set design
Build for touring
My background is in construction, joinery, design and art, and in the last few years this has included set design and build. I can offer my knowledge around methods and use of materials when designing sets for touring, and consideration of storage and reuse after their intended purpose.
Material choice can drastically change our carbon footprint before we even begin. Any wood products that are grown here in plantation forests like Pinus Radiata and Douglas Fir are good materials to use. Although it means more processing has been used, Pine Ply is also good, and can achieve a lot in cases where a panel is needed. These materials are grown sustainably – that is they grow quickly and are re-planted. Despite the problems with this model such as monoculture and loss of soil when deforested, it still remains one of the better products environmentally and carbon is stored in the timber for its lifetime.
Avoid using MDF at all costs. The dust is bad for our bodies, it takes a lot of energy to produce, it has a relatively short lifespan (especially if it gets wet), and you can’t burn it or recycle it. I often use cloth materials in my designs as a way to minimise weight, even though these are also problematic in a green sense since cotton and synthetic based materials most readily available on the market are energy intensive to produce and in the case of cotton require obscene amounts of water to grow. My advice here, and for any material really, is to use as small amounts as possible, consider how far it comes, and where possible use a recycled product. Jute and flax products take much less water to produce and there are great recycled nylon and polyester products coming into the market.
The more lead-in we have, the better choices we will make. If there is time pressure our default is to buy the first option that fits, and this means we never consider whether the product could be sourced more ethically, or even found second hand within the community. When it comes to green methods of design thinking, the overarching concept for me is to make things as simple as possible and to flat-pack so things can be both transported and stored. Multiple flat panels can easily be transformed into 3D objects that command presence on stage and provide screening, surface and backdrop, and transporting a bundle of flat panels is relatively easy. They also don’t need to be solid – they could simply be frames with cloth material used to create a solid panel visually. This reduces weight for travel, and dimensions for storage since the cloth can be folded up and the frames reduced even further into their individual pieces. A bundle of timber pieces and a folded package of cloth can go from something very compact to large space-filling structures quite quickly. Smaller packages require less fuel/energy to transport, and ultimately could fit into the one vehicle that transports the performers too!
The 2023 production Tense told the story of the Nelson Tenths; an unfulfilled promise of the NZ land company to award a full one tenth of the purchased and subdivided land in Whakatū back to the Mana whenua tribes and chiefs. The brief given to me by the creator/artistic director and storyteller Donna Mcleod was that the set should have 10 self-lit components to represent the ‘Tenths,’ it should be designed to travel, and it should be able to form a stand-alone sculpture for display.
After lots of thought and some prototyping, I built ten cubes, 650mm in height, width and depth, and stretched a polyester curtain sheer through the frame to create different shapes within that related to the story – a triangle, a Monopoly house, an ‘X’ etc. The curtain sheer gave the effect of a soft panel and the cube allowed stacking one on another to create volume. Each cube had a strip of battery powered LED along the inside front edge and was switched on as it was placed during performance.
Photo Credit: Steve Hussey, Nelson Arts Festival, Production Tense
These cubes were brought on one by one, and stacked to form a waharoa or whare. The top section was pulled together to form the triangle of the waharoa on stage at the finale – a slightly hair-raising action but with the help of good magnets it stuck every time!
Photo Credit: Steve Hussey, Nelson Arts Festival, Production Tense
Each cube was made with 12 x 12mm finger jointed square pine molding. I made four frames which formed the basic cube, then added extra pieces for the material to pass over and form the desired shapes. These frames were all screwed together to enable disassembly but were intended to remain together as flat frames to reduce workload in setup and pack down. The curtain sheer was held tight around the frame with Velcro sewed into each end, which could be easily removed and folded up.
Photo Credit: Steve Hussey, Nelson Arts Festival, Production Tense
While one 650mm cube doesn’t sound like much, ten of them takes up a surprising amount of room –2.75 cubic metres in total. I built them in my Nelson studio, and then we rehearsed Nelson and Motueka, performed in Motueka, and then performed in Nelson. Each time I transported them with my van as we couldn’t leave them at the rehearsal/performance space, and to avoid extra work I left as many assembled as possible.
While the timber and polyester sheer were the main materials used, I used LED strips for the inbuilt lights which required eight AA batteries per cube, so 80 batteries in total. I also needed rare earth magnets to hold the cubes together as they were brought to form the Waharoa – another material that should be used sparingly if at all. A rule of thumb for anything that we purchase is that the cost to buy is directly related to how much energy is required to produce it. While this may sound obvious it can help navigate around which products are better or worse.
About three years ago I was asked to build a set for Nutcracker in Nelson, and because of my frustration with storage and waste I proposed to build a miniature set in a box, place it downstage right, and have a camera on it with a live feed to a projector which fed the full size to the backdrop /cyc.
Photo credit: Lee Woodman, Production Nutcracker
The scenes within the box were changed and manipulated on stage by myself out of view, and the Drossellmeyer character on stage as much as we could. There were in total about 7 scene changes and the box lid could close at the end.
The inspiration came from my childhood and a treasure my mother kept and brought out very rarely – a fold out Noddy theatre set complete with all the favorite Enid Blyton characters on thin wire for the players to move, and a small paperback script with several plays to perform. It filled me with wonder as a child and somehow that wonder was the inception of this idea for Nutcracker.
The miniature hand-built aesthetic and mechanical movement fitted perfectly to the Nutcracker story, and being a reoccurring production, the box could be upgraded and refreshed as needed, which we did. As you can imagine, the materials needed and used in this were of tiny proportions. Most of the raw materials came from stock and reused furniture/objects in my studio. Things I purchased were the LED lights and drivers from a local manufacturer, the stepper motors and drivers, and a couple of printed backdrops. Any other bits were brought from recycle stores and dump shops.
The entire set now lives in my studio taking up no more space than a large suitcase. With the increasing accessibility of good projectors and ease of use in theatre settings, it made sense to capitalize on this for these green purposes.
As is often the case with these projects, they became a labour of love and the hours spent on the development was enormous. But once made it becomes a treasure to keep and cherish, which is quite the opposite of large flimsy plywood backdrops, taped up and painted, constantly cursed for their inconvenience of storing, and finally discarded in favour of the new.
Lee Woodman
Lee Woodman is a creative designer/artist who builds, makes, and designs anything from theatre sets to small habitats. Drawing from his passion for materials and trade knowledge of building, Lee prioritises a respect for the process and the people involved while maximising the utility of every component. Lee’s sensibility to both materials and people bring a wholeness to his creations that enrich the user’s experience and imbue joy into the work. Lee works for many aspects of the creative community and is co-director of 18a Project Space.