Designing The Pillowman

Designing The Pillowman

I’ve been a Martin McDonagh fan for a long time. One of my first major “breaks” as a professional lighting designer was to light a production of “The Cripple of Inishmaan” at the Leicester Haymarket in 2003. Directed by Paul Kerryson it was the first time I’d ever heard of Martin’s work. I was hooked. I remember during rehearsals for Cripple heading into town on my lunch break to buy as many McDonagh plays as possible just to read them for my own enjoyment, an act I’ve yet to repeat for any other writer. During this time and whilst singing his praises in some bar in middle England I heard the first rumors of his latest work. A move away from the Irish plays to a darker, colder climate. A totalitarian state. A play about child murders. A play with a bleak, dark…possibly hopeful, theme. The Pillowman. It was a few years before I finally got the chance to read it, and when I did it then sat proudly on my bookshelf. I made a promise to myself that I would someday design it. This day has finally arrived and I couldn’t have asked for a better team around me than with our Director Emma Jordan and the powerhouse companies of Prime Cut and The Lyric Theatre.

For a long, long time I’ve often wondered why this play hits home with me so much and it’s taken me years to try and finds the right words. I believe it’s to do with the actual power of telling stories and the value we place upon our life’s work. As a struggling designer living and working in London I was faced daily with the question to myself “WHY are you doing this?!!”…I’d very little money, rubbish accommodation, no social life, no job security and I was listening to friends of mine, who had “proper” jobs, discuss their second holiday homes. I’d literally worn a hole in the sole of my shoes (something I thought only happened in cartoons) walking the streets (which aren’t paved with gold) because I couldn’t afford the Tube. Then one night it came to me. It was all about communication. I work in communication. My work is about communication. Not in a mobile phone salesman type of way but in a way of one human ‘communicating’ with another. Communicating thoughts, feelings, ideas, opinions… via stories. We’ve been doing this since the dawn of time for a reason. It was important. It was worthwhile, worth the holes in my shoes, worth the lack of second…or even first holiday home. And that was good enough for me. I’ve never questioned my decision to pursue a role in Theatre since. For me there is no other medium like it to tell a story. To gather people together in a room, turn the lights down and tell them a story. So to have a play written not only from the point of view of a writer but a play about stories is perfect…and important.

“Stories can be either bacteria or light: they can infect a system, or illuminate the world” - Ben Okri