The actual design began to take shape when I made the model. Suddenly I got an insight into the opera and what it might ultimately look like. To translate these ideas into a visual spectacle is always challenging, but all the more so when many of the elements are still not definite. I am still adjusting the design in order to accommodate it to new details as they come in. This can be anything, for example: the number of participants changing, or the experience of hearing, for the first time, a computer rendering of the music. When there are so many unknown factors, the challenge is to keep an overall feel and vision, while rendering it into the thousand details without losing the overall vision.

I have been fitting most of the participants with one or two costumes. The visual element of the costumes is now in place and only minor adjustments will be made. A huge boost for the period costumes came when Susannah Waters, the director, returned from her trip to Finland with two suitcases full of borrowed costumes from Finnish National Opera. This is the kind of help on which small-scale arts organizations like The Paddock depend! I bought almost all of the contemporary costumes from Lewes charity shops. Last week, the first part of the set was constructed. This is always very exciting and the warehouse has begun to transform into a performance space. From now on, I will be concentrating more on “set dressing”, meaning texturing and painting surfaces, and adding furniture and props. There is so much enthusiasm for this project from everyone I meet. In the end, one thing is sure: it is going to be quite an event.

Num Stibbe - Designer, The Finnish Prisoner