Welcome!

Posted on by Paul Burgess

Here’s a quick selection of my work: use the menu to explore further or scroll down this page for my articles, posts, updates and other writings.

  • Plot 17, written and performed by Kenny Baraka, with DJ Conrad Kira, touring schools in an adpated horsebox. Set, costume and video design: Paul Burgess. An Apples and Snakes production. Photo Suzi Corker.
  • Light Waves, Dark Skies, directed by Mat Ball for We Made This, Chapter Arts and touring. Set, costume and projections by Paul Burgess
  • Deafinitely Theatre’s 4.48 Psychosis – a co-production with the New Diorama Theatre. Set, costumes and video: Paul Burgess. Lighting, Joe Hornsby. Full credits available on Deafinitely website. Photographer: Becky Bailey
  • Deafinitely Theatre’s 4.48 Psychosis – a co-production with the New Diorama Theatre. Set, costumes and video: Paul Burgess. Lighting, Joe Hornsby. Full credits available on Deafinitely website. Photographer: Becky Bailey
  • Switch ECHO by Adriano Shaplin at WUK, Vienna, directed by Alex Leiffheidt
  • Tom Fool at Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre 2006 and The Bush, London 2007. Cast: Liam Brennan, Meg Fraser and Richard Madden Director: Claire Lizzimore, Designer Paul Burgess, Lighting and sound Graham Sutherland. Photo credit: Richard Campbell.
  • Jonah and Otto by Robert Holman, directed by Clare Lizzimore, designed by Paul Burgess, with Ian McDiarmid and Andrew Sheridan
  • Our Country’s Good at The Watermill, Newbury, directed by Alex Clifton
  • Deafinitely Theatre’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in BSL at Shakespeare’s Globe, directed by Paula Garfield. Sets and Costumes by Paul Burgess. Photo: Simon Kane
  • Deafinitely Theatre’s production of Contractions, with Fifi Garfield and Abigail Poulton
  • The Rememberers, a live, hip-hop graphic novel, written and performed by Kenny Baraka. Video design by Arnim Freiss using drawings by Cristian Ortiz
  • Stranger, by Same Stuff Theatre with perormers Phan Y Ly and Ho Ngoc Bao Khiem, director Rob Hale and scenographer Paul Burgess. BlackBox, Hanoi, World Stage Design, Cardiff, Tara Arts, London, and The Albany London
  • Other Hands by Laura Wade, Soho Theatre, dircted by Bijan Sheibani, designed by Paul Burgess. Cast in this photo: Anna Orton and Michael Gould.
  • On the Rocks by Amy Rosenthal, directed by Clare Lizzimore and designed by Paul Burgess, Hampstead Theatre
  • Graeme Mackay, Susan Worsfold and Onur Orkut in Selfish at The Arches, Glasgow
  • Cece’s Speakeasy, by Apples and Snakes, at The Albany, London. A collaborative project led by Zena Edwards. Set, costume and video design, Paul Burgess. Associate designer: Carly Brownbridge. Featuring Jan Blake, Anthony Johnson, The Repeat Beat Poet, Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa, Amyra León and others. Music director: Eric Appapoulay. Producer: Lisa Mead
  • Shoreditch Madonna by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, directed by Sean Matthias

A climate triptych (and some thoughts on painting)

Posted on by Paul Burgess

I take painting pretty seriously. It hugely informs my theatre design work, and I’ve frequently created video material from it. The work I did for the Dulwich Picture Gallery commission was a kind of digitally animated painting (involving a lot of very real painting on a wall). I’ve done several painting commissions. My first pocket money job was scenic painting at Harlow Playhouse.

Allow me a brief tangent, as I’ve just noticed a nice parallel. The pocket money job at Harlow Playhouse came about because I did work experience there aged 14. They must have liked what I did because occasionally, over the next few years, they got me in after school if they were short-handed on a paint call. My first properly paid work in theatre was, rather similarly, after doing a work placement. This was at Shakespeare’s Globe. They kept me on as an assistant in the wardrobe, where I worked on several ‘original practice’ techniques, including painstaking work slashing patterns in silk. I also helped source calico, silk, leather, pewter buttons and other period-appropriate items, and got an excellent working knowledge of London as a result. It was a really fantastic job, to be honest, and it led me eventually to design the sets for a full-scale Globe show.

