Carla Joy Evans

Illustrator, photographer, set and costume designer, dressmaker and occasional creator of weird puppets. As my digital design work keeps me attached to a screen all day I like to take time out with more hands-on projects. Here are the ways I try to keep creative...

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This weekend the Questors theatre opened its doors for the first time since lock-down to the public for Art Quest - an exhibition showcasing local artists and makers. This was my contribution - an 18th century dress made from over 600 patchwork squares cut from costumes that we’d sent to the skip after a big clear out over the summer. This is my kind of recycling! 

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Private Lives

This year’s “easy” show to costume is Private Lives - just five actors in the 1930s. Satin PJs and evening dresses made to vintage patterns are not the easiest things to make, I have discovered. Then trying to put this this unforgivingly clingy, shiny drapery on an actress you discover a whole new world of pain! Very proud of how this looked in the end though, and an absolutely first class cast brought the house down with their Cowardy shenanigans.     

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Poster Shoot for Private Lives - by Noel Coward

Private Lives is the Questors season opener which I’ll also costume. Quite pleased with how this one turned out under challenging photography conditions - and and I had fun with the Photoshop...

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Designing for Restoration with a modern edge - Nell Gwynn

Nell Gwynn has opened this week - a more stripped down version than the 60 costumes I originally designed - maybe less ambition next time. I’m very proud of Lady Castlemaine’s gold dress - this one nearly got cut but I managed to make it in 48 hours the weekend of the first dress run!

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Costuming an Edwardian drama - Finborough Theatre

I’ve just costumed my first Fringe show - Jane Clegg for the Finborough Theatre. Set by Alex Marker. I learned a lot about detachable collars on this one and hope never to have to use them again - I’m sure some of the actors feel the same....

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The curtain has come down on Sleeping Beauty - such great fun and thanks to a lovely cast who I’d be happy to spend any Christmas with... 

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Costumes for Sleeping Beauty 

Since July I’ve been designing costumes for this year’s Questors panto, Sleeping Beauty - the wonderful wardrobe team have made it all come true! 

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When the Rain Stops Falling

The things we do for art! This weekend I was photographing a man in a lake wearing his dressing gown, holding a trout and screaming. I’d put him there, of course, so I could photograph the poster image for The Questors season opener: When the Rain Stops Falling. A melancholy and surreal play by Australian writer Andrew Bovell, it’s set in futuristic Alice Springs, where global warming has produced a never-ending storm in the desert. 

So the lead actor, the stage manager, the director, his wife and their baby all headed with me to the pond at my local park. In the bay next to us cheerful locals splashed around with their dogs pretending not to notice us. Editing out the trees and adding in the rain was a not too simple task for later on... 

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A poster for the Young Hot Bloods

And now for something completely different! Young Hot Bloods is a new verbatim play by award-winning Longsight theatre, using the multicultural voices and stories of todays East Londoners to discuss women’s rights issue 100 years after the first votes were won for women. 

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The set for Taking Sides.

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Taking Sides - set design

After the colour and chaos of panto costumes, I’ll be starting the new year with something completely different: a monochrome set design for Ronald Harwood’s post war play, Taking Sides. This is the sketch and model box for a government office in bombed out Berlin - the Americans have occupied and begun trials of suspected Nazi war criminals. I want to develop those doors into a centre piece for the room with a fanlight. The director wants a film noir feel (hence the blinds) and I’ve used a forced perspective to give it impact and scale in the small studio space. Now there’s just the job of building it...

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Mother Goose

The curtain’s gone up on this year’s panto! And the costumes almost look like the original drawings. Mother Goose runs at The Questors Theatre until 1st January 2018. I’m going to sleep until then....

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Mousehole

Beautiful Mousehole in Cornwall: our one night stop before the fun (or not) of the get-in tomorrow of The Country Wife at The Minack Theatre. A very good pub dinner and this beautiful view from our guest house will stand us in good stead....

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The Effect - poster

Now for a more straight forward poster commission- for Lucy Prebble’s The Effect. It’s the story of two young people who fall in love while participating in a drugs trial. The director wanted a picture that captured the themes of love and science under scrutiny and suggested the ideas of the lovers as through they were in an x-ray.  

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Panto Costumes!

It’s only June, but I’ve been busy making costuming drawings for the first show I’m going to design  - the pantomime Mother Goose by Ben Crocker. Based on a Scandinavian fairy tale, it’s set in a fantasy Norway and features trolls, yetis, snowmen and, of course, a fair few geese. An adult cast of 10 and 50 children will need approximately 120 costumes combined. Most of them will be made from scratch - now you see why I’ve started in June! Of course I’m not alone - the wonderful women (and two men) of The Questors wardrobe will have my back.... I hope.

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The Magician Commission

This must be my month for vintage style poster requests. After my recent adventure in Soviet art, next I’ve been working on a Victorian-inspired poster for the magician “Sonic” who’s performing his anniversary show at The Savoy. His act draws on turn-of-the-century conjuring legends like Keller and Thurston, and creating this poster has been great fun - especially finding out that I can still pull off a portrait!

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On stage at The Minack! 

The rain has been out to get us (every day, including the opening night) but at least we managed to get the set down those steps in the dry. Pleased too that Gillian’s dress is  holding up - literally! The Country Wife runs until the 8th of September...