Stage design and the politics of good taste

Awarding winning stage designer and director Ultz explores British theatre design since the 1950s in the second Annual Jocelyn Herbert Lecture.

Awarding winning stage designer and director Ultz explores British theatre design since the 1950s in the second Annual Jocelyn Herbert Lecture.

Set up by the University of the Arts London to raise the profile and stimulate debate about the often under-celebrated profession of stage design, the Jocelyn Herbert Lecture series honours Herbert for her part in revolutionising the look of post-war British theatre. Ultz follows Sir Richard Eyre, a friend and colleague of Herbert, who gave the inaugural lecture in 2010.

Acclaimed for her apparently simple and sometimes sparse designs and her use of light and shadow to create mood, Jocelyn Herbert (1917-2003) is particularly remembered for her groundbreaking productions at the Royal Court where she worked on the world premieres of scripts by Samuel Beckett, Arnold Wesker, David Storey and John Osborne.

She was a member of the Building Committee for the National Theatre on the South Bank and won renown for her use of the Olivier in collaborations with the director John Dexter and the playwright and director Tony Harrison. She worked in spaces as diverse as the New York Metropolitan Opera House, the amphitheatre at Epidaurus and the small studio at the Haymarket, Leicester.

Ultz’s international career includes 16 world premieres at the Royal Court and a long association with the Theatre Royal Stratford East. His awards include the 2010 Olivier for Best Set Design for Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, and recent work includes Wesker’s Chicken Soup With Barley at the Royal Court, the first production of which Herbert designed at the Court in 1958.

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