Designer for '3am' Curve Young Company production, Curve Theatre in Leicester

            In the second term of my third year at Nottingham Trent I had to opportunity to design a production at the Curve Theatre in Leicester. The production was the first from the newly formed 'Young Company', the Curve's own Youth Theatre group directed by Adel Al-Salloum and Peter Rumney, and would be my own first realised project. 

    The piece was to be fully devised by the Young Company themselves, which meant that my design process was different from anything I had previously done because it was to be inextricably linked with development of the Company's own process. 

    I observed the Company in rehearsals and picked out main themes from the work they were producing and tried to gage the tone of their work. This meant that the designs I produced were extremely emotional in response because they came from the raw emotionality and truth of the Company's work. The directors gave the company graphic novels as their catalyst for their development, due to the strong images embodied in the art form and the human, and sometimes supernatural, struggles in their stories. This engender the idea that the piece would take place in an urban landscape.

     I considered a number of different possibilties for the design of the show based on the key themes which arose while the company created the characters they would develop. These themes included; loneliness, confusion, a desire for resolution, chaos, fear and feelings of being trapped. I took these themes and used the meta-narrative overlying all of them, journey, and paired it with the only direction I had been given at this point, which was the hope that the production would be in traverse. I arrived at the design aspect which forms of the foundation of my concept; a road. Because of the previously mentioned them of a desire for resolution I considered that the company could build something as they progressed through the narrative; the idea of going from chaos to resolution. I also considered a tree-like structure, which could represent hope, which leads on to my development model.

The photos that follow are of my development model.
I used the tree to represent hope, while the rubble which formed the trunk showed both ruin and resolution through the act of building. The branches are hanging which I used to illustrate the transience of human life. After a discussion with the directors we decided that the tree being focused at one end of the traverse stunted the space's natural flow, and that the ideas embodied in the structure needed to be distilled and spread throughout the space. The road was the key aspect, and needed to be treated as such.

I saw the theme of ruin as being important to the piece, and this concept bore heavily on the costumes. When designing the costumes post-apocalyptic survival came to mind; the idea of clothes being practical yet ripped and well-worn. This meant the clothes would be in keeping with their environment. The budget was small for the show and working the costumes this way meant that the company could bring in old clothes of their own which could be broken down, keeping clothes to be bought and made to a bare minimum. The following is my group costume drawing depicting my ideas.

    My final stage design retained the road as the central theme and by keeping both ends clear both the flow of the space and the perception of past and future; chaos and resolution were kept intact. I carried the concept of ruin through, designing piles of rubble and broken artifacts at the sides of either end of the road. Using such materials meant they could be found, and not bought, keeping costs down and allowing more money to be spent on the rendering of the road. I designed telephone wires as hanging over-head. This suggested simultaneously; an urban setting, human interaction and the ephemeral spoken word. Writing, as a tool for extending the existence of the spoken word but also the existence of humanity itself, would take place on the floor in chalk. The following photos show my design.

Lastly I include photographs from the production which show set, costumes and how the space was used.

In this scene a piano was flown in. I made sure everything that would appear on stage would be suitably broken down, in keeping with the design rationale.

Curve Young Company production of '3am', photos by Pamela Raith