Before You Start Using Projections in Theatre | From Zero to One
You’ve seen a production use projections and thought:
We should be doing that.
Maybe it was a Broadway show. Maybe another high school down the road used digital scenery in its musical. Maybe you saw a production transform from a city street to a rooftop to an entirely different country without rolling a single piece of scenery onstage.
Then comes the harder question:
Okay…how would we actually do that in our theatre?
What kind of projector do we need? What do we project onto? Where does the projector go? Will actors cast shadows? Who runs everything? And what if our “theatre” is actually a gym, church, cafeteria or multipurpose room?
I recently sat down with my longtime friend and theatre director Corrie Cooper to talk about exactly that.
Not how to create the ultimate projection system.
How to get from zero to one.
And that distinction might be the most important place to start.
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First: Don’t Design the Perfect System
One of the easiest ways to make theatre projections intimidating is to begin by looking at what the biggest professional productions are doing.
Huge projectors. Media servers. Projection mapping. LED walls. Dedicated technicians.
That's one version of projection design.
It doesn't have to be your first version.
Corrie has now worked with professional theatre spaces where much of the infrastructure is already there. She can arrive with her imagery prepared in QLab, rent the appropriate lens or equipment, plug in and go.
But that isn't where she started.
She has also directed in spaces where the only available projection surface was a screen hanging above the stage.
For one production of Peter Pan, that was essentially what she had to work with.
So rather than dismissing projections because she couldn't fill the entire back wall, she designed around the screen she actually had. The imagery lived above the performers, and she adjusted the compositions to make that relationship feel intentional.
That's a useful first principle:
Don't begin with the projection setup you wish you had. Begin with the space you actually have.
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What Do You Really Need to Use Digital Scenery?
At its simplest, theatrical projection requires three things:
Something that displays the image. Something that sends the image. And something to put the image on.
Usually that means a projector, a computer, and a projection surface.
That surface doesn't necessarily have to be a purpose-built projection screen. Depending on the production and setup, theatres use cycloramas, scrims, flats and even light-colored walls.
From there, the questions become specific to your room.
How large is the stage?
How far can the projector be from the screen?
Where are the actors performing?
What lighting is hitting the projection surface?
Do you have space behind the stage?
And perhaps most importantly:
Who around you knows more about this than you do?
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Corrie’s Best Advice: Don’t Go It Alone
This was one of my favorite parts of our conversation.
If you're a theatre teacher who isn't particularly technical, you don't have to suddenly become an audiovisual engineer.
Look around.
There may be someone in your school district who understands projectors. There may be a parent who works in AV, IT, video production, live events or electrical installation. Your venue may have someone who can look at your stage and recommend a solution. An AV company may be able to install or rent equipment for the run rather than requiring you to purchase anything.
Corrie has approached it several different ways. One school invested in used equipment. For another production, she hired an AV company to install a projector temporarily. And she points out that if a school sees the equipment as something that will serve productions for the next five or ten years—not simply an expense for this year's musical—the financial conversation starts looking very different.
That's a healthier question than:
“How do I learn all of this myself?”
Try:
“Who could help us figure this out?”
That's theatre, after all.
We don't normally expect the director to sew every costume, hang every light, conduct the orchestra and build every platform.
Projection design doesn't have to be different.
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Front Projection vs. Rear Projection
This is one of the first technical decisions you'll encounter.
With front projection, the projector is somewhere in front of the projection surface and throws the image toward it.
The obvious advantage is space. You don't need a large area behind the screen.
The challenge is equally obvious:
People can walk through the light.
If an actor gets between the projector and the surface, you've got a shadow.
Corrie recommends thinking about this as part of your staging—not after your blocking is finished. Depending on the angle and position of the projector, you may need to reserve a portion of the upstage area where actors simply don't go.
Getting the projector higher and creating a steeper projection angle can help. But every room is different.
With rear projection, the projector sits behind a translucent projection surface and throws the image toward the audience.
The big advantage is wonderful:
Your actors can walk right up to the scenery without creating those front-projection shadows.
The tradeoff is space. Rear projection requires enough room behind the screen for the projector to create the image. AACT notes that a conventional rear-projection arrangement can require roughly 8–15 feet behind the surface.
For some schools, that's impossible.
For others, it can unlock some terrific staging possibilities.
Which brings me to one of my favorite projection stories.
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Our First Projection Screen Was Pretty Ridiculous
Years ago, before Theatre Avenue became what it is today, I was experimenting with projections in community theatre.
We had an unusual performance space with quite a bit of depth backstage, so we decided:
Okay. We're going to try rear projection.
There was just one problem.
We didn't have a rear-projection screen.
Fortunately, we had a parent volunteer who was really good at building things.
