Pyramid

On Friday we had as the guest speaker Vicki Mortimer who was the set designer for The Seagull. She has extensive experience designing for the theatre and opera. She said that she made her decision about which projects to take based on the piece, the director and the place where the performance is to take place. She has worked with the director Katie Mitchell for about twenty years and had to be persuaded to do The Seagull, because she had already done a production of it and because it is staged so frequently in England that there would be "associated imagery" for the play. Vicki said her passion was to work with living writers on new plays.
She thinks of the process as a pyramid that starts with her and the director and then gradually adds the other elements: the construction crew, the lighting director, the prop master, then the actors and finally the audience. She also brought a working model of the stage set which was interesting because at times you could see through the front "room" of the set to another room. The actors in the play had activities that they had to improvise off stage when they were not onstage, and at times you could hear or see them as you were watching the play. It sounds like a very intense and focused way to work. The director's purpose is to " give the audience a live experience every time". There are production images at the NationalTheatre website.



The picture is of ducks at Regent's Park