia has been identified as a trend that has been going on for the past few recent years. Use of images on screens has presumably been for the purpose of explaining and presenting to the audience certain elements which are not only integral to the plot of the play, but more often than not, also carry some sort of message pertaining to a certain issue or underlying theme of the production, which the playwright or director wants to bring out.

The use of lights is relatively simple, where it starts out dark and progressively turns brighter. There is use of both diagetic and non-diagetic sounds. When the old man is practicing Taiji, soft ambient music plays. A young American born Chinese then enters and the music stops. Later, a Roman Tham song is played by the old man on a radio.

Sandakan Threnody - Theatreworks

Sandakan Threnody is a powerful cross-cultural multi-media collaboration, which features aspects of dance, action, text and video. Focusing on feelings of tragedy during the Second World War, the play succeeds in terms of capturing mood and atmosphere largely due to the minimalist set which serves the theme of production striking effectiveness. The minimalistic set, designed by Justin Hill, comprises largely of a dark “monolithic stage left ” which acts as a screen on which footages of war are shown. The most interesting component of Hill’s set however, is the large metal plate hanging from the ceiling, slanting toward the monolith. This plate reflects images from both the video footage as well as stage action and manages to very efficiently capture the coldness of war and its oppressive nature. Deep upstage, there is a sole table and chair, behind which a performer sat for large parts of the play, reading out news updates. The flat tone of voice she used coupled with the gooseneck lamp on the table worked together to create a gloomy atmosphere. The generally very dark stage and lack of excessive props was exactly what was required to remove the audience from their comfortable surroundings and thrust them into the atmosphere of war and the gloom and misery that comes along with it.

Through most of Sandakan Threnody, there is always some video clip being screened. From seldom seen war clips to clips of soldiers marching on and on and even photographs of soldiers who perished in the war, the set seems to go beyond the physical set itself, to encompass the scene of the war and in a way, bring that into the theatre.

The incorporation of video screening and multimedia has also now dramatically fused differences between the theatre and the cinema. Once, this distinction used to be clear and well defined in that cinema was always hermetically sealed in terms of the relationship between the audience and the actors, whereas theatre was able to let both entities engage themselves together directly. This is virtually unprecedented in Singapore’s theatre history, and technology now gives the play a broader and highly dynamic ability to express itself.

However, there are disadvantages as well to this evolution of set design in the current theatre scene. One can say that in Sandakan Threnody, the focus is on the on-screen action more than the dance sequences. With the video clips and the narration taking over most of the attention of the audience.



Creating an alternative world:
Lovers’ Words – Fun Stage

The Fun Stage’s production of Lovers’ Words revolved around a world in which homosexuality is the norm, and heterosexuals are forced to meet for furtive encounters in seedy nightclubs, while the gay world pours scorn upon them as deviants and subjects them, when caught, to extensive psychological re-conditioning to get them off the straight and narrow path.

Lovers’ Words uses a set consisting of nets covering the entire theatre, including the audience seating area. In this play, once the audience enters the theatre, the set begins to play a major role in setting the scene. Immediately, the audience feels a certain degree of restraint because he is blocked in because of the nets. The audience feeling trapped within the play causes them to inevitably become part of the play. At the end of the play, the audience will feel that they are going through the same societal influences as the actors and they are no observers. The set plays a major part to bring forward this message to the audience by making them inextricably a part of the play.

The set is also aesthetically driven to represent a futuristic or non-existence society, which is very apt for the content of the play since the entire world is homosexual in the play's context. The set more than fulfils its role in forging this created world, creating its own version of reality and drawing the audience into it.



Ma:moment – Theatreworks

The stage configuration of Ma: moment is ‘Thrust’. The stage is split into three individual platforms and arranged such that each audience side gets their own “portion” of the stage. Each of the three portions of the stage is backed by a screen. When the actors play to one particular side, they are more often than not, distant to the two other sides. Their forms can only be seen vaguely and with the low levels of lighting, the audience can only tell what is going on by listening to the dialogue.

The use of lighting in the production can be grouped into four main threads: Red lights, low level orangey lights (resembling the levels of light given off by a naked light bulb), light coming from multimedia screen.(During the screening of the Hong Kong melodrama) and total darkness.

The perimeters of the stage are completely surrounded by translucent white material. The actors can still be seen clearly close up, but effectively, their forms are hazy and obscured The feeling of distance and ethereal otherworldliness is thus projected. Long, rectangular pieces of thin white material(possibly cotton) are hung from above the stage and are spaced uniformly throughout the areas within the stage. The pieces of material sway in the breeze and when actors drift around the pieces of cloth, there is again, a dream like, ethereal quality which suggests a state of fantasy and dreams. It is also symbolic of the afterlife which is a significant contribution to the plot, as the main character, Precious Pig, dies and returns as a Hungry Ghost.

