Featured Interviews
Artistry
MICHAEL BLAKE
(HOLLYWOOD, USA)
TOM PIPER
(RSC, London, UK)
CHRISTOPHER GUEST
(UK)
ROBIN FOX
(UK)
Music
JAMIE LIDELL
(NEW YORK, USA)
TOBIAS WILNER
("Bichi", "Blue Foundation", "Ghost Society", Denmark)
LIN DI
("Cold Fairyland", China)
KILLAFLAW
(UK)
Scientech
DR ROBYN LUCAS
(National Centre for Epidemiology and
Population Health, ANU, AUSTRALIA)
DR SETH FORMAN
(Tampa, USA)
Socialogue
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR THOMAS BEAMISH (University of
California-Davis, USA)
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
GEORGE GONZALEZ
(University of Miami, USA)
Articles
OIL vs. PEOPLE
OIL VS. EARTH
THE SUN IS BURNING
HOLOGRAPHIC EVERYTHING
THE HOROSCOPE BATTLE
UFO
Specials
STONEHENGE
LEARNING HOLLYWOOD SECRETS
WORLD CUP
Reviews New Releases
film
SPLICE
(Featuring exclusive interview
with award-winning
special effects expert
JASON BOARD
(Canada - USA)
KARATE KID
Other Reviews
film
IRON MAN2
Recommendations
Books
SOLAR
PARALLEL WORLDS
AHAB'S WIFE
THE HOST
INSTANT SELF-HYPNOSIS
|
 |
Award-winning
Theatre & Costume Designer
TOM PIPER
(UK)
“The biological design of a genuinely artistic mind”
|
 |
Tom Piper’s distinctive design and his ability to envision the essence of all life and ambience from literary works, have established him as one of the most sought-after theatre and costume designers of Europe and part of the United States.
Holding an impressive curriculum, which includes collaborations with reputed directors such as Sam Mendes and especially Michael Boyd, with whom he has worked as a close-knit team for several years, this multi-award winning designer discovered his true career path almost by accident.
Born in London and educated at Magdalen College School in Oxford, Tom had already embarked on a degree in Natural Sciences at Trinity College (Cambridge), with a view to become a biologist, when he volunteered to build the stage for a play that one of his oldest friends, Sam Mendes, was going to direct.
This was certainly a turning point in his life, for Tom discovered a passion stronger to him than science.
After struggling to combine his studies in science and build sets at the same time, he switched to an Art History course. Tom designed over 30 plays during his student life, travelled around Europe visiting different festivals, and then completed a two year post graduate course on theatre design at the Slade School of Art.
Whilst on this course, and due to having the courage to show his portfolio to designer Chloe Obolensky, he was invited to join Peter Brook’s company in Paris, to work on Brook’s visionary production of The Tempest in France, where he stayed for six months.
His accolades and awards would come rapidly, in parallel to his fruitful collaborations with artistic director Michael Boyd, for whom he designed the acclaimed A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
In 2004, Tom Piper was appointed Associate Designer of, probably the most famous classical theatre company in the world, The Royal Shakespeare Company.
Many notable actors have appeared in Royal Shakespeare Company productions such as: Vivien Leigh, Sean Bean, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Mia Farrow, Dustin Hoffman, Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, Jude Law, Helen Mirren, Gary Oldman, Peter O'Toole, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Stewart, David Tennant, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, amongst many others.
The Royal Shakespeare Company, which will reopen its transformed Stratford-upon-Avon site this November, is also the sole British member theatre of the Union of the Theatres of Europe.
Designer Tom Piper and Artistic Director Michael Boyd, make, most certainly, one of the most successful artistic teams of the RSC over the years. We are pleased to interview Tom Piper today, on his career, his work for the RSC and his current and future projects. |
William Shakespeare (Baptised 26 April 1564 -birth date unknown- in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England;died in 1616 aged 52) is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. The RSC takes as its job to connect people with Shakespeare and produce bold, ambitious work with living writers, actors and artists.
|
Thank you for taking the time, as busy as you are at the moment, to respond to this interview Tom.
1. MDM_ We know that you discovered your passion for art and design at a rather late stage in your life. Did it really never cross your mind at childhood that you may pursue another totally different career path to science?
1. TOM_ As a child I enjoyed doing puppet shows and building over the top tree houses, but I also loved Biology. At school I was a bit of an all rounder and didn’t get involved in theatre until my final year when I built a life-size Volkswagen golf car out of wood, which we dropped on to stage for a school comedy revue. It lasted two shows!
2. MDM_ Have you ever looked back and wondered what would your life had been like if you had not volunteered to build that first set for your friend Sam Mendes?
2. TOM_ I was extremely lucky at Cambridge in that there was a thriving student drama scene. In my first term I helped paint the panto and got sucked in to doing more and more behind the scenes work. As well as working with Sam, I did many other shows, so although he was one of the main reasons, I would probably have got into theatre whatever happened. I realized at university, partly by studying the history of science, that in order to really achieve anything as a scientist
I would have to spend many years of research and career development to make that major discovery. Sadly I didn’t feel I had the patience and theatre design offered a very fast way of working from ideas to realization in just weeks. I think I would have enjoyed working in science as a writer or educator and it saddens me that there is such I gulf of understanding about science even amongst well educated decision makers. I am a great fan of Ben Goldacre and his debunking of pseudo sciences.
^
GO TO TOP
(Continue below) |
3. MDM_ We can gather, from your experience, that different talents or passions can be dormant and may awake in people, by any triggering event, at different stages in their life. What would you recommend doing or trying out to the many that do not have a clear idea of what their true calling is and are on the verge of choosing an academic career path?
