The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
The makings of a performance
Assistant director for Monstrous Bodies at the Dundee Rep, Jennifer K Bates talks about bringing the show to the stage
Dundee Rep’s Monstrous Bodies (Chasing Mary Shelley Down Peep O’Day Lane) is a new play written and directed by Poorboy Theatre’s artistic director Sandy Thomson. The world premiere is a co-production with Dundee Rep and explores the time a young Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, found her imagination in Dundee in 1812. Her story is coupled with that of 14-yearold Roxanne Walker, during an epically awful week in her life in 2017.
Natasha Jenkins is the set and costume designer on the project, having previously worked with the National Theatre and Birmingham Rep.
Her first task was to capture and expand on Sandy Thomson’s vision for the play over two time periods. Her extensive research had her buried in books and frequently making trips to museums – the V&A in London being particularly useful.
Natasha’s designs have been brought to life by Dundee Rep’s in-house production team, handling both the set and costume aspects of the show. The wardrobe team – led by Cate Mackie – and skilled costume-makers throughout Scotland are responsible for the huge task of dressing the 26 actors and 60plus characters in the play.
They have created more than 200 costumes for the production, many of which were made from scratch.
The costumes themselves are hugely diverse, as the theme of the play switches from 19th Century dresses to modern school blazers and ties.
The ambitious set offers many different challenges as 20 separate locations appear throughout the play, including a boat, a school and a millionaire’s mansion. It is important that this scenery merges into one single, coherent piece.
The set not only blurs the lines between the numerous locations which appear in the play, it also seamlessly switches between time periods.
Devices such as using a vinyl flooring for the school but cut into the pattern of an 1812 viewing gallery, challenge how those materials and worlds work together.
The final product is what Jenkins refers to as a “playground”; an open set with different levels for the actors which allows the audience to see the mechanics of the changes happening in the play.
Jenkins’ goal was to craft each time period as realistically as possible.
A mass visual library of costume imagery and set possibilities took shape during her research, before finally making its way from London to Dundee – the same trip Mary Shelley herself takes at the start of her adventure.
Design plays an important role in the work of Dundee Rep – and not just within the walls of the theatre.
Its next show, Mobile, which is set in an actual caravan, is an intimate production that features design through the idea of class and taste in the way we dress, and the way we decorate our homes – from wallpaper to tattoos we are making statements about ourselves all the time.
The theatre has also teamed up with local game development studio Quartic Llama (now known as Biome Collective) and the National Theatre of Scotland to design Other, a free alternate reality sound game for iPhone.
Starting at the Rep and using the iPhone’s satellite tracking, the game guides users around the city unlocking shocks and surprises when key locations are reached. It also features many puzzles, stories, surprises and spinetingling, sinister audio.
Other was inspired by, and created to support, the equally spooky-looking Let the Right One In – a stage adaptation by Jack Thorne based on the Swedish novel and film by John Ajvide Lindqvist.