During March of 2012 my college took me to see a performance of Romeo and Juliet at the Nottingham playhouse. I don’t particularly like Shakespeare, but this production has inspired me ever since with everything I do. They chose such beautiful artistic moments and presented the story in such an interesting way it has stuck with me. Their whole premise was the idea that everything that happened to Romeo and Juliet could have been avoided various times in the story. Each time something like this happened they played through the alternative, and then stopped – the lights blinded the audience, ticking played through the speakers, and then they repeated the same section with the original text. They used a calm humming sound at times to orchestrate the story, along with modern songs and high levels of multimedia. The show inspired me so much I found that I used a couple of the same techniques and feelings in Changing Faces with the sound and lighting.

The poster. Monochrome image with the bold red influenced my own poster design.

 The Trailer. The low humming noise with fast ticking and flicking imagery has been a huge influence on my artistic style and these elements have found their place in Changing Faces.

The fact they played with history and took moments of blackout to change what happened is incredibly similar to what we achieve in Changing Faces. Seeing things from a different angle, as it were, it’s just that they went all out and show what would happen if something changed. Even the set and style have similar elements. They have a raised set platform at the back at the top that doubled as a projection screen and performance space. Similar to how we have it. I just found this production either intentionally or unintentionally has very similar elements that are explored in very different ways.

Image of Juliet in front of lit up platform.