Founded in 1966 by Stephen Arlen, then managing director of Sadler's Wells Opera, and Margaret 'Percy' Harris, then the company's resident designer, the course was first known as the Sadler's Well Design Course. The course subsequently became the Theatre Design Course of the English National Opera until 1981, and after some time at the Riverside Studios, the Almeida Theatre and the Royal National Theatre Studio, the course acquired the name Motley and took up residence at its present home, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.
Every year the course selects up to 12 postgraduate-level students who wish to specialise in theatre design. The one-year course is project based, featuring five or six projects a year, one an opera. Since Margaret Harris' death in 2000, the course has been led by designer Alison Chitty OBE along with tutors Ashley Martin-Davis and Anthony Lamble and joined by other practising professionals to work with the students on their various projects during the year.
Each year's course ends with an exhibition of the students' work and has done for the past 30 years. This year, for the third consecutive year, that exhibition - featuring the work of Sarah Bacon, Patrick Cahill, Kate Guiness, Maria F Guirao, Andrew Lennon, Sally Malkin, Lucy Read, Yann Seabra, Giulia Scrimieri, Ales Valásek and Jessica Wiesner - was held at the paint frame of the National Theatre. As in previous years, White Light supplied the exhibition with a selection of miniature lighting equipment to show the modelboxes and costumes to best effect, with Nick Dew and a team of lighting students designing and installing the lighting.
"I spent a few days in the Motley studio before the exhibition," explains Dew. "With each designer - amongst the madness of them all finishing things off - I have a brief chat about the scene they are presenting and how they feel it should look. Then we wave some birdies around and ruffle the swatch books to try things out! I try to light each model as a real scene, trying to catch the moment and taking note of the costumes on the model figures."
Dew and a team of lighting students then spent two days installing and focusing the lighting, making use of the full complement of Birdies "from 10 degree right up to wide FNV 60 degree lamps, which lets us create some realistic theatrical imagery." White Light also supplied Altman low-voltage profile spots for shuttering work and gobos, striplights for cycs as well as Par30s and floods to light the display boards.
(Jim Evans)
