SETPIECE Independent critical review Skip to content Issue 07 / 26

Notes

How the award categories changed across 72 seasons

Four categories in the first season. Fifty-four distinct headings across the whole record. The list is not stable, and the instability is the most useful thing about it — each new heading marks the moment a specialism became common enough to name.

A bare stage photographed from the deck, with an overhead lighting rig throwing coloured beams down through haze and a scaffolding tower standing at the right.
A rig loaded over a bare stage in the decade the craft categories settled into the list. Photographs illustrate the subject; they do not depict the productions named on this page.

The first season on this record carried three headings. Across all seventy-two seasons there are fifty-four distinct ones. No season carries them all, and several exist for only a few years before disappearing again.

The pattern is consistent enough to state plainly: a heading appears once enough productions employ a specialist to make the comparison meaningful. Projection design arrives in 2007-08 — not because nobody had projected anything before, but because the equipment became standard enough that the work could be judged against itself.

Fight choreography, first awarded in 2016-17, is the clearest case. Stage combat is as old as the stage. What changed is that enough productions hired someone whose whole job it was. The heading follows the specialism; it does not create it.

The 1970s ran a set of headings this record shows nowhere else: Most Promising Playwrights, Most Promising Composers, Most Promising Set Design. They existed for a handful of seasons and were dropped. A category can be a bad idea and still be part of the record.

Splits are the other half of the story. Scenic design divided across musical and play in 1995-96, lighting in 2008-09, sound in 2009-10, costume in 2015-16. Each split says the same thing: the workload in the two forms had stopped being comparable.

Read the fifty-four headings in order of first appearance and you have a rough history of the trade's own priorities — what it valued, when it noticed, and what it briefly thought mattered and then decided did not.

Every season on record → · Set design and game art →

Questions on this

How many category headings does this record hold?

Fifty-four distinct headings across seventy-two seasons. The first season carried three. No single season carries anything close to all of them, because headings arrive, split, get renamed and in several cases disappear entirely. Several headings existed for only a handful of seasons before being abandoned entirely.

Why do new categories appear at all?

Because a specialism becomes common enough to compare. Projection design arrives in 2007-08 and fight choreography in 2016-17 — neither was a new activity, but enough productions had begun employing someone whose entire job it was. The heading follows the specialism rather than creating it, which is why the dates are informative.

Did any categories get dropped?

Yes. The 1970s ran Most Promising Playwrights, Most Promising Composers and Most Promising Set Design, among others. They lasted a few seasons and were abandoned. A category can be a bad idea and still belong in the record. Their entries stay in the record because the awards were genuinely given, however briefly the heading lasted.

What does it mean when a category splits?

That the work in a musical and the work in a play had stopped being comparable. Scenic design split in 1995-96, lighting in 2008-09, sound in 2009-10 and costume in 2015-16 — the same judgement reached four separate times. Each split is a separate decision, reached four times across twenty years for four different crafts.

Is the changing list a problem for using the record?

Only if you read it as a fixed list. Read as a sequence it is the most informative part: each heading marks a decision about what deserved naming, and the dates of those decisions are the history of the trade's priorities.

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