click image for larger version NBT 'Dream' reviews (Will work after premiere on 5 September 2003) recent NBT Reviews Northern Ballet Theatre website

This piece is an extract from the latest issue of Northern Exposure, Northern Ballet Theatre’s Quarterly newsletter for the Friends of Northern Ballet Theatre.

Q: Where did your interest in theatre and design come from?

A: As a child in Ringmer and living just over the hill from Glyndebourne Opera House, I gained a part in Janacek’s Cunnning Little Vixen as Pepik, the forester’s son, directed by Jonathan Miller. Thomas Allen played the role of the forester and Norma Burrowes sang the Vixen. I still know my lines "buh buh help me she’s biting my leg off, help or she'll eat me up buh buh " The timing was difficult because during rolling down a flight of stairs and Norma faking biting my leg off I had to sing and keep a good eye on Simon Rattle who was conducting. I refused to wash the lipstick off my leg when I got home, other than my mother this was my first contact with the opposite sex - in a sort of physical way.

I then took up singing lessons with Elizabeth Abercrombie but after a year realised that, although singing appealed to me, my heart lay in the magical world in which the singers moved. Art, music, theatre and 3D design were subjects in which I excelled at school and so it was natural for me to decide to train as a designer for theatre.

What inspired you on your way to becoming a designer?

I was born in Southwick, on the outskirts of Brighton. At the age of two my parents decided to move to Ringmer, near Lewes in East Sussex. I was educated at Ringmer Comprehensive School and Eastbourne Sixth Form College, did a foundation year in Art & Design at Brighton Polytechnic, followed by a degree in Set and Costume Design at Wimbledon School of Art. It was there that my personal tutor and now long standing friend Richard Johnson gave me not so much

Duncan Hayler photograph © NBT

inspiration but an awful lot of backing, when it became clear that I was not one for fitting into existing moulds. I was inspired by the teaching of the late Richard Negri, a theatre director of great repute in England and designer of the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre.

What was your first job?

The first really serious job was as assistant and associate designer for the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s production of Gotz Friedrich’s production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. I was sent to Japan, into a rickety old workshop buzzing with mosquitoes and accompanied by regular earth tremors, 90 degree humidity, 40 degree heat and the task of overseeing and managing the construction of scenery for the first ever performance of the complete Ring in Japan. We had a record breaking 57 curtain calls on the first night. The experience gave me a great opportunity, great confidence, but was extremely hard work in unconventional conditions. It was, in short, a brilliant technical lesson.

Have you ever designed for dance before?

My first experience designing for dance was for Marek Rozycki at the Deutsche Oper ballet, Berlin in the workshop sessions initiated by Peter Schaufuss. Marek had seen my portfolio of designs for the theatre and courageously employed me, no money of course, but it was the chance he gave me that counted. Thereafter I designed several pieces for Marek, amongst others a world dance premiere of Gorecki’s Old Polish Music at the National Opera and Ballet Wielki Theatre, Warsaw, a world dance premiere of Penderecki’s 3rd Symphony in Poznan and Peter and the Wolf for both the State Opera Ballet, Berlin and the State Opera Ballet Krakow.

Publicity poster for A Midsummer Night’s Dream to be premiered on the 5 September 2003 at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds. NBT ©

Was David Nixon familiar with your work?

David Nixon saw my design for Peter and the Wolf in Berlin, contacted Marek and then asked me to design a new Nutcracker for BalletMet, Columbus, when he was Artistic Director there. Some months later David called me and asked whether I would be interested in working on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In fact his first question was “Are you still designing?” to which my reply was “yes” and for me “there was nothing else that would interest me more!” I am totally and utterly devoted to it!! So of course I leapt at the chance.

Have you ever worked on ‘The Dream’ before?

My first introduction to the play was at school in I hasten to add, a not all too bad school production. I was then invited by the designer John Bury, to see his now famous Glyndebourne production to the music of Benjamin Britten.

With our production for NBT, I was keen to avoid the obvious foliage glued onto netting and super naturalistic trees with all the fake bark. Lets face it we’ve all seen it before in one form or another, why keep repeating this over and over again. Have we no imagination or shall we continue to produce what I call ‘photocopy theatre’? “In a wood near Athens” need not always be interpreted literally.

I asked myself where do dreams take place and where do we actually ‘see’ them? David, Patricia and myself had all agreed that we should take the audience on a journey. Of course one could say this about any piece because it occupies our time. The difference however, came when David suggested a mode of transportation for this journey. This idea grabbed me. The couples in the piece make an experience and a temporal transformation occurs. I am not one for dumping static sets on stage (David I think had become aware of this after I had shown him 36 models for the Nutcracker). The word ‘set’ alone conjures up something fixed. In my opinion when music is involved this shouldn’t be the case, it is more of a transition. So our production will definitely be a dream you’ve never seen before. Its content and presentation are different to the traditional approach, whilst avoiding an abstraction of incomprehensibility.