National Theatre of Scotland

Interview with Lizzie Clachan

Lizzie is a co-founder of London based Stunt. She has designed all their productions including Amato Saltoni, Tropicana, Dance Bear Dance, The Tennis Show and The Ballad of Bobby Francois.

Her other productions include Woman and Scarecrow and Ladybird (Royal Court), The American Pilot (RSC), Bedtime Stories and the End of the Beginning (Young Vic), Factory Girl (the Arcola) and Moonshed for the Royal Exchange.

When you read Zinnie's script, did you have an instinctive response to it, specifically in terms of how you wanted to dress the characters?

Not really. There were some questions about when exactly it was set, in terms of period, and so my instinct was to resolve that.

At what part in the process did you go to Zinnie with your ideas and did you develop the design through a dialogue?
   
Zinnie and I had a very thorough process with plenty of dialogue and a few healthy disagreements. She had some initial thoughts which started the process and I initially developed ideas from these. She was aware of all my design developments from early on and never held back with her opinions – which I appreciated.

The set didn't point to a specific time period but the costumes did, particularly Julie's, what was the thought process behind this decision?

We were working with a particular period –Julie’s costume signalled that, but I let the set work more ambiguously, hinting at a glorious past that no longer existed in the same way and made reference to the time frame of when the play is originally set.

What did you want to say about each character and how do you go about doing this with costume?

In this piece, the costumes mainly reflected hierarchy and status. We spent a long time working on Julie’s costume so that it showed the correct mixture of child and adult, structure and informality

Did the actors have much input into their costumes?

I always talk to the actors about what they think the character is wearing and I use their input (if they have anything to say) to help create the design. In my experience, this process happens much less when period costume is required rather than if the actor is wearing ‘everyday’ contemporary clothes.

What are the most important things to remember when you design for a piece of theatre, particularly one that has to go on tour?

In general, the most important thing to remember depends on the type of theatre you are doing and so it always changes in terms of an artistic approach. However, technically, you always need to think about the space, budget, time frame, personnel (wardrobe, stage management etc).
For touring – you have to think, does it fit in the van, does it work in all the venues, will it fit up in time? Costumes tour much better than sets.

In retrospect, is there any part of the design that you would do differently – either because it didn't work or because you feel it worked so well that you would have liked to have developed it further?

I wish it had been more waterproof. We were always worried about throwing the water around and it felt quite important to be able to do that.

Lizzie was interviewed by Catrin Evans