Drama Puzzles

Interactive tools for drama students and teachers

Symbolism Digital Tool

September 24, 2025By Justin Cash11-12 (Ages 16-18)9-10 (Ages 14-16)VCE Drama and Theatre Studies

Here is an innovative app I designed to help students develop a stronger understanding of symbolism in drama. At its essence, a symbol represents something beyond its literal meaning; however, this meaning may take on multiple forms, making it challenging for performers to convey their intended ideas clearly to an audience. The Symbol Switchboard helps students in generating compelling symbols for devised drama and supports a deeper exploration of how symbolism interacts with various theatrical elements in performance.

How Does It Work?

In the Symbol Switchboard app below, you are presented with a series of choices in a range of distinct categories for your devised drama:

  • Prompt: First, read the generated prompt at the top of the app describing the scene
  • Style: Now choose one of the twenty different theatre styles in which to perform the scene
  • Space: Next, select one of eight well-known theatre spaces that best suits staging the prompt in – will you choose a traverse stage with an audience on two long sides, or theatre-in-the-round?
  • Proxemics: Next up are sixteen different spacing arrangements with diagrams and meanings – here, you will gain a better understanding of the symbolism behind character placement in the theatre.
  • Lighting Colour: Now, think about the lighting colour and how your choice can symbolically enrich the scene
  • Costume Colour: Then choose one of nearly thirty costume colours and learn the symbolism behind it
  • Prop/Object: Objects used as props can become powerful symbols in stage plays – here you have 78 different props and their symbolic meanings to choose one or more for your scene.
  • Tempo-Gesture: Next up is the character(s) movement in the scene and the associated tempo – choose from shielded slow movements to sudden slashing movements, and understand their symbolism
  • Words: Finally, discover how one or more words can become intense symbols, whether spoken or projected in a scene – choose one or more words that best act as symbols for the prompt.
Symbolism in drama - Lighting Colour
Various lighting colours can be chosen, each with different symbolic meanings.

Score

After you have completed these tasks, you will be given a score out of a possible 100 marks for clarity, with academic feedback and specific recommendations on how to improve your choices. Have you chosen a weak performance space for that particular prompt? Could your prop selection better align with the prompt? Are the meanings of your chosen lighting and costume colours clashing with the scene prompt?

Now, you can:

  • Edit your original response for a higher score and a richer understanding of the prompt
  • Clear all your choices and start over with the same prompt
  • Start over with a new prompt at the same difficulty level
  • Generate a “Staging Card” for use in the classroom
Symbolism in Drama Props
Nearly 80 different props can be chosen for their symbolic significance.

Symbolism in Drama: The Staging Card

The aim is to gain a deeper understanding of how symbols function in drama, the various modes in which symbolism can be communicated to an audience, and to attempt to stage combined choices within the app in a devised drama in the classroom.

Generating a Staging Card in the app will:

  • Present you with a summary of all your choices in one place
  • Offer directorial notes on how to stage the scene in the classroom
  • Allow you to save the Staging Card as a PDF
  • Allow you to print the Staging Card

Now, as they say, you’re off to the races, trying to stage a devised drama in the classroom using the scene prompt and each of the symbolic choices made in the Symbol Switcher app.

Modes

There are several modes for engaging with the Symbol Switcher app:

  • Devising short dramas in small groups
  • Have each group make selections in the app, generate a Staging Card, and pass it on to another group to interpret and perform
  • Devising longer dramas in small or large groups

Symbol Switchboard App

Teacher Corner

Teachers can gain a deeper understanding of how to apply Symbol Switchboard in the classroom at my companion site, The Drama Teacher.

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