Like We Were
Born To Move
Youth Theatre Ireland presents the National Youth Theatre
Peacock Stage, Abbey Theatre, 2023
How long do you wait for your Mam to come home before you have to do something about it? Who gets to fall apart? Who just has to cope? Why does asking for help feel impossible when it’s something everyone needs?
Like We Were Born To Move is about waiting to be old enough to make your own decisions, and how terrifying it is when you realise you finally have to. It’s about dancers and dancing, adultified youths, and systems of care.
Role: Set Design
Team
Writer: Eimear Hussey
Director: Niall Cleary
Cast: Noreen Angozi, Millie Bolger, Eoghan Flanagan-Healy, Setanta Flood, Eoin Gilmartin, Andrew Keegan, Isobel Koppe, Richie McDonnell, Jack Murphy, Faith Olasgoba, Evie Paul, Amelie Prone, Anna Scott, Conall Sheerin, Leah Sheridan, Jasmine Walsh
Set Design: Choy-Ping Ní Chléirigh-Ng 吳彩萍
Costume Design: Mae Leahy
Lighting Design: Sarah Jane Shiels
Composer & Sound Design: Denis Clohessy
Movement Director: Olwyn Lyons
Assistant Director: Rebecca Feely
Design & Tech Ensemble: Aoife Sheridan
Design & Tech Ensemble: Briana Gawley
Design & Tech Ensemble: Rhianna Clerkin
Dramaturg: Carys D. Coburn
Producer: Kelly Phelan
Line Producer: Sophie Coote
Stage Manager: Sara Gannon
Youth Theatre Ireland Director: Eoghan Doyle
National Programme Co-Ordinator: Rebecca Feely
Child Protection & Wellbeing Officer: Cathal Thornton
Design & Tech Ensemble Mentor: Jack Scullion
Production Manager: Pius McGrath
Set Builder: Colin Bartley
Scenic Artist: Emily Waters
Photography: Ros Kavanagh
Process
The images above show our early visual inspirations for the play, which is mostly set between a dance studio and an old family house. The transitions between the scenes needed to be fast. With dance mirrors on wheels segmenting the stage, we could create these two places. The rest of the furniture was kept minimal due to the cast of 16 needing to easily move. The backstage and wings of the Peacock are pretty tight. The text makes references to domestic tasks that never end like doing laundry. There’s a scene also where the housemates are organising their clothes. That stuck with me as something to bring into the design. My favourite feature is probably the chandelier / hanging dryer, which I modified myself to allow socks to hang from it!
For this show, I didn’t meet Niall in person until rehearsals! So working digitally at the start made sense for us. I could easily share the model over video call, make adjustments and show different sight-lines. This is the white card model, showing the set up for the house (top) and dance studio (bottom). Later we decided to add the walls and make the kitchen simpler for less clutter. I prefer to model digitally up until white card, as I work quicker and get a clearer sense of scale. However, this depends on the director too and how they like to work. At drama school, we mostly used physical model boxes. For the final design presentation and sharing with the cast I made a physical model. A design like this with stairs and limited backstage space meant that it was important for the team to see a model box before going into tech.