About

  • Michael b&w web

Design matters. Design shapes our daily lives whether we look for others to organise what we do and how we do it, or take matters into our own hands. To misquote Steve Jobs: good design not only feels and looks right, it has to work. Design for the stage is very often untouchable for it’s patrons, its images are contributed to by many others and it only works in the context of a complete experience; with the working performer at its core.

My practice steers my teaching; my teaching helps me navigate practice. Research is caught in the intersection of both. Over time I’m increasingly surprised by how contradictory my processes are – no sooner have I found the right way of working on a project, it becomes all but redundant for the next. I design my process as much as the product itself.

Design is often taking the least worse path: the more routes I have available to me over time, the less chance I have of taking a bad one.

But in a world of increasing possibility, taking the right one can be
almost, and wonderfully, impossible.

   “Stage Design is my compass.”