set, film and costume design

Elephant and Castle
Aldeburgh Music, Snape Maltings
20, 21 June 2007

team

director and film: Tim Hopkins
set, film and costume designer: Pippa Nissen
lighting designer: Zerlina Hughes
text: Blake Morrison
music: Mira Calix and Tansy Davies
film assistant: Sara Muzio
design assistant: Martina Von Holn
musical director: Julian Warburton

description

Elephant and Castle was a staged new opera that was part of the Aldeburgh Festival in 2007.

A series of installations were set in the landscape and buildings of Snape Maltings, and the audience moved around these for different scenes. There were a total of seven installations including; a house set within a listed dilapidated ruin, a screen within the reed beds, a photographic fantasy of the Elephant and Castle attached to the outside of the building, a lit billboard in the gardens, a theatre set of the shopping centre within the auditorium, and a lorry parked in the landscape with a band inside. The story of Hansel and Gretel was played out as films were projected onto surfaces and musicians walked through the landscape.