Oliver Messel study day at the V&A:
Oliver Messel – In the Theatre of Design
Saturday 4 February 2012, 10.30-17.00
Victoria and Albert Museum
A study day exploring the career of Oliver Messel, one of the foremost stage and interior designers of the 20th century. Working with Diaghilev, then on Broadway shows such as The Country Wife, and on films like Gigi, Messel also designed homes for the 1960s jet-set including Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon. This event brings together curators and historians as well as colleagues who knew and worked with him, and examines his work for film, theatre, interiors, and architecture. It coincides with the publication of a major monograph on Messel’s career.
Tickets: £45/£35 concessions; £10 students
To book: call 0207 942 2211 or visit www.vam.ac.uk/whatson
10.30 Introduction and Welcome
10.40 Oliver Messel – The Man
Thomas Messel, Editor of Oliver Messel: In the Theatre of Design (Rizzoli 2011)
11.10 Coffee
11.30 Oliver Messel and his Artistic Environment
Stephen Calloway, Senior Curator, V&A
12.10 Oliver Messel and Costume Design
Sarah Woodcock MBE, Costume Historian
13.00 Lunch Break
14.00 Oliver Messel and Sleeping Beauty
DVDof extracts of the Royal Opera House 2011 performance
14.30 Messel’s Architecture and Interiors
Jeremy Musson, architecture historian and writer
15.20 Tea
15.40 Messel and Film.
Keith Lodwick, Curator, V&A
Discussion
http://www.vam.ac.uk/whatson/event/1567/oliver-messel-2706/
A Year That Felt Special – Adam Somerset looks back over theatre in Wales in 2011:
“British theatre is living off its past” declares London’s most senior critic of the past year. It is a part of the allure of theatre that no single person can ever quite know what theatre is. The overall critical view is as much a collective effort as theatre itself is collaborative endeavour. The hardest-working reviewer might get to see two hundred pieces in mainstream venues. The truly driven, adding in six a day for three weeks in Edinburgh, might notch it up to three hundred in a year. There is no tally for the totality of theatre in any one year. In any case, in a vibrant culture there is no clear boundary line between theatre and other hybrid art forms. The most that one person might aspire to witness is, maybe, twenty percent of what has been made available. “Wales is a culture in fracture” declares a dramatist from the floor of Cardiff’s gleaming new Dora Stoutzker Hall on October 1st. “Theatre criticism is in a state of sickness” asserts a speaker on the stage “and it reflects a theatre in a state of sickness.” It is a statement of sufficient drama and provocation enough to be quoted in Barn and on the Guardian’s website. As metaphors they catch the ear. But, like all metaphors, whether they are a proper description is a personal judgement. Every person holds their view of what theatre is, or isn’t, or ought to be. The same playwright in the Dora Stoutzker Hall goes on to condemn the resistance of Wales’ theatre establishment to gay-themed plays. This is a puzzler. The week before I have been at Cardigan’s Theatr Mwldan. My last view has been of Simon Watts, Paul Morgans and the rest of the cast passing round pints of Brains to make the good the torrent of physical and emotional energy that has been “Llwyth.” “Llwyth” had a stormingly good Edinburgh. In that setting no-one cares what language it comes in. It is just another European language; all that matters is whether it lives on stage or not. But then Wales had a stormingly good Edinburgh overall. There have been hits before but it is a long time, and certainly before my time, since the weight of shows warranted a social get-together at the artistic fulcrum that is the Traverse. It is in human nature that every person, everywhere, thinks their time and their place is the most special of all. It’s not. But 2011 did feel different. “Llwyth” turned out to be one London newspaper writer’s top show of the Festival. “The Passion” was another critic’s show of the year. National Theatre of Wales in the view of the Observer is “one of the best things to happen to the stage in the past five years.” When Fair Play came to Aberystwyth in October I remarked that “no-one ever embarked on a life in the theatre in the expectation that it will be easy or indeed fair.” Theatr Powys bowed out in 2011 with a last show that was bitter-sweet and completely original. New companies formed and got their productions out on the road. As well as Fair Play, Waking Exploits made the trip to Aber and was personally much appreciated. “Bred In Heaven” and “The Wizard, the Goat and the Man Who Won the War” were popular hits. Both had deep cultural roots and deserved the applause. Many would say that not much on earth is as important as rugby and politics. Frapetsus, in particular, reached out to a new audience for theatre. They earned standing ovations at the New Theatre