Pamela Howard. Drawing Theatre

About

The installation focuses on six recent works with music, including The Greek Passion, The Marriage, and Pamela’s critically acclaimed interpretation of Bizet’s opera Carmen for the Ljubljana Slovene National Theatre Opera and Ballet. Most unusually within theatre and opera, Pamela works as both Director and Scenographer.

Pamela begins her creative process with a pen or pencil and draws her way to the first night, using her highly developed and individual drawing skill as a tool to communicate her ideas and vision to her performers and creative team.

Pamela declares:

“When I first enter a new performing space and gaze into its void, I am always filled with the fear that I will never be able to create anything meaningful this time. But, I have learned over the years that fear is the partner of creativity, and one does not come without the other. Then I remember I have strategies to penetrate the darkness of the unknown. I look at the dimensions of space, its height, its width, its diagonals and make a visual notation. Then I try to imagine how a person looks there, and then how many people can fit into that space. I draw them, and suddenly I have started ‘Drawing Theatre’ “

As a passionate advocate of drawing, Pamela has created this installation in response to a highly original, purpose-built drawing studio, bravely commissioned by Arts University Bournemouth and designed by internationally acclaimed architect and AUB alumnus Sir Peter Cook RA. In this architecturally uncompromising building, the centrality of drawing is acknowledged and celebrated.