The story
Lost and Found is Oliver Jeffers’ much-loved picture book about a boy who finds a penguin at his door. Sure the penguin must be lost, the boy rows it all the way to the South Pole, and on the way realises what he has really lost, and found. In December 2023 the story came to the stage for the first time, as part of the opening season at Aviva Studios, Factory International’s new home in Manchester. Adapted and directed by Will Brenton, with puppetry, an original score by Gruff Rhys and video projections throughout, the show ran from 12 December 2023 to 6 January 2024.
What we did
We created the video projections for the show, working with Will Brenton, Nigel Mousley and the Factory International production team. Each scene was its own video cue, built to match the script and the stage: the boy’s quiet seaside town, the journey from the ocean into town, his house, the musty lost property office, a night-time bathroom with the stars coming out, a picture book whose pages turn through an animal alphabet, the boat setting out to sea, a whale breaching, and dusk falling back home. We kept to the soft, simple look of Oliver Jeffers’ illustrations, so the projections sat naturally with the set, costumes and puppets. Props such as the boat and the book were built as 3D models to match the real ones on stage. From September we shared cue renders and edits with Will for notes, then joined rehearsals and the technical rehearsals at Aviva Studios, fine-tuning the timing so every cue landed with the actors, the music and the sound effects.
Stills
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Credits
