Below are the prelimonary designs I have come up with for Strathfield Musical Society’s May 2012 production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. There is no lighting design depicted in these so in a number of cases the effect is not quite what it would be on stage under the proper lighting, eg hiding portions of the stage in blackout while the scene continues under spots.

In this attached word document is the Running sheet for the show showing the division of the musical numbers into the appropriate scenes (Attached Running Sheet)

The preliminary set design is shown below. We have a production meeting to look at the set design, costumes and lighting on Saturday 25th of Feb, and so I will update these images to the final versions once we have that.

The first scene is set in an airport. There are still a number of details I need to nail down like whether the cast are getting onto the aeroplane or whether they are jsut milling about inside the air port.

This is an animation of the set from the front to better show the depth of the set and the arrangement of the set pieces.

NB: The animations below are are 640 x 480px and are between 1Mb – 4Mb in size. They are .avi files encoded with either the DivX or Xvid Codec so if you are having trouble playing them with windows media player or your chosen media player you can try updating these two codecs on your computer. You can do that here for DivX or here for Xvid.

Scene 1 Aeroplane

This is the same scene from above to see how the stage is occupied by other set pieces in preparation for the scene change.

When Jacob and Sons starts the scene changes to Jacob’s Farm. This will be a difficult change as there are a lot of chairs to make up the aeroplane and the walls of the aeroplane will be difficult to move quickly with the cast already in the next scene in a freeze.

Scene 2 Jacob’s Farm

This is the same scene from above.

This is an alternate version of that scene with the rostra on one side of the stage rather than split to two sides. This directs the vanishing point across the stage, better guiding across the stage and making the scene seem bigger.

This is that scene from the top.

After the brothers sell Joseph to the Ishmalites he gets carted off to Egypt where we next see Joseph in Potiphar’s house. Initially this scene is infront of the curtain, to allow for the narators descriptive song about Potiphar, before we come across his wife in her love den and Potiphar is in his den. The words of the song suggest Potiphars den is below his wife’s bedroom but for technical reasons we will just have to have it beside.

This is that scene from above showing the setting of the next two scene changes behind two sets of curtains.

When attention switches to Potiphar’s wife the curtains open to reveal her in her bedroom. Potiphar’s side of the stage is darkened while he goes back to his desk.

Scene 3 Potiphar office and bedroom

This scene from above.

When potiphar hears the commotion coming from his Wife’s bedroom he barges in. His side of the stage immediately blacks out and is changed to the prison set. We will have to find some way of opening up half the curtain, perhaps by lifting it from the base to allow the striking of the office set (out the side door) and the movement of the left prison wall set piece. It is on casters so it will be easy to move in.

This scene from above.

In order to take Joseph to Prison for his shenannigans with his wife, Potiphar takes joseph across to stage left and throws him roughly to the ground at the far left under a very tight spot. While he is being all sad and hard done by the bedroom set is struck and the red curtains are opened fully. Joseph can cross back to center as now the entire stage is the prison and he can lament about doors closing on him. Depending on the staging the rest of the cast can be hidden in a sillhouetted freeze amongst the set pieces up the back of the stage during the song ready to help move the pieces down stage for the next part of the song.

This scene from above.

After close every door to me, the proson set moves forward and the rest of the prisoners become apparent ready for Go, go, go Joseph and the finale of act 1. The Baker and the Butler are tied to posts on their own trucks. The are wheeled into place by the rest of the cast. Other cast members can be behind the lower and upper sets of bars. The uper ones are ontop of a set of steps that will later be used in the Pharaoh’s scenes so you can climb up the back of them in this scene.

This scene from above.

At the start of act II we are back in the aeroplane.

I still need to set up this scene with the Pharaoh set behind the curtain so I don’t have this one from above yet.

When the song the Pharaoh’s story starts the Aeroplane set is struck and the red curtains open to reveal the Pharaoh’s city. Should be much bigger, brighter and busier than Jacob’s farm.

This scene from above.

Eventually we get to Those Caanan Days, which is back at Jacob’s farm. This will be a smaller version in front of the red curtains, both to contrast with the big Egyptian city but also because it is impossible to move the City set out and put the farm back for one song then bring the city back. Also the farm in this scene should have a look of dejection about it as it has been in the throws of the 7 year famine which Egypt has avoided thanks to Joseph.

This scene from above.

I have not finished modelling the last scene change which is outside the city. I will put this infront of the white curtains which we will make blue with lighting and make this a minimalist set for this scene which is really just about Joseph being reunited with his father after 14 years.