Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2009 - 28

Perfection City by David Shellan (1984), Wimbledon School of Art's Theatre. Directed
by Richard Negri; designed by Simon Vincenzi and Clarinda Salandy. Rehearsal photos (note
Richard Negri sitting in the auditorium in the top photo).

theatre

design

technology

W I N T E R

2009

led to him taking the opportunity to ask for the same color to
be reproduced in the re-glazing of the three huge domes of the
Exchange. It had been fortuitous timing because the glazing had
to be replaced for health and safety reasons and the Prudential
Assurance Company, who owned the building, had to foot the
huge bill.
It's difficult to convey the singularity of Richard Negri's powers as designer, director, or teacher in words. Colleagues who
worked with him all those years ago, when interviewed, uncannily, and independently, all quietly referred to him as a "genius."
Most of his students felt, and still feel, the same as we've none
of us met anyone with anything like the vision and insight he
had. However, former Wimbledon student Johanna Bryant, who
became head of design at the Royal Exchange for several years,
shared with me the sense that it was very difficult to come out
from under his shadow on graduation, even more testing for Bryant designing in "his" theatre. She also declared her belief in his
genius and said that, for her, the memory of his designs for The
Cherry Orchard at the Exchange exemplified his rare insight. For
the final scene, instead of an exterior setting of the house with
the family preparing to depart for the last time, Negri created a
simple cross of felt carpet underlay, and nothing else apart from
a collection of suitcases gathered at the main exit from the auditorium. Bryant said it was breathtakingly simple and yet so evocative of a recently vacated house stripped bare with everything,
including carpets, removed.
For Shakespeare's The Tempest in 1970 at the University
Theatre in Manchester Negri created an island by filling the entire stage area using several tons of sand, topped with a large
driftwood log. Very simple, but so typically exacting, in that Negri
demanded three grades of sand applied in layers with a final top
layer of mica dust. As Ariel leapt around the stage space arcs of
mica were left hanging in the air as if movement was suspended
in time, exactly as Negri intended.
Negri's charismatic quality as a teacher and his gentle humanity may be revealed more effectively through his own words.
I'll conclude by quoting him from a brief interview given for a
television program about the new theatre in Manchester, broadcast in 1976. The video excerpt can be seen and heard on the
Richard Negri Web site, www.richardnegri.co.uk.
The words in response to the interviewer's questions, transcribed from that interview, are now all Richard Negri's.
"How did you feel when you first walked into the empty
Royal Exchange?"
"I wasn't totally unprepared although in another sense I was
because I had been doing a lot of experimental work with forms
of auditoria to find a form of a theatre within a space and so
when I heard about the Exchange it was like meeting for the first
time a real situation so what form it was going to take I hadn't a
clue. After a couple of seconds-shock-the thing that came
very, very strongly into mind was Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. If
you remember the scene with the sculpture created in this vast
hall and for no reason at all I was near a table, covered with
about a quarter of an inch of dust, and I just found myself writ-

http://www.richardnegri.co.uk

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2009