Pro Vice-Chancellor

The experience of the COVID-19pandemic has reinforced the importance of human connection to our lives, and the critical roles the creative arts play in our abilities to express ourselves, understand each other, and build communities.  

In welcoming and honouring Es Devlin today we are recognising an exceptional visual artist and scenic designer whose sculptural worlds have captured the imaginations of millions, provoking emotion, inspiration, reflection, and fun. From music, to couture, to theatre; from huge arenas and festival fields, to theatres, galleries, and couture catwalks, Es Devlin’s designs have thrilled and moved audiences and crowds at Coachella, Glastonbury, Paris Fashion Week, the Almeida, the Tate, and the National Theatre.The closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics;the opening ceremony at the Rio Olympics in 2016;a Tony Award for her scenic design for the Lehman Trilogy;an eighty-foot animatronic figure for a Take That arena tour; Olivier Awards;a fluorescent red lion roaring AI-generated poetry from a plinth in Trafalgar Square; a CBE for design …. I don’t have time to list even the highlights, and the work keeps on coming. As Es herself as said, ‘I always feel exhausted when I look back! Because there is a lot’.  

Indeed, there is, and I wish I could conjure up some of the stage sculptures Es Devlin has created for you. If you haven’t seen them– trust me –and go away and take a look.  

Great live performance is the often-indefinable moment of fusion between performers and creators, movement, sound, light, and environment. It is hard to put your finger on what’s happening, but you know something is, and those moments move you, stay with you, and - at their best - change you. Es’s work materialises this perfect fusion – enchanting, captivating, and inspiring future designers. While conducting the research to write this oration I was struck by one tweet posted by a student which read, ‘Es Devlin’s team replied to me about conducting an interview for an assignment. Imagine if I get to talk to literally the person who made me want to be a production designer’.   

Following a childhood on the South Coast, Es Devlin studied English Literature here at the University of Bristol, graduating in 1993, then went on to Central St Martins to study fine art. It was there that a tutor suggested scene design, an idea that didn’t land so well at first – Es found theatre a little boring at that point. But scene design offered a fusion of the arts that brought to life her entwined love of writing, art, music, and – eventually! –theatre, something her sculptural art works continue to capture – bringing together music, light, and language. Her designs are parts of the performances they are created for, rather than backdrops, her installations designed to engage and connect with audiences through their sensory elements. Each brings energy, movement, and mood creating ‘little chinks in the armour of the brain’.  

Es Devlin has worked with Beyoncé, Complicité, Louis Vuitton, Harold Pinter, Billie Eilish ….but it is not the celebrity of the performer or the scale of the design that gives a project its appeal. In her words: 

“[I]t’s less about the size of the venue than the ambition of your co-conspirators. It might be a very young theatre director putting on a big play for the first time and they need everything to be exactly as they envisaged it. That can keep you awake at night just as much as the worry of a giant 60ft-high monolith falling over.” 

And getting it right– stopping those things falling over– takes teamwork, curiosity, stamina, and sensitivity. Es Devlin may be the go-to stage designer for theatre, there is simply no bigger name in scenic design, but her work remains about learning, adapting, and changing. This is well captured in her pragmatic response to a question in a 2018 interview that ‘mistakes are pretty much things that don’t work aren’t they […] if something isn’t working, I change it’. It’s something that any career in the arts – or indeed in any sector – hinges on, and that message, that exceptional talent still depends on grit and learning to flourish, is one –no doubt – that all of us here today could take with us.   

Pro Vice-Chancellor, Es Devlin embodies all of the values that we seek to recognise and celebrate in the award of an honorary degree and I present Es Devlin to you as eminently worthy of the degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa.