A wall which has been somewhere else

Source A: an original imagined reflection by a theatre set maker about reusing scenery.

The wall had been a kitchen before it became the side of a railway carriage. We covered the painted tiles, moved a window opening and built the new scene around what the store already held. Reuse was not only a way of avoiding a new purchase. The available wall asked us a question a blank order form would not have asked.

I enjoyed that negotiation. A feature which first appeared inconvenient suggested a different entrance, and the scene began to move more naturally around it. We still had to decide when alteration would become more work than another solution. Keeping something merely to say it had been kept would not make every decision sensible.

I like knowing the wall’s earlier life. The audience need not know it. The new scene must work as the scene they have come to see, not as a demonstration of our store cupboard’s impressive history.

Source B: an original imagined statement by a director using reused scenery.

I support looking in the store before commissioning everything anew. A production may gain possibilities from a material the designer had not expected to use. But I am wary of beginning to defend an awkward scene because the wall already exists.

The audience is asked to imagine a particular place. If a door opens where the action cannot use it, or a remembered shape keeps calling attention away from the scene, we must be willing to change the plan. The success of an earlier production cannot answer whether the same object serves this one.

Reuse can also be invisible. A surface altered so thoroughly that nobody recognises it has not failed to preserve value. We should explain our choices when useful, but not require every object to advertise how responsibly it was chosen. Let the scenery earn its place through the work it does now.

Compare the views in Sources A and B about reusing theatre scenery.