The play that I have decided to design a set for is Rent. Rent is a rock opera with music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème. It tells a story of a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York's Lower East Side in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS. The most basic requirement of a set is to serve the text and the performance. 
All sets should provide a playable space that allows actors to move about and make their entrances and exits freely. This being said, set designers need to consider a text very carefully to make note of all special needs of the production. As stated above, Rent takes place in New York’s Lower East Side. To facilitate a set that fits the production, I think research must be conducted of the area that the set is to emulate. The Lower East Side is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. One of the oldest neighborhoods of the city, the Lower East Side has long been a lower-class worker neighborhood and often a poor and ethnically diverse section of New York. As well as Italians, Poles, Ukrainians, and other ethnic groups, it once had a sizeable German population. I think for the set there should be 
a consistent background of the façade of a tenement building with a large, black wrought iron fire escape going up the side. The fire escape being a key feature in one of the play’s acts. The majority of the set should be fabricated from the lightest and cheapest materials available thus saving cost on construction and saving time between set changes and requiring the use of minimal stage hands.
All sets should provide a playable space that allows actors to move about and make their entrances and exits freely. This being said, set designers need to consider a text very carefully to make note of all special needs of the production. As stated above, Rent takes place in New York’s Lower East Side. To facilitate a set that fits the production, I think research must be conducted of the area that the set is to emulate. The Lower East Side is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. One of the oldest neighborhoods of the city, the Lower East Side has long been a lower-class worker neighborhood and often a poor and ethnically diverse section of New York. As well as Italians, Poles, Ukrainians, and other ethnic groups, it once had a sizeable German population. I think for the set there should be 
a consistent background of the façade of a tenement building with a large, black wrought iron fire escape going up the side. The fire escape being a key feature in one of the play’s acts. The majority of the set should be fabricated from the lightest and cheapest materials available thus saving cost on construction and saving time between set changes and requiring the use of minimal stage hands. 
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