and could have stayed a lot longer. “The Wizard…” will be back in 2012 at those venues which missed out on the first tour. The growth of new venues continued unabated. Merthyr’s Theatr Soar opened in the Spring, Cardiff’s Richard Burton Theatre to a fanfare in June. The Sherman’s new self kicks off early 2012 and the scaffolding comes off Llanelli’s Y Ffwrness in November. Welsh theatre has acquired a lot more overhead. I read, and reviewed, Mike Bradwell’s “The Reluctant Escapologist” in the summer. It is in many ways an annoying read, but it is also a cry of protest against theatre’s raw making being swamped with erroneous cost. The Sherman took on a tone of slight apology for its “Raw/Amrwd” productions. Since one of them was among my productions of the year, I saw small artistic justification for reverting to any other model. So venues abound, and there are any number of cool new spaces for a cappuccino. But Cardiff does not have the leaky, rough, sixty-seater where new voices can see their work first tested out. A keynote speaker at an Arts Marketing conference in Mold on November 17th suggested provocatively that everyone had been getting it wrong for a long time. I am on the receiving end of the promo and it isn’t working as well as it should. In Autumn, I went searching for the venues for a tour by a funded company. The company’s website failed to mention any production beyond that of 2010. Same month, I found the box office of a venue for a show that evening locked and deserted. On enquiry direct to the company it transpired the show had been cancelled two weeks before, but still featured on the venue’s web diary. I moaned at the time about Mappa Mundi’s omission of the cast’s names. The company in that case has built itself a powerful brand name. But there is a lot of muddle in arts marketing between medium and message. The basics for advertising are unaltered, the same for theatre as any other product. At the very least, state in plain language what it is, what are the main sales points, and who is it for. David Edgar delivered a tour de force of a lecture at the National Library’s Drwm on September 17th. He made mention of his best theatre book of the year, Aleks Sierz “Rewriting the Nation.” My review in April ended with “the sheer profusion that Sierz describes, its scale, its irreverence, its probing fearlessness left me cheered and not a little awed.” Wales had its theatre heroes in 2011, artists who just wanted to make it happen. They stretched their credit cards to the limit. Forget overdrafts these days from the banks. Get a loan, and you sign your home over as collateral. It happened. We, in the audience, are the beneficiaries. The funded companies produced work at their best fit to hit the world. But they also produced theatre, or bits of theatre, that sat there like suet. I know the symptoms. The eyes wander, they run around the venue’s architecture, they start watching other members of the audience to see if they are absorbed or not. There’s no favouritism here. Theatr Clwyd Cymru, the Sherman, the Torch, Volcano, National Theatre of Wales, the National Youth Theatre, they all produced stuff that hung heavy. Theatr Genedlaethol didn’t, but they are undergoing their review and did not produce that much. The right to fail is paramount. But when it doesn’t work, a common factor is detectable. The professional writer is the disposable member of the creative team. It can be done for a number of reasons, economy (false- how about sacking the lighting director for once?), aesthetic ideology (misguided), fashion (we’re all susceptible to fashion trends), hubris (no comment.) “The fetishization of the figure of an absent but despotically controlling eye… masterminding every inch, every second” is a fashion statement. It’s a view, but I just don’t believe it. A director, actors, a writer, a designer, others assemble in some dreary rehearsal space. Each new creation is a nerve-inducing, collective leap into making something new. The melodramatic “fetishization” just doesn’t smack of the real thing, of a witness who has been there. There is a honourable record of actors turning themselves into masterly writers. Hywel John’s “Pieces” in 2010 received an enthusiastic reception. The odd writer, within limits, has done a decent job in directing a show. But I am just unconvinced by directors who extend themselves into writing. It doesn’t happen in England or Scotland. Late in the year came a piece of heavyweight support. “Writing of any kind”, says John Caird in his monument of a book “Theatre Craft” “requires a measure of untroubled space and time, both commodities in short supply for a Director.” I wasn’t at Edinburgh. I didn’t see “Fragments of Ash”, “Muscle”, “Richard Parker”, “Barber of Seville”, “Katya Kabanova”, “Salsa” and many others. Of the touring shows I saw “Woyzeck on the Highveldt” and Analogue Theatre but missed “the Container”, Forced Entertainment, and a lot else. I was absent from ninety-five percent of “the Passion.” Seventy-five seconds of television time were given over to the ghosts beneath the pillars of the M4. The images looked superb and emotive. Members of the audience wept. Personally, I prefer a Christ who is divine rather than loosely allegorical. The corporations that truly oppress tend not to carry clubs and guns, but to be soothingly telling us that everything is all for our own good. But that’s art. It hits in all kinds of different ways and I was only present for a few hours. The rest is the memory of others. Richard Eyre in “Utopia and Other Places” wrote of “the “untranslatable” element in the theatre, the part that isn’t a surrogate for television, that isn’t prose to be read standing up, the part that can’t be translated from stage to screen; the part that is, in a word, theatrical…the unique properties of the medium- its use of space, of light, of speech, of story-telling; its theatreness.” In the performances spaces of Wales in 2011 that untranslatable quality took on many a form. It was Anthony Hunt’s rubber-limbed Benny Southstreet. It was director Mathilde Lopez having a Latin American mineral magnate come on stage as a sinewy creeping jaguar. It was Volcano and the Clarks staging cosmetic surgeons in the practice of their dark art. It was an opera where the hero’s opening line, addressed to the conductor, was “What the f*** are you looking at?” That was Music Theatre Wales and “Greek” which collected an Outstanding Achievement in Opera award. It was the band playing tinkly music as Oliver Wood, in a seven year old’s party frock, sits down, then breaks all audience expectations with a deep pitched tenor. The best of the year? It is a mix. Originality, vision, accomplishment, feeling are all in there, along with a good dose of pure personal preference. If I had the chance to see the work of 2011 all over again, my first five, alphabetical order only, would be: Mess up the Mess: “Click” directed by Sarah Jones Mid-Wales Opera: “Madam Butterfly” directed by Stephen Barlow National Theatre of Wales: “the Village Social” directed by Ben Lewis Sherman Cymru: “The Sanger” directed by Amy Hodge Theatr Clwyd Cymru: “the Taming of the Shrew” directed by Terry Hands |
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| Reviewed by:Adam Somerset |
Rick Fisher Named ALD Fellow:
The ALD have announced that their former Chairman, Rick Fisher, is the latest member to be given the honour of becoming a Fellow of the ALD. It is the highest Award the Association can award to its members and is presented in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the art and business of lighting design. He joins the company of such luminaries as David Hersey, Robert Bryan, Andrew Bridge and Francis Reid, who presented the award to him.
Another Fellow and ALD President Richard Pilbrow sent a message from the US which was read by MC for the event, Mark Jonathan.
“Great moments in the theatre stick in my head. As Billy Elliott soared magically into the air, my soul soared with him. Light, story, music, performer, magic: all fused into an ecstatic moment.
We are very fortunate to be lighting designers. We explore the cutting edge of art where it bonds with technology, in aid of telling stories on the stage. We manipulate light itself to evoke the imagination. Illumination to reveal our way in the world of theatre and beyond. Rick Fisher is one of the greats of our profession.
Light matters. Rick’s leadership of the ALD has made it matter so much more. Take it from me, starting an organisation is quite easy. Taking a mature one, and kicking it into a whole new life is hard. The ALD has always had enthusiastic members, but Rick, as our Chairman, has given it a whole new life . . . And an entirely new importance.
As an organization he has led us into greater responsibility. The foundation of Light Relief was pivotal in saying: “We are a profession and we must take seriously our members’ really long term needs.” Progress in improving our immediate needs . . . like more money (!), has been slow, but steady. The battle for true recognition for our profession goes on. But nobody has done more to open up the world to lighting’s real role. Rick’s initiative in seeking a meeting of minds with theatre critics was surely brilliant. Under his leadership, FOCUS, has simply become the best magazine in the world about our art of light. We are marking his retirement as our Chairman. He has our thanks.
In 50 years, his extraordinary contribution will be remembered. Lighting designers will still wonder about how such perfection could be achieved . . . A boy soaring into the air . . . A spirit soaring above our sometime mundane world. That is what theatre can do. That is what light can do.
New ALD Chair, Peter Mumford also sent a message from his production desk.
