The Threepenny Opera

Joint Production with the Music Society

The Threepenny Opera (German: Die Dreigroschenoper) is a play with musical elements by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill which offers a socialist critique of the capitalist world.

• The set design was by Jenny Tiramani from the theatre design course at Trent Poly. As the design students had limited chances to see their designs actually constructed, Jenny had the great idea of getting real world experience with us. For many years afterwards I had her art deco design sketches which I later returned to her when she was working at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. That might have been the night I was offered a drink in the bar by David Calder - ‘theatrical royalty’? The design required the band to be on stage and we came up with the idea, with Mike Wolfe the Lighting Designer, to hide the band behind a sharkstooth gauze during the overture. The idea was to snap the band into view at the start of Act One. This meant we needed Jenny’s art deco view of London painted identically on both the gauze and a back cloth. I had no idea of how to do that so I asked my friend Stanley Rixon, Technical Manager of my home theatre, The Nuffield Southampton, for advice. He said just bring everything down to Southampton and he would do it. So one Saturday I drove with the gauze, the backcloth and Jenny’s design sketches to Southampton. Stanley always painted at night, he said he saw the colours better. He layed out the backcloth on the Nuffield stage, with the gauze on top of it, and painted both at the same time. Once hung in the New Theatre about 7 feet apart and with the band squeezed in between I think we managed an “oooh” from the audience each night when the band suddenly appeared in a snap cue. — John Schwiller 2021-12-11
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