Stories High

Scenic Design Workshop

Set design is often the first thing an audience views when walking into a theatre. It begins to set the tone of the play and gets the audience’s imagination going. In this workshop we will play with a combination of designing, model making, sketching and research.  We will look at scripts and analyze various methods of approaching scenic design and find inspiration to create our own set designs. Each class will include a brief survey of scenic design and installation art as well a look at popular designers and their approaches to set design.  We will also look at varying types of design for theatre including, proscenium, site specific and black box theatre. The majority of each class will  include a model making component, playing with foam core, white model making, sketching and alternative approaches to conveying scenic ideas.  This class will be great for anyone interested in design as well as any theatre artists including directors, designers, writers and actors looking to understand the craft of their collaborators.

Tanya Orellana is a San Francisco based scenic designer. A graduate of the San Francisco State Theatre Design Program, she is experienced in set design, scenic construction and scenic painting. A core member of Campo Santo for the past six years, she has been a part of the intimate Intersection New Work Process, conceptualizing and designing sets alongside the writer’s process over extended periods of times.  Her Campo Santo design collaborations include the world premieres of Alleluia written by Luis Alfaro and directed by Jonathan Moscone, Tree City Legends by Denizen Kane directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and The River by Richard Montoya directed by Sean San Jose.  Along with her work at Campo Santo she has designed for many bay area theatres including Laney College, USF, Golden Thread Productions, Word for Word, SF international Arts Festival, Guerilla Rep theatre and Sleepwalker’s Theatre. Tanya is a staff member at Intersection for the Arts as Co-Technical Director and Production Manager and resident Campo Santo designer.  This Fall she will begin the MFA program in Scenic Design at CalArts.