Jamie Vartan
Designs for theatre includes "Grief is the Thing with Feathers (Barbican / Dublin / NYC), Arlington (Dublin / NYC); Ballyturk (Dublin / Lyttleton, NT) ; Misterman (Galway/ NYC / Lyttleton, NT); Bondagers (Edinburgh Lyceum); Khandan (Royal Court); Mass Observation (Almeida)
The Lost Child Trilogy (David Glass Ensemble), with residencies in Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Philippines, Colombia ; Knives in Hens ( Perth ), Woyzeck in Winter ( Galway / Barbican). Opera includes The Second Violinist ( Dublin / Barbican) The Last Hotel ( Dublin / ROH / NYC ); La traviata (Malmo); Ariadne auf Naxos (Salzburg ); Carmen (Lisbon), A Village Romeo and Juliet (Wexford ) ; The Queen of Spades (La Scala) ; Eugene Onegin (Opera du Rhin) ; productions in Cagliari, Naples, Florence, Parma, ROH and Scottish Opera ; currently Ariadne auf Naxos ( La Scala ). Film production design includes The Last Hotel ( Sky Arts).
Image credit: Patrick Redmond
Featured Work
The Second Violinist
This is a new opera by Donnacha Dennehy & Enda Walsh, about the life of a second violinist, with the Crash Ensemble orchestra sunk into the set - a very closely synched production of sound, light, design & video design, about a life in upheaval, with a dark secret, and an obsession with communication through social media, which forms part of the video design displayed on an LED screen the width of the stage - the protagonist is played simultaneously by a singer & an actor in a mute role.
The set has an over-riding sense of a crime scene and is split into two levels ; a domestic apartment world beneath, & a forest of trees above, accessed by a loft ladder sunk into the ceiling.