Design elements

Lighting

Created by Steven Loxley, a second year stage management student, Emma's lighting design has maintained a simplistic but bright theme. Mixing a naturalistic style with symbolic additions enhances the environment of each scene. For indoor scenes, Loxley has employed the use of red and amber units to create warmth, indicating the lack of electrical lighting of the era and the subsequent allusion to open hearths in living areas. In contrast, scenes set outside have embraced lighting with blues and greens indicative of the strength and colour of the English country side, which all Jane Austen novels celebrate. Loxley has also worked closely with Carolyn Taylor-Smith in ensuring that the colour themes of the costumes are highlighted and match with the lighting scheme. Using bright lighting for Emma, superbly supports this Austen comedy intrigue.

Sound

Second year stage management student, Ben Stewart, researched famous Regency composers in the lead up to designing the sound program to the USQ Emma production. He chose to use these period pieces, mainly Mozart, to accompany the play to celebrate the natural period feel of the script. Only choosing naturalistic sound accompaniments for the play was important to Stewart, when a carriage is on stage, there are realistic carriage sound effects to accompany the action in the hope to create a piece of history brought to life on stage.

Set

In order to get a comprehensive sense for the Regency period, Chris Willems researched the cultural, architectural and also decorative style of Regency. He has coupled this knowledge with a highly stylised set in order to capture the audience's imagination of the time that Jane Austen's writing captured. Working closely with director Joanna Butler, Willems has brought a highly developed theatrical sense and approach to Emma to maximise the effectiveness of his stage design. Choosing a light colour palette allows the lighting design to determine and vary the visual mood of the scenic elements.