The Mill City of Dreams

ABOUT

Drummonds Mill opened in the 1880s, at a time when Bradford was responsible for a third of the world’s wool production and closed just under 10 years ago. The audience led through its abandoned departments by caretaker Frank – played with self-deprecating melancholy by Geoff Leesley – and as the tour progresses it becomes increasingly apparent that we are journeying through Frank’s own recollections, animated by apparitions of former mill-workers and the crushing roar of phantom looms. 

The holes where the textile machinery use to be are revealed at every room, The endless pillars and vast space, cracked paintwork, piles of discarded boxes, furniture, trolleys and bobbins, the layers of history, a jaunt into the past. A place once active with hundreds of people, where women sang songs to drown out the sound of machinery, is now empty. The vacuous spaces, the bits of wool still hanging from pillars, the paper patterns stuck between the pipes on the wall, the smell of damp, the sound of dripping water, the concrete floor, the endless glass roof, incoming light, faded warning signs, the benches, the wool samples, lab equipment … is left now for the piece to make a sense of. 

Most of the set and the props used in the production were found abandoned inside the mill. The piece was based on the relationships between the mill workers and was set between the post-war period and today, as this is in the living history. The lives of the people in the mill echo once again.

‘Assorted artefacts salvaged from the building to transform nooks and crannies into striking theatrical spaces.’ 

                                                       ‘The past looms large’, Telegraph & Argus.

 

Perfomance

Freedom Studios

 Disused Drummonds Mill, Bradford UK

March 2011

Set designer: Roma Patel
Costume designer: Roma Patel
Lighting designer: Lumen
Sound designer: Composer- Janek Schaefer
Digital video NA: Photographer- Tim Smith
Director/choreographer: Madani Younis & Omar Eleria
Other creative collaborators: co-writers Jonathon Holmes & Madani Younis

WHAT WE DID​

Set design / Costume design /  Set build

Knock Against My Heart

About

Knock Against My Heart is a play written for Theatre Centre by Oladipo Agboluaje. It toured to audiences aged 14+ secondary schools in 2008.

Set to the music and soul of Rio’s favelas, this thrilling play was inspired by The Tempest and developed in a unique collaboration with Brazil’s acclaimed theatre company Nós Do Morro

“Knock Against My Heart was a complete theatrical experience… provocative, really sexy, painful and funny. It touched me in a deep way.”

Greg Hicks, Royal Shakespeare Company

Customer

Theatre Centre, London, UK

School Tour Production

Writer: Oladipo Agboluaje
Director: Michael Judge
Design: Roma Patel
Lighting: Prema Mehta
Dramaturg: Carl Miller
Voice Consultant: Claudette Williams
Music: Stephen Hudson
Music: Manuel Pinheiro
Production/Company Stage Manager: Alice-Jane Lingwood

WHAT WE DID​

Set and Costume design

Romeo in the City

About

Romeo in the City is set in a modern day urban comprehensive school. A cast of 15-17 year olds have been chosen to perform Romeo and Juliet as the school production. Against this background we follow the parallel stories of the cast members as they are forced to work with people who they would not normally associate with. As the story unfolds, the audience will reflect whether fact will follow fiction as two cast members fall in love.

The main inspiration for the design was an urban street setting, the alliance that youths and gangs have to their urban surroundings and street culture today. The visual elements of the set were inspired by the city streets: grey concrete, Banksy’s graffiti, advertising billboards and metal grills. I felt that the urban environment was always present even within the scenes set indoors.

COmpany

Theatre Centre, London

Writer: Amber Lone
Director: Michael Judge
Design: Roma Patel
Cast: Balvinder Hayer, Ery Nzaramba, Robert Solar, Selina Zaza and Seray Morka
Music: Stephen Hudson
Lighting Design: Ian Scott
Fight Director: Brett Yount
Movement Consultant: Vik Sivalingam
Production Management: Adam Carrée
Stage Managers: Beth Hoare & Patrick Birch
Voice Coach: Claudette Williams
Casting: Bernadette O’Brien
Photography: Pau Ros
Dramaturg: Carl Miller

WHAT WE DID​

Set and costume Design

Tempest

The Tempest

Fitzgerald’s Park, Cork

“Designer Roma Patel’s embellishments are also strategic, with some playing areas mast-high, others cavernous, others again very wet; her attention to detail, as in the mitred edges of banners for the masque or in the midsummer sweetness of the croquet-lawn constantly rewarding the captivated audience. “

Mary Leland, The Irish Times, press review of The Tempest, 2006

COMPANY

Corcadorca

Written by William Shakespeare
Adapted by Jocelyn Clarke
Directed by Pat Kiernan.                                        Set Design – Roma Patel
Costume Design – Joan Hickson
Lighting Designer – Paul Denby
Composer – Linda Buckley
Choreographer – Jools Gilson-Ellis
Production Manager – Joe Stockdale
Stage Manager – John Grubb                            Assistant Director – Bridget Deevy                   

The Merchant of Venice

Merchant of Venice

This was a promenade production, with the audience walking from the indoor and out location around the city

Nominated for Best Production in the 2005 Irish Times Theatre Awards

Venue: Old Irish Distillery (North Mall), City Courthouse and Liberty Street, 14 to 25 June 2005.

Written by William Shakespeare
Adapted by Jocelyn Clarke
Directed by Pat Kiernan

Assistant Director – Joanne Beirne
Production Manager – Joe Stockdale
Assistant Production Manager – Eoin O Cathain
Stage Manager – Rose-Anne Kidney
Assistant Stage Manager – Niamh O Meara
Lighting Design – Paul Denby
Set Design – Roma Patel
Costume Design – Joan Hickson
Composers – Mel Mercier and Linda Buckley
Video Production – Mick Hurley

Sponsored by Murray Ó Laoire Architects
Corcadorca Theatre Company - Sponsor

WHAT WE DID​

Set Design/ video

The Living Image

 

The Living Image is a Virtual Reality Art Installation developed by a multidisciplinary team of artists- comprising – Trudi Entwistle, Graham Nicholls, and Roma Patel, it was commissioned by LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre) and was presented in association with the London Science Museum’s Dana Centre in May 2004. 

The Living Image 

VR Installation 

London Science Museum’s Dana Centre  

May 2004

 

"Video, sound and photos essentially make it art, but it could also be a future museum experience. The result is not the kind of tourist trail one would expect.
Instead, this is hi-tech art which allows visitors to explore the darker sides of the city, the "in-between" places that tend to be overlooked in everyday life."

New Expression for a virtual City A review by Jo Twist from the BBC