Gilbert and Sullivan set design

I am involved with the Gilbert and Sullivan society at St Andrews URC, Monkseaton and have been a member of the scene painters team for 10 years or so now. More recently I have been designing the sets as well as painting them.

I haven't taken photos of the final designs in the past so I thought it would be a good idea to record this years design for The Mikado and show the work in progress. 

I have taken a few different sources as inspiration for the design such as Japanese prints and screens.

Using Photoshop, I have roughed out a working plan for the stage set showing a general idea of how I would like it to look. I have copied a modern design for paper screens for the side flats.
This will have to be modified a great deal to fit the newly built properties of the stage set.

There will be a built pagoda and platform in front of the backdrop now so the idea for the waterpool and flowers will need to be changed. The distant pagoda will now be painted onto the backdrop, stage right.

The idea is to be looking out onto the garden from a screened indoor area towards a distant landscape of pagodas and cherry blossom with cascades of blossoms on the stage flats right and left.


Some examples of past designs:


The last time St. Andrews performed The Mikado, it was set in a modern style with the town of Whitley Bay standing in visually for the town of Titipoo. 

(The image shown here is not how the set was designed, the group are putting on a concert of songs and the stage flats were placed over the curtains for this event and they are not seen in the correct order.)

This design is for one of the earliest I was involved with, showing a traditional approach with stone effect and gothic archway.

This is the design for The Grand Duke, for which I used the original set design drawing from 1896 as inspiration.