DESIGN MEETING FOR ROMEO AND JULIET

Dave!

I felt the urge to briefly update you on the fantastic design meeting Rich and I had last week, which has made us both even more excited about the R&D week. We met in the National (what a lovely place to meet and do business - I wonder how the refurb will change that...only for the better I hope!), and discovered our two designers, Rhys Jarman and Max Humphries awaiting our arrival. Thus ensued an energy filled hour of ideas and doodles about the puppets we're having made for the R&D week, as well as some ideas about the overall concept for the set for next year.

We've asked Max to make us two puppets for our week of research, one, the Nurse, the other Juliet's father, Lord Capulet. Rich has had some lovely ideas about the Nurse, and it looks like she'll be smaller than the rest, and ever so slightly magical... I don't want to give too much away, but it's all very exciting! One little clue... In a discussion about the Nurse and how to make her magical, Max did come out with the ever so slightly worrying statement, 'Well, I do have a dead pigeon in my freezer, so we should be ok'...resulting in a short pause around the table as we all digested this, and silently resolved never to accept icecream whilst at Max's house...

Lord Capulet is set to be a hugely versatile puppet, comprised of a head and two arms, and after only a weekend of work, already looks amazing. Rich's design ideas for Lord C are based around the idea that he will grow not only in power but also stature as he becomes more and more incensed by Juliet's rebellion against his authority. For a brief moment we strayed down the inspirational line of Ming the Merciless, but we caught ourselves, and went for the safer, and infinitely more appropriate inspiration of Brian Blessed for the face. Ideas of royal colours, blue, green, red, all floated around the conversation, but what is fantastic is that it's all so experimental, and we can keep playing and experimenting 'till he's just the way we want.

In talking about the set we began thinking about using the textures of marble, and stone, and then thought that these would be great textures for the skin of the puppets, making them look like they are truly a part of the set. We've also managed to incorporate these ideas of texture into our new title we've just had designed....watch this space for more details of that!

All in all, it was an exceptionally productive and exciting meeting, and I'm sure I haven't done justice to it here, but I know for certain that Max and Rhys will, and we'll have some fantastic puppets and sketches to play with come the week of the 25th, and I for one Dave, can not wait!

Thanks Dave, see you monday.
Sarah (Night Light Producer)