Liz Ascroft
Opera Credits include: LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR (Houston Grand Opera Texas, La Fenice Venice & The Sydney Opera House); THE CARMELITES (Grange Park Opera); PORGY AND BESS (The Royal Danish Opera);
Theatre Credits include: ONE FOR THE ROAD (St Martin’s Theatre, Lincoln Centre – New York for The Pinter Festival). AFTERPLAY ( Gielgud Theatre London & Sydney Festival); BEAUTIFUL THING, THE THREE SISTERS, THE RISE AND FALL OF LITTLE VOICE, ON THE SHORE OF THE WIDE WORLD (Royal Exchange Theatre & National Theatre); APOCALYPTICA & VINCENT RIVER (Hampstead Theatre) PEGGY FOR YOU (Comedy Theatre, London & Tour); HOTEL IN AMSTERDAM (Donmar Warehouse).TARTUFFE, OF MICE AND MEN (Birmingham Rep); ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, (Dukes Playhouse Lancaster)
Liz graduated with a BA Hons from Wimbledon School of Art. She has been awarded the Arts Council Trainee Design Bursary, the UNESCO award for Promotion of the Visual Arts (Prague Quadrennial ’99), and TMA Best Designer.
Featured Work
The House of Bernarda Alba
I initiated the idea/concept of rooting a chair for each family member of the Bernarda Alba household into the floor. Above each chair was a rope-bound piece of sackcloth. I used Lorca’s stage directions as printed text on the set, so that in terms of visual interpretation and imagination as audience members, we were all made equal.
This was a GRAEAE Theatre Company production. Graeae champion diversity by placing D/deaf and disabled actors centre stage. The physicality of our actors added weight and gravitas to the situation until, under severe duress and at the moment of an off-stage suicide, one of the chairs falls over by itself, and the sackcloth above that chair drops like a suspended body, and stays there.
The concept had a long game plan. The incarceration and entrapment that has built up is released, but not in a good way.