Alys Whitehead creates modern, minimalist sets, mostly.
The NDT Broadgate resident on life as an early-career designer and new show SAD at the Omnibus Theatre. PLUS: don't miss The King's Head Theatre's new Springboard season.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
Each issue features an interview with an exciting, emerging theatremaker - and gives them a chance to be explicit about where they want to go and what help they need to get there. Maybe you, reader, can give it to them, or put them in touch with someone who can.
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Before this week’s interview, I want to give a mention to The King’s Head Theatre in Islington and its new Springboard season of ten shows created by early-career artists. It kicks off on Tuesday next week and runs until April 23rd, with two or three new productions performing back-to-back every week.
It is a really exciting line-up of shows, featuring drama, drag, comedy and cabaret, with 80 per-cent of the work either being created by LGBTQ+ theatremakers or focusing on LGBTQ+ stories. The majority of shows were originally intending to run at VAULT 2022, but found a new home at The King’s Head after the festival’s cancellation.
What is on offer? Well, the season starts on Tuesday with Alan Flanagan’s The Silver Bell, a new play about love, loss, and parallel universes directed by Dan Hutton, and Fruits, a neo-cabaret about adjusting to society’s expectations as an immigrant from international collective Takdaja. Then over the following weeks, there are queer love stories in Babydoll and A Partnership, drag in the shape of Grey Widow and Drag Queens vs Zombies, and lots, lots more.
More info and tickets can be found on The King’s Head Theatre website – and there’s a discount if you book two or more shows together! Okay, on with this week’s interview.
Designer Alys Whitehead has a question: “Wouldn’t it be cool if a theatre had a season in which each production was led by a different practitioner?”
“There could be one show led by a writer, one by a director, one by a set designer, one by a sound designer, one by a lighting designer,” she continues. “I think there is a strong case for artistic directors to be designers, too, actually. People often question whether design can be the starting point for theatre. It definitely can.”
The question of why there is not more design-led work on British stages – and how it can get there – has cropped up a lot lately. So, too, has the issue of the sustainability of a career in freelance design, and the adverse mental health effects of working on several different projects at once, often in isolation.
Rosanna Vize, Shankho Chaudhuri, and Sam Wilde have discussed such topics in this newsletter, and initiatives like Scene/Change and NDT Broadgate’s design studio have pushed them higher up the industry’s agenda. Prompted by the pandemic, there have been signs of a sea-change in the working practices – and, fingers crossed, the working conditions – for designers in the performing arts industry.
Whitehead is a member of NDT Broadgate’s design studio herself – one of twenty early-career artists offered free studio space by the project – and she is both grateful for the purpose and creative freedom the space affords her, and excited by the opportunity it provides to work alongside other artists.
“The studio space itself is great, of course, but the really brilliant thing is that you are no longer working at a desk in your bedroom,” she says. “You are surrounded by other designers, all doing different things at different stages in their career. That shared knowledge, that sense of community, that ability to ask each other questions is so valuable. It’s honestly like nothing else.”
“I like stuff that is minimalist and modern. I like clean lines and high concepts.…”
Whitehead grew up in Bracknell, Berkshire. She was an artistic child, but never thought that it was something she could pursue professionally. “I liked making stuff, but I wasn’t very good at drawing or painting or anything,” she says. “Then, I swapped English for photography at A-Level, and really enjoyed having a medium to work in that didn’t involve a paintbrush.”
Whitehead went on to complete a foundation diploma in art and design at Oxford Brookes School of Art, graduated with distinction, and subsequently spent three years studying design and practice at Central Saint Martins. She left in 2016, by which point she knew she wanted to work in performance design.
“At the end of my first year, we had to do a hypothetical design project, and I remember being annoyed because I really didn’t want to be a designer then,” Whitehead says. “I designed a hypothetical production of Attempts On Her Life by Martin Crimp, and I enjoyed it so much, I actually decided that was what I wanted to do.”
Covid-19 interrupted Whitehead’s plans post-graduation, but she started assisting and model-making for other designers – Jasmine Swan, Andrew Exeter, Grace Smart, Rosanna Vize – and worked on “a bunch of random pub shows”, before eventually arriving at the production she considers her first proper credit – Robert Boulton’s social-media dystopia Snowflakes at the Old Red Lion in October 2021.
“I was really proud of that,” she says. “It felt like I’d announced myself. It felt like I’d come out with a bit of a bang. I spent so long with that show, and knew the play and the concept inside out, so everything felt really clear and easy. That’s when design is really fun, when it doesn’t feel like a struggle.”
Whitehead’s stark design for Snowflakes – a blue-lit bed, surrounded by bright tubes of light – earned her an Offie nomination. She followed it up with several other shows – Maddie at the Arcola Theatre, Rage + Consent at Drama Centre London, Lysitrata Jones at Arts Ed – and is now preparing for the opening of Marie McCarthy’s production of Victoria Willing’s new play SAD at the Omnibus Theatre.
“It’s definitely a dark comedy,” she says of the show. “It’s about a woman called Gloria, whose mother dies after eating a dinner she cooked, and who runs away and lives in her attic for most of January. It’s about nostalgia and isolation, and I’ve really tried to explore that through the set. Attics are very evocative spaces. They tell you a lot about a person, a bit like Storage Hunters.”
“This is definitely the messiest, most chaotic design I’ve done, and that’s been really fun,” she says, when asked if she has any particular aesthetic inclination. “I love stuff that is hyper-realistic and detailed, but in my gut I think I am more on the Snowflakes side. I like stuff that is minimalist and modern. I like clean lines and high concepts.”
What do you want to do?
I’d love the chance to work abroad. I’d love to see how designing works in Europe and in America. I’d love to work on more new writing. And I really want to meet a director and start a working relationship, where we collaborate on several shows together over a long period of time. I haven’t had that yet.
What support do you need to get there?
I think the Bush Theatre is making some really cool stuff. Having a conversation with someone there would be great. I’d like to work as a more permanent assistant on a bigger show, as well. I’d love to assist at somewhere like the National Theatre and see how a design comes together in a really big space. I think I could learn a lot from more established designers.
How can people find out more about you?
People can come see SAD, when it opens at the Omnibus Theatre in April. Then in August I am designing for Big Fish at the Wycombe Swan Theatre, so people can come see that, too. They can visit my website, and find me on Twitter, as well.
In terms of influences, I really like the designers Merle Hensel and Hildegaard Bechtler. And, in a more light-hearted way, I really like the Instagram accounts of AnonyMouse and Katie Louise Davenport.
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If you want to get in touch with me to ask about anything, or to suggest someone who deserves a shout-out in this newsletter, you can reach me on Twitter - I’m @FergusMorgan - or by simply replying to this email. That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.
Fergus Morgan