We spoke to Siena Tone, Dash Arts’ Intern from Emmerson College, Boston. Siena shared her experience of working as the Design and Costume Assistant supporting Set Designer, Alex Podger, and Costume Designer, James Reeves for The Great Middlemarch Mystery production.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your journey

I was born in Colorado in the US. I grew up in like a tiny little mountain town. Then went to a university in New York, and I went to school there for a little bit to study fine art. But, it wasn't quite the right fit for me. I realised that being a fine artist or even being an illustrator is not something that is realistic in the modern world. During that time I started working with my sister who is working in film as a director. I discovered that I love this kind of storytelling through design; creating sets and costumes and being able to tell a story.

So then I transferred to Emmerson College in Boston, where I studied for my BFA (Bachelors for Fine Arts) degree. It was a very theatre-based program and I learned a lot about the fundamentals of scenic and costume design. From there, I wanted to experience living in Europe, so I secured an internship through IES with Dash Arts. I arrived in the UK in January 2022.

A very short time as Middlemarch started in April?

Yes, very short.

How did that go?

A picture of a couple's wedding in a church, there is an image of three tiered cake — Characters Rosamond and Lydgate Photoshopped onto Siena’s parent’s wedding photo

For the first month and a half, I worked with Alex (Alex Podger, Designer) virtually because he was still in Australia. It was funny as we are always in a different time zone. But it was really good. He gave me guidance as to where to start, then I was given free reign, which was great! I learned a lot.

What is unique about Middlemarch is that it is an immersive theatre, it is so interactive, and the audience is up and close to everything, which is a lot different from what I am used to in designing sets for a film and a traditional theatre. For example, when a character reads a newspaper in a film, the text on the paper can be random, because the audience will not see it in detail if it’s not necessary for the scene. On stage, the newspaper can be blank. However, because this production was such an intimate experience, the graphics have to be really detailed to fit in the world of Middlemarch.

That was a huge task for me in the first part of my work. The first time I met Alex, I told him that I am not that strong at Photoshop and Illustrator. And of course, I ended up spending hours using these programmes. But I learned so much and now I know all the tricks! I even Photoshopped actors’ photos to my mom and dad's wedding pictures to make the wedding photos!

What guidance did Alex give you?

He walked me through what the spaces going to be, how we are going to approach them, and the colour palettes that we are going to use. Then the overall aesthetic of each location. From there we went through the list of scripted graphics and props that we know we needed, and if I needed more information, we consulted the script.

He also introduced me to where I can find items online and other places. That was really interesting for me, because we don’t have the same resources in Boston! I am used to always having sourced every single prop from second-hand shops, random places, or Facebook marketplace. But here in London, there are huge prop rental houses, which were amazing! We could basically find everything we needed. That was such a great experience for me because I’ve never worked with props in that way. It was old hat for Alex but for me it was exciting.

Image of Pioneers office, white board, desks and red lamps — Pioneers Office - With the red lamps

How did you find working on 4 different locations: the dean’s living room, the bank, the pub and the hall?

We worked from pictures we had of the spaces and the idea of the early 1980s in which the production is set. Alex had 3D graphics of the spaces to help us understand the spaces. Then we visited Coventry and did a walk-through of each space. This was useful in solidifying our designs. Mostly I found there was much more space than I thought there would be. I was also slightly worried that the spaces might either look too modern or too antique, but they didn’t thankfully!

What was your favourite space?

I think the Pioneer was my favourite visually. I just loved the way that turned out, it was really fun and colourful with a lot of things going on.

I also thought that the bank actually turned out really well. We were very nervous because we weren’t sure exactly how it was going to look in the end. Partly because all our options for bank desks got booked up, so the desk that we used was a last-minute attempt that we put together, but it turned out really well.

What were your biggest sources of inspiration?

Mostly online archives of magazines that show what houses looked like in the 80s, to give us a solid idea of the aesthetic. There may have not been a newspaper office in a town hall in the 1980s, but we took elements of a newspaper and brought them to the space we were envisaging, then put a creative spin on it like the red lights in the pioneer.

I also worked a lot with James on the costumes. We got a lot of visual references from 1980s and late 70s clothing. We went to different kinds of vintage stores throughout London, finding different items and piecing them together for each of the characters. We’d think ‘yes this is the kind of things Raffles would have bought and worn’.

So you thought of the characters when you put together the costume?

a person standing looking at another person lying in a sofa — Raffles in his costume lying on a sofa in the Bank

Yeah, I’d be like ‘if they were walking in the store right now, what would be the thing that catches their eye?’ In my past experiences, I was always taught costume design in a very rigid way. Where you draw out a character design, and say they have a red shirt, then you search every store until you find that one red shirt.

With James however, we’d start with an idea. Say we wanted Raffles to be in denim because it felt right. Then let’s find the pieces that he would wear in this store. It was more natural and to me, it felt much better. It reminded me of when I was a kid, I used to play dress-up with my mom’s clothes and create characters with the pieces I found in her closet.

All of this sounds so fun! and you haven’t worked on this sort of production before?

No. I’ve done different types of productions: a bunch of movies and independent films and very traditional theatre before, but I’ve never really done any kind of interactive site-specific work like this.

After all of that, what would you say to people about Dash Arts?

I think it is a great community of people. The work Dash do is really inspiring to me. Not only because of the different stories they’re telling, but also the conversations they’re having about culture. I think anyone can learn from that. I definitely want to bring it into my work in the future. I also felt that Dash knows how to handle having an intern and how to keep me engaged. And of course, I learned so much from Alex. He was a really incredible mentor.