Liz Johnson

Liz is based in the The Midlands and completed her degree in Theatre Design at the Birmingham Institute for Art and Design, where her experience covered many aspects of performance and event. She is both a set and costume designer and has particular experience in prop making and sourcing for both theatre and film.

She has been a design assistant, scenic painter and prop maker for the Birmingham School of Acting Winter Season 2006 at the Crecent Theatre, Birmingham, which included Of Mice and Men (Dir. Dominic Colenso), The Flies (Dir. Rebecca Atkinso-Lord) and Head-Rot Holiday (Dir. Abigail Anderson), and she also took part in the collaborative design of a short film based on the life of Walt Disney, for which she also sourced costumes and made props. She was a contributor towards the collaborative design of a contemporary dance performance of Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the Patrick Centre in the Birmingham Hippodrome, for which she also took part in the construction and paint-effects team for a submarine themed water-misting machine, which was commissioned by Live Nation for the Download Festival 2007.

Liz has a particular interest in site-specific work, which influenced her decision to design, for her final major project, a theatre event that incorporated the performance of two Oscar Wilde plays at a stately home in Staffordshire. 

She enjoys taking part in both the design process and practical work involved in staging a performance, and she hopes to spend more time working in various types of theatre and branching into film and television. 

Ev Beard

A very versatile, multi-talented artist, Ev has been providing art/crafts activities to schools, colleges and community groups for over 15 years. He has designed the activities to develop awareness of the traditions and artistic values of the sometimes forgotten cultures e.g. Aboriginal painting. Completely self-taught, he is an ac

complished portrait/wildlife artist working with virtually all paint mediums, including glass paints and sculpts in clay. His wildlife work has been endorsed by the late Molly Badham - founder of Twycross Zoo and he donates part of the proceeds from the sales of his work to wildlife conservation.

In 2002 he founded Studio Select - a registered charity, to which he is the Project Manager/Trustee, to assist disadvantaged artists and provide art in the community. This includes working with a drama group - Theatre d' Europe that uses drama and games to teach French in schools, producing their backdrops and props. Ev is also involved in the admin and production areas of a drama group - Radio Rep that produces story Cd's and radio plays for hospital radio. Radio Rep has developed the project working in allegiance with Vale FM using school pupils and drama students in the productions. 

Through Studio Select, he develops opportunities for artists by promoting their talent to various organisations: schools, colleges, community groups etc. 

For example S. S. Mary & John J & I School in Erdington, Birmingham, has used Ev's artists extensively to paint murals, backdrops for school plays and display material - all involving the pupils.

Ev has a Small Business Certificate with which he uses his experience to assist, advise and motiv

ate to set up their own businesses, direct them to develop their simply set an exhibition. His involvement with the Birmingham Opera Company is to further develop his experience in set design - to both assist other artists within his organisation and broaden his own skills. Plus if required, to utilise his various skills towards the set design.  

The Brains of Birmingham Opera Design Brains Trust

Over the course of the next few days we'd like to introduce some of the lovely people that make up Birmingham Opera Design Brains Trust.  

Bouncy Hills

The huge cat litter hills from the model are now being put into the factory but are obviously not made from cat litter this time. To save money the hills are going to be made up of a combination of shipping containers, hay, decking and soil, apparently soil is expensive. I made a contour map based on our hills of cat litter in the model and then proceeded to figure out how many shipping containers could fit underneath it, tweaking the hills to make them slightly larger or smaller in certain areas.

The shipping containers started coming in and over the next few days the "big strong boys" as Sam calls them have started building them up with hay and soil. Us Design Brains climbed one the finished hills yesterday and found that the top was very bouncy if you jump on it, we're guessing that's the roof of the shipping container underneath us. We've been told it's safe but if you come to the show i wouldn't recommend using it a bouncy castle.

Once all the hills are made there will be a final layer of soil added on top which will be a more precise colour, texture and grain, To get the effect of the land we want that fits in with the opera.

The Cow Shed

Graham decided it would be nice to have one of the acts outside in the 'cow shed' on the side of the factory. This idea went down pretty well with everyone, pretty quickly act 2 emerged as a perfect choice to be set outside. So we got to work on making an extra part of the model for the outside.

The idea of having act 2 outside has just this weekend been scrapped because it was unworkable due to the noise and light levels. But these are some of the things that might have happened. The Idea was to use the intermezzo like an interval. Different ideas came and went like a carnival party with chinese dragons or for a while it was a beer festival. It's a shame the outside couldn't really be used because some really exciting stuff was being talked about for going on out there, things like cars blowing up or a huge mural of Idomeneo bleeding.

Model Box

In the design studio Stuart and I (Harry) were busy making a 1:50 scale model of the inside of the factory. So after a trip to the art shop for materials we got to work. Stuart took photos of the space and printed them out at 1:50 scale so that we could get more of the feel of the building into the model, which i thought was a great idea that i will probably use in some of my designs in the future. I'd never made a model this big before and I would usually be working at 1:25 scale which for me really gave a sense of the sheer size of the space.

Stuart also introduced me to a computer program called SketchUp he uses sometimes for things like this, In this program you can create a 3d model of a space and fairly quickly add pretty much anything you want to it whether it's bits of buildings, railway tracks, a car , table, curtain, river...... the list goes on. It's definitely something i will use for my own designs in the future.

We used the model to try out and develop some of the set ideas. One of the thoughts Stuart was having was to create great big hills inside the space, To keep it cheap we used cat litter, the model resembled a huge cat litter tray afterwards.

Later the model and the initial ideas were shown to Graham Vick (the director) who on the whole seemed to like it. Throughout the talk some parts of the set were slightly altered, parts were taken out completely or used in a different way and other ideas were added. I was on hand to quickly make up models for the things that Stuart and Graham were coming up with. It was really useful for me to listen in on that conversation and see how a director and designer interact and work together and especially the power struggle between them.

As the ideas developed so did the model even the people got replaced by even more detailed plastic people.

First view of the factory

This is how the factory looked when we first saw it . There was a lot of rubbish scattered around, oily floors, leaks in the roof and skylights in the ceiling. The process of making the space ready to then have a set put in began. Apart from the very obvious of cleaning up and blocking leaks, the skylights were blacked out and then made to look like they had always been like that. This was so that we could have complete control over the lighting of the show.