This 2022 Lecture can now be viewed on YouTube – click here

And for a comprehensive look back at the history of the Society’s connection with the legacy of Edward Gordon Craig, click here for an account by our Vice-President Eileen Cottis.

The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and the Society for Theatre Research are pleased to announce an open panel discussion for the 2022 Edward Gordon Craig Lecture, with representatives from Scene/Change, including Set & Costume Designers Soutra Gilmour and Simon Kenny.

“Designers are the builders and shapers of the worlds we see on stage, dramaturgs of visual narrative through the use of people and space.”

Scene/Change is a collective of Set and Costume Designers brought together through ART, ADVOCACY and ACTION, in support of the theatre industry and its creative workforce.

The collective began in April 2020 as an email exchange entitled ‘dialogue in strange times’ in response to the extraordinary situation our industry faced due to the global pandemic. The exchange was to connect the design community in support and solidarity, and to also reflect on design practice within the theatre & performance industry. The Scene/Change community is a place for all: at its heart, professional set and costume designers, design associates and assistants, of all levels of experience in dialogue with each other, and also our colleagues across the industry.

The event will be held at 6:30pm on Thursday 16th June 2022, at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London, NW3 3HY.

All attendees are welcome at a drinks reception following the lecture.

Speaker biographies

Soutra Gilmour
Theatre includes: Antigone (National Theatre), Duchess of Malfi (Old Vic), Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (National Theatre), Reasons to be Pretty (Almeida), Inadmissible Evidence (Donmar Warehouse), Double Feature In The Paint Frame (National Theatre), Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf (Sheffield Crucible/Northern Stage), In a Forest Dark and Deep (The Vaudeville), Polar Bears (Donmar Warehouse), The Little Dog Laughed (The Garrick Theatre), Three Days of Rain (Apollo Theatre), The Pride (Royal Court), The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes (RSC @ Wilton’s Music Hall), Piaf (Donmar Warehouse, The Vaudeville and Teatro Liceo, Buenos Aires), The Lover and The Collection (Comedy), Our Friends in the North, Ruby Moon, Son of Man (Northern Stage), Last Easter (Bimingham Rep), Angels in America (Headlong/Lyric, Hammersmith), Bad Jazz, Brief History of Helen of Troy (ATC), The Birthday Party (Sheffield Crucible), The Caretaker (Sheffield Crucible and Tricycle), Petrol Jesus Nightmare # 5 (Traverse/Kosovo), Lovers & War (Strindbergs IntimaTheater, Stockholm), Hair, Witness (The Gate), Baby Doll, Therese Raquin (Citizens,Glasgow), Ghost City (59e59,New York), When the World Was Green (Young Vic), Modern Dance for Beginners (Soho Theatre), Through the Leaves (Duchess and Southwark Playhouse) and Shadow of A Boy (National Theatre).

Opera includes: Down By the Greenwood Side/Into The Little Hill (Royal Opera House) Anna Bolena, Don Giovanni, Mary Stuart (English Touring Opera), The Shops (Bregenz Festival), The Birds, Trouble In Tahiti (The Opera Group), El Cimmarron (Queen Elizabeth Hall) Saul, Hansel and Gretel (Opera North), A Better Place (English National Opera) and Girl of Sand (Almeida Opera).

Simon Kenny
Simon is a UK based set and costume designer working in theatre, opera and live performance. He trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. His work on the acclaimed off-Broadway ‘Pie Shop’ production of Sweeney Todd was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design of a Musical. His designs for Black Men Walking were selected to represent the UK at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and at the V&A Museum.

Current and forthcoming projects include Blue/Orange (Theatre Royal Bath, Royal & Derngate Northampton); Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls & Rockaby (Jermyn Street Theatre, Ustinov Studio Bath); The Secret Life of Humans (English Theatre Frankfurt); The Wiz (Hope Mill Theatre); Nothello (Belgrade/Coventry City of Culture); The Lion (Southwark Playhouse, Arizona Theatre Company); and Whistle Down The Wind (Watermill).

Musical theatre includes: Dave Malloy’s Ghost Quartet (Boulevard Theatre); Assassins (Watermill/Nottingham Playhouse); Cabaret (English Theatre Frankfurt/Deutsches Theater Munich); Sweeney Todd (Harrington’s Pie & Mash Shop, West End and off-Broadway, Tooting Arts Club); Guy Chambers’ folk opera adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant (Royal & Derngate Northampton, West End); Kander and Ebb’s The World Goes Round (Stephen Joseph Theatre); Billy The Kid (NYMT/Curve); and Saturday Night Fever (Theatre Royal Bath, UK tour).

