Madeleine Girling

You won the Linbury Prize for Stage Design in 2013 – how has this helped further your work?
Firstly, regardless of winning, being involved in the Linbury Prize at all is hugely beneficial to young designers because you immediately become part of a kind of database, which is really helpful. It’s just a brilliant platform for you to showcase your work to other professional designers, as well as theatre companies and directors. It’s such a brilliant organization for setting up meetings and connections with other companies and directors of a similar trajectory.  That’s been extremely helpful to me so far.  

What drew you to set design in the first place?
I think it was the combination of different demands that it had and different areas of skill that it required that were so different from each other that was really appealing. It appeals on an extremely creative level, and it allows you to be very individual, and creative, and artistic, while it’s also a very practical job that requires you to think logically. It’s a lot about communication with other people which is a very appealing aspect of it. 

What’s also great about this job is that each new project or each new job that you’re given is a whole new area of research and learning. I really love that side of the job, where you’re given a new subject matter each time and a whole new area to explore and learn about, whether that’s history, or a particular culture, or politics. I think that’s a really interesting side of this job. 

You also have other creative talents, like model-making and puppetry – can you tell us about those?
I studied at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, and it’s an absolutely fantastic course for theatre design. It forces you to explore a huge range of different artistic disciplines and areas of design. You learn about design for puppetry, dance performance, opera, and they’re really brilliant at teaching you all areas of the design process.

There’s this huge puppetry project at the end of the first year in which you get given a script and you have to design, and then make, and then perform in this show. I was taught lots about not only the design process but the practical side of making things and then having to perform with them, which was really brilliant in understanding the whole process of a production and what your job is as the designer, and what you’re asking of other people.  

It was great fun. It was a very intense time of my life, and really hard work, but also one of the happiest. 

What was the first performance you designed for, and did it go to plan?
I suppose my first proper show was in my third year at Royal Welsh. As it’s also a drama school you get to design for the real shows that are going on at the college for the third- year drama students. They invite professional directors in to work with you and the drama students, and I designed a production of Blood Wedding. I did the set and costumes and it was a great experience. There were lots of challenges but I think it went well in the end. Everyone seemed to be pleased with it! 

 

What is your general process for designing a set?
I suppose it’s different every time. It completely depends on who you’re working with and what’s important to them. What sort of director you’re working with and how they like to work. I think for both me and the director, whoever I’m working with, the starting point always seems to be really analysing the script and trying to understand exactly what we both think the play is about, and what the audience is there to experience from that play. From there, that’s always a really good starting point to understand what we need to really focus on and what’s the most important aspect of the play, and also what areas not to fall into or what we don’t want to do with it. 

 

So it’s very much a collaboration?
Absolutely. That’s another aspect of the job I love as well. It’s so much about working with other people, and different people feeding into your work so it really feels like a joint effort, which I always really enjoy. 

It’s really helpful in not being too precious about things when people give their opinions. It feels like a very healthy way to be making art. 

 

You’ve been working on Time and the Conways for the Playhouse – how did you go about reflecting the aesthetic of the play?
The process on Time and the Conways has been slightly unusual because of the whole Linbury Prize and the fact I started work on it through that. At the beginning it was probably slightly more independent and individual that normal collaborations would have been. I started by reading the play and really trying to understand it, and through that I did a lot of research around the writer [J.B. Priestly] and his interesting ideas around time – that seems to be hugely important to this play – and what he was trying to tell the audience, and how the play is a vessel for him to explain his own theories on time. I really wanted to help support that and help show this unusual concept of time. In some productions of this play it might be less clear, so for me that was a real focus.

 

Where there any challenges in designing the set?
At face value it’s a very naturalistic play, and yet the writer’s ideas about time and the fact that our past, present, and future are all existing in parallel is a very non-naturalistic idea, so for me the challenge was to try to create an environment that expressed both of those sensibilities. 

 

You’ll also be designing for Arcadia at the Playhouse, which is coming up in November. How’s that going?
It’s going very well. I’m actually working on that today, doing some model-making. I’m really enjoying that, it’s great to be doing another show at the Playhouse especially now that I know everyone. I really enjoying how though it’s also a play that deals with time and looks at the future and the past and their relationship to each other, it’s extremely different as well and the whole aesthetic demands something very different and much more solid. So I’m loving the contrast, working on those two things. 

 

Were you excited to be able to design for the Playhouse?
I was over the moon! Being part of the Linbury and getting to meet both Giles [Croft, director of Arcadia] and Fiona [Buffina, director of Time and the Conways] was brilliant in itself, and to be able to show my work to them and collaborate with them for that process was fantastic. To then go on and win it and be able to put that show on is more than I could have wished for. 

 

So what’s next for you after Arcadia?
I’ve got a few things lined up over the Christmas period, and January and February in London, which is really exciting. But I’m not sure how much I can say about either of those at the moment! 

Will you stay with set design, or do you think you’ll branch out into other theatre roles - maybe even acting…? 

I don’t think acting’s for me! I absolutely love being part of the creative team but I’m not sure I have the skills to be an actor; I think it’s a very different skills set! I think that the training you get in this job and the experience is applicable to lots of different areas and I’d be really interested to see what those are. I’d like to do some more design for performance in areas like dance and opera, and possibly some more film, but at the moment I’m just feeling very lucky to be working where I am, and I’m just seeing what comes next and where that takes me. I’m happy on this journey. 

 

What would be your dream production to design for?
I’m not sure I’m able to answer that question! Another reason why I like this job is you’re often presented with plays or things that you would never had chosen yourself, but mean a lot to someone else, and they feel really passionately about. I really enjoy being presented with those things and understanding why they love them, and then learning to love them myself. Being presented with whole new things that I wouldn’t necessarily explored myself. I’m not sure that there’s something specific – that I have a dream show. For me it’s just about keeping going and continuing to work with people that I like working with on stuff that excites and inspires me. 

 

Final question: who do you look up to in the set design world? 
There’s lots of designers who I think are brilliant. I think Naomi Dawson is a wonderful designer, Soutra Gilmour, Es Devlin, of course. Oh, and one other person: Tom Piper, who was my mentor when I worked at the RSC. He‘s been a great inspiration to me.