Each portion of the stage is backed by a screen on which scenes from a Hong Kong melodrama (“Mother’s Grief”) would be projected. The scenes in the film are used as a plot device. However, the abstractness of the entire production seems to hint that there are deeper underlying meanings to the use of the film. It could be that the scenes from the film are just the fantasies of the main character. After all, films are not real. People watch films to immerse themselves in it and live out their dreams and fantasies. The use of the film, then, is a representation of the character’s desires and dreams to be a mother.

For the most part, there are no miscellaneous sounds provided by the sound crew. Most of the sound effects are produced by the actors themselves. For instance, during the scene when Precious Pig tells the Char Siew boy to offer her more Char Siew during the Hungry Ghost Festivals after her death, another actor runs around throwing Hell bank notes in the air while incessantly mimicking the high pitched sound of a bell, reminiscent of the bells at Chinese funeral rites. At the end of the play, the actors walk off stage in a slow procession to an old Chinese song famous in the 60s.

Props are kept to a minimum. There is a dressing table full of cosmetics and an accounts book on one portion of the stage, representing the period of time in Precious Pig’s life when she had been a Mamasan. Then, there is also a funeral alter with candles and Hell bank notes, representing the afterlife. Hell bank notes scattered all over the place. One particular interesting prop is a piece of yellow cloth which is either wrapped around Precious Pig like a decorative scarf, used as a sign of an offering of love and protection to her daughter, a sign of the connective aspects of sexual intercourse and ultimately, balled up and stuffed under the actor’s shirt to mimic pregnancy – which is in itself another detail that contributes very strongly to the overall theme of the production. What is most interesting about the use of the cloth to mimic pregnancy, is that the role of the Precious Pig, returned from the dead as a Hungry Ghost, is momentarily taken on by a slim, male actor with ghoulish makeup. The waif-like physique of the male actor further emphasizes the aspect of starvation of Precious Pig as a hungry ghost; Precious Pig is “pregnant”. It shows that her starvation is not so much of a want for food as it is a longing for a child. This is ironic, since physically, Precious Pig looks as if she is carrying life in her womb, but this is a phantom pregnancy, as death is a state in which life is absent. The physical manifestation of the signs of pregnancy, both in death and in the form of a male actor, contributes to the idea of the starvation of the maternal instinct.

Overall, the set design contributes in many ways to the play, but there is another important aspect that gives the play a whole new level of depth. The character, Precious Pig, had lived all her life in Chinatown and had even been a Mamasan in one of the many brothels in olden day Chinatown. The production was presented at Sago street, where the infamous Death houses were in the olden days. "…these are where the sick go ostensibly for treatment but where chances of recovery are almost nil. "

Sago Street was also where funeral cloths, paper models of houses and Hell bank notes were sold. The play had its run during the month of the Hungry Ghost Festival and the song that was played at the end of the play has now been “stereotyped” as a sort of theme song for female ghosts. This setting within a setting has no doubt, been designed to play on the cultural knowledge of the audience who, at the very least, would have some awareness of the history of Chinatown, and who would certainly be aware of the Hungry Ghost festival during which the play is being shown. This setting within a setting adds a new dimension of self-reflexivity and background knowledge that will make this play a very much more interesting experience if the audience is able to appreciate these elements.

Everything but the Brain - Action Theatre

Everything but the Brain is set in a playground/children’s playroom fashion with ladders, a structure made out of brightly coloured bricks, reminiscent of the main structure in playgrounds. Everything is brightly coloured. The set appears to put emphasis on Elaine’s childhood memories, and it is as though, although she is now 36 years old, her memories still revolve around her past. This is further portrayed with the 3 bears chorus, who cannot be seen by the other characters, except Elaine herself and the audience. Throughout the play, Elaine and the 3 bears addresses the audiences, which gives the audience a sense of connectivity, and thus drawing us into her childhood days and also understanding her occasional child-like qualities. Thus, the audiences will understand and see the set as appropriate and it underlines the whole notion about Elaine who has been reliving her past, and also how she fights against time as her father is dying.

Fairly natural lighting used throughout most of the play, except occasional changes to emphasize on either Elaine’s emotions or thoughts. However, there was a scene when Elaine was flirting with the doctor and the passion was played out in a surreal sexual situation with red lighting. The use of this red lighting only once in the entire play could possibly be an allusion to Elaine’s only romance in 20 over years that she has stayed single. Flashbacks are indicated by a sudden slight muting of the lights.