Continue reading A climate triptych (and some thoughts on painting)

Plot 17 x Hello Stranger

Posted on by Paul Burgess

Every four years The Society of British Theatre Designers celebrates UK theatre design with a combination of books, exhibitions and events. This also feeds into the UK display at the Prague Quadrennial.

Last time round, we had an exhibition at the V&A, which included my design for Deafinitely Theatre’s 4.48 Psychosis. This time round, it’s a three-part publication series including a catalogue representing the breadth and diversity of UK theatre design, and a programme of regional events and exhibitions.

My entry this time round is the set – a converted horsebox, in fact – that I designed for Plot17. One of my favourite projects, it’s a mobile hip-hop block party for ages 7+, travelling the world raising awareness, inspiring action and spreading the message of “making things green”. The lead artist on the project, Kenny Baraka, is himself a force of nature, producing amazing lyrics and inspiring the youth up and down the land. It’s a great show, made a brilliant team, but it’s also a doing something really important by making the business of caring about nature and the environment accessible and cool for thousands of kids. And it’s out touring again this year.

Continue reading Plot 17 x Hello Stranger

David Hockney helped me with my schoolwork

Posted on by Paul Burgess

The 1985 Hockney Paints the Stage exhibition at the Hayward Gallery made a huge impression on me as a child. When I came to choosing a topic for my ‘A’ Level art project, and I saw that Hockney was designing a new production for the Royal Opera House, I knew what I had to do.

The new production was Richard Strauss’s Die Frau Ohne Schatten, directed by John Cox, with whom Hockney had already worked on several operas including the celebrated Rake’s Progress, a harmony of music and scenography that makes it one of the most perfect operatic designs I’ve seen. 

I wrote to the Opera House and Susan Usher, head of production, very generously invited me to watch a design meeting. At the end of that meeting I was told I could come to a further meeting attended by Hockney. A few days later I was in the production office at Covent Garden, a few feet away from one of titans of my teenage world, with his blue and red hearing aids and a personal supply of camomile tea bags. By this stage there was a close-to-final model but it wasn’t Hockney’s own. He’d made one at 1:8 scale. The ROH had then made the rather more accurate 1:25 version we were now looking at. At one point it became apparent that he had to remake the Emperors’ throne. ‘I can’t work this size – too niggly for me!’ he declared. He ended up making it at 1:8 when he got back to LA, and sending it over to be scaled down.

Continue reading David Hockney helped me with my schoolwork

Dysbiosis in development

Posted on by Paul Burgess

I was incredibly pleased with how this went. I had the idea just before Covid but then decided to step up and focus on promoting environmentally sustainable design in the theatre sector. Between the Society of British Theatre Designers working group, Ecostage and everything else, this has rather taken over my life! However, the reason I stick with a career in this precarious and often badly-paid sector – and the reason I want it to be sustainable in all senses of the word – is the creativity. Dysbiosis sits right on the overlap between ecology and art. Thanks to Queens generously giving us space, we did a week of experimentation with some really wonderful creative practitioners. Such a privilege!

Here’s a summary from the Daedalus website:

Dysbiosis R&D at Queens Theatre, Hornchurch

A call for collaborators

Posted on by Paul Burgess

Queens Theatre Hornchurch, where I’m on the Environmental Responsibility Subcommittee, is committed to the idea that its journey towards environmental sustainability should be reflected in its creative output. As part of this, David Shearing led This Story is True for Most of Us as part last summer’s the Blueprint Festival. I was a creative associate on the project, which took a vegan meal on the theatre’s roof as a basis for an exploration of time, locality, ecology and – of course – our relationship with food.

Now QTH has given me space to start developing a new piece of theatre. I don’t know what the end result will be, except that it will be open, accessible and connected to the community. But I do know where we’re starting; by looking at our relationship with Nature through the lenses of language, culture and queer ecology. This is how I like to work, starting with research and, by applying my design process to the directing process, working collaboratively to find a logic and a shape to the piece.