“I can’t think of a more appropriate choice to award an ALD Fellowship. Rick’s commitment to the art of lighting design goes way beyond his own personal work which has been so successful and extends to a generosity and enthusiasm for the furtherance of the profession as a whole.”
Evening Standard Theatre Award 2011 Design Winner:
This year’s Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Design has been won by Adam Cork For his sound design of Anna Christie & King Lear at the Donmar Warehouse.
The judging panel consisted of the newspaper’s deputy editor Sarah Sands and theatre critics Henry Hitchings, Susannah Clapp, Matt Wolf, Georgina Brown, Charles Spencer and Libby Purves with Lebedev chairing.
The winners were announced at a ceremony at the Savoy Hotel.
The awards in full are:
Best Actor (joint) Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller for Frankenstein: Olivier, National Theatre
The Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress Sheridan Smith for Flare Path: Theatre Royal Haymarket
Best Play The Heretic and One Man, Two Guvnors by Richard Bean: Royal Court and Lyttelton, National Theatre
The Ned Sherrin Award for Best Musical Matilda the Musical: Courtyard, Stratford-upon-Avon and Cambridge Theatre
Best Director Mike Leigh for Grief: Cottesloe, National Theatre
Best Design Adam Cork for sound design in Anna Christie and King Lear: Donmar Warehouse
The Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright Penelope Skinner for The Village Bike: Royal Court
The Milton Shulman Award for Outstanding Newcomer Kyle Soller for his performances in The Glass Menagerie, Government Inspector and The Faith Machine: Young Vic and Royal Court
Editor’s Award Michael Grandage for making the Donmar Warehouse a star
Beyond Theatre Award: The Most Incredible Thing by Pet Shop Boys and Javier de Frutos: Sadler’s Wells
The Lebedev Special Award Kristin Scott Thomas for her contribution to theatre
The Moscow Art Theatre’s Golden Seagull Tom Stoppard for his contribution to Russian theatre and the international stage
LINBURY PRIZE 2011 WINNERS:
The winners of the prestigious Linbury Prize for Stage Design 2011 were announced at a ceremony at the National Theatre this evening, Thursday 10 November. The four young stage design graduates who have won a unique opportunity to design a professional production for a major theatre or opera company are: Hyemi Shin, a graduate from Wimbledon College of Art who will be working with The Lyric Hammersmith and Filter, Jemima Robinson, a graduate from the Bristol Old Vic who will be working with the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, Sarah Beaton, a graduate from Central School of Speech and Drama who will be working with The Opera Group, and Emma Bailey, a graduate of Motley Theatre Design Course, who will be working with ROH2 at The Royal Opera House.
Hyemi Shin was also named the overall winner of the Linbury Prize 2011, and wins an extra £1,000 in addition to the £2,500 prize money received by all four winners. The awards were presented by Anya Sainsbury CBE, founder of the Linbury Prize, Caro Newling, Chair and Sir Nicholas Hytner, Director of the National Theatre. The judges for this year’s award were renowned designers Jon Bausor, Miriam Buether and Ian MacNeil.
An exhibition of work by all 12 finalists runs until 29 November at the National Theatre.
photographs by Sheila Burnett
Costume design for film V&A residency:
V&A Museum, London, July – December 2012
£8,400 bursary (subject to tax and National Insurance)
The V&A is inviting applications from UK-based film costume designers who wish to develop their practice in designing and making costume specifically for film through working with the V&A’s collections and through public engagement activities. The Residency will be based in the Sackler Centre for arts education at the V&A and will run alongside the major exhibition Hollywood Costume: 100 Years of the Good, the Bad and the Beautiful. This is part of the V&A’s Museum Residency Programme and will take place in London over a six-month period July – December 2012.
Closing date 13 November 2011
For further information, please contact hr@vam.ac.uk, or visit http://vam.ac.uk/jobs. The deadline is Sunday 13 November 2011 at 00:00.
4D Modelshop 10% discount for SBTD members:
Don’t forget that 4D Modelshop are offering all SBTD members a 10% discount from 1st October to 23rd December 2011.
Click here to download the voucher http://www.theatredesign.org.uk/membership/special-offers/ (you must be logged in to access this page). On the same page you can find details of special offers by Stage Jobs Pro and Theatre Digs Booker.
