Black Theatre Workshop is making big moves — their bilingual production of Pipeline, co-produced with La Manufacture, has swung us right back into gear with this emotional, challenging piece and beautiful, bold creative choices.

The play follows Nya, a single mother who teaches in a public school and her teenage son Omari, who attends a private institution. As Omari struggles with the everyday factors working against him in the school system, an incident occurs that puts his future, and the education his mother worked so hard for him to have access to, at risk.

Pipeline’s stellar design team deserves to have a light shone upon them while audiences still have a chance to catch the French version of the production from April 26th to May 8th at Théâtre La Licorne.

On set and costumes, Nalo Soyini Bruce thought a lot about the uniforms we wear everyday: in school, for work and as members of society. A theme throughout Nalo’s work is her non-traditional mix of pieces to create asymmetry in her characters. In Pipeline, the architecture and shapes throughout costume and set created the perfect industrial, chilling rigidity that characters manipulated with their frustrations.

It is important to highlight Nalo’s stellar team of Black women supporting her design: Courtney Moses (Set & Costume Assistant), Mlle Geri (Make-Up Assistant), & Enyse Charles (Costume Assistant). Nalo has expressed that their work was instrumental to the process and collaborating exclusively with a team of Black women in costume, makeup and sets was a first for her. She feels it is important for youth to see this example and be inspired to enter creative fields as performing artists as well as designers.

Elena Stoodley, Sound Designer, felt personally connected to the story of Pipeline, having grown up in the Quebec school system. “Like Omari, I was sometimes targeted and with no other ways to protect myself, I used to result to my fists to stop the verbal bullying,” she says. She even wrote a piece about her constant fear of ending up in prison because the school system at an early age made her feel like she needed to be contained.

In creating the production’s sound design, Elena thought about how prison systems are mirrored in other institutions and “how weirdly, a prison soundscape resembles high school hallways. The cafeteria, the intercom, the bus that gets you to class or your cell, how time is counted...” She mentions the threat of being just a number is latent, a theme echoed in the video and costume designs, as well.

Lighting Designer Tim Rodrigues, a staple of the Montreal theatre community, knew he would be working on this production as of 2019. Rodrigues was drawn to the emotional layers in the script, as well as the importance of the issue at the centre of the story: the school-to-prison pipeline.

Starting with identifying moments where light or quality of light is mentioned in the script, Tim also follows and elevates the emotional journeys of the characters with lighting. He looks into different cultural references mentioned in the script (poetry, music, etc.) and carries his impressions of the story and the world into design meetings and conversations with the creative team and directors. Tim’s lighting for Pipeline created a moody, chilling colour palette that elevated the intensity and depth of the content presented.

Video design team Andrew & Emily, of potatoCakes_digital, were also enthused to be a part of this production and developed their design virtually using Unreal Engine and a draft of Nalo’s design to pre-visualize their mapping. The video design mapped throughout the show onto the actors and stage, providing context, shape, and texture; elevating the emotional peaks of the performance.

To find out more, go check out the show at La Licorne from April 26th to May 8th! Tickets are available here.