Dr Kathrine Sandys

MA, PhD, FHEA
Job title
Head of Theatre Practice, Principal Lecturer Theatre Practice

Profile

I am a scenographer, researcher and academic working with predominantly light, sound, landscape and space.

I studied Theatre Design at Croydon College, hold a Masters in Contemporary Arts from Manchester Metropolitan University and a PhD in Music: Sonic Arts from Goldsmiths College. My practice has journeyed through theatre, dance and music to installation art and site-specific work, design and curation for galleries, museums, landscape and heritage sites.

My research focuses on the histories, the materialities and cultural affects of former industrial, military and marine landscapes.

Explored through phenomenology, synaesthesia or the Sublime, installations and performances have included: rearranging Elgar’s previously unperformed Memorial Chimes manuscript, through Bletchley Park coding for Loughborough’s Carillon (2012 Cultural Olympiad commission); a deconstruction of the underwater sonic landscape of the Lower Thames Pool; remixing and designing lighting filter dyes to sound frequencies and a disco appropriating the Tate Collection (Tate Liverpool). At the 2011 Prague Quadrennial, I received the “International Jury Award for Excellence in Sound Design” for Hush House, a site-specific sound installation in a former Cold War U.S Airbase (Aldeburgh Music).

Current research includes the urban landscape Pigment/Dye/Material/Scent Botanic Garden Laboratory.

My practice nationally and internationally has included work with artists in South Africa, Japan, Ireland, Canada, India, US, Zimbabwe, Germany, Ghana, UK, Sweden, Hong Kong and Czech Republic, at Imperial War Museum North (M.E.N Theatre Awards: winner Best New Play 2002); Liverpool’s Playhouse, Everyman and Unity Theatres; Aldeburgh Music; FACT; Opera North; Liverpool International Biennial of Contemporary Art; Harare International Festival of Arts; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra; Churchill War Rooms; Tate Liverpool; Video Positive; Realworld Records; Liverpool European City of Culture 2008; Discover Children’s Story Centre and Vintage at Goodwood 2010 (UK Festival Awards: winner Best New Festival 2010).

As a committee member of the Society of British Theatre Designers, I co-curated (with Lucy Thornett) the Round Table Discussions for the UK pavilion at the Prague Quadrennial 2019.

Prior to Central I held roles as Interdisciplinary Curriculum Leader at Rose Bruford College; Head of Lighting, Sound and Digital Production at Mountview Academy Of Theatre Arts and Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Design and Technology at Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts.

Areas of Expertise

  • Design and Production for Live Performance
  • Landscape and Scenography
  • Phenomenology
  • Politics of military and industrial landscapes
  • The Cold War cultural fantasy
  • Site-responsive work and politics of appropriated space and materials
  • Lighting, sound and digital media in museum and heritage site interpretation
  • Synesthesia

PhD Supervision

To date, I have externally examined 2 PhDs, one to upgrade and one at completion in areas including Scenography and Landscape, and Lighting Design and its cultural contexts. I am currently supervising or interested in supervising doctoral projects in the areas of:

  • Lighting for live performance, its cultural contexts and histories
  • Phenomenology and scenography
  • Sonic Arts
  • Landscape and scenography
  • The Sublime
  • The Cold War Cultural Fantasy

Key Publications

2020. Mine are the Dead Spaces: A Discussion of Bunker Work’s Atmosphere, Limits and Routines, Journal of War and Cultural Studies, 13.1, 54-74

2017. “Sublime Concrete”in: In the ruins of the Cold War bunker: affect, materiality and meaning-makingRowman & Littlefield

External Practice

2021. (Lighting Designer) Sirens, Mercury Theatre, Colchester. 

2018. (Lighting Designer) it will come later, International Contemporary Dance Collective (ICoDaCo). 

Register of Interest

Nothing to declare