In David Rockwell’s Manhattan office, there is a room filled with dozens of models for the musical and theatre sets he has designed over the years. The shelves are lined with miniature worlds rendered at a half-inch scale: tiny cardboard cut-outs of the shoe factory in Kinky Boots; a remarkably realistic Streamline Moderne train carriage from the set of On the Twentieth Century; and matchbox-sized versions of the pool table that appeared in the production of The Nap. In the centre of the room stands a long table for meetings with directors and choreographers, and toward the back are the desks of the designers busily at work on new productions.
‘That room, for me, was like how you imagine Father Christmas’ workshop to be, filled with the most magical toys and gems that you’re ever going to find,’ says Simon Sladen, senior curator of modern and contemporary theatre and performance at the Victoria & Albert Museum, which has recently acquired the original set models for four David Rockwell-designed performances – the aforementioned productions, plus Hairspray. ‘When I first walked in, I was probably just a rage of jealousy that we would never be able to acquire all of those materials or have so many on display.’
