Something I enjoy more than anything else is volunteering to do the St Jude’s school play scenery. I did Alice in Wonderland for my eldest daughters Year Six production and this year was lucky enough to do The Lion King for my youngest. St Jude’s were amazing and despite all the extra difficulties of COVID the school decided to go ahead with the end of year school play. Miss McLeash wrote an adaptation of the Lion King, and I got busy with papier-mâché and acrylic paints.

Inspiration

I’m fascinated with Ben Day dots and simple brushstrokes. I have always painted with using perforated steel as a stencil to create a halftone backdrop to my paintings. Doing the school play backdrop is amazing because when else do you get to paint such a big picture.

The film of course was a great source of visual imagery, although I felt it was in the ‘classic’ Disney style, I certainly was intrigued by how ‘Spider-man Into the Spider-verse’ had really visually brought together lots of visual styles that I was interested in, graffiti spray paint colours, Ben Day dots and four colour separation, and the Kirby Krackle.

I was also very keen to avoid the West End stage play’s way of doing things, as that had become the default style for many subsequent school production.

Elephant graveyard tusks

When Simba mischievously takes Nalla into the Elephants graveyard they are surrounded by giant elephant tusks, and an elephant skull. I made some tusks from cardboard and papier-mâché secured onto an MDF base.

Jungle fallen tree trunk

Simba having fled the Pride Lands grows up with Timon and Pumba in the Jungle Oasis and adopts their diet of grubs. This creates a great comedy moment as they introduce him to his new diet. This required creating a hollow fallen log that the children could reach into and pull out bugs. I built the fallen tree trunk out of old bicycle boxes, and found pulling the cardboard apart after soaking it in water created a rough bark texture.

Sun and Jungle disk

The centre piece of the backdrop was a setting sun to represent the Pride Land savannah which could then be turned around to symbolise the scene had changed to the Jungle Oasis.

Tree tops

I decided that the simplest way to create trees was to hang the tree canopy from the ceiling of the school hall. I keeping with the African theme, I went to Brixton market and brought a selection of wax resist fabric, eventually picking a geometric green design.

Stage backdrop

In many ways the most enjoyable part of the whole process, the school very kindly gave me the use of the art room on a Friday, and I could create the backdrop for them on the floor. The art room is actually decorated with bits of the scenery that I had made for Alice in Wonderland a few years before. So I feel very at home in this room.

Stage set in the school hall

Finally, it all came together in the school hall.