DESIGNER | Liz Ascroft

THE RISE AND FALL OF LITTLE VOICE

ROYAL EXCHANGE THEATRE MANCHESTER

TMA BEST DESIGNER AWARD

"Sarah Frankcom's fine new production, brilliantly designed by Liz Ascroft in a style that combines grim realism with witty touches of surrealism, as well as delivering a thrilling, flaming coup de theatre, has exactly the right mixture of warmth and guts."

CHARLES SPENCER THE TELEGRAPH

THE HOMECOMING

THEATRE ROYAL BATH, UK TOUR

On a spectacular set creating Nosferatu-like shadows, Keith Allen expertly negotiates patriarch Max’s rapid turns in a bleakly humorous production exploring relationships

There is a warped fairytale element to Liz Ascroft’s spectacular set, its back wall decked out in morbid grey-green flock wallpaper that reaches into the heavens, making the house seem as tall and inescapable as Rapunzel’s tower. On to that vast space are thrown spidery Nosferatu-like shadows as characters climb or descend the staircase.

THE TELEGRAPH

BEAUTIFUL THING

ROYAL EXCHANGE THEATRE MANCHESTER

"Yet to see the two lads huddled together in bed - vulnerable beneath the vast overhanging balloon globe that dominates Liz Ascroft’s at once urban and kookily otherworldly set - is to get the message of both how complicated, and also how wordlessly easy, adolescence can be."

DOMINIC CAVENDISH THE TELEGRAPH

ONE FOR THE ROAD

AMBASSADORS & LINCOLN CENTER NEW YORK

WOMEN TO WATCH AND OTHER PRIME MOVERS

LIZ ASCROFT

"From a host of fast-rising women designers, I'd pick her out, largely on the strength of her astonishing set for Pinter's ONE FOR THE ROAD which combined austere economy with a hint of terrifying unseen worlds."

MICHAEL BILLINGTON THE GUARDIAN

PORGY AND BESS

A BROADWAY CLASSIC COMES TO LIFE

Set design is the art of telling stories through visual language. Follow set designer Liz Ascroft as she prepares for the Broadway-classic Porgy and Bess at The Royal Danish Opera House.

I trained as a theatre designer at Wimbledon School of Art and I’ve been working as a freelancer in the business for over 30 years.

I received the Arts Council Trainee design bursary, won the TMA Best Designer Award and the UNESCO award for the Promotion of the Visual Arts at the Prague Quadrennial.

Pinter’s ONE FOR THE ROAD has been my proudest achievement to date. I don’t have any photos of it because the set fell down and there was no time to take any photos once we had got it back up and working.