The Victoria and Albert Museum was beautiful inside and out. I loved the statues and the paintings. The jewelry exhibit was a particular favorite, capturing history in sparkling and shimmering jewels. However, the theatre exhibit was fascinating, I loved that they had a whole room dedicated to showcasing theatre’s history and educating the public on that process of creation.
The costumes were beautiful. I thought that the set designs were cool to see, it was inspiring the way that people thought outside of the box to create the ambience and story of the show in a set. A lot of these sets reminded me of what we went to see. The Sweeny Todd set was intricate, multilevel, and detailed. Shiloh informed us that just the model probably took hundreds of dollars to create. The Sweeny Todd set reminded me of The Phantom of the Opera and Les Mis. The way the different levels added to the directorial choices that were available. In all of these shows the characters had the opportunity to pop out of different places and place themselves above or below certain parts of the stage to encourage engagement and attention to the entire set, not just the ground level.
I also liked the set model that did the opposite and created a big hole in the floor under the swinging girl. Without knowing anything about the show I already got to see some of the metaphor of the set and understood what it was trying to communicate. It reminded me of the set for House of Shades, where the father was able to open a trap door and there was lighting coming from the bottom, just like in this set model. It also reminded me of Life of Pi, when he jumps off the boat and falls through a small hidden hole in the show. It is this type of unusual thinking that creates diverse and new unimagined ideas in theatre. It is a way of keeping theatre alive and refreshing with new secrets, ideas, and tricks.
I also liked the little model light board where you could play with the lighting on a real set. Because I’ve been thinking about lighting and observing it a lot on this trip it was neat to get to see some of the behind the scenes and helped me to connect more in my mind about how those things work.
Signing off from London,
Margaret
Theatre in London U of A 