Staging for Small Spaces

My church built an exquisite new sanctuary, with seating for 800 people. We drama minister folks got a beautiful raised stage, with exits on either side and a connecting hallway in back. We were in heaven! But church buildings need to be multi-functional. We share our space with the choir, with a rock band, and with potted flowers. Our acting space, then, is somewhat crowded.

Staging pieces in a small space can be tricky. Here are some of the things I learned.

To define your acting space, mentally draw a line from the lowest seats house left and house right to the upstage center of your stage. (Just a quick brush up: if you're standing on stage facing the audience, your left hand is pointing to stage left. If you're sitting in the audience, facing the stage, your left hand is pointing house left. The end of the stage closest to the audience is downstage, while the end farthest from them is upstage. There. End of lesson). If you view that point at upstage center as the apex of a vee, now you know where your action needs to take place...inside the vee. Everything should take place inside that vee. The edges are your view lines for the audience.

If your acting space is shallow and wide, like ours, your vee will be very wide, and your action will tend to string out in a line. Keeping the action realistic in this configuration is tough, but it can be done. Your actors will need to cheat as much as possible. (Cheat; addressing the audience at 1/4 face. In real life, people face one another to chat. On stage, they turn 1/4 away from each other to let the audience in. Elizabethan actors turned fully to the audience, sometimes taking a step or two down toward them, to deliver their speeches. They broke the fourth wall, and cheated the other actors. Hence the term). You may have to have them cheat more than 1/4 if your stage is very wide - it looks very odd to have actors face each other across twelve feet of empty space!

If your acting space is narrow and deep, you have another set of challenges. Your vee will be narrow but steep, and you'll find your actors bunched up in the center. You will want to work the edges of the vee, rather than the center. You action will need to take place downstage center for the most part...depending upon the number of actors, you'll have view problems if you place the action upstage in a crowd.

Don't forget to consider the angle of the house floor. Most church floors are flat. Your upstage action will be lost if you're working with a flat floor, so plan on moving key characters downstage. An angled floor is a Godsend (if you'll pardon the pun) because you can move upstage, and your performing area automatically grows in depth.

Don't forget to stage for your sound system. Once you've identified the piece you're going to perform, make sure and chat with your sound guy before you stage it! He has a specific number of instruments he can assign to you. If there will be fixed microphones on stage, make sure you determine where they will be placed, and plan on centering your action near them.

Don't forget to stage for your lights. We have minimal control over placement of lights in our church, so we have to be careful as to where we place the action in pieces. Lighting can be an incredibly effective tool in your piece. It can also blow you up if you don't think about it at the outset!

Don't forget to stage for your video. Our church has a video camera system that allows the message to be broadcast throughout the various rooms of the church, and also the message to be recorded on DVD. For us, the camera is at the back of the house, and mounted about 18 feet off the floor. When we do a performance, we try to stage ourselves at the best depth and angle for the camera...not only will it show better for the rest of the church, but, hey, I'm on a DVD!
In our sanctuary, the images from the camera are relayed to large view screens on either side of the stage during the performance. We have the benefit of close-ups. If you have this capability, don't shy away from using it. With a camera, every seat in the house becomes a great seat!

Finally, don't forget to plan your entrances and exits. How will your actors get on and off stage? Does the piece require a black out to end it? If so, how do the actors get offstage? These are little details that will help you succeed in your staging, regardless of the space!