MA Theatre Design: Immersing the audience in dynamic environments

This year, MA Theatre Design 2021 graduates have created dynamic, inventive environments which aim to connect their audience to the performance.

We caught up with 3 graduates who have chosen to explore subjects with personal connections and asked them to share their UAL Graduate Showcase submissions.

The play How to Disappear... follows the lead character Charlie's decision to change his identity and focuses on mental health and what gives you your identity.

I decided to set it in Fulham Town Hall which is currently going through a change of identity to become a hotel. The rooms feel realistic as if they have been lived in, whereas the central area is more abstract.

Attendees explore the showroom by room whilst listening to the play through headphones. They experience the play as individuals not always hearing events at the same time as others which creates a sense of isolation between them and the other attendees.

• View more Emma’s work on the Graduate Showcase

I heard Alice's Adventures in Wonderland from my mother when I was a little girl, the same age as Alice. When growing up, I always thought about Alice and sometimes, I felt like I was Alice. That is the reason I made this immersive design for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It gives audiences the chance to be Alice or a member of the wonderland.

• View more of Shiyu’s work on the graduate showcase

The project illustrates an interpretation of philosopher Michel Foucault’s concept Heterotopia - a physical representation or approximation of a utopia.

I chose quite an ambiguous concept, so it was challenging to reinterpret my version of heterotopia clearly. The goal of the project is to convey the concept to the audience so that they can have new experiences in familiar places such as the train station.

• See more of Doyeon’s work on the graduate showcase

As part of the MA Graduate Showcase this September, MA Theatre Design graduating students also showed their work online and in an external special exhibition at Cannon Place, 78 Cannon Street in central London.  

This film captures the launch event on the evening of 24 September 2021.