Introduction

One wants to live, even at sixty. – Sorin in Anton Chekov’s The Seagull

The scenic model is a miniature, three-dimensional representation of a scenic design built in an exact scale. A common working scale for scenic models is expressed as 1:24, or ½”=1’-0”, meaning every half-inch in the model corresponds to one foot in real life; a five-inch-tall wall in model form equals a ten-foot-tall wall on the stage. While the scenic designer is required to produce a model for each and every production, (I’ve already made hundreds in my lifetime), the building of the scenic model is not merely a rigorous component of our practice–it is an act of creation. Lovingly handcrafted from bits and pieces of this and that, the model takes on a life of its own, imagining whole worlds in miniature that inspire fantasies and daydreams. But all too often the meaning of the model’s being, its ontology, is ignored and the model is regarded as little more than a tool for communication, and when it outlives that material purpose, it is discarded on the trash heap. To this, I say, “attention must be paid”, for the model has a higher calling. The life of the scenic model, like any life spent in the service of art, is worthy of more consideration. We must imagine for it a better afterlife.