The It's Nice That team put together their ideal art and design-related play

In light of New York Fashion Week’s main event, a star-studded play put on by Opening Ceremony entitled 100% Lost Cotton, the It’s Nice That team began to ponder their own individual dream play, and what that would look like if they were given the chance to direct it. The results are pretty weird to be honest, but you can’t deny the appeal of each and every one in its own way.

Who would you cast in an art and design play? What terrible existential crises would you put the characters through? Who would commit suicide via an asp to the breast? All comments welcome below…

Liv Siddall

I think my play would star the entirety of London’s art and design scene, written by Gary Larson of The Far Side. I’d like to have Yann and Gwendal le Bec and Jean Jullien doing a sort of News of the Times live commentary on stage left as the play went on. I’d see those three as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-style onlookers, narrating and drawing as they watch the plot unfold. I would also make sure there was a classic moment where a sandbag would fall from the rafters suddenly killing one of the cast. Which member? I couldn’t possibly say.

James Cartwright

I’ve always wanted to see an adaptation of the life of artist and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley. The Art Nouveau genius was infamous for creating grotesque, erotic images that took inspiration from Japanese woodcuts and the posters of Toulouse Lautrec. He was great mates with Oscar Wilde and went everywhere in a morning coat with patent leather shoes and yellow suede gloves. Sounds like a cool guy to me.

Ideally he’d be played by someone suitably foppish like Benedict Cumberbatch, with a horribly cluttered set reminiscent of an early 1990s British period TV drama. There’d be cameo appearances from Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde (because he agrees to do everything), and Hugh Laurie would come back from the US to appear as Beardsley’s ghost, tormenting his living self from beyond the grave and causing him to have feverish, inspirational dreams. Sounds quite shit now I think about it. Shut down within the week for poor attendance.

Amy Lewin

My favourite plays are always brain-groaningly metatheatrical, so this one would have to be full of meta-art and pat-yourself-on-the-back-you-clever-thing references. It would start like this:

[Lights]

In the centre of the stage is an unmade bed. On the floor are bottles of alcohol, scrunched up tissues and a pair of ladies’ tights.

And it would end like this:

Woman 1: SHIT! There’s someone inside that shark’s mouth!

Woman 2: Oh yes, that’s the artist.

[Curtains]

I’ll leave you to fill in the middle.

Maisie Skidmore

My art and design play would be about a dinner party attended by the world’s most iconic female artists, dead and alive. It would be set around a banquet table in heaven, with the set and props designed by Stefan Beckman who created this magical landscape of clouds for Marc Jacobs. Lead parts would include the likes of George O’Keeffe, Louise Bourgeois, Marina Abramović, Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, Yoko Ono and Frida Kahlo, who’d all be played by very precocious pre-teen girls dressed up to the nines as their characters. (I imagine a ten year-old dressed head to toe in black with a fabulous hat and some sunglasses as Yoko, for example.)

The plot would revolve around each of the characters telling an anecdote about their lives, sparking a debate with the others. Kind of like Loose Women, but for legendary artists. Frida Kahlo would get drunk on Mezcal and start dancing on the table before the first course had even been served, which Louise Bourgeois would haughtily disapprove of. Marina and Yoko would try to settle the dispute through meditation and peace talks respectively, to little effect, while Diane and Cindy instagrammed the whole event. Artful chaos, basically.

Rob Alderson

I am gong to cheat and suggest two here. David Goldblatt’s talk at Design Indaba remains one of the most spellbinding things I have seen this year. He talked for an hour or so about his photography; how it responded to and sometimes shaped the social and cultural history of South Africa over the past few decades. I always think drama works best when it uses an individual’s experience to tell much wider stories about complex, world-changing events, and I think this could work perfectly on stage (or indeed in the cinema).

For something a bit different I always enjoy listening to Neville Brody and his insightful, rollicking raging against the enemies of art and design. So I’d love to see a one-man show – Brody – where he works himself up into incandescent fury. It ends with him punching through the wall of the theatre and escaping into the night.