12 Performance Designers Selected To Represent The UK At The Prague Quadrennial

The Society of British Theatre designers are delighted to announce the twelve performance designers selected to represent the United Kingdom at the prestigious Prague Quadrennial.

Every four years the Society of British Theatre Designers represents the work of performance designers based in the UK at the largest scenography event in the world. This year applications were submitted to the open call from set, costume, lighting, sound, video and experiential designers across every genre of performance design including theatre, opera, dance, live art, circus, carnival and outdoor festivals were submitted.

The selected twelve performance designers and their submitted productions are:

Alexander Rigg - Bellmouth Papercone/Orographic, Oceanallover, Scotland (2015,2018)

Becky Minto with Mark Murphy - Out of This World, VTOL, MacRobert Arts Centre, Stirling and tour (2017)

David Farley - Flood, Slung Low, Hull City of Culture (2017)

Ian MacNeil - Angels in America, National Theatre (2017)

Jamie Vartan - The Second Violinist, The Black Box, Galway and Barbican (2017)

Laura Ann Price - Talking Heads, Leeds Playhouse (2018)

Leslie Travers - Elysium, Norwegian National Opera (2016)

Lucy Osborne & Nina Dunn - Set and AV Designers - The Assassination of Katie Hopkins, Theatr Clwyd (2018)

Rajha Shakiry - Misty, Bush Theatre and Trafalgar Studios (2018)

Shizuku Hairu - Dystopian Dream, Sadlers Wells and international touring (2017)

Simon Kenny - Black Men Walking, Eclipse, Royal Exchange Studio and touring (2018)

Soutra Gilmour - Pinter at the Pinter, West End (2018)

The selection panel for Staging Places at the Prague Quadrennial were: Kate Bailey (Senior Curator and Producer, Theatre and Performance Collections at the V&A), Eva Auster (AV and Projection Designer), Greer Crawley (Director, SBTD, Editor of the Society's journal Blue Pages and lecturer in spatial design and scenography), Thomas Hescott (Director, writer and Executive Director, Stage Directors UK), Catherine Kodicek (Costume in Theatre Association and Head of Costume, Young Vic), Claudia Mayer (Associate Director: Design, Tara Arts) and Fiona Watt (Project Curator, Staging Places and Honorary Secretary SBTD).

STAGING PLACES is a four-part initiative by the Society of British Theatre Designers. Every designer who submits will have an example of their work created between 2015-2019 shown in the online Staging Places exhibition, with 12 selected designs to be shown at the Prague Quadrennial in June and a further selection to be presented at the V&A museum in London from July 2019. Staging Places will also be hosting a series of regional events across the UK to engage with designers across a diverse range of media. Key themes for 2019 are Design Creation, Design Realisation, Design Futures and Designers Taking the Lead.

The Prague Quadrennial also celebrates the work of student and early career practitioners from throughout the world. The Society of British Theatre Designers and PDEC (the Performance Design Education Collective) have selected Abi McDermott, Conor Smart, Jordan Smith, Kathryn Weaving, May Davies, Rhi Binnington, Vivianna Chiotini, Scott Castner and Yifat Shir Moskovitz from an open application process to represent the UK providing this emerging curatorial team with bursaries to make The Future Utopias Imaginarium in Prague.

The Society of British Theatre Designers is an organisation for designers, run by designers. Founded in 1975, they represent UK designers nationally and internationally by mounting exhibitions, promoting awareness of theatre and performance design, contributing to design education opportunities and acting as a hub for the sharing of information and communication between members. They are the rst point of communication in the UK for the international scenographic community, and for International companies seeking professional designers. SBTD have 3.1k members to their Facebook group and full society members include the multi Olivier award winning Bunny Christie. This year is set to be an important one for SBTD as they continue their Value of Design campaign with Equity and BECTU to promote increased understanding of the design process, better working practices and employment structures, improved credit and visibility for stage design work in the media leading to the renegotiations of the UK Theatre and SOLT collective agreements.

The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space is the largest scenography event in the world. It explores a huge diversity of scenographic practice, from stage and costume, lighting, sound and digital media design, to landscape, urban and found space performance, as well as the design of performance spaces and theatre architecture. In previous years SBTD have presented work by Ralph Koltai, Paul Brown, Leslie Travers, Es Devlin and Gary McCann. The 14th edition of PQ will be held in June 2019.

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