Lucy Thornett
Lucy Thornett is a London-based, Australian scenographer and a lecturer at UAL. She makes site-specific and immersive performances and installations for theatres, galleries and other spaces. She has also designed sets and costumes for numerous performances in Australia.
Lucy is currently co-convenor of the UK Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) Scenography Working Group, reviews editor for Theatre and Performance Design journal, a committee member for SBTD and an associate editor and regular contributor to Blue Pages, and an active participant of London College of Communication\’s Space and Place Research Hub. She is also an AHRC-funded PhD candidate in scenography at the University of Leeds.
Image credit: Amy Thornett
Featured Work
Tower
Tower was a site-specific performance in Elephant & Castle in London. A shifting urban landscape provided the backdrop to private scenes staged within the windows of a high-rise building. The audience were aurally transported into the rooms of the building through a binaural soundscape, while peering into these spaces from a distance with binoculars.
Tower intervened into the space of the city by using performance design to highlight the spatial performativity of the site and its architecture. It did this by bringing to life the building through the flickering of the windows and the invitation to look closer. The audience were invited to transgress the usual behavior of the city site and gaze for longer than usual into private spaces, with the aim of setting in motion an encounter that intervened into the site’s geometry; its performance of daily life; its politics; and its changing architecture.
