NIALL MCKEEVER

Directed by Max Key

Set and costume Designer: Niall McKeever 

Lighting Designer: Alex Hopkins

Assistant Director: Camilla Gürtler  

Costume Supervisor: Robin (Bobby) Soutar

Set around Limehouse Cut and the Lee River in East London, Herons is the disturbing and moving story of fourteen-year-old Billy, whose life has been made a misery by his father's actions. As the teenagers that surround him on the estate step up their campaign of bullying, the play escalates to a violent climax.

The director and I wanted to design a non-specific space that could exist, but was difficult to locate. Mirroring the audience directly, the set was designed to instil a ruthless and prolonged sense of threat that hits audiences as soon as they enter the auditorium, and amongst its brutal harshness, also could implant and hold moments of peace, tenderness and silence.

We designed a huge embankment, extending the performance space at an angle. Audiences as well as the characters on the stage, are constantly confronted and rebuked by various objects and items dumped in the canal succumbed by the prevailing gloom these characters currently find themselves; a lingering sting at the foot of the stage.