3. TOM_I recently did a careers fair at my kid’s school and was asked by several 15 year olds what they should do as a career, there were even a few torn between science and the arts. It was depressing that they felt they had to make a cut off now between the two fields. I would advise anybody to just keep having experiences and following enthusiasms, you never know where they might lead, nor do we know what skills and careers might be available in ten years time
4. MDM_ What do you enjoy the most: the process of envisioning the general look and feel of the different stage designs of a production or designing to the detail the costumes for the different characters?
4. TOM_ Difficult. Being a designer is like having a telescope in your hands, you have to keep flipping it around sometimes studying the details at other moments the overview, the attention to both is vital. |
"Antony & Cleopatra" - Design by Tom Piper - RSC |
5. MDM_ You form, with artistic director Michael Boyd, a remarkable and successful team. How important is to work under mutual understanding and what is your secret to achieve it?
5. TOM_Yes, a ready shorthand is very useful and does allow you to explore ideas very rapidly. It is also an atmosphere of trust where I am not trying to impress or win over the director to my design, it is much more of a dialogue and I am very used to Michael deciding to cut or change things as the process develops. The needs of the production should come ahead of individual sensitivities. The danger is that you create too much of a private language that an audience doesn’t understand, so I have to keep alert to whether the ideas are coming across.
6. MDM_ The work you feel most proud of to date would be…
6. TOM_ The RSC History cycle (Richard II, Richard III, Henry I,II,III, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI). 8 plays on one environment.
7. MDM_ Apart from Shakespeare, which other authors inspire you? And what stage or even film production would you love to design?
7. TOM_ Arthur Miller, Monteverdi, Benjamin Britten. I would love to do Peter Grimes one day. |
"As You Like It" - Design by Tom Piper - RSC |
8. MDM_ Which would you say are the main challenges that young designers face nowadays and how do you think that these could be overcome?
8. TOM_ Economic hardship. It is a very crowded profession and there are many design schools. I get over 100 portfolios for the trainee scheme we run at the RSC. Often to get started a designer will need to do unpaid fringe and assistant work. I could only do it as my partner had a real job and we could live in my parent’s home. We need more funding to allow people of less privileged backgrounds into the arts.
9. MDM_ You have designed for the RSC “Antony and Cleopatra” and “As you Like it”, both in representation over the summer. Would you be so kind as to walk us through your envisioning process in each of them?
9. TOM_ For “As you like it” we wanted to understand the politics of the situation , what had caused the Duke to over throw his brother and what it meant to be exiled in the wood. Why at the end of the play is it reported that Duke Frederick is on his way to flush out the other Duke with a whole army? This led us to consider how Shakespeare may have used, as he often does, the play as a allegory on contemporary Elizabethan politics. The new court could be seen very much as a protestant world, all monochrome and buttoned up, but still elegant and rather beautiful, while the exiled court are more like a catholic insurgents force, training and hunting in hiding. Initially Arden is a hard wintery environment in which everybody, shepherds included, have to struggle for survival. In the second half of the play the politics fades and Shakespeare allows the love story to blossom, we explode the world in response to this and the whole auditorium is filled with love poems and placards to create an abstract paper forest.
For “Antony and Cleopatra” the challenge was to create a space that could be extremely fluid so we can shift locations without scene changes. It had to evoke both the heat and passion of the Egyptian scenes and a more political cynical atmosphere in Rome. It is also a surprisingly domestic play with many private scenes at court, so we needed the space to be able to feel intimate as well as epic. The Courtyard Theatre at the RSC, our prototype for the newly transformed Royal Shakespeare theatre which reopens this autumn, is a thrust Stage with the audience on three sides, so I have to think sculpturally and not block sightlines. We created a steel drum bulging into the space, with bands of rust fading to cold metal by the top. It could be lit as either a cold or hot surface. Many doors enabled the cast to make very quick entrances and exits and get to the centre of the stage as quickly as possible.
^
GO TO TOP
(Continue below)
10. MDM_ We not long ago had the pleasure to cover Brian Eno’s last talk at the prestigious Brighton Festival during which he commented that he did not believe that Science and Art mixed well. Do you share his opinion?
10. TOM_ Maybe. But I want to fight to improve the mix. Go to the Welcome institute and see the work created there by artists in response to science.
11. MDM_ We know that you have been quite involved in the redevelopment of the site of the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon, which will reopen this November. Would you share with us the exact date of this event and, if already finalised, the title or titles of the plays that the site will reopen with?
11. TOM_ We plan a soft opening with a programme of events from November. There will then be a reprise of shows in the new main theatre from our current repertoire in the new year, and the first new productions will play from April 2011, some of which I hope to be working on with Michael.
12. MDM_ What feels the most satisfactory, the awards, the expert recognition and the accolades from the critics or the rapture on the faces of a full audience?
12. TOM_ The audience, I don’t get many accolades as my style is normally judged too minimal. I enjoy theatre for the shared experience of actors and audience in the one room, my work is the springboard for that communication and a stimulus to the audience’s imagination. Often a successful design goes unnoticed as it does not overpower the actors.
13. MDM_ Could we know about any of your future projects, Tom?
13. TOM_ “Zorro” the musical in Moscow, Japan and Holland. “Plough and the Stars” at the Abbey Dublin.
ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY WEBSITE:
www.rsc.org.uk |
^
GO TO TOP
<< BACK
|
 |
© WONDERLANCE LTD. | All rights reserved | Company No. 7183786 | UNITED KINGDOM |
|
