Staging and Design: A World on a Bare Stage
Designing a World Without a Set
The 2013 New Vic production used theatre in the round at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme. That configuration shapes its design decisions: there is no back wall to hang flats on, no single “front” to place a painted landscape. Everything must work from all angles. This forces the production into a minimalist aesthetic where objects, light and bodies carry the entire scenic burden — and that turns out to be the production’s greatest creative asset.
For a GCSE Drama student, this unit is a masterclass in how minimal scenography can actually communicate more than a fully realised naturalistic set. When the audience watches the company convert four chairs into a railway carriage, they are not passive observers — they are actively co-creating the fiction. The designer’s job is to give them just enough information so that their imagination completes the picture.
The production typically uses chairs as railway carriages, rope as ship rigging and canes as multiple tools — each transformation is achieved through precise physical use by the performer, not through visual trickery.
Set Design: The Empty Space as Possibility
The set designer’s first decision is stage configuration and levels. A production of this play that uses a central raised platform for the Reform Club gives Fogg an immediate visual authority: he is literally above the world he is about to conquer. When Passepartout operates at floor level, the contrast in levels communicates their relationship instantly, before a word is spoken.
Across the episodic structure, the only constants are a table and a set of chairs that can be reconfigured per scene. A row of chairs placed upstage and angled slightly can become the viewing gallery of the Reform Club; the same chairs rotated and placed downstage become a train carriage hurtling across America. The speed of these reconfigurations is part of the show’s theatrical language — an audience that sees chairs moved quickly learns to read those moves as scene changes and accepts the new location immediately.
A persistent student misconception is to suggest a large scenic elephant as the design solution for the India sequence. This misses the form the play is written for. Productions use puppet elephants or pure physical theatre (ensemble bodies) precisely because the play’s style is anti-naturalistic. Suggesting a painted or mechanised elephant in an exam answer signals that you have misread the genre. A strong answer suggests stylised physical solutions consistent with the ensemble aesthetic — for example, a puppet elephant built collaboratively by the company using poles, fabric and collective movement, or pure ensemble mime.
Lighting Design: Painting the Globe
Because the set is minimal, the lighting designer carries enormous scenic responsibility. Each new location must be painted in light. A warm amber wash from a high angle creates the heat of India; a cold blue wash from the sides suggests the Atlantic crossing in winter; a neutral, slightly grey top light places us in foggy London. Lighting wash choices are the quickest way to transport an audience across continents.
More specific effects come from lantern choices. A profile lantern can be used to throw a hard-edged spotlight onto Fogg at the moment of the wager — isolating him from the Reform Club chatter as if the rest of the world has receded. A gobo of moving water patterns projected from above transforms the bare stage floor into the surface of the ocean for the Atlantic crossing. These specific design choices communicate location and mood simultaneously without a single piece of scenery being added.
Lighting transitions replace scene changes in this production. The move from a warm amber wash (India) to a cold blue wash (the Atlantic) is a design shorthand that takes less than ten seconds and instantly relocates the audience without a single piece of furniture being moved.
Sound Design: A Soundscape Around the World
The soundscape is equally important. Train whistles, steam hiss, ship bells, the call to prayer from a minaret, Yokohama street noise and the rhythmic clatter of railway track can all be designed into the production’s score. The sound designer has two main tools: diegetic sounds (those the characters would hear — the steam engine’s release of pressure) and non-diegetic underscore (a rising orchestral phrase as Fogg’s train accelerates, unheard by Fogg but felt by the audience).
Some productions interpolate live music — a pianist in the corner, a percussionist tracking the journey — which adds the additional layer of music-hall theatricality that the play’s comic tradition invites. The sound of a music-hall piano underscoring a chase sequence immediately signals that the play is aware of its own genre and inviting the audience to enjoy the theatricality, not just the story.
Costume Design: Identity in an Accessory
Costume design in this production must solve the multi-roling problem: one performer will play many roles, so each role must be instantly readable from a limited set of accessories. The base layer — typically a neutral Victorian-inflected suit in grey or cream — stays constant. Over it, a pith helmet signals India; a captain’s peaked cap and a slightly maritime posture signals the ship; a sheepskin hat and heavier coat signals the American West.
Signifier costume strategy means the designer must choose accessories that read clearly from every audience sightline (critical in in-the-round staging) and that can be donned and shed in seconds. The choice of colour is also important for character identity: Fogg’s costume is typically a consistent, precise dark grey or navy — the visual equivalent of his personality. Passepartout, by contrast, might have a slightly more bohemian base layer and brighter accessories to signal his continental exuberance.
As a lighting designer for the moment when the company begins burning the ship’s wooden deck for fuel, you might build from a cool steel-blue wash (open Atlantic, night-time) and introduce a warm orange-red flicker from below stage level — using floor-level lanterns or footlights — to suggest the growing fire. The juxtaposition of cold blue above and warm orange below creates a visual instability that mirrors the desperation of the moment. A slow, pulsing rhythm to the flicker (rather than a frantic strobe) keeps the audience in the drama rather than pulling them into a safety-concern.
As a sound designer, you might layer a low, continuous drone beneath the scene — representing the ship’s engines slowing — with the distant crack and hiss of timber burning. Non-diegetic underscore could begin quietly here: a single, sustained string note that rises very gradually in pitch as the fire takes hold, cueing the audience that something important is at stake without spelling it out.