Playing With Scale

This exhibit explores how theatre designers use scale models, through seven productions that appeared on the Olivier stage of the National Theatre between 1977 and 2018. The designers are: Hildegard Bechtler, Bunny Christie, Soutra Gilmour, Jocelyn Herbert, Geoffrey Scott and Anthony Ward. It includes films with some of the designers talking about the models. The designs respond to the unique space of the Olivier, and some make use of its drum revolve, a complex piece of stage machinery. Scale models were also important in the design process for the theatre itself, with architect Denys Lasdun collaborating with directors and designers through models. The physical exhibition was displayed at the Wolfson Gallery, National Theatre from October 2018 - May 2019.

In theatre, scale models are tools of collaboration. They are used in discussions with directors, actors, scenic artists, prop-makers and designers of light, sound and projection. Although today physical models are often supplemented by digital visualisations and construction drawings, they are still regarded as essential by many creative teams. Designers also make working or ‘sketch’ models to think through technical and creative problems. In British theatre, final models are usually made in a ratio of 1:25 – this means a two-metre doorway is 8 cm tall in the model. Smaller models (e.g. 1:50) can’t include much detail, while larger ones (1:10) are hard to transport. In North America, where feet and inches are the standard units of measurement, models are made in a scale of 1:24, and this is also the scale used in film. 

Denys Lasdun was appointed as the architect of the National Theatre in 1963. A Building Committee of directors and designers worked with him on ideas for the Olivier Theatre, the main auditorium. Lasdun’s model-maker, Philip Wood, made hundreds of models of the Olivier at different scales and to various degrees of finish.

Director John Dexter and designer Jocelyn Herbert collaborated closely with Lasdun on ‘Scheme B’, physically cutting up models to experiment with the space and to think about the relation between the auditorium and the stage. Just like a set designer, Lasdun used a scale figure – ‘a human being whose eyes are 5 foot 6 ½ from the ground, just a silhouette’ – to think about how his models would work at life size. He said, ‘I move it around, and I look through that eye of the human being and I find that gives me a very good guide.’ (Quoted in Barnabas Calder, 'Raw Concrete', Heinemann, London, 2016 pp. 293-4.

The Olivier contains an extraordinary piece of stage machinery that was not yet fully functional when the theatre opened in 1976. The ‘drum revolve’ beneath the Olivier stage was designed by Richard Pilbrow and Richard Brett of Theatre Projects. It is five storeys deep and is made up of four elements that can be used independently or together: the cylindrical drum, a flat rim that surrounds it at stage level, and two semi-circular elevators known as Red and Blue. The whole drum can revolve, turning a disc at the centre of the stage floor. The surrounding rim can turn independently – at a different speed or in the opposite direction to the drum. The Red and Blue elevators can rise and fall separately through five storeys. By coordinating a rising elevator with the turning revolve, a scene can be made to ‘corkscrew’ into view.

The second production designed for the new Olivier theatre was 'The Plough and the Stars', by Sean O’Casey. The play is set in Dublin before and during the Easter Rising of 1916. Director Bill Bryden and set designer Geoffrey Scott were taken by actor Cyril Cusack on a ‘recce’, a research trip, to look at the Georgian tenement houses and pubs of Dublin.

Reviewer Charles Spencer commented, ‘Nowhere is the attention to detail more apparent than in Geoffrey Scott’s settings. They evoke the atmosphere of the Dublin tenement with such microscopic accuracy that you can imagine the smell of the place, the creak of the floorboards.’ (Charles Spencer, The Surrey Advertiser, 7 October 1977). 

The designer Jocelyn Herbert (1917–2003) created hundreds of designs for productions in theatre, opera and film. She worked extensively at the Royal Court, Old Vic and National Theatre and was known for a collaborative approach to design that respected the contribution of makers as much as directors. Drawings, paintings, set models, masks, sketchbooks and correspondence from her whole career are now held in the National Theatre Archive. Herbert’s archive is an unparalleled resource for the history of theatre design.  In the image opposite Jocelyn Herbert sets up the model for her design for John Osborne’s play 'Inadmissable Evidence', directed by Lindsay Anderson at the Teatr Współczesny, Warsaw in 1966.

Bertolt Brecht’s play 'The Life of Galileo' was directed by John Dexter and designed by Jocelyn Herbert. They had collaborated for more than 20 years and always spent a long time working together with a model, discussing not just the look of the stage but also how the actors could move about on it. Dexter said of their collaboration 20 years previously, on Arnold Wesker’s play 'Chicken Soup with Barley' (1958), ‘We did two weeks talking, looking at the ground plan, playing with bits of cardboard. We had to “sort out the plumbing”, the geography of the place. You do that with any play, no matter how abstract.’  (Cathy Courtney, 'Jocelyn Herbert: A Theatre Workbook' 1993, p. 215). 

