SBTD Designer

Bek Palmer

Biography

Professional

Bek designs sets, costume and puppets for a variety of performance including opera, classic drama, theatre for young audiences and immersive experiences.

Previous work includes; Hairspray (Pimlico Opera), La Cenerentola (British Youth Opera), Same Time, Next Year, No Man’s Land, My Mother Said I Never Should, The Birthday Party, Waiting for Godot and Betrayal (London Classic Theatre), Hansel & Gretel, A Christmas Carol, Henry II and Matilda the Empress (RABBLE Theatre), The Chronicles of Atom & Luna and The Mystery of The Raddlesham Mumps (Funnelwick Limb), Baba Yaga, Spirits of the Sea, Bear & Butterfly, Tiny Treasures, Luna, The Elves and the Shoemakers, Angel, The Night Pirates and My Mother Told Me Not To Stare (Theatre Hullabaloo), The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart (Eastern Angles), Alfie White: Space Explorer and Lemony Snicket’s Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming (Tall Stories), What The Ladybird Heard (Kenny Wax Ltd), Shaun The Sheep (Dan Coleman), Happily Ever After (Action Transport Theatre), The Duchess of Malfi (Punchdrunk & ENO)

Bek trained in Performance Design at LIPA and studied Post Graduate Theatre Design at RWCMD.

WAITING FOR GODOT

IMAGE CREDIT: SHEILA BURNETT

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Role:
Production Designer

Year:
2015

Venue:
National Tour of both End-On and In-the-Round, mid-scale venues

Company:
Bek Palmer

The country road in the script is, to me, an allegory for a route between two stages in life that people usually pass through, but these characters have got caught in a loop of repeating actions and events.

I wanted to create a parallel universe, where alternate versions are glimpsed through portals. Initial ideas were of a hall of mirrors, things being reflected many times, each with slight distortion. Choosing to elevate trees as if they were slowly rising through this alternate reality, I positioned one tree lower in the space giving us the tree featured in the play.

Until late in the process, I had a large oval wooden floor, but this worked against the transitionary space I was trying to create. I decided to cover the floor area with a black reflective surface on which the characters cannot step and broke the wooden floor into floating stepping stones, creating a pathway through the space. This decision influenced the blocking of the action, resulting in a choreographed route over the stones to navigate the space.

Credits:

Director:
Michael Cabot

Lighting Designer:
Andy Grange

Costume Supervisor:
Saeni Greene

Writer:
Samuel Beckett

Set Builder:
Tandem Scenery

Photographer:
Sheila Burnett

La Cenerentola

Robert Workman

Bill Knight

Robert Workman

Bill Knight

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Role:
Designer

Year:
2019

Venue:
Peacock Theatre

Credits:

Director
Stuart Barker

Lighting Designer
John Bishop

Costume Supervisor
Laura Pearse

Spirits of the Seas

Mark Savage

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Role:
Set, Costume & Puppet Designer

Year:
2016

Venue:
Touring

Company:
Theatre Hullabaloo

Touring to non-theatre spaces, Spirits of the Sea was an immersive piece. An audience of children stepped inside a mariner’s hut to meet a fisherman and his musician friend. Storytelling, live music, puppetry and song combined to tell a beautiful folktale inspired by Annouchka Gravel Galouchko’s picture book Sho and the Demons of the Deep.