Collaborators - UK Design for Performance

We're just back from this amazing free exhibition at Nottingham Trent University. We went along to get some ideas for our forthcoming stage production, Dark Angels.

British Theatre Designers have a worldwide repuation for fresh and innovative ideas. How do they communicate their ideas to audiences - and to the artists, performers and technicians they work with? How will these ideas translate into three-dimensional space / structures, costumes, light and sound? What is the dialogue between the designers and their collaborators?

This major exhibition brings together a huge range of work made in the last four years by over 10 contemporary UK designers; it has been made possible through a new collaboration between Nottingham Trent University's Theatre Design Department and the Society of British Theatre Designers (SBTD).
The venue was the impsoing Waverly building, the original Nottingham Art School on the Nottingham Trent Univerity City campus; a selection from the exhibition will be on display in Prague's Industrial Palace, in the International Prague Quadrennial in June 2007.

The exhibition was accompanied by a full colour catalogue and tailored education programme for schools and colleges, offering a unique resource for students, teachers and anyone interested in contemporary performance.

We were completely blown away by the sheer scale and breadth of the designs on display.

Prior to going one question loomed in my mind: How do you display over 150 theatre designs in one building? The answer, is that every single production had a small scale model made. Both of the designs I photographed here are actually scale models, probably no more than 50cm accross.

All three of us took some great ideas away which we'll add to our own in the coming months. It was encouraging to note, that we all liked the same kinds of stage design - hopefully this will minimise conflict when the time comes to design the production!