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Mise-en-Scène

As you learned earlier in this unit, play scripts often include minimal detail.  This serves two purposes. 

• First, it allows for a great deal of freedom to the people who are staging the play to make it their own unique production.
  
  
• Second, this minimal quality to scripts also gives everything on stage much greater importance.  The props, set, even the costumes all become very meaningful and serve to help tell the story and convey key themes.

Mise-en-scène is a term used both in theatre and film to describe everything other than dialogue that is used to help tell the story or set a mood.  The mise-en- scène is what makes the dialogue come to life.  It can serve a variety of purposes.  It can help the story seem believable, establish the setting, convey character personalities or state of mind, or help set the mood of a scene.

Mise-en-scène includes all of the director’s choices in the following areas:

• lighting
• set design and décor
• costuming (as well as makeup and hair)
• props
• blocking (actors’ movement and placement on stage)
• framing of a shot (for film)

Typically the director is very involved in decisions regarding the mise-en-scène of each scene.  He or she will usually work with the crew—set designers, costumers, lighting, hair, and make-up people, as well as the actors—to plan how everything should look.
 Next time you watch your favourite television show, or go to a movie or a play, pay attention to the mise-en-scène.   You will be amazed at the hundreds of small but meaningful details that you may never have noticed before!  Ask yourself what those details reveal about the story and the characters.