Ultz to give Jocelyn Herbert Lecture 2011:
The Annual Jocelyn Herbert Lecture
Ultz – The Politics of Good Taste
29th November 2011
The designer Ultz takes a look at British stage design since the 1950s. His recent work includes Chicken Soup with Barley, which Herbert originally designed in 1958.
Tickets: £4 (£3 concessions)
Running time: 45 mins
The lecture is funded by the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation as part of its support for the Jocelyn Herbert Archive at Wimbledon College of Art, the University of the Arts London.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/67680/platforms/the-annual-jocelyn-herbert-lecture.html
THE LINBURY PRIZE EXHIBITION 2011:
Monday 31 October – Sunday 27 November 2011
Monday – Saturday 9.30am – 11.00pm, Sunday 12pm – 6pm
The Linbury Prize is a unique opportunity for graduating stage designers to work with leading directors and to gain a professional commission with one of four major companies. This year the companies are: The Lyric Hammersmith and Filter; Watermill Theatre, Newbury; The Opera Group; and ROH2 at The Royal Opera House.
An exhibition of the work of the 12 finalists and their finished models will be held at the National Theatre from 31 October – 27 November, giving visitors a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes process of set designers. The winners for each company and the overall Linbury Prize winner for 2011 – chosen by renowned designers Jon Bausor, Miriam Buether and Ian MacNeil and the commissioning companies’ directors – will be announced at an award ceremony on 10 November.
www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/linburyprize
Subsidy, Patronage & Sponsorship: Theatre and Performance Culture in Uncertain Times:
A Three Day International Conference 19-21 July 2012
Sackler Centre Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
The global economic down-turn has prompted a number of different responses around the world. Whilst the UK government has reacted by introducing swingeing cuts, forcing the Arts Council England to announce a 29% cut in its budget in 2010, in the same year France’s response to the recession has been to increase government spending on the arts by 2%. Alongside cuts to the arts, the UK government is now giving serious consideration to implementing American models of arts funding: these include corporate sponsorship, private philanthropy and endowments (such as the proposed £55 million Endowment Fund) as alternatives to the model of state subsidy (managed through the Arts Council) that has been in existence since 1945. Examples of private patronage sustaining a theatrecompany have been comparatively rare since the time of Shakespeare, yet the success of the arts venue at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London, and the oft-quoted example of opera at Glyndebourne, neither of which receives Arts Council support, have been heralded by those who wish to radically alter established patterns of arts funding as an example of good practice and a way forward. Already there are signs of a new climate emerging. For instance, The Times newspaper has recently taken to naming the main sponsors of shows in its arts reviews. There are also inevitably a number of voices to be heard opposing the very idea of state subsidy of the arts: voices such as that of the playwright Gregory
Motton who, in his polemical book Helping Themselves: The Left-Wing Middle Classes in Theatre & the Arts, castigates the most important channel of cultural support, the Arts Council, as a moribund and self-serving organization that stifles creativity, and panders to a small cultural elite.
In the second year of Arts Council cuts, and on the eve of the Cultural Olympiad, this conference provides a timely opportunity to assess arts policy around the world. Concentrating specifically on the situation in theatre and performance culture, the conference will bring together academics, practitioners and those working in arts funding to debate not only past relationships between subsidy and arts policy on the organisation, practice and development of theatre from the mid twentieth century to the present, but also to discuss the impact of the current recession and state funding of the arts at a time when alternative forms of funding are being seriously considered
Proposals are sought for papers that address one or more of the following areas:
● The past / present relationship/distinction between patronage, subsidy and sponsor ship
● The discursive relationship between policy and practice in subsidised performance
● National models of subsidy and the effect of instrumental funding
● The relationship between policy makers and practitioners.
● Past and present models of private patronage
● The past / present role of the Arts Council of Great Britain /Arts Council England
● Subsidy, patronage and policy in the regions
● The role of the private patron in theatre and performance culture
● The role and impact of subscription theatre in America
● Past / present ‘moments of crisis’ in theatre and performance
● National lotteries and theatre / performance funding
● Embracing the economic crisis – opportunities for innovation in theatre and
performance
The organisers of the conference are also open to suggestions for papers on other and related topics. Abstracts for papers should be 250 words in length and sent to m.pye@vam.ac.uk . Suggestions for panels (consisting of three papers) on a specific theme or topic will also be welcome. The closing date for submissions is January 22nd 2012.
