Set, costume, light, and sound designers work together to invent a stage environment for the actors that both supports the content of the script, and transports the audience to a different world. This magical world is tangibly represented in the Chicago Theater Collection by the set renderings, floor plans and elevations of the set designer, the sketches and swatches of the costumer, the sound plots and cue sheets of the sound designer, and the technical plans and light plots of the lighting designer. These documents, while supplementing the literary, artistic, and administrative contents of the production files, also give researchers the opportunity to follow the career of a single designer, to compare and contrast different design concepts for the same play, and to study the impact of Chicago designers on contemporary American theater. Rehearsal photograph for the 1988 Goodman Theatre production of Pal Joey. Even routine movements such as walking across a stage or placing a book on a table are part of a nonverbal vocabulary that conveys feeling, drama and character to an audience.
Movement can be as important as the spoken word.
The Chicago Theater Collection best represents this illusive activity through a large body of production prompt scripts. A prompt script is a wo-dimensional manifestation of what happens on stage, and not only records movement as imagined by the playwright, but notes and transcribes the director's and performers' interpretation of that movement, and how it is rendered technically and dramatically. Productions with dance numbers or fight sequences pose different challenges, and often require the expertise of an additional artistic staff member, the choreographer. Records such as dance and fight notations, rehearsal photographs, and production staff meeting minutes give insight into the way choreographed movement is incorporated into the drama. An indispensable member of any production is the stage manager, the moving force behind much of the play's backstage activity.