My Career: Scenographer Katie Davenport

Did you always want to be a scenographer (i.e. a set and costume designer)?
No, and I think I didn’t fully realise what that was until I had left art college. I did contemporary dance when I was in school, so I thought maybe I would do that as a career. I visited a few art colleges when I was 16, and I thought, that’s perhaps where I could see myself. When I came across a course that combined performance with creating visuals, I was drawn to it without fully knowing what it would be. Something just intuitively felt right. 

In college, I studied… production design for stage and screen at IADT (Dun Laoghaire). It was an intensive four-year course where we worked in a studio every day. I met incredible people there, who are still close friends to this day. I ended up majoring in set design for theatre. I felt more at home creating spaces for live performance.

My most formative work experience was… as an art department trainee on a Victorian TV series where I was specifically responsible for all funeral and brothel-related props for about six months. It was intense and my first professional job straight out of college. After that, I was an assistant designer at the Abbey Theatre where I shadowed theatre designers like Monica Frawley, Sarah Bacon and Aedín Cosgrove – all really incredible women.

My first real job… during college was tearing ticket stubs and hoovering the seating bank as an usher in the Mermaid Theatre in Bray. Watching the shows and films that were programmed there was part of the job!  My first few professional set designs were for tiny stages above busy pubs, where I would make and hand-paint everything. The budgets would be about €100 and it was a bit of a thrill to see how far that would stretch in EuroGiant!

The most invaluable thing I learned early on in my career was… the relationships you build in your working life with the people around you are much more important than the stress of any one show or artwork. Protecting those working friendships is something I think about a lot. And remind myself of. In Ireland, we have such incredibly generous and talented costume makers, set builders, scenic painters and model makers who always go the extra mile. 

A common misconception about what I do is… it’s a glamorous job. There’s a lot of wading through hire houses and warehouses, and carrying awkward things like miniature model boxes of theatres and period costumes up stairs (why are costume departments and studios always at the very top of a building!?). Of course, there’s a bit of glamour on opening night.

My main responsibility in work is to… create the visual world of a play, opera or dance piece. I am responsible for the concept and execution of the spaces performers inhabit, the clothes they wear and all the objects they use. I work as a freelance set and costume designer across different theatres and theatre, opera and dance companies during the year. I spend half of my time in my studio drawing and making miniature models of the set design at 1:25 scale (25 times smaller than real life) and technical drawings that carpenters, metal workers, scenic painters and model makers use as a blueprint to make the real set from.  I make costume drawings that communicate to tailors and seamstresses the form and fabrics of the costume world. The rest of the time is spent in theatres, either in the rehearsal rooms or on stage with the actors, singers, and dancers, in costume departments and set building departments with those teams, or with the creatives I’m collaborating with; writers, directors, choreographers, designers, as we create the performance together.

Do you have a career mentor or someone you look up to/seek advice from?
One of the best people I’ve met was a woman called Monica Frawley. She was a brilliant theatre designer, my mentor, and a really good friend. She’s the reason I’m a theatre designer, she lit a creative fire under me. I met her in college, where she was teaching my course and she very gently encouraged me to find my own voice. Her work was terrific, humorous and earthy, but more than that, she lit up every room she was in.

The biggest risk I have taken in my career so far is… designing a fetish-wear opera with a giant eyeball on stage.

I wake at… something I love about working in theatre is rehearsals don’t begin until 10am. We work quite late, but we don’t have many very early mornings. I get up between 7.30am and 8am.

The first thing I do every morning is… put in my contact lenses because I’m very short-sighted. 

My morning routine is… I’m not very good at routines at all. I eat breakfast, have a quick coffee, do a few emails and then I’m out into the world; to a theatre for rehearsals, or maybe a cold warehouse to check a set being built, fabric swatching, prop shopping, costume fittings.

I can’t go to work without… my phone, my leap card and my Freitag backpack.

I travel to work by… bus mostly. Sometimes I’ll walk when I’m not in a rush. For the last 10 years I’ve lived in Dublin city centre or within walking distance of the city centre. 

I start my working day at… about 9am – a very soft 9am.

The first thing I do at work is… seek out another coffee. Have a little chat with everyone before beginning work. It is a very social job, and a lot of the people I work with are freelancers but also friends. The art scene is quite small in some ways. 

I usually spend the first portion of the day… doing the technical and more administrative side of the job. This would be emails, meetings with the theatre departments, breaking down scripts, visual research, technical drawings, receipts, and online costume and prop sourcing. I leave the afternoons and evenings for the concepts and ideas to land. They need a bit of breathing space. I have to muse on ideas for a good while in a bit of an abstract formless way before I can catch them in a drawing, collage or model. 

I break for lunch… anytime between 12.30pm -2pm. It depends on the rehearsal schedule for the day. I usually have a toasted special or soup and a cup of tea. My studio is above George’s Street Arcade (in the delightful shop Om Diva) so I’ll eat there, or near a theatre I’m working in.

The most useful business tool I use every day is… it’s probably a tie between a tape measure and the camera on my phone. Oh and definitely voicenotes on WhatsApp. 

I save time by… schedule sending emails – what an amazing invention! The illusion of saving time still feels good.

I rarely get through my working day without… checking my Google calendar for where I’m meant to be. To add to that, I have a terrible sense of direction and I’m overly reliant on Google Maps. 

The best part of my day is… seeing an incredible or hilarious performance, a costume that turns out just so much better than you could ever dream up (because of the people making it), and when you solve something that has seemed creatively impossible. 

The most challenging part of my day is… ensuring all parts of a production (from a visual end) are communicating clearly and moving at the same pace. 

I usually end my day at… 6pm or 7pm if I’m in rehearsals or working in my studio. If the show I’m working on is in technical rehearsals (at the end of rehearsals where we move out of the rehearsal room and onto the stage) or in previews, then I’m in work until about 10pm-11pm until the show opens. 

I switch off from work by… meeting with friends and family. Glasses of wine and company. TV series and napping. Also, I go to see a lot of shows and exhibitions both because I’m interested and I want to be moved, but also to support pals. It’s not exactly switching off, but it’s somewhere I find a lot of enjoyment and community. 

Before I go to bed, I’ll… turn on my festoon lights in the bedroom (I don’t like the big light), make a hot water bottle and a cup of tea.

The work accomplishment I’m most proud of is… winning an Irish Times Irish Theatre award for costume design and representing Ireland twice at the Prague Quadrennial (a world exhibition of theatre design). I’m also designing an opera in Italy at the end of the year, so I’m really looking forward to that.

If you want to get into my line of work, my advice is to… assist a set and costume designer whose work you admire. Draw every day and people watch. I think drawing is important – it’s one of the main ways we communicate ideas to the people we are working with. I made work in awkward tiny spaces on very small budgets for years and sometimes I found it very difficult, but I always felt there were people around in the theatre community who were willing to help you out in extraordinary ways, and point you in the right direction if you asked for help. I think it’s quite a profound thing. 

I’ve just finished working on… Peter Pan by Roddy Doyle at the Gate Theatre and Krapp’s Last Tape with Stephen Rea at the Project Arts Centre. At the moment, I’m working on Audrey or Sorrow by Marina Carr at The Abbey Theatre, What We Hold with Jean Butler at the Irish Arts Center in New York (where I’m writing the answers to this interview from!) and La Traviata for the Irish National Opera in May.

Imagery courtesy of Katie Davenport