Nest of Boxes

Yesterday

Alex Robertson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:54:38 +0000

The Yesterday project was a theatre in education show designed to give interactive learning to an audience. It was all based around the emergence of the teenager and the visit of The Beatles to Mold in 1966. The brief was to create a playground feel, a place which could work for both interior and exterior, but also with the quick passage of time, was never a fixed place.

To keep the young audiences interested we planted an in-th-round auditorium within the set, leaving the performer’s free to pull the audience’s attention in several directions. The multi-media screens also helped to diversify our level of interaction, switching quickly through different time periods, and allowing us to tell more story in a shorter space of time.

Century

Alex Robertson — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:36:33 +0000

Century was a piece spanning the last 100 years of Welsh history, highlighting key events that shaped modern Wales. Our greatest challenge was to create a world where we could move from one time to another without copius clunky scene changes. We created an art based set influenced by Franz Kline which could easily change and be manipulated by the cast.

Magnificent Myths of the Mabinogi

Alex Robertson — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:42:53 +0000

The Mabinogi is a series of ancient stories which are the basis for most of Welsh folk law. Our brief was to create a space that could house up to 45 performer’s and it became clear early on that this world needed to seemingly have no place in space or time, a completely created world. To achieve this we kept the design very elemental choosing to show only wood, stone and light on stage.

Beautiful Thing

Alex Robertson — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:21:58 +0000

This play is about the lives affected by two young men coming to terms with their gay relationship. The setting is a high rise council block., it was important here to make the set a claustrophobic space for these characters. The vivid colours coming off the grey walls are representive of the boys growing love.

The wall opening up to reveal the bedroom, was a direct response to the practicalities of using the space. The costumes were a modern update, and because of the low budgets on this production, most of the costumes were provided by the actors own forgotten wardrobe items. It had the knock on effect of achieving the hand-me-down and bread-line feel we desired.

The Mikado

Alex Robertson — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:45:04 +0000

The Mikado, is a comic opera and this show was held at an outdoor festival. The progression for the design was to create a japanese garden, that would look good at both day and night-time. It was a very simple setting but we updated the piece to modern day japan in the costume, floor motifs, and props.

The costume designs in this show were a strong combination of modern japanese street style and traitional dress. The combination was in keeping with our aim to update the piece. Using bright colours throughout helped identify characters quickly and establish them the garden surroundings.

Goon Bandage, An Evening With Harry Secombe

Alex Robertson — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:39:28 +0000

This was a one man show about Harry Secombe in his dressing room an hour before an evening with performance. We went for a stark and minimalist approach with the only colour coming from the red curtain of the stage, set behind him. The curtain being the ultimate goal, and all else pales in comparison.

The costume was very important here, as this was a reconstruction rather than a representation. We needed Harry to be the element of real in our minimalist world.

Educating Rita

Alex Robertson — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 19:51:50 +0000

We updated this piece to Cardiff, using local accents and dialects. For the design concept we invented an island held up by books and papers, which is the reccuring symbol of the piece. Also, we created two massive towers of books, one strong and the other crumbling, representing the different states of the two characters as we enter the play. The projection screen, was used to show the painting in the room as well as the window to the outside world, it flicked between different images of Cardiff life.

The two characters costumes, once we had established that this was a Cardiff ‘Rita’ became a simple thought process. We took both actors shopping and costumed them using the contempory Cardiff shopping scene.

Alice

Alex Robertson — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 19:47:53 +0000

Alice was an interactive audience performance mixing both puppets and live actors. The story and the media where a perfect mix, with us leading the audience through the college grounds and Bute park, to different performance areas, the audience were in very close quarters and got to directly interact with the puppets and performers.

The design for Alice was a collective effort, with the groups taking charge of different sections of the whole.

The process from drawing to model to actual realisation, was similar to any other design process in that respect. The group design work, however, was vital in pulling together this ever expansive performance and keeping the piece together overall.