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In a play there floats a “mood,” a “tone,” or a “feel,” if you will, that can, more or less be detected in all of the comprising elements of a dramatic work.
The director is to find such a “mood” and to stage it before the audience. It is he with the help of the designers (setting, light, costume, make up, props, etc.) and the collaboration of the actors, creates an atmosphere encompassing that “mood/tone/feel.”
Such a “mood” may either be accentuated or barely implied in a play.
To communicate such a “mood”, thedirector has at his disposal a number of artifice both visual and aural.
The sum total of affairs and the artifice visualized before the audience by the director are accounted for as the “visuals”, while all of those that are heard by the audience comprise the “aural” counterparts.
There are directors who favor appeal to other human senses as well in the course of their play taking advantage of touch, taste,
and sense of smell in creating the dramatic “mood”.
The indigenous setting of a coffee-shop, where theatre-goers may assemble to see a traditional play, provides the director with the opportunity to serve tea to his patrons as an extension of the play.
Having actors shake hands with the audience reinforces the friendly atmosphere and enables the director to explore another channel of communication, the sense of touch.
Burning aromatic plants and spices will appeal to the sense of smell and introduces an atmosphere to the audience from a slightly different angle of sensation.
It is the visual and the aural communication, however, that have most pervasively been utilized by stage directors. “Mood” and “atmosphere” are the foremost means of theatrical expression, uniquely accentuated and centrally devised by the schools of Symbolism, Expressionism, and Impressionism.