HOME > ABOUT > SUSTAINABILITY
SUSTAINABLE
SCENERY
A Long-Term Investment in Theatre Education
PROVEN
STEWARDSHIP
Nearly two decades of repertory reuse demonstrates that every investment is built to last.
LASTING
IMPACT
Grant-funded resources will serve hundreds of students across many productions and future seasons.
ARTISTIC
EXCELLENCE
Professional quality resources allow students to experience ambitious theatre at an exceptional level.
EDUCATIONAL
ACCESS
Students receive hands-on theatrical training and production opportunities within their public school.
BUILT BY STUDENTS
Our stages are built through collaboration, cooperation, and teamwork. Students work side by side to construct, paint, repair, and maintain our repertory scenery - developing practical theatre skills while taking ownership of the worlds they bring to life onstage.
For nearly two decades, LCHS Theatre has treated scenic construction as a long-term educational investment rather than a disposable production expense.
Large-scale scenic environments are deliberately designed, maintained, stored, reconfigured, repainted, and redressed for multiple productions across successive student cohorts.
LCHS REPERTORY SCENERY
EDWARDIAN MANSION
2007 - Present (20 years)
DESCRIPTION
A formal, full-stage interior built around tall paneled walls, monumental cornice work, practical architectural openings, and a raised central entrance. Its restrained Edwardian vocabulary can be transformed through furniture, properties, color, and lighting, allowing the same durable architecture to support very different comic and dramatic worlds.
PRODUCTIONS
Cash On Delivery
Don’t Drink The Water
The Curious Savage
Rumors
NEW YORK APARTMENT
2007 - Present (20 years)
DESCRIPTION
A flexible multi-level apartment interior with stair units, landings, doorways, wall panels, and practical circulation. The architecture is intentionally neutral enough to shift between periods, neighborhoods, and socioeconomic circumstances through paint, furniture, dressing, and lighting rather than requiring a new structural build for every production.
PRODUCTIONS
The Odd Couple
Jake’s Women
Beau Jest
Lost In Yonkers
VICTORIAN HOME
2007 - Present (20 years)
DESCRIPTION
A richly detailed domestic interior using tall walls, crown molding, wainscoting, practical doors, a staircase, and multiple playing levels. Surface treatments and decorative dressing can move the environment from restrained realism to heightened period comedy while preserving the same core scenic structure.
PRODUCTIONS
Proof
You Can’t Take It With You
Arsenic and Old Lace
See How They Run
ELIZABETHAN PLAYHOUSE
2007 - Present (20 years)
DESCRIPTION
A permanent classical playing space inspired by Elizabethan theatrical architecture, with columns, an upper gallery, twin staircases, and a strong symmetrical façade. Rather than rebuilding for each Shakespeare production, scenery, properties, banners, lighting, and staging choices transform the same architectural framework for a new play.
PRODUCTIONS
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
Twelfth Night
19TH CENTURY LONDON
2007 - Present (20 years)
DESCRIPTION
A modular streetscape of aged plaster, exposed brick, shutters, doors, windows, and layered architectural trim that can be rearranged around the theatre’s portal system. The same components have created multiple versions of nineteenth-century London, demonstrating how modular scenic architecture can be recomposed and redressed rather than discarded.
PRODUCTIONS
A Christmas Carol
Les Miserables
Oliver!
Jekyll & Hyde
MEDIEVAL CASTLE
2004 - Present (23 years)
DESCRIPTION
A large-scale Gothic environment of stone walls, pointed arches, towers, columns, galleries, and modular architectural units. Its deliberately broad medieval/Gothic vocabulary allows the structure to move between ominous drama and European period storytelling through lighting, scenic dressing, and selective reconfiguration.
PRODUCTIONS
Dracula
Once Upon A Mattress
Camelot
Man of La Mancha
STOCK MUSICAL SCENERY
In addition to the principal repertory environments above, LCHS maintains a substantial inventory of modular musical scenery. Platforms, stair units, portals, wall systems, architectural details, and specialty scenic pieces are repeatedly adapted and recombined rather than treated as single-use construction. The examples below show how this stock inventory supports productions with radically different visual identities.
SWEENEY TODD
LEGALLY BLONDE
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
MAMMA MIA!
This repertory model is both environmentally and financially sustainable: materials are preserved, structural components are reused, and new grant-funded construction expands an existing system instead of replacing it. Just as importantly, the model is educational. Students learn to inherit, maintain, adapt, and improve production resources created by the students who came before them. The proposed scenic expansion continues an established LCHS practice with a documented record of long-term use.
PROPOSED SCENIC DESIGN
The following concept drawings were created for the new repertory scenery proposed through this grant. They show how the new pieces are being designed for their first use in Annie while becoming part of the larger scenic repertory used across our grades 7-12 program.