He constructed a giant wooden frame almost like you would build a canvas for a painting. Then we stretched semi-translucent construction plastic across it.
And somehow bicycle parts became involved in getting the whole thing properly tensioned.
Our projector?
A little short-throw gaming projector we bought online.
And because this was backstage during Annie, we put a stepladder over the projector to keep someone from accidentally stepping on it.
The same parent volunteer then sat beside the projector during performances and helped usher the orphans over it as they crossed from one side of the stage to the other.
It was not sophisticated.
But here's the important part:
It worked.
We had gone from zero to one.
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And Version Two Was Better
The next time we used rear projection was for Charlotte's Web.
By then we understood more.
And suddenly we discovered something wonderful about rear projection.
Charlotte could walk right up to the screen.
Because the projector was behind her, she wasn't throwing a giant shadow across the image. We could animate the words appearing in Charlotte's web while the performer interacted with the imagery right in front of it.
That was something we couldn't have learned by waiting until we owned the perfect projector.
We learned it by doing a show.
Then another.
And another.
That's the part of getting started with projections that I think sometimes gets lost in conversations about lumens, lenses and screen materials.
You are allowed to get better at this.
Your first show doesn't have to demonstrate everything projections are capable of doing.
Maybe your first production uses ten projected backgrounds.
Maybe it uses three.
Maybe all you've got is an overhead screen, and the only thing you project during Peter Pan is a beautiful moon.
That's still one more storytelling tool than you had before.
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Think About the Actors Before You Think About the Image
There is another mistake that's easy to make when projections are new:
You become so focused on making the projected image work that you forget there's a play happening in front of it.
Your actors still need somewhere to perform.
With front projection, Corrie points out that the beam itself effectively becomes part of your scenic footprint. Actors entering that space can create shadows, so projector placement and blocking have to be considered together.
Lighting matters too.
A projector is creating an image with light. Your theatrical lighting is also creating an image with light.
Those two systems have to learn to live together.
If you're blasting a projection surface with stage light, don't be surprised when the scenery starts looking washed out. Keeping appropriate stage lighting away from the projection surface can make a substantial difference in image clarity.
This is why I like thinking of projections as scenery, rather than simply “video.”
They affect blocking.
They affect lighting.
They affect transitions.
They affect where physical scenery goes.
They should be considered as part of the stage—not something added to it at the end.
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Don’t Forget About Scene Changes
Corrie brought up one challenge I think first-time projection users rarely anticipate:
Blackouts.
With traditional scenery, you might take the stage completely dark, move everything, and bring the lights back up.
A projector complicates that slightly.
The transition between two digital environments becomes visible unless you deliberately design what happens between them.
Maybe one image fades into another.
Maybe the projection goes dark before the stage lighting does.
Maybe an animated transition carries us from one location to the next.
There isn't one universal answer.
But Corrie's point is worth remembering: transitions need rehearsal too.
The technology shouldn't announce itself every time you change locations.
Ideally, the audience simply follows the story somewhere new.
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Should You Buy a Projector?
Maybe.
But don't assume you have to.
One of Corrie's examples involved simply hiring an AV company to install a projector for the week. She compared that expense with what it would have cost to create the kind of full physical scenery she wanted and found the numbers surprisingly comparable.
For a school planning to use projections regularly, purchasing equipment may eventually make sense.
For a theatre experimenting for the first time, renting may make more sense.
And if you're performing in a professional venue, some or all of what you need may already be available.
The important thing is to solve your actual production problem before you start shopping for equipment.
A projector isn't the goal.
A better production is.
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The Most Important Step Is Probably the First One
Looking back at that homemade Annie setup now is funny.
We've learned a lot since then.
The technology has changed. The artwork has changed. The equipment has changed. Our understanding of how projections can interact with actors, physical scenery, lighting and storytelling has changed.
But I'm glad we didn't wait for all of that knowledge before trying.
Because theatre has always worked this way.
Someone says:
“Wouldn't it be great if we could…”
And then a handful of people stand around looking at a stage until somebody says:
“Well…what if we tried this?”
That's scenic design.
That's lighting.
That's costumes.
That's directing.
And, despite all the technology involved, that's projection design too.
Your first setup doesn't need to prove you've figured everything out.
It just needs to get you to version two.
Watch the Full Conversation
If you're considering projection backdrops or digital scenery for a school musical, community theatre production, dance performance or other live production, Corrie and I go much deeper into the practical side of getting started in the full conversation.
▶ Watch: Want to Use Theatre Projections? Start Here.
And if you're ready to see what digital scenery could actually look like in your next production, you can explore Theatre Avenue's projection backdrops and show collections.
The important part is that you don't need to have the whole thing figured out before you begin.
Sometimes getting from zero to one is enough.
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