george alex design portfolio

chapter arts centre
royal welsh college of music and drama

Dir: George Perrin
Writer: Gary Owen (adapting Frank Wedekind's play)
Venue: Chapter Stiwdio

Set and costume design

* A PLAY ABOUT THE STUPID THINGS YOU DO WHEN YOU'RE F**CKED*

Frank Wedekind's original 'Spring Awakening' - set in the late 1800s - explored the pain and confusion of teenagers kept ignorant about sex and reproduction. 

​Gary Owen's new adaptation drags the play into the present, where the internet shows young people every sex act imaginable in graphic detail, but says nothing about the consequences and complications of sex in the real world.

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The play is set in a pupil referal unit.  Director George Perrin and I were keen to explore the idea of creating a sculptural space that would alter, restrict or allow for the actors to move through it in unusual ways. Setting the play in the round, and removing the 'off-stage,' I reimagined the stage as a linolium dish sunk into the floor where the characters would literally find it harder to escape their environment, trapped under the ever present gaze of the audience, looking down on them under harsh florescent lighting.