Jacques and his Master

This photograph details the model box for the design of Milan Kundera's Jacques and his Master.

Jacques and his Master

I used collage here to suggest the unreality of the world for these characters. Also, the mirrors on this design suggested the vanity of the character.

The Three Penny Opera at The Arts Institute at Bournemouth.

Mac the Knife wore this pinstripe suit. The interesting design detail was that the lining suggested his evil, murderous nature.....with his name surrounded with blood stains.

The director featured this element in the choreography of the scene. It was a simple device , but it was quite unsettling for the audience when the lining was revealed.

The Three Penny Opera at The Arts Institute at Bournemouth.

This image is of the final design for Jenny. She wore a black gaberdine coat over her red dress.

This was for the scene with Mac in the street when she sings the "Pirate Jenny" number.

The Three Penny Opera at The Arts Institute at Bournemouth.

The Whore House!

I deliberately designed the shirts to be super vibrant. This style suited the "musical" element of the production and was clearly influenced by the heightened reality of the German Expressionist artists that I had seen.

The Three Penny Opera at The Arts Institute at Bournemouth.

This design was inspired by an Otto Dix painting.

The dress is made of satin backed crepe and scattered with sequins.

The Three Penny Opera at The Arts Institute at Bournemouth.

This dramatic image shows the 2 narrators in action...

The Three Penny Opera at The Arts Institute at Bournemouth.

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These amazing suits were made by the 2nd year Costume for Screen and Stage students at The Arts Institute at Bournemouth.

The design was influenced by a exhibition that I went to in New York called Glitter and Doom. The exhibition concerned itself with the art of the Weimar republic and German Expressionism.

Fragment of the frontcloth I designed for Cinderella

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This image is of half of the frontcloth I designed for Cinderella.....inspired by the french court, with the fleur de lys.

This is just half of the design.

The set for Tess of the D'Urbervilles I discussed earlier

Here is the set I discussed earlier in my blog.

Tess is descending the stairs in a dark red silk dressing gown. Angel is waiting for her.....

Cinderella

This photograph shows my design for the Ugly sisters finale costume for Cinderella.
I wish it was in colour....the idea was to have the pair come on , revolve together centre stage, looking like a fountain form a grand french palace and then separate, revealing the inside of the pond, complete with fish and plants.
The costumes were made from turquoise and gold lame. The dames wore blue hard wigs with a gold cupid perched on top......not at all camp!

Daisy pulls it off

This picture shows the two leading characters, Daisy (in the background) and Trixie.
The gym "horse" was also a multi functional prop, becoming a bed, a desk and of course part of the clifftop!
The set was very minimalist, but the costumes were designed to be very accurate representations of school uniform in the pre-war period.
The school blouses were made with extra large soft collars to replicate those I had seen in photographs from the 1930's.
The pinafore dresses were made from navy fine wool and carefully pleated and held with a yellow woven "garter which represented school sports colours.

Daisy pulls it off!

Daisy pulls it off! by Denise Deegan is a "jolly hockey sticks" sort of a play within a play.
Based on the schoolgirl stories of Angela Brazil and Enid Blyton's Malory Towers stories, this paly saw the cast of schoolgirls performing their play in the school gym. Each actor played at least two parts and the gym climbing frames pulled out to represent doors, walls, windows and even a clifftop........all spiffing japes gels!

Designs for Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

I created these designs using black paper to reflect the film noir aspects of the production. I did not do the set design for this piece. The designer, John Jenkins, designed the set using predominantly black as the major theme.

The Jeni from Aladdin

This is my design for The Jeni of the Ring from Aladdin.

The trousers were made from liquid lame and the cummerbund was made from a gold and black brocade.

This performer was an acrobat who wore a double wired harness (hence the wide cummerbund), and performed complex acrobatics whilst "flying".

Gold was a colour theme that I used throughout the production.

Aladdin designs

I was lucky enough to be asked by Marina Caldarone and Julian Woolford to design their production of Aladdin at The Queens Theatre , Hornchurch.

I loved working on this production. We really tried to push the boundaries with the genre of Pantomine. 

Our Aladdin was played by a male actor, rather than the usual female.

This costume design is for Widow Twankey's first appearance. I tried to reflect current fashions, but , obviously exaggerate the design features with garish colours, "pagoda" shoulder detail and a large embroidered feature on the back panel.

The dame who played this part, asked that we kept the designs quite feminine with high heels and huge wigs, but with no false breasts!

I broke several cardinal rules of costume design -you will notice that I did not "colour in" my design, but used the colour of the paper to suggest where myself and the supervisor might"go" with the fabric choices. We had limited time to chose fabrics and we needed to be able to respond to whatever was available in the fabric shops. You can see some swatches in the top left hand corner. 

A photo of Angel from Tess of the D'Urbervilles

You can clearly see the heavy swagged backcloths in the background.

I think that Angel's costume (on the left) is a good likeness to the original design. The suit that he wears was made of a cream linen. The actors are standing on the higher level that I incorporated into the design.

Tess costumes

This shows a part of the costume design, in my next post, I will put up a photo of the actual costume. This design is for the character Angel when he visits the tropics.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles at Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch.

This was my design for Tess. I used steel, wood and huge swagged backcloths to create an impression of the Dorset and Wiltshire countryside.
The set was painted on the Jackson Pollockesque style, which seemed to shimmer onstage.

The Steamie at The Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch.

This picture shows the set, which was hugely realistic, with hot and cold running water and of course, steam!

The Talk of the Steamie

I loved designing these costumes for The Steamie.

This play is really gritty, but a great comedy with music.

It is set in the Glaswegian wash houses in the 1950's.

A photo that I took of the design on stage

I love the way the cloths look really light and airy. The footlights added to the seaside, theatrical feel that we were after. The carpet worked on many levels ; painted floor planks on carpet were surreal and the carpet was practical as it allowed the actors to be really physical in their performance.

Habeas Corpus at Theatr Clwyd, North Wales

This photograph shows a fragment of the actual model (1:25) that I made for this project.
Habeas Corpus by Alan Bennett, is a wonderful dark comedy which explores amongst other things, ideas about family and morality. It is set in a seaside town. My brief from the Director, Marina Caldarone, was to create some of the flavour of the seaside postcard, with a slightly surreal edge. I had seen Magritte's painting and chose to use it as my inspiration for the design.
The show had to tour, so it it made from simple painted cloths which can expand and contract, The planks of wood on the stage are infact made from painted carpet.


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