Theatre includes: The Death of a Black Man (Hampstead); Antigone (Mercury Colchester); The Gift, Black Men Walking, Princess & The Hustler (Eclipse, UK tours); stage adaptations of Jackie Kay’s Red Dust Road (National Theatre of Scotland/Edinburgh International Festival), Alex Wheatle’s Crongton Knights and Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses (both Pilot, UK tours), Louis Sachar’s Holes (Nottingham Playhouse and UK tour) and Karen Blixen’s Babette’s Feast (Print Room); Giraffes Can’t Dance (Curve/Rose/Simon Friend); Macbeth (Stafford Shakespeare Festival); Broken Glass (Watford Palace); Wind in the Willows (Sherman); Peter Pan (Mercury Colchester); a national tour of Driving Miss Daisy with Siân Phillips (Theatre Royal Bath); Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare’s Globe); Platinum (Hampstead); Barbarians in the vacant Central St Martin’s building in Soho (Tooting Arts Club); Sleeping Beauty, The Ladykillers, Sherlock’s Last Case, Sleuth (Watermill); The Children, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Venus in Fur, The Collector (English Theatre Frankfurt); a major revival of Martin Sherman’s Rose with Dame Janet Suzman (HOME); Fallen Angels (Salisbury Playhouse); The Light of Heart, Ghosts (Theatr Clwyd); two American Seasons at the Ustinov Studio Bath, including In The Next Room or the vibrator play (also St James), 4000 Miles (also Print Room), Fifty Words (also Arcola), Red Light Winter, In A Garden; Absent Friends, Entertaining Mr Sloane (London Classic Theatre, UK tours); ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas, a new devised piece for small children (Unicorn); Island (National Theatre & tour); and Border Force, an installation/performance/club event for Duckie.

Other theatre includes the UK premiere of Noel Coward’s This Was A Man, and revivals of previously banned Young Woodley and Tea and Sympathy (Finborough); Purple Heart (Gate); The Machine Gunners, Run! (Polka); The Belle’s Stratagem, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, The Busy Body, Antigone, Feathers in the Snow (Southwark Playhouse); Hamlet (Young Vic); The Mountaintop (Derby Theatre); There’s Only One Wayne Matthews (Sheffield Crucible Studio); Palace of the End, Riff Raff (Arcola); Pedestrian, a new play for one man and a goldfish (Bristol Old Vic & UK tour); Measure For Measure, The Comedy of Errors (Cambridge Arts Theatre); Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls (imitating the dog/British Council, National Theatre of Greece & UK tour); The School for Scandal (Park Theatre); Good Grief (UK tour, Theatre Royal Bath); Seven Jewish Children (Hackney Empire); Michael X (Tabernacle); The Veiled Screen, True or Falsetto? (Drill Hall & international tours); Twelve Angry Men (Tricycle); three national and international tours of new plays for British-Asian company Rifco Arts; and as Associate Designer, Double Feature – a season of four new plays in a bespoke pop-up venue in the National Theatre Paintframe.

Opera includes A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Le Nozze di Figaro (Nevill Holt Opera); Vivienne (Royal Opera House, Linbury); The Cunning Little Vixen, The Prodigal Son, The Homecoming, Háry János, Orlando (Ryedale Festival); Carmen (Prison Choir Project); A Voice of One Delight (Tête-à-Tête); Albert Herring (Surrey Opera); Carmen (Hampstead Garden Opera); A Night at the Opera (London Palladium & UK tour).

He works regularly with drama and theatre production students as a designer, project leader and visiting lecturer. Productions include Against, Suddenly Last Summer, The Workroom (RADA); Angels in America, Woyzeck, Machinal (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama); Legally Blonde, Evita, Roberto Zucco (Arts Ed); Caresses, In Flame (Manchester Metropolitan University); a promenade production of Watership Down (Oxford School of Drama at the Botanic Garden, Oxford); and a series of devised projects for Creative Partnerships.

Scene/Change is a collective of Set and Costume Designers brought together through ART, ADVOCACY and ACTION, in support of the theatre industry and its creative workforce.

The collective began in April 2020 as an email exchange entitled ‘dialogue in strange times’ in response to the extraordinary situation our industry faced due to the global pandemic. The exchange was to connect the design community in support and solidarity, and to also reflect on design practice within the theatre & performance industry. The Scene/Change community is a place for all: at its heart, professional set and costume designers, design associates and assistants, of all levels of experience in dialogue with each other, and also our colleagues across the industry.

All attendees are welcome at a drinks reception following the lecture.