Birmingham Opera Project:
Khovanshchina
This was a speculative design project in collaboration with the artistic director Richard Wallacy at Birmingham Opera. The brief was to design a promenade performance for the opera Khovanshchina for a found venue of my choice.
Ivan
Sofia
Peter
I choose to set the opera in Greenwich Powerhouse
 secret police/Peter's private army |
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Peter's private army/The secret police
I've based my designs on Joseph Stalin's rise to power and gain over the soviet union in Russia.
I've staged the opera in the old Greenwich electricity works communicating the themes of industrialisation within Russia. Stalin becomes Peter, with the secret police serving as his own personal army while Ivan (Trotsky) secretly plans to place young prince Andrei on the throne in order to gain power.
Religion industrialises and the old believers fight to remove Peters influence as a false idol and the changes made to the church.