Simon Daw
Stage design credits include: 1984 Northern Ballet; Baskerville Liverpool Playhouse; The Worst Witch UK Tour; The Welcoming Party MIF/Theatre-Rites & Ruhrtriennale Festival; World Factory Metis Arts.
Young Vic; French Without Tears ETT, Humble Boy, Poison, The Lottery of Love, Sheppey, The Philanderer Orange Tree Theatre; Material Men Shobana Jeyasingh Dance; Eventual Progress Ekaterinburg State Academic Ballet; Waiting for Godot, The Winter’s Tale, The Daughter-in-Law Sheffield Crucible; Democracy Sheffield Crucible & The Old Vic, London; The Metamorphosis Royal Opera House and The Joyce, New York; Dead Heavy Fantastic, Lost Monsters Liverpool Everyman; As One Royal Ballet; Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare’s Globe; Dolls National Theatre of Scotland; DNA, Baby Girl, The Miracle, The Enchantment National Theatre; Elling Bush and Trafalgar Studio); Owen Wingrave Set Design: for Aldeburgh Music/EIF.
Installation/performance commissions include: The Competition Shoreditch Town Hall; 3rd Ring Out UK tour; Wave Structures, Hopefully it Means Nothing, Sea House Aldeburgh Festival.
Image credit: David Sandison
Featured Work
World Factory
World Factory is an interactive performance project that explores the relationship between China and the UK through the lens of the global textiles industry. Co-created by Simon Daw and Zoe Svendsen the project was initially inspired by conversations with Chinese theatre director Zhao Chuan and his company Grass Stage in Shanghai.
To get a greater insight into the world of fast fashion Simon and Zoe designed a shirt and had it made in a Chinese factory. Barcodes printed onto the shirt, when scanned with a phone, reveal the people and processes involved in its manufacture.
The narratives and film they gathered on this journey became central to the performance: audience members in 16 groups simultaneously control competing clothing factories in China. The decisions the audience make (tracked by bespoke software) take them on different narrative paths through the game until finally the consequences of their choices are revealed.