Biography

Mona Kastell is an an international award winning Breton Scottish multidisciplinary ecoscenographer, community engagement and shamanic practitioner with a strong interest in social and ecological conscious design. With over 15 years of professional experience, she has worked collaboratively across several media, including stage and costume design in devised, street and physical theatre, dance, film, and participatory art installations focusing on Nature Connection & Wellbeing.

As a designer/maker, Mona takes the lead in creating her own work, engaging herself holistically in her creative practice questioning traditional ways of working within her practice embedded in expanded scenography. She combines stage design, Permaculture & Ecological Design, to actively instigate positive change for the future of our society and the planet. She places Nature, interconnectivity, and authentic community engagement at the heart of her creative practice.

Her paper on ‘Ecoscenography in action: Bridging stage design with nature connection to shape sustainable communities and wellbeing’ is published in the Peer reviewed Scene Journal. Her design for ‘Glimpsing Air Pockets’ is featured in Tanja Beer’s book on Ecoscenography and won 1st prize at World Stage Design 2022 in ‘Alternative Design’.

Mona is one of Ecostage co-director, an online initiative advocating for holistic sustainability with a pledge at its heart to adapt to the climate crisis in the performing arts.

This has been a working method development between several artists, aiming to re-create Western faery tales with artists of colours to produce new diverse role models to children. There are series of miniature video projections, where magical creatures are hidden on trees and objects.

The creatures took shape between materiality and the capacity for devising costumes through the performers’ responsive body in movement, the moving body becoming a design tool. Designed individually with each performer, the costumes externalize their inner soul, visually narrating their own stories and characteristics, yet belonging to the same otherworldly world inspired by Arthur Rackham’s faery tale illustrations. Rethinking our relationship with objects, the final costumes show the potential of creating art though not creating waste, from reused found pieces, to purchasing pre-loved clothing or natural fibres only fabrics. The chosen pieces and fabrics reflect light through texture, manipulation and colours, in anticipation of the projections.