Here, we have identified another trend in using sounds. There seems to be an increasing fondness for having the actors themselves produce sound effects. In this case, even the non-diagetic music seems to be produced by the actors themselves. Note that in the death scene in which Elaine’s father is led away by the Death figure, Brendan Fernandez sings, “I might have had a wicked childhood….” The use of the gong by the bears is intrusive and shocking. And when they do the countdown and announce how many minutes are left till Elaine’s father’s death, it provides a sense of urgency and even though the audience are informed from the very start that Elaine’s father will die, it is still disturbing to have the gong punctuate and mark the countdown. Although the use of the gong and the consistent countdown to the death of Elaine’s father as well as end of the play may be intrusive and shocking, it serves to remind the audience that although we are drawn into her narration and life story, we are nonetheless watching a play. It serves to rouse the audience from our state of passivity and instead to be aware and to interrogate.

The use of costumes is naturalistic other than for the 3 bears, who wears the same clown costumes and have their noses blacked and whiskers drawn on. This is not just for pure humour but also to distinguish them from the other characters. In other words, to show that the three bears exist only in Elaine’s world and her childhood in particular.

One Flea Spare – Luna-id

In another Luna-id production, One Flea Spare, a tale set in 17th century England, in the midst of a plague that gradually thwarts social stratification and class. At once upon the audience entering the theatre, they are immediately drawn into the play’s trapped atmosphere, where brave members of the audiences are made to sit elevated and surrounding the main stage space, extending the nature of entrapment within the story - a situation in which the Snelgraves experiences as a result of the extension of their quarantine period and home exile. The set is plain in space but vastly in a muted brown; a colour with the idea to evoke gloom and dullness. The shaped corpses hung on the stage ceiling wrapped in bags of burlap, are creepy and looms over a prevalent sense of death, decay, and decadence. Decomposition is suggestive by means of the hung bodies to cause unease with the audience, who were almost forcibly made to share with the play’s overarching plague epidemic. This establishes the mise-on-scene and it articulates the situation for the play in which the characters find themselves in a cramped situation surrounded by death from all sides; and they try to keep them at bay by scrubbing the floor and walls with vinegar. The set in One Flea Spare is therefore particularly effective in providing the atmospheric elements to the overall appeal of the play.


Fireface – Toy Factory

Another play whose set is exemplary in enhancing the play’s atmosphere is Toy Factory’s Fireface. Central to the set design is a black tree that looks as if it has been singed to the core, whose roots are in fact ingeniously disguised electrical cables. The set has been referred to by theatre critics as “the obverse of the archetypal tree of life, and therefore another reminder of antithetical forces jockeying for precedence, this gothic stump bears sinuous veins of orange light glow eerily like molten lava during the climatic transitions.” The tree appears to extend the play’s theatrical pacing, particularly by means of employing the precise lighting choreography of Lim Yu Beng, with synchronised cues in such a close array; they serve to signify a point of tension or contention, and enable the play to keep its dramatic actions at an optimal pitch.

Conclusion:

It is largely through plays like Lovers’ Words and Everything but the Brain that we can say that despite the influx of multimedia and videos being featured in current theatre productions, it is not a case where such features are mandatory and concern the success or failure of the play. Set design should be seen as a combination of theatrical aspects rather than concentrating only on what is on stage. Lighting, sounds, costumes, props, actors and other semiotic signs and systems should also be taken into consideration when we talk about a set design. The major functions of lighting for example, have also shifted from purely functional, as a source of illumination, to expressing various moods and indicating time and space. Analysis of various plays has provided insights of how semiotic signs or systems either work in hand with the set design or inadvertently fail the performance. They give additional layers of signs; change the hierarchy of these extraneous signs that varies the purpose and impact that the set design may have upon the play as well as the audiences. It would also mean that the importance of the set design as well as how well it is able to portray its purposes, its relation to the play and possibly the audiences ultimately acts as a catalyst to aid in the success or failure of the play.

As consistently reiterated in this discussion, the importance and purpose of the set design has progressed from merely operating on the functional level by means of providing locale to also higher levels such as actantial, sociometric, atmospheric and symbolic which adds on allegorical meanings to the play. As the set designs become increasing inter-woven with the dramatic text and performance text, they participate as one of the key aspects to determine the extent of success of the play/s.

From the discussion of the selected plays, a general trend is noticed in the Singapore English Language theatre. Plays have taken a significant move away from conservative use of the set – i.e. mainly functionalistic, naturalistic and the fixed use of spatial organization to more innovative, artistic, abstract and Brechtian. Audiences are required to question and critically analyse the mise-en-scene and other theatrical aspects as compared to being passively “spoon-fed” with information. It should not be said that set designs have entirely moved away from the conservative. Rather, there is presently more flexibility and versatility to allow the set to fully realise the potential of the play and participate in the determination of the success of the play. Viewing the trend in a less theoretical perspective, set designs have increasingly incorporated the use of technology to emphasize and support the themes of the plays. Set designs have taken a gradual but significant step away from a limited purpose to a more global and worldly incorporation and confluence of disciplines and ideas.