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A stage design featuring corrugated plastic panels at West End Community Church in Nashville, TN
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Nomad System modular room dividers from Mio
One size fits all. A common slogan we see thrown onto products from socks, to gloves, to replacement parts and much more. However, this approach doesn't always work as intended: the pants are too baggy, the screw isn't snug, the color doesn't quite match. Frustration sets in and what seemed like a good idea turns sour.
I'm sure more than a few of us have felt these same feelings when tackling a new stage design for our church.
Tasked with designing the next full-scale movie set that's sure to impress our audience and bring the pastor's lofty dreams to life, what starts out as ambitious fervor can quickly turn to wallows of frustration. Aside from a small sector of churches that have the manpower, financial, and design resources to pull off a Titanic replica on stage every few months, most of us are in a much different situation --- one that requires not just a one-size-fits-all approach, but rather a path favoring modular and flexible design.
The Money Problem
As techs in the production department of a church, we face the inevitable budget strain each and every year. It just so happens that production is one of the more expensive areas within a church–aside from administrative costs and perhaps building utilities. Keeping the lights on and staff properly compensated come first at any church and we often must figure out how to do more with less, especially with extracurriculars like stage design. So we find ourselves in situations where the pastor expects a blockbuster stage but we've have the budget for a party with piñatas and balloons.
This is where the idea of a flexible stage design comes into play. How can we utilize materials that can be used in the future, recycled if you will, with other designs and props? At this point we are thinking about money management, not necessarily the cheapest options, but stretching our investment farther than a simple one-and-done stage set. Filling our toolbox so to speak with materials that can be used now and repurposed at a later time.
One way to do that is thinking in terms of geometric shapes and the various combinations those can be arranged. Take simple squares of coroplast, for example. This corrugated plastic sheeting is inexpensive and easy to source from a local plastics or home renovation supply store. The material provides a wonderful backdrop for lighting when hung from up top (see Figure 1). The same squares could be rearranged into an endless number of options: diamonds, 3-D boxes, cut into other shapes, hung or stacked in layered arrays. And with coroplast, the lightweight construction and cost-effective price makes it usable in the future rather than a one-time purchase.
Even within the world of plastics, which are generally easy on the wallet, the list of options runs deep. Plexiglass, acrylic sheeting, and foam board are excellent options as well for geometric design and shaping.
Modular Thinking
Talk to anyone in the corporate and startup world these days and you are sure to hear the term “modular office space” tossed around. With the need for quick arrangement, growth, and function at their fingertips, businesses look towards furniture and design pieces that allow for addition, subtraction, and effortless transformation. These principles also translate when it comes to enacting effective stage designs, and for good reason.
Take a multi-site church for example; various campuses within each church that have different shapes and sizes. Some are built from the ground up, others remodeled from an existing location, and some gathering in a school or theatre. The trick here, for most churches, is bringing continuity to each campus, giving them each a similar feel but within a unique location. And with stage design, executing an idea in more than one building requires a careful approach. This is where modular thinking comes into play.
Touring productions deal with this on a continual basis. Playing arenas and sheds which all feature differing dimensions, rigging points, and weight limits, production designers typically create a show that can scale–both in size and arrangement–in order to fit each venue but bring a consistent result night after night. A good place to start then is designing around components that are assembled in pieces. A single 40-foot element might look great in your main campus but will never fit into a smaller, satellite location. That same element constructed scaled into individual 10-foot sections though is now proporational and reusable in multiple ways.
An obvious choice for segmented designs and scalable solutions is aluminum truss. Looking beyond production-centric components however, numerous companies offer modular office and aesthetic components that are affordable and lightweight. Sturdy, corrugated cardboard room dividers from Mio, for example, (see figure 2) feature various color combinations and the ability to scale a design as needed for room size and shape.
Putting It Together
Well-crafted designs can vary from one church to the next. How a design translates to an audience and space however is a large part of its success. While we've only touched the surface level of possibilities here, taking ample time during the design phase to craft a set that will scale can single-handedly improve the entire outcome. And beyond that, the materials used can often be selected in a way that is affordable while allowing pieces to be reused and recycled in the future.
The best aspect of this process is that the possibilities are endless. Try, refine, try again, and branch out beyond your current landscape. Looking outside the obvious while making slight shifts in how you think about stage design will bring continuity, consistency, and an elevated sense of creativity for you and your church.
