Listed in order, just scroll down to find them – The Steamie / Gaby Goes Global / Of Mice And Men / Dancing At Lughnasa

We produced Tim Roper’s play ‘The Steamie’ in December. It’s set in a Glasgow communal laundry, where the local women come to do their household washing – and gossip . . .

It’s also a musical, with a lot of vibrant songs celebrating working-class life in Scotland. Director Leanne McKenzie got stunning performances out of her actors, but to be honest, it was the set, designed and built by Richard Gamper and Mark Green, that stole the show.

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When a small recruitment agency decides to diversify into becoming an international art dealership, what could possibly go wrong?

Ian Black directed Judy Upton’s comedy as NVT’s November production. The weather was starting to get chilly, but that didn’t deter our model!

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This is the final scene from ‘Of Mice And Men’, our October production at New Venture. George is about to shoot Lennie, an act of kindness to save his friend from being lynched for the accidental killing of a young woman.

Tim McQuillan-Wright’s direction of Steinbeck’s classic was done with a cut-down cast of just four, and my lighting had to evoke different locations and times of day. The top photo is of the riverbank, and above is the campfire where George and Lennie keep warm for the night.

Yellow-brown lighting for the inside of the ranch bunkhouse, and a warm evening glow over the barn where Lennie has his fatal meeting with the young woman.

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Eddie Carbone is in love with his niece Catherine. Except he doesn’t realise it, though his wife Beatrice sees the situation only too clearly.

Everybody tries to tell Eddie, including Alfieri the lawyer, but he doesn’t hear them – and when Catherine falls in love with a young cousin the situation ends – inevitably – in tragedy.

Mark Wilson directed Arthur Miller’s great play as our June production, with audience seated on all four sides of the Studio theatre, so it was a challenging project to light.

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This is Michael, the son of the youngest of the five Mundy sisters in ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’, Brial Friel’s play set in the west of Ireland in the 1930s. He’s an older man now, and he tells the story from the time, years before, when he was only seven years old.

There’s a lot of dancing, to Irish music broadcast all the way from Dublin onto the family’s Marconi radio. But the play’s mainly about religion – both Christian and animist African, and about the economic and social changes taking place all across Europe during the decade leading up to WW2.

There’s also their brother Father Jack, the missionary priest sent home in disgrace from Uganda after he ‘went native’ and began worshipping the tribal god that he’d encountered.

Gerry McCrudden directed this powerful production as NVT’s February offering. I was very pleased to work on it, getting an insight into the Celtic Lughnasa festival as well as an introduction to Brian Friel’s work.

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