@ CLUE On Stage 2025
STAGE DESIGN
CLUE on Stage is a fast-paced comedic murder mystery inspired by the classic board game, and it follows the spirit of the 1985 film adaptation. Six guests, Colonel Mustard, Mrs. White, Mrs. Peacock, Mr. Green, Professor Plum, and Miss Scarlet, arrive at a mansion for dinner, invited by the mysterious Mr. Boddy. Each guest is given a weapon and has a motive, and soon Mr. Boddy turns up dead.
The guests, along with the butler Wadsworth and the cook, scramble through the mansion’s rooms, including the study, library, kitchen, and ballroom, trying to work out who the killer is, with what weapon, and in which room. The show balances suspense with sharp comedy, with witty dialogue, slapstick chases, and nods to the board game’s mechanics. With so many rooms and so much running between them, the staging has to keep scene changes quick and the mansion easy to follow.
As the investigation spirals, several endings are revealed, each offering a different solution, which keeps the audience guessing until the final curtain.
For CLUE on Stage, I took on drafting the entire stage, which stretched my skills in new ways. The plans had to be shared with several people, so I taught myself Sweet Home 3D and mapped out the stage. With a mansion full of distinct rooms, a shared plan let everyone see how the spaces connected and where each one sat.
We had no access to the original floor plans, because our original technical director was on medical leave. So I measured the stage myself, running a long tape measure from a nail anchored on the stage, from the cyc to the front curtains. That produced a plan accurate to within about a foot. I learned how hard accurate measuring is without a laser level, and how to check for slack in the tape. During the build, the crew sometimes found pieces a foot or two off the plan. I caught those errors as they came up and fixed them, so they never stalled the work.
This was our original plan for CLUE on Stage. Much of the design was based on the original Parker Brothers board game, so the mansion and its rooms followed the board’s layout. Starting from a design people already knew gave the audience something familiar to recognize, and gave the crew a clear reference when we talked about where each room belonged.
We explored many ways to arrange the sets. The show moves fast, with characters running from the study to the library to the kitchen and ballroom, so the layout had to support that. We worked around the pivotal scenes and tracked where the key pairs of characters move from scene to scene, so the rooms they travel between could sit close together and transitions would stay quick. Each idea was a trade-off between keeping the board game’s feel and giving the actors a path they could run.
When we compared the plan to our real stage, some pieces were much too big for the space. We reworked the layout to fit, keeping the scenes and movement that mattered most and scaling the rest down. The original plan gave us the starting point the final design grew out of.
For CLUE on Stage, I took on drafting the entire stage, which stretched my skills in new ways. The plans had to be shared among several departments, so I taught myself Sweet Home 3D and built a digital model. With a mansion of many distinct rooms, a shared plan let everyone see how the spaces connected and where each room belonged.
Our original technical director was on medical leave, so I had no access to earlier floor plans or measurements. I measured the stage myself, anchoring a long tape measure with a nail, from the cyc to the front curtains. Without a laser level, my plan came out accurate to within about a foot, and I learned to check for slack in the tape. During construction, the adjustments that came up were the kind I expected, and I solved them as they appeared so they never stopped the build.
This was our original concept for CLUE on Stage. Much of the design was inspired by the Parker Brothers board game, so the mansion and its rooms followed the board’s familiar layout. Starting from a design audiences already recognized gave viewers an immediate visual connection and gave the crew a common reference when we talked about where each room belonged.
We explored many arrangements. The play moves quickly between the study, library, kitchen, ballroom, and dining room, so the layout had to support fast transitions and constant movement. We analyzed the key scenes, tracked where important pairs of characters travel, and placed frequently connected rooms close together. Each idea was a trade-off between keeping the board game’s feel and giving the actors paths they could run.
When we compared the concept with the actual dimensions of our stage, several elements were too large. We revised the layout to keep the movement patterns and storytelling priorities that mattered most and scaled the rest to fit. The original design was never built exactly as planned, but it was the foundation the final set grew from.
Using Sweet Home 3D, I drafted a floor plan of our stage, running from the cyc to the front curtains. The plan was accurate to within about a foot, not better, because I was measuring without the right tools. I did the measuring alone, anchoring a long tape measure with a nail at one end and walking the other end across the stage. Without a laser level, and without a second person to hold the tape, I couldn’t always keep it taut, and any slack added error to the measurement.
That taught me how hard accurate measuring is without proper equipment. I learned to check for slack, to expect small errors to add up over a long span, and to treat a hand-measured plan as a close guide, not an exact one. It also explains why the crew was often a foot or two off during the build.
CLUE on Stage was our first production with a substitute technical director. I was one of three senior technicians, and with the previous generation’s guidance gone, we stepped up to run the build ourselves.
The substitute director became an important mentor. He had worked at the school years earlier and was now a contractor, and he taught me practical skills like framing and construction techniques. Working with him showed me how much more there was to learn beyond what I already knew.
That mattered on a build with limited resources and measurements that were sometimes a foot or two off. I went to him when I needed guidance, and I fixed mistakes as they came up. The production taught me to adapt, to ask for help early, and to treat mistakes as part of the work.
These are the original character cards from the 1980s Parker Brothers Clue. I scanned them and adjusted the images to fit our portrait frames. In Adobe, I sampled the color profiles of the cards and extended each image to match the size we needed. Then I studied the roughness of the aged cards and worked to recreate it, keeping the wear random so the extended areas wouldn’t look patterned or obviously added.