Simon Daw’s bleak, minimal near post-apocalyptic set certainly had its challenges.

The crispness of the empty space with a clean floor with no joins posed an interesting design for Splinter Scenery​ resulting in stretching a 12m x 60m sheet of material over the entire stage to give a perfectly flat finish. Not only did the floor need to be almost card like but it also needed to fade into infinity by the use of a tapered cove at the back of stage.

The two key features to this design were the large rock and the lonesome dead tree.

The Rock, which not only had to look the part also had to serve two functions: to allow an entrance/exit for all the actors to appear on stage from beneath but also a climbing frame for a young boy to clamber across. Therefore the structure had to house a sub-stage stairwell and enough space for 3 actors at once, one of which measured in at 6’5”! Along with this internal space it also had to be strong enough to allow a boy to climb over the rock safely. Once the structure had been made a group of our master sculptures set about making the rock take shape to what you see on stage.

The Tree, was painstakingly constructed by one man over a six week period from a basic steel structure and built up over time to produce a fantastic life like tree.