The Path to Woolf Works and the Language of Design

Abstract

Film technology has become an increasingly prominent component of theatre design. In the practice of Robert Wilson and Robert Lepage it may support what has been described as a ‘pizza style’ of presentation, in which disparate techniques and modes of presentation are used to disturb conventional ideas of narrative, context, and textual authority, while in the work of Motionhouse it creates a language of dance as circus. The longstanding collaboration between film designer Ravi Deepres and choreographer Wayne McGregor presents an alternative model, at once highly composed as narrative and based on meticulous research into textual evidence. In this interview with David Roberts, Deepres charts the evolution of his work with McGregor up to their award-winning Woolf Works, showing how a genuinely collaborative artistic process and attention to the graphic possibilities of different film technologies have transformed our understanding of the role of design in devised performance. Ravi Deepres is Professor of Moving Image and Photography at Birmingham City University. For the past nineteen years he has designed shows in collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor. Their most recent success, Woolf Works, won the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production and re-opened at La Scala Milan in April 2019. David Roberts is Professor of English at Birmingham City University. His recent publications include George Farquhar: A Migrant Life Reversed (Bloomsbury, 2018), and he is currently working on a new edition of Congreve's The Way of the World.