The Design

Designer Kevin Jenkins talks about his design for Warrior Square.

In the play, two actors play all the characters. How did you design their costumes?
The main characters, Riva and Andrea, have a basic costume. The actors need to be able to change really quickly so that the play is not disrupted. That means that they may just put on a pair of glasses, headscarf or hat for the more minor characters or a jacket or cardigan when playing the parents. When Riva becomes Leo, I designed something to make her look less feminine (the red, white and blue tracksuit) but that she could still take off quickly during the fight, when she becomes Riva again.

How did you decide what Riva and Andrea would wear?
I had a discussion with Alex (director, Alexander Ferris) and we looked at the clothes children were wearing about 8 years ago, when the play was written. Then I looked at pictures of refugees on the Internet and in two books about Bosnia and Kosovo to get a feel for the clothes of the region the play is set in. It was also important that the costumes reflect the characters’ personalities - Andrea is sporty so he is in big, baggy, sporty gear. As far as Riva is concerned, I found her when I was looking through a book – I saw a picture and I just said “That’s Riva!” She’s wearing a yellow jumper, which is a colour that keeps hope going, and I think that’s there in the play.

What can you tell us about the set?
I went through four of five ideas for the backdrop. The final one was inspired by a photograph from a book about Kosova. It needs to be able to suggest lots of different locations throughout the play and not be too specific. There is a suggestion of a fence, and this links to the actual fence on stage. The idea was that it should be moody and atmospheric.

Obviously, we need to be in lots of locations during the play. We start and finish in a park overlooking the town but we also need to get the idea of being by the seaside and at times indoors. No one location could be so realistic that we couldn’t be somewhere else.

The floor-cloth is inspired by the skateboard park up at Meersbrook in Sheffield. We went up to the park there and looked down over the city, just as Andrea and Riva do at the start and finish of the play. I felt a concrete texture would have the feel of a park but could also be seen by the sea, or in an Eastern European country. I would like to get the same texture of the ground we saw there in my floor. I also got the idea of putting graffiti tags on it, which links to the theme of identity in the play. Although I played around with other shapes, the floor-cloth is circular, and we also have the roundabout. This reflects the circular nature of the play – we start and finish physically at the same place, although hopefully the characters have moved on in themselves.

Alex and I also wanted to get some height, energy and movement into the set so I incorporated some physical objects, for example the roundabout, which also becomes a kitchen cupboard and a school desk. The bin and tyre serve another purpose too, as we can use them to store clothes and props.

Can you outline the process you went through for the design?
After I’d read through the script, I did some initial research on the area of the Balkans. Following that, I had a meeting with Alex about the play and the themes. It was also important at this stage to think about how a school tour works – how many people would we need to get into the room and how close would they need to be? That was when I came up with the idea of the set in a semi-circle. I also looked at the size of the van it would be touring in and thought about how much three people could carry and assemble in an hour each day!

After that, I began to think about textures and colours and to find examples in magazines. At this stage, the idea of the wooden fence and palette came to me, as it is reminiscent of the seaside. Although there is an element of decay to the design, I didn’t want the set to be heavy and oppressive. I used greeny-blue and light blue tones and the concrete is a warm rather than a cold grey.

The next stage was to make a storyboard to make sure that the locations made sense and that the costumes worked. This is when I rethought some ideas practically. For example, the roundabout was originally flatter, and I redesigned it so that it could become something else and could be used for storage.
The final stage for me was the model box, with the final layout and scaled down sizes. After that, it’s over to the set and costume departments.
  
How did you become a theatre designer and do you enjoy it?
Yes, I love it! I actually did an engineering degree and was involved in student productions, designing and making sets. After that I taught Design and Technology in a secondary school and the highlight of my year was being involved with the sets in school productions. In fact, I loved it so much that I decided to go to London to do a theatre design course. I’ve worked on various jobs, such as for the Edinburgh Fringe, and last year I was really pleased to design Topdog/Underdog in the Studio. This is my second job at Sheffield Theatres.