Masterclass - Alison Chitty

Alison Chitty trained at St Martin’s School of Art and Central School of Art and Design. She won an Arts Council bursary to the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, where she became resident designer designing over 40 productions. She returned to London to work at the Hampstead Theatre, Riverside Studios, Royal Shakespeare Company and the West End.

She was resident designer at the Royal National Theatre for 8 years where she designed numerous productions including the Olivier Award winning Remembrance Of Things Past and Sir Peter Hall’s productions of Antony and Cleopatra, the late Shakespeare’s and The Bacchae.

In the field of opera she has designed productions for Glyndebourne Festival, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, English National Opera, Opera North, Royal Albert Hall, Houston Grand Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Staatsoper Berlin, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Bastille Paris and the operas of Los Angeles, Dallas, Seattle, Goteborg, Copenhagen, Geneva and Bordeaux.

Her production designs include several Mike Leigh films, including Life Is Sweet, Naked and Secrets And Lies, winner of the Palm d’Or at Cannes and Academy Award Nominee for Best Picture.

Alison Chitty has advised on the design and construction of theatre buildings in Stoke-on-Trent, Delhi and Johannesburg. She is currently Concept Theatre Designer for Sir Peter Hall’s new theatre in Kingston and was Associate Designer at Chichester Festival Theatre 2003 – 2005.

She is a frequent lecturer and advisor in theatre design, and is director of the Motley Theatre Design School.

Recent productions include the critically acclaimed Two Thousands Years by Mike Leigh at the NT, The Voysey Inheritance for which she won an Olivier Award for Best Costume Design and Midsummer Marriage for Chicago Lyric Opera. Her future plans include Birtwistle’s Minotaur for ROH and The Vortex for The Peter Hall Company.

She was awarded an OBE in 2004.