Credits as Production Manager
Amy gained experience as a Production Manager while a student at the University of Oxford, developing a variety of technical skills including basic carpentry and co-ordinating large teams of designers, technicians and numerous assistants, ensuring cohesive design delivered within budget and to an agreed timescale.
Amy has several production management credits for 472 Productions, including Brave New World, Henry IV Part I, and Girls will be Girls. In addition, she has worked with a number of other companies in the same role.
Travesties
“What did you do in the Great War?”
“I wrote Ulysses… What did you do?”
“Bloody nerve.”
Henry Carr is a former (minor) British diplomat, now reduced to a footnote in history. He reminisces about the surreal, spectacular time when three great minds collided in wartime Zürich, 1917: modernist writer James Joyce, anarchic artist Tristan Tzara, and communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. This unlikely group swap theories and insults as they find themselves in a somewhat unorthodox version of Oscar Wilde’s 'The Importance of Being Earnest', and chaos ensues...
A mingling of fact and fiction, the tale is told through an eclectic mix of parody, puns, and peculiar goings-on, set against the backdrop of a Europe thrown into turmoil by the First World War. This surreal comedy blends laugh-out-loud moments and sharp social commentary in its quest to explore questions of political and artistic rebellion.
Director: Bea Udale-Smith
Assistant Director: Rosa Haworth
Lighting Design: Seb Dows-Miller
Set Design: Alistair Debling
Costume Design: Shivaike Shah
Set Dressing: Sophia Mara Buck
Props Supervisor: Jim Fellows
Photography by Luke Wintour
The complexity as well as the beauty of this production lies in the close ties between the different elements of technical design. Seb's lighting interacts seamlessly with Alistair's set design, in particular the gauze cladding of his Dadaist structure. Sophia's dressing and Jim's props likewise cohered to the same design brief. As Production Manager, I co-ordinated these cross-department links as well as ensuring detailed logistical plans for both sourcing and construction phases of the project.
"Travesties is impeccably designed." – The Poor Print
"a sparkling evening with a high level of competence shown by actors and technical crew in general" – Theatreworld
TEDx Oxford
Oxford New Theatre
4th March 2018
Co-Technical Director: Nat Davies
Lighting Designer: Jennifer Hurd
Associate Lighting Designer: Seb Dows-Miller
Assistant Lighting Designer: George Twinn
Stage Manager: Miranda Mackay
Photography by the committee of TEDx Oxford
TEDxOxford is an annual independently organised TED event. The day-conference brings together young individuals aged between 16 and 25, who will hear from a collection of the world’s most interesting and remarkable minds.
But it is more than just an event. TEDxOxford is attempting to do something that has never been done before: deliver the inspiration of TED to our nation’s youth. We are guided by the notion that today’s students will become tomorrow’s leaders, and feel that it’s our responsibility to help them develop into the innovators that they will one day become.
The great challenge of working on this production was the combination of working in my largest venue to date, along with joining a team of those whose expertise lay outside of theatrical production.
As Technical Director, I co-ordinated all aspects of pre-production planning and paperwork, including CDM, Technical Riders, liaising with contractors, co-ordinating hires, and staffing fit-up and run crew.
TEDx Oxford was mounted at the Oxford New Theatre (an ATG venue) in March 2018. The conference attracts some 1800 attendees and is run on the main stage of the venue. It is run by a team of volunteers in all aspects, from planning speakers, logistics, and theatrical production, to marketing, front of house, sponsorship, and graphics.
It was a delight to manage the technical sub-team for this production, and I hope to be able to return to the New Theatre in a similar role soon.
Sweet Charity
By Neil Simon, Dorothy Fields and Cy Coleman
Oxford Playhouse
Halfwit Theatre
February 2018
Sweet Charity is one of Bob Fosse's most famous musicals, which as a trained dancer made it a particularly brilliant production to work on. The narrative follows Charity, a young woman in the dance-halls of New York City, who falls in love with Oscar, an unsuspecting actuary who belongs to a different world. Their will-they-won't-they love affair concerns the majority of the show, but with stand-out musical numbers like Big Spender and Rhythm of Life, along with Simon's witty script, the centre-piece of this show is the 'how' not the 'what'.
This explosion of colour, rhythm, and fun takes us on a whirlwind journey following the life of its female protagonist.
As my first project taking on the role of Production Manager sole, I gained a lot of knowledge and skills from the experienced team of theatre technicians that I was privileged to work with.
Interaction between departments again characterised the majority of my work, with strong interactions between LX and Set on this project, as seen in the photographs below. Alex and I had the great privilege of building this set together, which was remarked as one of the most ambitious student sets seen in recent years.
On this production, I also fulfilled the role of Company Manager.
Director: Nils Behling
Assistant Director: Caitlin Kelly
Choreography: Olivia Charley
Set Design: Alex Taylor
Lighting Design: Jennifer Hurd
Costumes: Christina Hill
Stylists: Eimer Mcauley, Emily Albery
Props Supervisor: Thomas Robertson
Photography by Ben Darwent and Georgia Crowther
"Aesthetically, the show was consistently strong and cohesive." – The Oxford Student