In 946 - The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips, the lighting design had to be really dynamic in order to tell us where to look, to describe locations theatrically without naturalism, really defining …
Archive
-
-
In The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, light created magic.
-
I like to see the workings of theatre. I like there to be magic as well, where you don't know how that's happened, but I like to see the workings of it too.
-
When we started thinking about the musical landscape of Steptoe and Son we knew we wanted to use music to not just locate us in time but also connect us in memory.
-
Kneehigh had almost three different sections - one of which was the touring shows, and there were the village hall touring shows, and there were the schools shows. Even though I trained as a teacher, …
-
Live musicians bring an immediacy. It’s important to place the music and give it its full impact. I’m not keen on underscoring. A live band adds real power to the live storytelling. Much of …
-
What’s unique about the Kneehigh process is that it’s about investment, ownership and generosity. The Barns was the thing for me, how isolated it was, how focused the work was and how the bubble of …
-
Kneehigh already had a kind of a template, which was like a way of telling stories with their bodies. It became even more important when you took that work outside, we found we could tell stories …
-
I’m a little bit sceptical of original ideas...
-
For me, there's an interesting feedback loop with Kneehigh. I watched Kneehigh and was influenced by Kneehigh and then wrote my own stuff. Then there's quite possibly my writing influence on …
-
King of Prussia was essentially brandy smuggling back in the 1800s and it felt very relevant to Kneehigh, because there was a lot of political intrigue, as it were, within the writing of the show, …
-
At the time, I was really inspired by Bruno Bettelheim’s book, The Uses of Enchantment (1976). He was a Holocaust survivor, and he had a thesis - which has now been discredited - that fairy stories …
-
This show was created in the early days of Emma and Stu Barker’s working relationship and was mainly soundtracked: Wagner, Offenbach, Jurassic Five etc. The production was managed by the …
-
The chorus in The Red Shoes were a chorus who’d seen things we should never have seen and done things we should never have done. We mingled with the audience. Before we started, we were barefoot, and …
-
Both Emma Rice and I absolutely believe in the collective imagination of the room. If you can create the conditions for that kind of creativity, the collective imagination is going to give you far …
-
I just thought, I wonder what happens if the Chorus are like bird watchers but they’re looking at love? I remember suggesting everybody put on a funny balaclava and anoraks and start looking for …
-
At the time of making the show in the early 2000s, Emma and I were really into Tarantino and films like Pulp Fiction: bloody good storytelling and great music. This Tristan & Yseult is a …
-
The music of John Gay took opera music, the serious opera, and whilst not mocking it, used it as fuel to comment on the wealthy and to show another side of life. That's what Punch and Judy did: they …
-
One of the things I’m most pleased about with our show is that I think we’ve done the original play really well. Alfred Jarry was our spiritual guide. His ground-breaking and highly controversial …
-
I always work around an idea. If you know you love it, that's in the bank. Think round it. What does it make you think of? What were the things that were swirling around in your mind? With Brief …
-
Ideas are everywhere
-
I'm a massive believer in dressing up. Always have been. I think everybody changes the minute they dress up, but you have to make sure that the clothes fit. Teachers need to find things that make …
-
As soon as you start getting your group to have fun with what they're doing and play to their strengths, you’re on to a winner because they love what they're doing. What they're doing becomes really …
-
Improvisation is really important for storytelling.
5 / 9