I’m wondering if anyone has experiences in using blender (a freeware programme) for stage design? I’ve played around with blender some time back but unfortunately I didn’t master the finer details of how to use it. It is a quite sophisticated 3D image manipulation programme and as such maybe not the best choice for someone looking for a simple programme for simulating one’s stage design. And – it is mainly operated by shortcuts, which, if I don’t use them constantly, I tend to forget, so every time I have to start more or less from scratch. Anyways, here are some of my – admittedly not very advanced – results of using blender.

Stage design for Soul Cage (2009). The blue construction with the “person” inside (I didn’t get as far as modelling human beings, so I borrowed him from a tutorial) in it, was the “elevator”, which was a central element of the set for this play. At this stage I was still planning to have the entrance of the elevator sideways and have the audience look into the elevator through a “glass” wall. You might notice some blue “sky” on top – no, this does not mean that our theater doesn’t have a roof. (The university might be trying to save money but they haven’t dispensed with roofs yet.) I simply forgot to put in a proper ceiling in this image.

Here is the whole thing viewed from the front. The white box is the reception desk (the play was set in a hotel). I don’t know if it was because of blender (I think not) or because or chief set-constructor alerted me to it (more likely) but in the course of planning this special set we realised that, depending on where a spectator sits, view of the “elevator’s” interior would be limited. But so much of the action was supposed to take place just there! Solution: slightly angled side-walls for the elevator and telling the actors to keep themselves visible (i.e., not lean on the walls of the elevator too much or spend a lot of time at the very back of the elevator). We worried about this quite a lot but I think in the end it worked out fine.

Seven people (the main characters) “stuck” in the elevator. And you can see (almost) all of them!

While the main layout of the elevator was fairly basic (three angled walls + ceiling), the details were a technical masterwork (thanks to our crafty set technicians…). The elevator had an “automatic sliding door” on the front, so you would see people getting in and out. But since it was vitally important to see the interior of the cabin while the elevator was “moving”, we had no use for an actual door. Instead we used a sliding plank to signal the door, which was operated by ropes by two people standing behind the elevator box. The elevator also had a (manually operated) bell and a dial (manually operated with the help of a long pole) showing the floors the elevator was moving through. These were two very busy helpers behind the elevator!