At the initial meeting, the Director talked about the background of the play to set it in context.

It was written by Willis Hall in 1958 and is based upon his experiences during his National Service. It is set during the Second World War in 1942 and in the Malayan jungle, where the British were attacked from the land by the Japanese army advancing via Thailand.

In terms of writing, it is an extremely ‘well-made’ play in that it has an Act 1 followed by the curtain/interval and then an Act 2. It is also in ‘real-time’ as well as being set in one place and one room, which in this case is a hut in the middle of the jungle.

What begins as a routine patrol for the British ends with the soldiers being swept up in the invasion and, when they capture a Japanese soldier, they have to make a terrible choice in order to survive.

The hut is not an element of the design that either Josie or Lucy wanted to interpret to be something other than it is in the text, as it is very important that it be naturalistic. So it has been designed to look very real and detailed as well as what Lucy referred to as ‘earthy and rough looking’.

The hut also needs to look like it has been built possibly twenty years before the setting of the play and then left. It will be made to look as if it has been built from wood from the world of the jungle around it, and it will have a bamboo thatched roof. As it’s been left in a humid, rainy climate for a number of years the texture of the wood will be reflective of this.

Inside are various bits of furniture – a table, a bench and a few chairs – which are all to look as if they have been hand-made in a rickety fashion and left higgledy piggledy.

Close-up of the set model box showing the required furniture. Designed by Lucy Osborne - photographed by Susan Weaver

As the play is set in real-time, light and sound will be created to enhance this.

To enhance the idea of continuous time, it has also been discussed that the front of the hut is flown in during the interval, but that the audience will still see the characters through windows, as if in real-time. Prior to rehearsals this element of the staging had still to be confirmed, so look out for this when you watch the show!

The main choice the Director and Designer had to make was what was outside the hut which, in reality, is an infinite expanse of rain-forest jungle.

At the beginning of the play, the jungle protects the soldiers but as it progresses it appears as if the jungle is closing in on them. Josie and Lucy want the audience to get a sense of something outside the hut that, whilst you never really see it, you still get a sense of ‘the monster’ that is beyond.

Discussions started out with the idea of a realistic jungle but this was discarded as Josie and Lucy did not feel that it gave enough scope of possibility.

They wanted something to surround the hut that could become incredibly frightening and something that could change in quality as the play progresses - something maybe more expressive than realistic, which they could use to control the outside environment differently.

From these thoughts came the idea of the viewfinder which you can see on the picture below. The viewfinder is the part of the set that surrounds the hut in which you can see spots of light. These lights will then be manipulated to build and intensify as the play progresses. The idea is similar to a hologram which can change in quality to create different shapes and pictures.

Photograph of the set model box showing the viewfinder element of the design. Designed and photographed by Lucy Osborne

The idea is also quite a filmic devise which, if you look at it to begin with, can appear quite naturalistically like light coming through trees. In Lucy’s words, it is the idea of what someone’s ‘dream jungle’ may be. The kind of moment when if you were laid on your back in the jungle and you squinted and looked up to the trees, then you would see shadows, shapes and chinks of light.

One of main reasons for creating this effect was the idea that you can terrify people more by not showing ‘the monster’ - by being shown a partial idea of what may be beyond the world of the hut but then allowing peoples’ imagination to create what that is. That is always much more terrifying than revealing the real thing.

The viewfinder also has the ability to draw the audience’s attention to the hut and can enhance the sense of claustrophobia.

Ultimately, it’s an imaginative, changeable technique which can be manipulated to reveal how the jungle appears to the people within it.