Continue reading A call for collaborators

Recent and Current Reading

Posted on by Paul Burgess

OK, I thought I’d share my recent and current reading. Starting with fiction.

Youth Without God (thanks Jono C-S for the recommendation) is fascinating read. Somewhat driven by ideas at the expense of character depth, it’s nonetheless powerful and evocative. Historically interesting too, and a disturbing window onto human behaviour as the Nazis gained power. Plenty of lessons for today.

Reading Youth Without God made me realise how little German literature I’ve read. Quite a few plays I suppose, but not many novels. Anyway… The Tin Drum has been on my reading list for yonks, so I finally got round to it. And yeah, what a wild ride. Incredible. Disturbing. Epic. Definitely joining its compatriot The Magic Mountain in my informal and unnumbered list of favourite ever books.

Continue reading Recent and Current Reading

Ecological Values

Posted on by Paul Burgess

Given some of the awkward conversations I’ve had over the course of my career, I’ve added something to my website about my values, my expectations, and what I bring to the proverbial table. It’s very much a work-in-progress which I’ll doubtless keep refining. Do please feel free to let me know your thoughts!

Ecological Values

Bubble Dreams: the movie

Posted on by Paul Burgess

Actually a lovely (and very short) film about how Carolyn Defrin and I made Bubble Dreams, an interactive video installation for Tessa Jowell Health Centre, London, commissioned by Dulwich Picture Gallery. Have a watch, and if you’re in the Dulwich area, pop in. It’s in the children’s waiting area; you’ll need to ask to be let in.

I can’t post this without also mentioning the amazing team we worked with: creative technologist Rob Hall, production manager Thomas Wilson, painting assistant Carly Brownbridge and children’s workshop leader Holly Dabs. Particular thanks also to Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Alexander Moore for being so supportive and maintaining such a good balance between the needs of the commissioner and artistic freedom.

Fly, you fools! (or How Popular Culture Can Help Tell the Climate Crisis Story)

Posted on by Paul Burgess

We win or lose through the stories we tell. They’re what changes the world. And the most important story we need to tell today is the one that gets the people of Planet Earth to take meaningful action on the ecological breakdown.

The stories we’re offering now, however, aren’t working.

It’s fine to tell those who respect science about how we’re on track for catastrophe, because they understand evidence. It’s fine to tell those already awake to social and environmental injustice how climate change is driven by our economic system and the power structures that maintain it, because that fits their existing worldview. But what’s the story for everyone else?

Humans are brilliant at denial. Being able to put aside thoughts of suffering and mortality, to compartmentalise and not feel everyone else’s suffering too deeply, helps keep us sane. It seems that’s how the majority of people respond when faced with the facts of impending apocalypse too, and it’s understandable. Climate change is deeply frightening and it’s coming at us like juggernaut with broken brakes.

Continue reading Fly, you fools! (or How Popular Culture Can Help Tell the Climate Crisis Story)

Environmental ethics and artistic practice: can they speak the same language? What does environmentally careful design look like?

Posted on by Paul Burgess

This is the text I prepared for the above-named panel, at Making Theatre Green, at the National Theatre, London, 6th June 2022. What I actually said was inevitably a little different, but this version is clearer to read than a transcript with all my ums, errs, omissions and mistakes!

When I was around 12 or 13, I dug out my old Playmobil figures and made scale model sets for them. They’re quite close to 1:25, actually! I first painted the back wall of the school hall for a show when I was about 15. An early starter, you might think?

Well. According to a newspaper clipping, my mum found the other day, I got a brief write-up in the Harlow Star, aged 10, for saving up my pocket money to plant trees. 

And, frankly, it escalated from there.

So… I’ve been involved in environmental campaigning longer than I’ve been designing shows. But the crazy thing is how, until a few years ago, I totally compartmentalised the two.

Why did it take so long for me to bring these two obsessions together?

Continue reading Environmental ethics and artistic practice: can they speak the same language? What does environmentally careful design look like?