Chicken feat (From The Northern Echo)

Chicken feat

5:54pm Tuesday 13th December 2011 in Features By Steve Pratt

Steve Pratt talks to film and stage designer Barney George about his work and theatrical fowl deeds.

BARNEY George grew up in a world of movie magic. His dad, Dick George, is a top special effects designer for film and TV who worked on the first three Star Wars movies – and took his work home.

It’s the same now with Barney’s two children.

He has a studio at home so they’re able to keep an eye on pretty much everything he’s doing.

“As a six-year-old it turns your head a bit having rubber monsters in your parents’ bedroom because it’s the only place warm enough for the rubber to dry out,” he explains.

It was perhaps inevitable Barney would follow in his father’s footsteps. “It didn’t occur to me to do anything else,” he says. “I think where you grow up in a family where you are immersed in that world, then family life and working life get blurred.”

He and his father have worked together on prop making and special effects. “It’s the movie aspect that got me going and that started when I was at university. I did bits and pieces of fine art and got stuck in the theatre. I did a few pieces of acting at the beginning and it was all valuable experience because there’s a lot of crossover between design and performance.”

One of his dad’s recent tasks was making the human automaton for Martin Scorsese’s newlyreleased film Hugo. A dozen of them, in fact, with each one capable of a different function, including writing. Barney’s own film work includes making a very important box for The Da Vinci Code, as well as jewellery for Prince Of Persia and Oliver Stone’s Alexander. His current project as a designer is very different.

For a start, it’s in the theatre. He’s collaborating with York-based writer Mike Kenny (who adapted The Railway Children into a hit play complete with real steam engine) and director Gail McIntyre on a very different version of Jack And The Beanstalk, at West Yorkshire Playhouse.

EVERYONE is keen to point out this is not a pantomime, but a different take on the story of the giant who’s taken the girl with the harp and left some very unhappy farmyard chickens behind.

Leeds-based designer George had seen McIntyre’s work in the region and was keen to work with her. The opportunity came with Beauty And The Beast. Several more Christmas shows with Kenny have followed.

The productions are developed through what he calls “conversational experiment”.

Ideas are bandied around to find an approach to the story. “It’s very much an open conversation and we develop an association early in the year with the performers.”

This Jack is set in a farmyard, which arose from Kenny’s predilection to tell stories from the point of view of people within the tale.

“But perhaps people you don’t expect to have an opinion”, he adds. In this case, that would be chickens. “Being told from the point of view of chickens made us all laugh,” says George. But he says “this is no Chicken Run” – a reference to the Aardman animated feature which was a bit like The Great Escape, but with chickens.

“To portray the chickens, we’re exploring techniques we’ve used in the past. They’re chicken characters, but humanoid in their characteristics. It’s one of those balances that has to be treated quite carefully but is in very safe hands with Gail.

“Quite early on we knew we didn’t want performers in chicken suits. My challenge was to create human-looking costumes that have chicken-like characteristics.”

One of his next design challenges will take him to Singapore, working with Slung Low company on a piece about vampires.

More film work is a possibility. “I’m tempted by the prospect of making things. That’s why I love design because you’re very much closer to the process. I’m a bit of a sucker for anything that involves making things.”

For the current show that includes a beanstalk that grows before the audience’s eyes.

“That’s quite an engineering feat,” he says.

• Jack and the Beanstalk: Courtyard Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until January 21.

Box office 0113-2137-700 and online at wyp.org.uk