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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