The physical world of every play starts with imagination. Creatives including the writer, director and scenic designer dream up a backdrop that helps audiences believe in the lives of their characters.
It takes lumber and nails, cloth and pipes, power tools and paint to make these visions real. At CSUN, students in the Mike Curb College of Arts, Media, and Communication provide the craftsmanship and the sweat to make this happen for Department of Theatre productions, flexing their artistic and literal muscles.
“It’s so fun being able to be a part of that creative process and helping create a world for the actors and for the enjoyment of all the people who are coming to see the show,” said Arianna Alonso, a third-year theatre major with an emphasis in design. “So it’s just awesome to be part of that creative process. And it scratches an itch that I got, just to build and to make something.”
There are two scene shops on campus. The newest is a thoughtfully designed, first-class shop located inside the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts. The Soraya scene shop was designed as a learning space for students in the Mike Curb College, built to be easy to use and stocked with top-of-the-line equipment with extra safety features.
The hands-on experience highlights the integral link between the academic programs of the Mike Curb College and The Soraya, a connection formed in 2006 with a $5 million gift toward the construction of the performing arts center from music industry mogul and former California Lt. Gov. Mike Curb ’09 (Hon.D.).
“I love that shop,” Alonso said. “It’s a dream.”
Inside the Shop
Each semester, CSUN Theatre puts on at least one show in Experimental Theatre, located in The Soraya complex, an intimate black box space with flexible seating that enables extra creativity in set design. Most of the building work for these shows happens in The Soraya’s scene shop, tucked away on the venue’s first floor. The shop is also sometimes used to build sets for CSUN’s famed Teenage Drama Workshop, a conservatory-style program for building theatre skills.
The Soraya scene shop is built for woodworking and welding. It also has a small paint area and a shop for building props, said Laurien Allmon, the Department of Theatre’s scene shop supervisor, who has an office in The Soraya.
Its array of saws includes one by Festool that holds wood in place so students don’t have to put their hands near the blade. A computerized SawStop table saw can hit the brakes when it senses stray fingers.
It’s helpful that the shop is connected to the Experimental Theatre and features loading doors that are tall enough to bring in columns or scaffolding.
“They were smart when they made the shop,” Alonso said. “And they made a beautiful building.”
The Craft
The productions in the Experimental Theatre provide opportunities for student creativity and craftsmanship. The two shows there in 2025 couldn’t have looked more different.
“The Hunchback of Seville” set was designed by assistant professor Lily Bartenstein to look like a noble bedchamber inside a turret. The set was walls, stairs, a marble painted floor. Bartenstein’s class helped add fake brickwork.
For “The Good Person of Setzuan,” students built a run-down cityscape designed by guest artist Tom Buderwitz to evoke urban poverty. The set featured 20-foot walls using scaffolding, wood, metal, paint, tarps and whatever spare or rusty parts were in inventory.
“It’s very found object,” Allmon said.
The Students
Getting real-world experience building sets is an incredible opportunity for Mike Curb College theatre students interested in building sets for theatre, film or TV. The work on CSUN theatre productions is a differentiator in the job market.
Allmon typically hires two to four students per semester to help build sets for shows. These include the Department of Theatre’s shows as well as the Teenage Drama Workshop put on each summer.
Students usually come from the Mike Curb College theatre department’s two scenic design classes — Theatre 261, an introductory course, and 361, the intermediate course. Allmon looks for students with carpentry skills and some comfort with power tools. She looks for roles that meet their interests.
“We can negotiate, because I want them to succeed,” Allmon said. “I want them to enjoy building.”
Alonso started building things in her backyard with her dad, a construction worker.
“A lot of it was him teaching how you do it properly, because he didn’t want me to kill myself,” she said.
When Alonso got to middle school and then high school, she was able to help build theatre sets under supervision.
She’s helped on a few productions at CSUN and hopes to continue working with theatre productions after graduation. There’s something fulfilling about the time crunch of building a world before an upcoming show, the theatre major said.
“After the job is done, I’m like, ‘Wow, I really did that,’” Alonso said.
The spring 2026 Mike Curb College Department of Theatre schedule begins on Feb. 20 with a production of “Twelfth Night,” adapted and directed by Shelby Lewis, at the Little Theatre in Nordhoff Hall.
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