Live Performance Designer
April Rowland
Realised Designs
Heritage Project for Southwell Workhouse
Photoshop
This project gave me the opportunity to apply for a realised design with the National Trust at Southwell Workhouse, Nottingham. The objective of this project was to think about how to incorporate Site Specific into a design, whilst highlighting social care within the performance. The aim was to create a 5-minute performance by looking through several historical archives based on the workhouse provided by Jane, my volunteer. The ‘National Trust’ asked for a scripted piece that portrays a story of social care. I worked in collaboration with my volunteers to understand how my ideas could be achieved within the room I had chosen. I needed to produce a Site-Specific performance that incorporated the building, story, costume/prop and aims. This design included budgeting, finding material, choosing a performer, designing all aspects and researching that time period. I hope this project will help me widen my research capabilities as well as practise and learn different techniques in creating cos/prop.
Costume Design:
Sketchs:
This topic help uses, explore in depth, about how to make a 1:25 scale model become actually set for a production. At the start of the project we were shown how to make a small mini flat and canvas frame. This help uses to understand what type of tool we would be using. As well to think about the correct Health and Safety issues you should be aware of, in the workshop. An example, was COSHH- Control of Substances Hazardous to Health.
​
As in a team, we were able a work well together however, at first it was quite challenging to work out the measurements of the model. We did have a disagreement in the group, but was able to overcome the discussion. We used my model from the previous project called Speculative Design Project and the book was called “The Seven Acts of Mercy” by Anders Lustgarten. In the brief, we had to make the model to fit a curtain size which was 2.5m in each group. In the groups, there were four groups of 5-6 people in them. These groups had to choose one design for the real construction build, which was my design.
​
This follows on from ‘Seven Act Of Mercy’ where the model of the performance was built. The design of the structure has been split into two elements, bricks walls and church columns. The brick walls symbolise Liverpool and its industrial location and columns to represent the religious churches found within Italy. The columns are above the bricks to create a divide between the two worlds.I decided to fade the structural element from the columns to the bricks this was to make it seem like they’re interlinked together. I decided to do this with the brick work and the paved floor as well and then gradually fade the floor into the audience. This artistic element allowed the audience to feel like they’re
in the performance and create a link between the unlikely pairing of the two worlds. Caravaggio’s painting is a big element within the performance and the aim was to make it stand out. Therefore, the frame was laser cut and designed to fit the time frame of 1606 Napes.