Designing oppression: timber, iron, and claustrophobia
Design focus: The ceiling beams should hang deliberately low to create claustrophobia. Sparse furniture and rough-hewn timber suggest hard labour and a joyless theocracy. This lets the audience feel how private guilt is amplified by a society designed to suffocate.
A single, persistent structure used across locations. In The Crucible, it can trap characters in the same “wooden cage” while furniture shifts signal house/court/jail.
Raised platforms that create visible status. In Act 3, Danforth elevated forces the accused to look up — architecture becomes intimidation.
What the audience can (and cannot) see. Bars or framing can restrict sightlines so the audience feels imprisoned with Proctor in Act 4.
Unpolished, axe-cut timber. It signals frontier harshness and the “unfinished” brutality of Salem’s morality.
Board-aware model paragraphs that connect set choices → meaning → audience effect.