Worlds of Imagination

Set models can be exquisitely crafted and beautiful objects. But they are made as working tools, a key part of the process of creating a show. A scale model helps designers test ideas in three dimensions, working out scenery, props and sightlines.

A model is also a collaborative tool. First, it can be used as a basis for discussion with the show’s director, lighting designer and production manager. Often the final model is preceded by a simpler white card model which quickly demonstrates the designer’s initial concept.

The model also helps the creative team work out details of staging, lighting and costings. Then it becomes a reference for the prop-makers, set-builders, scenic artists and other production staff who will realise the creative vision.

Meanwhile, the cast are shown the model at the start of rehearsals, and often it will stay in the rehearsal room, helping them shape their roles with knowledge of the space they will inhabit on stage.

Hugh Colman was commissioned to design the ballet that would be performed in the State Theatre at the opening night of the Theatres Building: The Sleeping Beauty. It was the biggest stage he had designed for so far. A bigger stage meant a bigger model, as all set models are made to an exact scale: usually 1:25, where a human figure is about 7cm tall.

Although the new theatre had Australia’s biggest stage and exciting new possibilities, choreographer Maina Gielgud’s vision for The Sleeping Beauty was for a sumptuously traditional production of this historic work.

The process of designing for the brand-new theatre was the same as had been passed down to Colman by the older generation of designers. Naturally, that meant a handmade model, the surviving parts of which Colman has recently donated to the Australian Performing Arts Collection.

Set models are traditionally presented in a box, scaled to the exact size of the intended venue’s stage and the proscenium arch above it.

But not all theatres have this traditional layout. For Arts Centre Melbourne's Theatres Building, it was intended from the start to include a flexible ‘black box’ space for experimental theatre and other performance: the Studio (now the Fairfax Studio).

Nigel Triffitt, one of the most innovative theatre-makers of the 1980s, was commissioned to devise a show for the Studio's opening season.

Triffitt devised, designed and directed spectacular visual theatre productions that combined music, puppetry, acting and movement.

Each of his shows featured extraordinary sculptural sets, and The Gift of Vagrancy was no exception, showing off the Studio's potential for theatre 'in the round' with sets for a series of scenes, each modelled before construction.

Indeed, when Triffitt was commissioned to develop a show, the first thing he would do was buy balsa wood. “I have a close relationship with a hobby shop on Lonsdale Street, where I go on a daily basis”, he told The Age in 1987.

One room of Triffitt’s two-room Melbourne apartment would then be devoted to model-making:

Triffitt saw a model as replacing the need for set drawings completely. He explained that “You see, the model and what appears on stage is exact. People think they understand a drawing, but they don’t. A model is a model and it’s in scale. It’s the quick and easy way to work. You give people the model, they build it.”

He also appreciated the appeal of models as objects:

Triffitt donated his collection of set models to the Collection in 1998, and they form a striking record of his extraordinary visual imagination.

In 2008 MTC donated their model for a production of The Importance of Being Earnest, directed by Simon Phillips and designed by Tony Tripp, that was performed in the Playhouse in 1988. Tripp created an ingenious revolving set, placing the characters as if in a book illustrated by Oscar Wilde’s contemporary Aubrey Beardsley.

In 2011, to mark the end of Phillips’ tenure as Artistic Director, MTC restaged the production. Production staff visited the collection to view the model, as they recreated the original sets. The set model conveys the feel of each scene more vividly than any two-dimensional drawing.

Richard Roberts, Head of Design at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), has designed many productions for the Theatres Building's stages, most recently his starkly atmospheric set for Victorian Opera's The Visitors.

For Roberts, design is about taking an idea that at first exists only in the designer's head, and giving it a form in the real world. He teaches his students to make a series of models as part of this process. These models become a vital communication tool: "When I'm trying to articulate to students why we make models, I describe to them the experience of the first day of rehearsals of a new show", he explains.

The model sits on a table in the rehearsal room under a cloth. "All the actors come in. You have been working on the design for months, but it is Day One for them. And you want to bring them up to speed. Now, you could make a speech. And it would take a really long time to describe all the things you're going to do. But the other way is to pull the black cloth off the model and just show them."

For Roberts, digital design tools cannot compete with the tactile appeal of a model: "With craftspeople in particular, but also with actors and directors, they want to be able to hold it in their hand and turn it around themselves. You can't do that through a screen."

The qualities that make set models a powerful tool for communication before a show, also make them among the most meaningful remnants left after the final curtain falls. Roberts feels that set models from previous productions are "quite precious things", because once a performance is over, they can be almost all that remains of an ephemeral art form.

The Australian Performing Arts Collection will continue to work with designers and companies to collect set models that reflect the creativity and ingenuity of Australian designers. With the art of the model being passed on to a new generation, they will continue to play a leading role in creating new shows on Arts Centre Melbourne's stages.