It doesn't matter if you are designing a prop home for a theatre production or staging furniture to sell your own home, you want it to look the best it can as well as livable and realistic. The key words here are 'livable' and 'realistic.' Your actors may be able to move around better on a stage where all the furniture is pushed up against the walls, but it won't give off that Millcroft home feel you want. In order to set up the furniture and decorations in your play so that it is both practical for the production and realistic for the audience, follow these simple guidelines.
Less is More
The tenet often applied by real estate agents and professional home stagers when attempting to stage a home to appeal to buyers will serve you well as you gear up to produce your play. Though most Toronto townhouses can fit multiple couches, end tables and chairs in the living room, cluttering up the space will only make it seem smaller. Having a lot of furniture will also make it very difficult for the stage hands to switch sets because there is more to move and it will need to be stored somewhere. Artfully placing a few key items can create the same look but give your actors room to move.
Personal Touches
The key to making a room look like it is owned by someone and lived in on a regular basis is to add personal items like photographs and trinkets of the sort that people pick up as they go through their lives. Has your character visited India? If so, you might add a souvenir statue of Buddha to a side table in his fake Markham home. Is he or she an avid reader? Add a bookshelf or leave some tomes open and half read on the table. Does your character have relatives? Hang photos representing them on the wall. These questions, which you or your playwright will know the answers to, will help you add personal touches to the sets.
Livability
It is one thing to have a home and quite another to live in it. You can buy Leslieville homes and fill them with furniture and trinkets but if the space doesn't look comfortable the audience won't believe anyone actually lives there. For instance, add some padded chairs if it is supposed to be a place the characters often sit in. Another aspect of livability is decoration. The color of the walls, the window hangings, and the artwork on the walls should all create a feeling of homeyness unless you're staging a dungeon. Even the coldest English manor houses had paintings on the walls and splendid velvet curtains.
Period
A problem often encountered by set dressers and producers is fitting the decorations in with the chronological setting of the play. There are no shortcuts with this one, unfortunately. You genuinely have to know what styles Ontario architects were using after the 1930s so your depression-era play won't mistakenly feature a photo of a building from the future on the wall and what fabrics were preferred by the designers of the day.
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