I do like designers.

Designers are great. At least the ones I have been lucky enough to work work with are.  You can do the most outrageous stuff and they don't object.  You can put in a stage direction like 'The whale surfaces and the boat is sunk.' and while the director might go hairless the designer reaches for their sketch pad or the back ot a fag packet, depending on their working method, and gets on with it.

Kelly Jago is the designer on Looking for the Rainbow - a play for tinies that goes into rehearsal with Big Window next month and when I wrote it - and I am still amazed that anyone lets me lose to write for this age group - I filled the text with stage directions like 'and then they find something and something happens'  then went and talked to Kelly who would immediately come up with the solution.  I did it like this at first because we have  a small budget and the design and what can happen within the set will be an integral part of the experience so the obvious thing was to discuss the possibilities with the designer.  After our first meeting I did it because she had such bloody good ideas.  The picture below doesn't give any idea of all the things the set can do as Kirsty and her Mum go on their search for the end of the rainbow.  Creatures will appear, it'll become a cave and then a river, and finally of course a rainbow, and all done so simply and for next to nothing.  Can't wait.

Model box for Looking for the Rainbow - designer Kelly Jago.