From theatre sets to arena shows for
Kanye West, the stage designer has waved her magic wand over them all. Now it’s her turn in the spotlight
Es Devlin, the 48-year-old
British set designer, is often asked where her ideas come from. These ideas – “stage sculptures”, she calls them – might take the form of the ingenious revolving glass box that encloses the performers in director Sam Mendes’s production of The Lehman Trilogy, transferring to Broadway next year after a sold-out run in London’s West End, or an outsize replica of Miley Cyrus’s tongue that the singer slid down on her 2014 Bangerz tour. Or it could be 200,000 pieces of mirror fixed by hand on to columns for a Louis Vuitton runway show or a pair of hands 25m high emerging from Lake Constance in Austria, tossing playing cards in the air for a production of Bizet’s Carmen.