What is a reality show 'set piece'?

What is a reality show 'set piece'?

When you're producing a reality television show, you don't want to just watch people live their lives in the rawest form, in general. That's boring. So what reality producers do is they have set pieces in which the cast participates in some way. In The Surreal Life, a show I did, a newspaper would come in the morning and tell them what they were going to do that day, and it might be that they had to put on a show for kids in the back yard. All of a sudden, you get, "Who's the director? Who's going to be in charge? Who's a good actress? Who's going to be a bad actress? Who's going to say something inappropriate to the kids?" There are all kinds of turmoil and problems that come from that one little set piece on a reality show. After that, what happens is unpredictable, but the set piece was scheduled weeks in advance. We knew we were going to have them do a backyard play; weeks in advance we located a school that was willing to bring the kids to see the show. We produced it and we sent it in and what happened was the true story of how the reality show cast reacted to that set piece.