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The Power of Projection

By Brian D. Taylor, Project Editor, Pioneer Drama Service 

Brian D. Taylor is the project editor for Pioneer Drama Service, a published playwright and a former drama teacher.  Working with K-12, college and community theatre groups, he has a wide theatrical background with experience in directing, acting and technical theatre.   

You probably are reading this article thinking it’s about having your actors project their voices so they can be heard.  Indeed, that’s an important topic, especially when working with young actors.  But I’m talking about a different type of projection — using screens and projection technology to establish settings, enhance atmosphere, or even create a secondary location on stage.  So let’s talk about the power of projection and how it can change your approach to traditional stage design.

The Backdrop

We’ve all been there, designing a show that takes place in multiple locations and wondering what to do about the backdrop or the main set piece.  Sometimes we’re in the dark forest, later it’s morning in the village, and then it’s night in the same village.  And those are just the exteriors!  How do you effectively create backdrops for a show that has multiple locations, both exterior and interior, without breaking your budget?

Of course, you can fall back on the old generic backdrop that “works” for all locations.  But using projection technology that your organization very likely already owns opens the door to a new world of possibilities!  Each scene can now have its own unique backdrop — vivid, detailed, and believable — at little to no cost.  Imagine the foggy, moonlit landscape peeking through the twisted canopy of the dark forest, the village market on a sunny day, then the same village market at night with lights shining in the windows and a blanket of stars above!

Interior settings also become much easier.  How many plays have you chosen not to produce because they require actors to move from one room to another or from one person’s house to another?  By changing the projection on the backdrop and shifting a few stage props, you can easily create an entirely different atmosphere in a matter of seconds!

Weather

Speaking of atmosphere, you can even make it snow on that village by using projections instead of the mess and clumsiness of dropping confetti from the catwalks.  Let’s say your village is an actual set piece.  Projections can be videos as well as still pictures, so to create the feeling of a wintry night, all you need is a clip of falling snow, perhaps enhanced with a wind sound effect.  Imagine the storm scene in King Lear!  With a video clip of a driving rainstorm projected onto a backdrop, you can put Lear in the midst of a very realistic tempest.

Setting Info and Credits

If you’re a teacher, you’re probably familiar with projecting text for use in the classroom.  Text projection can also be useful in the theatre for communicating necessary information to the audience.  For instance, in plays that move forward in time or have flashbacks, the year can be projected, or something like “Five years ago...”  We typically use the program to communicate this, but projections will allow you to share this information artistically, incorporated directly into the stage design.

Similarly, projected text can be used to make scenes where characters are reading or composing a letter or a text message onstage more visually compelling.  Projected text can also creatively enhance the curtain call to give credit to the actors, naming them individually as they taking their bows.

Phone Calls

It’s a common staging cliché when two parties are in a phone conversation to stage one party Down Right, while the other party steps onstage Down Left to play the other end of the call.  This trope has always annoyed me because the other party, who is supposed to be elsewhere, is entering into the same setting as the other characters, literally just a few steps away from the other actor.

Of course, we are trained to suspend disbelief and just go with this, but using projections can make these moments more believable.  You can do this as a live feed, shot just offstage, or as a prerecorded video projected onto the stage.  Imagine if the character who is on the other end of the call and supposedly in Central Park could actually appear to be in Central Park.

Ghosts, Spirits, and More

By experimenting with the material you are projecting onto, you can discover even more artistic uses for projections.  Think of Cinderella talking to her mother’s spirit in the tree.  Rather than staging it with a live actor coming out of the tree, you could project video of the actor onto the tree, which better suggests that she “is” the tree.  You can even create a ghost or a hologram by projecting onto a more diaphanous material.  Of course, lots of plays include scenes with characters speaking to a ghost.  And we’ve all seen Star Wars actors speaking to holograms projected by droids.  This can be done live onstage with a little fog and a projector!  Imagine the magic of Star Wars holograms live on your very stage!

Projection technology is exciting because the applications are endless and most organizations already own the equipment, making this technique as accessible to educational and amateur theatres as it is to professional theatres.  Of course, the implementation of this technology will vary based on your equipment and the size of your theatre, but I encourage you not to overlook the usefulness of projection in your production design and ideas.

Check out the following spotlighted titles that incorporate or invite projections.