Anyone who reads Philip Pullman’s extraordinary stories will be taken on an extravagant imaginative journey in which they visit parallel worlds, watch in awe the titanic battles between the forces of good and evil, experience fantastic creatures, and are introduced to the worlds of witches, daemons, and armoured bears. They will also be invited to think.
You can trace the many threads that went into taking this epic tale from the written page to final performance.
Follow the progress of the company from their first meeting through the elaborate
Technical Rehearsal into preview and performance. Your journey will reveal an exciting process of theatre-making, involving cooperation of a high order, the ability and willingness to take calculated risks, and above all a shared belief and commitment to the vision that inspired Pullman to write
His Dark Materials .
How did Nicholas Wright manage to distil the essence of Pullman’s books into two three-hour plays? Find out in
The Alethiometer . Learn how Danny Sapani (Iorek) approaches performing as an armoured bear that drinks, fights, talks and acts like a human in
Lyra meets Iorek and how the cast come to terms with their puppet
daemons Read the production diary of Anna Maxwell-Martin (Lyra).
How on earth do you make an audience believe in the existence of parallel worlds? What does an armoured bear look like, or a cliff ghast, or a harpy? The creative team provide answers in
set design and
costume design, while in
lighting design and
sound design you can learn about the contribution the technical team make to the success of a performance.
How many different resources, people, money, and things are required?
Production management has to find the answer.