Live performers launch new exhibition on the art of theatre staging at Sleaford venue

At a moment when the future of theatre in the UK is in the balance, Staging Places: UK Design for Performance launched at the National Centre for Craft and Design on Saturday, where it will run until January 10, highlighting some of the incredible work done by the UK’s designers and producers is more

important than ever.

The exhibition is being presented by the Society of British Theatre Designers and features work by theatre designers working across the UK and around the world.

The Covid-19 pandemic has already caused untold damage to the arts and the performing arts sector in particular and Staging Places aims to celebrate the diversity of performance design and making practices of designers in the UK today and inspire young people for the future.

The exhibition features work by designers working across the UK and around the world. With the exhibition demonstrating the breadth of creativity within the industry.

Visitors will find set models, costumes, props, photographs, drawings and videos.

Fiona Watt, Staging Places curator and chairman of the SBTD, said: “We are really delighted that we are at the point of coming out of hibernation and back into the light to share this work with you. Our sector has obviously been hit extremely hard during the pandemic and that is likely to go on for quite some time.

“But designers are very resilient and imaginative and inventive people and generally work in response to restrictions. So, this will be another challenge for us as we gradually come back to making live performance again.

“So, we thought that there’s no better time actually to remind everyone of what an extraordinary set of skills and processes it takes to bring a performance to life and bring it to a stage, in every sense of what a stage might mean, through an exhibition like this.”

Some of the work featured includes both final designs and the processes in creating the final pieces. Designers on display include Alex Rigg with Orographic, Soutra Gilmour with Pinter at the Pinter, Shizuku Hairu for Dystopian Dream at Sadler’s Wells and David Farley with Flood as part of Hull City of Culture. Work by East Midlands designers Emma and Giuseppe Belli (Belli and Belli) are also new additions to the exhibition.

Alongside Staging Places, the NCCD will also be showcasing work by local designer-makers working in theatre design, including prop maker Lou Jones and puppet maker Ruth Pigott in the Window Collection exhibition Theatrical Property.