About:
Laura Cordery is socially-engaged artist and designer who has 15 years experience working as a theatre set and costume designer. She is the creative director and founder of Drawing Voices, an arts organisation dedicated to collaborative projects addressing loneliness, ill health, and disadvantage within communities. They bring together artists and communities to weave individual experiences, stories and voices into co-created works of art and performance.
Laura is based in Hertfordshire and has been working primarily in theatre with a passion for new writing. She trained at RADA gaining a post-graduate diploma in Theatre Set and Costume Design. Before this, she studied Art History at Warwick University, and during her time there she began designing for productions in the Warwick Arts Centre.
She has designed numerous Shakespeare productions for the theatre on board the QM2, operas for Venetian Palazzos, storytelling pieces in transformed disused spaces, interactive spaces for physical theatre pieces, and giant bonfires used for outdoor performances. Laura’s explorative approach when visualising character and text is playful, ambitious and bold. She is most interested in creating sculptural playgrounds where stories can unfold and where actors can play.
In her visual arts practice, she works responsively to museum collections and artefacts in a similar way to play-texts. She explores encounters with characters found within objects and artefacts from the past and uses dialogue and story exchange to form the approach and subject of her work. She works in mixed media, drawing, painting, and small-scale sculptural works.
Laura taught for 10 years on the Set Design for Performance short course at Central St Martins.
Previous credits as Designer include:
Associate Artist With Shooting Fish Theatre: OUR PLACE (TIE Tour); NEWTOPIA, NO PICNIC, FLEUR-DE-LIS, THE MURDERESS, 10:01, BACK STORY (Trinity Arts Centre); GOOLE'S FRIENDLY GIANT, THE TEMPEST (West Park Goole); LAMINATED (Tristan Bates). - EVERYTHING BETWEEN US (Finborough Theatre); SMALL TOWN HERO (Blueprint film); INIGO (White Bear); MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM (Ovalhouse); JUST THE TICKET (Bridewell); THERESE RAQUIN (Park 200/Finborough); VENUS & ADONIS (Scuola di Giovanni Evangalista, Venice); DIDO & AENEAS (Ca' Rezzonico, Venice); FRAGMENTS OF CLAY (Hong Kong Rep); PRIDE & PREJUDICE, BARD ON BOARD, PRIDE & PREJUDICE, ARABIAN NIGHTS, CANTERBURY TALES, ROMEO & JULIET, HAMLET, MERCHANT OF VENICE, RICHARD III, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (Cunard QM2); NINE DAYS THEY FELL, HIGH SOCIETY, LILY JONES' BIRTHDAY, FOUR (Vanbrugh/GBS RADA); WHEN CHAPLIN MET GHANDI (Kingsley Hall, Bow); THE DEATH OF KING CHOLERA (Seething Wells, Kingston); THE LOCAL STIGMATIC (Baron's Court); MISS JULIE (Greenwich Playhouse); For costume only EKUL MIZAN (The Place) CONSTANCE (King's Head).
Previous credits as Assistant Designer include:
For James Cotterill on MERCHANT OF VENICE (Globe Theatre) TO HAVE AND TO HOLD, BOTTICELLI IN THE FIRE (Hampstead Theatre); HAMLET (Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company/RADA); FRACKED! (Chichester Festival Theatre/UK Tour); THE MIGHTY WALZER (Manchester Royal Exchange); THE WAR HAS NOT YET STARTED (Plymouth Drum); OUR SHARE OF TOMORROW (Theatre 503).
For Hannah Clark on SOUR ANGELICA for Opera North; IDOMENEO (Garsington Opera); 4.48 PSYCHOSIS (ROH /Lyric Hammersmith); QUEEN ANNE (RSC/Theatre Royal Haymarket); WIT (Manchester Royal Exchange); THE ORESTEIA (Shakespeare's Globe); BANK ON IT (Theatre Rites/Barbican).
For Katie Lias on SHAKE RATTLE & ROLL (Polka Theatre); for Robert Innes Hopkins on NOISES OFF (Nottingham Playhouse); for Liz Ascroft on CARMELITES (Grange Park Opera); PORGY & BESS (Copenhagen Opera House); for Neil Irish on CHRISTMAS CAROL (Derby Theatre) and JEKYLL & HYDE (Hong Kong Jockey Club Amphitheatre)
