set and costume design: whose shoes?

We began our first term with a speculative project, working alongside the theatre company Red Earth Theatre and their co-artistic director, Amanda Wilde. Amanda decided she wanted us to design for a play by Mike Kenny, “Whose Shoes?”, an alternative style fairy tale narrated by a bag lady. Using applied theatre the company often performs shows in educational settings or schools, hence our design brief being set in a primary school’s hall. I found the model making process fairly simple, however in the model making sessions following my final presentation I made a few small changes including painting the colour of the mountain to a darker grey, reshaping the grass matting to look more naturalistic and remaking the bridge out of wood instead of cardboard, adding grain and texture.

To begin our devised project for “Whose Shoes?” we were put into groups where we brainstormed the themes of the play and the possible problems the audience may deal with at their age (9–10-year-olds). Merging these ideas, we created a modernised version of the fairy-tale where the main character, Eldemina, would go through each season looking for a different hobby. As a group we attended a shadow puppetry tutorial where we made 3D houses and looked at previous years shadow puppets made from a range of materials, card, wire, and acetate. This aided our final decision to use shadow puppetry throughout the performance. It took a group effort for us all to make shadow puppets, source props and costumes, design projected drawings for the backdrops and create captioning using acetate and an overhead projector.

carnival costume: gluttony

Term 2 began with experimentation, preparing ourselves for our carnival project alongside the talented carnival artist, Clary Salandy. We spent the first 2 weeks creating sculptures and expressive drawings of the 7 deadly sins. As a group we focused the first week and a half on sloth, but eventually landed on gluttony as the chosen sin for our carnival costume. With a week and a half to go, we began designing and making our final costume with help from Clary. The group and I found that this was not enough time to create a fully complete and well-made costume. Therefore, our final costume missed particular aspects such as extra plates balanced around the performer’s legs, food scraps overloading the plates and an unpainted headpiece. Upon reflection, I believe only the first week should have been experimentation followed by a week of designing and the rest making. None the less, I learnt a great amount of knowledge around the materials used for carnival costumes and how carnival artists such as Clary make the costumes move to fit each costumes characteristic.

site specific theatre: 7 deadly sins

Following on from the carnival project, we began our site-specific project around NTU’s Arkwright building, photographing interesting architecture and noting down what emotions arose whilst in areas in and around the building. In groups, we marked down which spaces best linked to each deadly sin, and from this created a site-specific performance, linking to the historical context of the building. My group instantly focused on the age of the building, erected between 1877-81, and decided to pick a Victorian novel to perform for each deadly sin. My chosen sin was pride, depicted through a performance of The Picture of Dorian Grey (Oscar Wilde). With my chosen space in the building, I created an architectural drawing using brown paper, charcoal, and white pencil to create shadows and lighting. To aid this design I made a digital version using photoshop, with added lighting, audience, and a performer. I was able to develop my site-specific knowledge within this short 2-week project, which will be useful for future projects. It was also very insightful as this was my first attempt at an architectural drawing, which I was pretty proud of.

opera costume design: l'enfant et les sortileges

Whilst working on this opera I helped a third-year student, Yeelen Fourcade, on her final project, designing costumes for Nottingham College’s performance of “Oh! What A Lovely War”. Due to this, I was only able to focus on one aspect of the operas design, I chose costume. I attempted to focus my costume scheme on the late Victorian era style fashion, but whilst designing for some of the furniture and object costumes I didn’t stick to this periods fashion. If I was to redesign these costumes, I would make them all cohesive with Victorian styles such as a bustle for the teapot, or a traditional Victorian men’s suit for the grandfather clock. I am however very happy I chose to design for costume as it helped me improve my life drawing skills, specifically drawing faces and body stances.

Construct the moment: Shower room

For the first three weeks of the Construct the Moment project I was still working on my placement at Nottingham College. Once I joined my group back at University they decided to recreate the shower room within the Waverley building. Although the group had not yet began constructing the shower room all the group members had their own roles, therefore I often found myself completing odd jobs. My first individual job assigned by the project manager, Emily, was to attempt to recreate the light fixtures from the bathrooms using the materials available in the workshop. To my surprise, there was a textured acrylic in the workshop which was the exact same pattern as the plastic in the bathroom’s light fixtures, to make this I created a mould so the acrylic could be vacuum formed the right shape and then cut to size. Once this was complete, I needed to create a frame for the fixture but there was no white acrylic left in the workshop, therefore I used wood. To give the illusion of a plastic frame, the wood was sanded down, each hole filled with Polyfilla, painted white and finally, glossed. Albert, our workshop technician, was a great help as I had not used any of the workshop tools since 2020, pre-covid. After I became comfortable in the workshop I was able to help creating other accessories needed for the shower room such as the light switch and an air vent. I was also able to practise my scenic painting aiding the scenic painter, Tia with the shower curtain and whilst painting and glossing the wall tiles.