These flat cardboard figures designed by Jocelyn Herbert were intended to be used when working with set models. They are drawn and painted on card, some with plasticine or coins to help them stand upright. The small figures are full of life, with characters shown in mid-action, leaving the details of the costumes for larger drawings on paper. This production of the play required 105 separate props, including globes, telescopes and other scientific instruments. The scale models of furniture and props for 'Galileo' are made of many different materials including wood, paper, metal, clay, plastic, fabric, solder, paint, glue as well as found elements such as twigs and coins.

Costume drawings for these characters can be viewed on the next pages.

The sketch shows Galileo lifting and turning his student Andrea as he sits on a chair, to demonstrate the motion of the earth in relation to the sun. He says: ‘For now we know – everything moves!’ (National Theatre Archive JH/4/63). James Hayes, the actor who played Federzoni in the 1980 production of 'Galileo', later recalled its opening moment. James Hayes: 'I’ll never, never forget the opening image when the audience came into that theatre … There was a huge armillary sphere hanging here, and this very beautiful wooden floor, then the music started and way, way in the distance the light came up on a very simple platform which was on tracks, with tables and scientific instruments on it, and in the centre of it was a copper basin on a three-legged stand, and Michael Gambon was standing there, naked to the waist, with his young assistant, young Mark Brenner. And that’s the way this play opened, this sphere flew out and this truck came down – and you knew you were in for a great evening.’ 

This production of Shakespeare’s comedy about two sets of identical twins, directed by Dominic Cooke and designed by Bunny Christie, emphasised the feel of a teeming city, moving from the docks to a city centre of shopfronts and alleys. The performers scampered up and down ladders and staircases inside tall towers, leaning out of windows to call down to people on the street below. Rather like the characters, the buildings are twinned and have secrets to reveal. The collaboration with production managers and engineers was crucial in planning how to execute a ‘kinetic design’ that required filmic orchestration of moving scenery.

Sophocles’ tragedy was given a modern setting by director Polly Findlay and designer Soutra Gilmour: curved concrete walls enclose a military control centre. In interview Gilmour said, ‘All my work endeavours to respond to the chosen space, in conversation with the text. In that sense it’s always site-specific, whether I am in a found space, West End proscenium theatre or the Olivier. It’s a dialogue with the place, a relationship with the materials and – hopefully – a releasing of the energy between production, space and audience. The Olivier is a modern interpretation of an Ancient Greek playing space, a direct conversation between actors and the audience, so its most valuable playing area is the downstage triangle between the outer sightlines and the centre of the drum. The most important discovery for me was uncovering the ‘jaws’, the low curved concrete walls Lasdun designed that sit half on the stage and half in the auditorium. Often these are covered up in order to hang lights but they have a crucial role in bridging the threshold between stage and auditorium. Exposing them shrinks what can feel a huge space by visually pulling the stage into the audience’s space. It becomes a shared space.’ 

Model made by Aaron Marsden and Katie Lias (2012) with additional model-making by Nina Patel-Grainger (2018).

Detail from the final model for 'Antony & Cleopatra', designed by Hildegard Bechtler. The wall shown in the photograph rotates. On this side, representing Egypt, there are textured tiles glazed in vivid turquoise, a pool and sun loungers. 

In Anthony Ward’s design for 'Exit the King' by Eugène Ionesco, directed by Patrick Marber, the actors are brought close to the audience by placing the whole set on the front half of the revolve. A red carpet runs down the centre aisle of the auditorium, linking stage and audience. At the end of the play, the walls sink down on the elevator and disappear, leaving the carpet and throne suspended above the abyss. The throne slowly glides backwards into the darkness. Anthony Ward worked with design assistant Luke Smith, creating dozens of models at different levels of detail as the design evolved over the course of a year.

Up to two years before opening night, a designer receives an invitation to design a production. Months of research and conversations with the director follow. A production manager discusses early white card models - accurate in scale but without any surface finish - with the designer to think about feasibility and cost. A 'white card' presentation usually takes place about six months before the first performance. About eight weeks later the final model,  complete with indications of colour, texture and materials, is shared with members of the production departments. The model is measured to create construction drawings; propmakers and scenic artists use it as a reference in the studio. Actors usually see the model on the first day of rehearsals, and it often remains in the rehearsal room until the fit up. Once the production has opened, the model can be used in touch tours for blind and partially sighted audience members, in education workshops or at fundraising events. After the end of the production, the model is offered back to the designer. Selected models are acquired by theatre archives such as the V&A or by the National Theatre Archive.