GC5: Evaluation of High School Musical

IntroductionThe area of the set for “High School Musical” that I was responsible was the interior for the “School”. The interior breaks down into the back half of the set and the corridor area of the set.

Pros A pro of my piece is that it fits in with the social context of the play. “East High” has a high basketball pedigree and within the play they compete in the “championship game”. Also it tells the audience that the school is very much focused on basketball rather than the “arts” or science. Also, I am pleased with the selection of trophies we used. Because we sourced the

trophies from the cast and crew people had football and cricket trophies. But those trophies didn’t work because the audience would notice that the trophies didn’t match the play. So we picked trophies that either looked like basketball trophies or they were neutral. Finally, we picked trophies that had colour because “High School Musical” is an all dancing and happy musical so the colour of the trophies would have indicated that to the audience.

Looking at the whole set in general, I think the sports equipment was a good idea because this further shows the schools bias towards sports rather than the other disciplines such as drama and chemistry. If you compare the scenes in the chemistry lab or drama studio they had little, if any equipment whilst the basketball team had basketballs, cones, a net and lots of basketballs.

Another idea that worked is the floor. We used laminate to give the idea that it was a basketball court but when we rolling it

out we didn’t have enough. So, we spread the laminate out across the space to give the illusion that there is more than there is. Also we put a white E with a red border to show the audience that it is “East High’s” sports hall. This fits in with the social context of the play that the popular group are the basketball team or “Jocks”.

A good point about the set is the lockers. There is 4 blocks of lockers which each identify each social group. The Jocks, Brainiacs, Thespians (the drama group) and the skater group. The locker with the trophies on it is the Jocks locker. The locker with the pink locker (Sharpay’s locker) is the thespians locker. The locker with the science decathlon posters are they Brainiac’s locker. And the locker with notice board is the Skater group. This isn’t clear to the audience because the Skater group don’t have any main roles.

Finally, a strength about the set is the flags on the flats at the back of the set. This shows that the whole school is cheering on the basketball team which seems to be the main focus of the show. This backs up my previous point

on how the school is very bias towards the basketball team.

ConsA weakness of this set is that there is crash mats under the staging. Now, I can why we used it to show the audience that the school is sports orientated but since all the equipment is all basketball the crash mats stand out a little. If were to do it next time I would replace the mats with more basketball equipment .

ConclusionTo conclude I think that the set is very good and it takes in both geographical context and social context into account. If I was to change anything for another production I would think about changing the crash mats for maybe some lockers or some more gym equipment. But all in all a good set.