The students in Mr. Jack Micetich’s high school theatre tech classes receive detailed training in lighting design, set design and construction, costume design, and several other areas of stage production. As they began to build the set for the fall play, The Play That Goes Wrong, students completed an activity to show the importance color theory plays in the design of any production.
Students initially sorted M&Ms by color, labeling each section with the corresponding color. From there, they mixed up the M&Ms, and then tried to re-sort them by color under various tones of light, noting how each color changes drastically under different tones. What they may have thought the blue M&Ms were under green light, actually turned out to be yellow, and so on.
While changing the color of a costume, wall color, or light cue, may seem like a small adjustment, this activity helped show how a singular change in color can affect all the different design elements of a show.