Projection and Scenic Design for ‘A Nutcracker in Havana’ – Carlos Acosta’s cuban take on this classic ballet.
Photo Credits: Johan Persson
Nina recently spoke to the ALPD about her new adventure in scenography for Carlos Acosta’s latest full length ballet: A Nutcracker in Havana:
‘ Animating Space Across Virtual and Physical’ – Association for Lighting Production and Design
“I have been working as a Video and Projection designer for over 16 years (after 6 years in film and broadcast). Strangely enough, I always thought that if I diversified my practice within the theatre crafts, I would move towards lighting (in fact, I joked about doing so when I accepted my prized KOI award in 2015), but my current trajectory seems to be tending more towards helping to shape the space in physical terms.
Over the years, I have increasingly found myself thinking along the lines of an animator of spaces: I have become more involved in devising fly and automation sequences, including the previz of various options for the director to help them think ahead of time about how space, image, and music can work together.
The video designs I am now asked to create have gained an increasingly fulsome remit, providing a greater proportion of the visual storytelling. A few examples include The Grange Opera’s productions of Orefo and Dido (lit by Jo Town); a double bill of Bluebeard’s Castle and The Seven Deadly Sins in in Buenos Aires (lighting by Jack Knowles); The Shark Is Broken played in the West End and on Broadway (lit by Jon Clark) and The Imagine Theatre pantos I create with my team at PixelLux each year. I enjoy the greater challenge this presents compared to some of my lighter touch earlier shows and am blessed with a fantastic team both in-house at PixelLux and across our more expansive pool of long-term freelancers without whom this scale of show wouldn’t be possible.
There have also been a few occasions where conversations around projection have come first, with the scenic design following after (usually prompted by me asking WHAT will carry the imagery!). On a few occasions where the surfaces are simply required to serve that projected visual storytelling, I have been known to take on smaller-scale scenic designs.
When Carlos Acosta approached me to collaborate on his new take on the ever-popular Nutcracker Ballet, this time set in Cuba, his thoughts also turned first to projection. We had met whilst I was working on ‘Lazuli Sky’ – a new ballet by Will Tuckett for BRB. The work was created during the pandemic – when the scenic workshops were closed, so we had to rely on projection with a minimal set drawn from stock items such as a BP, Gauze and Dance floor.
It makes a lot of sense to rely on projection to describe the environment when it comes to Ballet. Dance requires as much space as the stage can afford, so his idea of emphasising image rather than scenery in this story of ballet seemed fitting. In addition, there are magic effects, fantastical journeys and scale shifts inherent in the story, which lend themselves to using projection and animation.
As we talked through the show, he also started to mention prop elements, and slowly, it became apparent that he wanted me to take on both. This is the largest-scale physical design I have ever taken on. With a tour across the UK and exacting budgetary and time parameters, I knew I needed to keep it simple yet effective (a scenic designer’s klaxon phrase from critics, I know!). I have learned that when presented with an exciting challenge, you just need to gather the right team around you, so I knew I needed to bring on board a brilliant associate possessing broad skills across design disciplines. I enlisted the help of Tyler Forward, who has experience in Lighting, Set and Video Design. We also worked closely with Andrew Exeter, our lighting designer – incidentally and not insignificantly, as well as a set designer – on practicals, and to ensure this collaborative approach was known, I requested a shared Scenography credit in the program.
The first concepts I came up with were embarrassingly simplistic yet somehow also overly fussy. Still, there were some gems in there, like the inclusion of a classic car – the likes of which line the streets of Havana to this day due to a history of closed trade borders – to transport Clara to the land of sweets.
I started to look at the space again and tasked myself with interrogating materials that could speak to the story, move and shape the space, and, of course, take imagery and light well. The holy grail of projection surfaces seems to be one that can act not only like a gauze with transparency and opacity depending on how it is receiving light but also one where things can pass through – all of which were requirements for the choreography and storytelling. It was a conversation about how Cuban Christmas trees were decorated with beer cans and bottle tops in the early days after the 30-year-long ban on Christmas was lifted, which sparked the idea of using ring pulls linked into chains as the main gesture. This look would also evoke fly curtains seen in cafe doors, and eventually, we opted for a tracked chain link curtain (with several no-fly venues on the touring list at the time, so tracking was crucial).
Knowing how light would work within the space was crucial. The chains provide both an interesting surface for non-projected light whilst taking projection well – significantly bolder gestures and patterns like we use in the forest and snowflakes for the Act 2 diverts. The transparency and fluidity of movement in the curtains, combined with the endless array of possible shapes we could create using their arched-shaped cut, was exciting in its potential. We carried out extensive sample tests, which told us what the model box and digital model couldn’t and discovered a great deal during the bauprobe in the summer
Once we had decided on the shape of the space, the design of the visuals could begin in earnest. A notion that carried through from the first designs was extending the physical space through projections. In the more realistic scenes, the visuals make sense of prop items such as the staircase and developing the detail on these physical elements after the projection allowed us to cross-reference shapes and finishes used within the virtual to the physical where it would usually work the other way around.
What had excited me most about the prospect of working with Carlos was the dialogue between him as an animator of people and me as an animator of space and how we would set about navigating dovetailing the two with the music at the heart of it all. He seemed to have a very clear vision of when the projected visuals would take the stage, for example, for the reveal of the rat king (where we used a combination of pre-filmed footage and AI-generated visuals via Stream Diffusion within Touch Designer) the transformation of the house from rural shack to mansion and the journey to the land of sweets (a sandwich of visuals on the gauze and BP created in Unreal Engine).
For my part, I was able to suggest moments where the stagecraft could support the dance, and he was open to re-choreographing sections to allow for us to best use the full range of spatial options available and to allow for our brilliant stage management team to achieve the scene changes required. The curtain moves beautifully when tracked slowly, and the spatial reveals initiated by the cast could really be enjoyed. There were admittedly moments where I had envisaged that the visuals would animate more, but Carlos felt that the focus should be on the dance, and we decided to balance this and refocus on the dance.
I also loved leaning into the Cuban take on this story and encouraged Carlos to drive the concept through at each stage. It felt like a deep dramaturgical collaboration, which is rare for my stagecraft.
The projection rig consists of 4 Panasonic RZ21K projectors: 2 x cyc, 1 x floor and 1 x FOH run by a solo disguise media server. We had planned to use notch and camera tracking to allow the dancers to spread magic visuals across the floor on occasion, but we ended up deciding to save this for a future outing. Tech time was limited in relation to the ambition of the show, and we’re all super proud of what we could achieve in the time, but all things being well, this Nutcracker will be touring again next year, and I can’t wait to work into it further!
My next opportunity to create both space and visuals is already on the horizon, so I am excited to see where this journey takes me!”
