Wagner's ring cycle

These designs for Wagner's 'Ring Cycle' are the result of a four-year collaborative research process with the director Phyllida Lloyd. The research questions addressed involved finding ways to present an opera of the epic dimensions and the mythical associations of the 'Ring Cycleâ'on a domestic scale. Hudson was interested in exploring the dramatic conventions of 'soap opera' and looking at ways of applying them to 'grand' opera on the stage of the Coliseum. Facing the design problems of how to create the small and the particular in a space as vast as the Coliseum and enable it to be read by an audience; and how to concentrate and focus audience attention to enable the retelling of the familiar story of a 'family' who just happen to be Gods in an unfamiliar way, Hudson constructed a series of moving screens to shutter the space and frame the action exploring the ways in which the voyeuristic conventions of the proscenium stage might be exploited to give the audience glimpses into the private worlds of the protagonists in this case scaled down to domestic interiors. The costumes were contemporary, each character very precisely identified by what they wore. The supernatural was made apparent by the use of light sometimes emanating from within the set, and sometimes from outside. The 'Cycle' was performed in English and Hudson's research explored ways in which space could be organised to enhance the auditory reception of the work while simultaneously presenting a world in which both the mortals and the Gods were recognisable characters that the audience could identify with