Staging a scene using AutoCAD

Consider the art of stage choreography. No, not the kind where energetic singers in brightly coloured leotards earnestly hoof their way through a showstopper; rather, how the performers interact with the set around them, how buildings appear and disappear in the time it takes to play a few bars and how someone with a balcony ticket has a completely different (though no less intriguing) visual experience than someone sitting front and centre.

Set design is one of the most immersive parts of any show and this design (or lack thereof) is often both the first and last impression that a production has on its audience. It can seem like magic, as though fairy dust has been sprinkled and suddenly you're no longer sitting in your seat at a Broadway, West End or even a school show. Instead, you have been transported to Romeo and Juliet's Verona, Alexander Hamilton's 1776 or Peter Pan's Neverland.

Oli Cooper, a project draughtsman for London's National Theatre, is the guy whose job it is to make sure you get there.

“I take 1/25 scale models that designers have produced, or even just design concepts, and turn them into full design drawings, where they can edit and update their design based on budget, functionality and material economy,” he explains. “Then, from that, I take it to what we call a bench drawing, where we actually manufacture the piece in a carpentry or metal workshop for the stage. Alongside that, I also produce ground plans—what are essentially the architect's drawings—of the theatre with all these elements in and see how they co-ordinate together, essentially choreographing their dance around the stage.”

It doesn't end there. Cooper has to consider what happens to these sets when the curtain closes for the last time: “I have to plan for their initial storage and then even to the end of the show where it will be stored or possibly transported and destroyed.”

For Cooper, who has worked on plenty of high-profile productions in his five years at the National Theatre, there is one thing he can count on being the same with every show: his software.

“Everyone I have spoken to uses AutoCAD and I can see why,” he says. “The processes that we use in theatre and the speed of change, AutoCAD just enables us to really keep up with the process unlike any other programme. It allows us to be accurate in what we're producing but also organic, which is a really hard balance to find.”

And while the software is a constant, the shows could not be more different. When working on The Light Princess, he had to account for a lead actress who'd spend much of her time in the spotlight airborne. Ark-ive required a freestanding ark outside the theatre, which The Guardian described as “a grey clinker-built boat [that] has been beached: constructed from recycled scenery and riverside salvage, it's about 17 metres long and has a 10-metre-high mast.”

And then there is the Olivier Award–nominated production of Peter Pan. There were no plush bedrooms and pirate ships here, with Neverland having the look of a rusted-out warehouse secretly taken over by children, where the wires show and everything has the feel of dressing up in grandma's attic—if grandma lived in an abandoned shipyard.

Despite that ragtag feel, it's precision work behind the scenes. “Because of the quality and the standard to which the paperwork is expected, I don't think there'll ever be a shift for me, personally, from AutoCAD,” Cooper says. “With the add-ins that have been added recently, there is a lot of inventive stuff that has come across to AutoCAD from other programmes; you know, it's all those little features that keep getting added, so it becomes the better general tool—and yet, it's still a more specific tool than any other one that I have found and used.”

With AutoCAD as his foundation, Cooper and his peers are starting to branch out a bit, adding in other Autodesk programmes such as 3ds Max to test sightlines. It's a fascinatingly complex process, one that considers a huge number of variables for each individual piece of the set.

While every live show is a different experience and a unique moment in time, the actors creating that experience rely on the right set piece appearing in the right place at the right time. One that had better not break, wear out or move inappropriately. They can thank Cooper for making that possible.

“The processes that we use in theatre and the speed of change, AutoCAD just enables us to really keep up with the process unlike any other programme. It allows us to be accurate in what we're producing but also organic, which is a really hard balance to find.”