Designing Jekyll & Hyde
Interview with Meg Rollandi, Designer for Don Juan and Jeykll & Hyde
Tell us more about your role as the production designer for Jekyll & Hyde. What does it entail?
My role in the show is kind of different to what it might be in a more traditional in a theatre design role. Often there is a script and the shape of the show is already known. With Jekyll & Hyde the show was developing as it was being made.
One of the focuses for me was knowing the show needed to be able to tour around easily, and for it to be done anywhere. That type of brief changes what my focus is in terms of creating a world. Which is what I think my job is – visually representing, or creating the world of the play or the performers.
Leo is really interested in how anything in the space can be changed or transformed. That means we don’t do any set decorating – which I’m not really interested in doing in any of my work anyway. So rather than dressing the set, which is a more traditional theatre design, instead, all of the objects in the space, are at some point, used in a transformational way.
So that involves working with the performers and responding to the things that they offer to help them practically realise their idea. And then it becomes my job to create a cohesive aesthetic around those objects.
I wasn’t the sole designer for Jekyll & Hyde either. The very first showing of the work was designed by Debbie Fish.
My role in the show is kind of different to what it might be in a more traditional in a theatre design role. Often there is a script and the shape of the show is already known. With Jekyll & Hyde the show was developing as it was being made.
One of the focuses for me was knowing the show needed to be able to tour around easily, and for it to be done anywhere. That type of brief changes what my focus is in terms of creating a world. Which is what I think my job is – visually representing, or creating the world of the play or the performers.
Leo is really interested in how anything in the space can be changed or transformed. That means we don’t do any set decorating – which I’m not really interested in doing in any of my work anyway. So rather than dressing the set, which is a more traditional theatre design, instead, all of the objects in the space, are at some point, used in a transformational way.
So that involves working with the performers and responding to the things that they offer to help them practically realise their idea. And then it becomes my job to create a cohesive aesthetic around those objects.
I wasn’t the sole designer for Jekyll & Hyde either. The very first showing of the work was designed by Debbie Fish.
What are some examples of object transformation?
The tulle is a good example of something that is really transformational. At first it just seems like it’s just a bunch of tulle that the performers pull out of the suitcase, but when spread across the whole audience, and lit in a particular way, it becomes fog. And it completely transforms the space into a dark, scary, closed-in space. We also use the tulle again used as poison gas. The way the performers manipulate it, basically like a puppet creates that transformation. |
" My job is visually representing, or creating the world of the play or the performers." |
So when in the process of devising do you start to work with the team?
To start off I work with Leo and we talk a bunch about how we want the work to feel. So we talk through different qualities that the performance has. For Jekyll & Hyde we want it to feel quite dark and spooky, but also quite playful, and we want it to be high stakes. From there I basically turn up with a bunch of offers and objects that the actors and devising team can play with in the room. Then they respond – like certain objects might need to be stronger, or be more flexible. And then I work from that. It’s a constant conversation.
With the design we tried to capture the honest quality of the work, as well as the duality or disguise of Jekyll and Hyde. All of the audience get to dress up and put themselves in some kind of a disguise that helps them to play and helps them to participate. And I think we all wear a disguise in our lives a little bit.
To start off I work with Leo and we talk a bunch about how we want the work to feel. So we talk through different qualities that the performance has. For Jekyll & Hyde we want it to feel quite dark and spooky, but also quite playful, and we want it to be high stakes. From there I basically turn up with a bunch of offers and objects that the actors and devising team can play with in the room. Then they respond – like certain objects might need to be stronger, or be more flexible. And then I work from that. It’s a constant conversation.
With the design we tried to capture the honest quality of the work, as well as the duality or disguise of Jekyll and Hyde. All of the audience get to dress up and put themselves in some kind of a disguise that helps them to play and helps them to participate. And I think we all wear a disguise in our lives a little bit.
What work or methods or making inspire you?
For these works I’m particularly interested in collages and assemblages. In a fine arts context that might be sculptures made from a bunch of found objects. Or post-modernist artists who are cutting up found imagery, painting on it, and then changing the meaning of it. I look at those sorts of works for inspiration to see how they are transformed. We also look at appropriation in Jekyll and Hyde. How we draw from different eras to make a new timeless place or time. In Jekyll and Hyde they are moving between Victorian London which is really far from where we are now, and the present day. So folding in references to that is important. And how have you created the story of the performers themselves – as a pseudo-french troupe of entertainers?
Their frenchness is their own kind of disguise. They all have a character arc, but it’s about finding a way to unify them through the design, but give them individual character. So we aim to suggest some of their character or the clown that they’re playing without putting them into a character actor costume. In traditional commedia dell'arte clowning they have really specific roles, but instead we look at how these performers can create their own metaphorical masks. That is the purpose of their accents, and it is what their costumes are trying to do. Their costumes also have a pretty and modern quality that could fit into the real world right now. We’ve carried through the costumes from their previous show ‘Don Juan’. It’s all black or white, so really monochrome, and we insert all the colour in through the audience and through the storytelling. |