Worldly stuff

Angela Nemov’s house is crammed full of stuff, top to bottom. Rope lighting, a view finder and a red wetsuit; a xylophone, a wooden telephone and a Little Prince calendar; glass jars full of knick-knacks, plastic jars with more knick-knacks and irrigation-pipe joiners; two floral teacups, a green teacup and an orange coffee-pot; a hat box, 10 or so hats (not in the box), invisible thread and pick-up-sticks. Just stuff, everywhere, lots and lots of stuff. In parts, the piles seem to teeter in gravity-defying balancing acts and, in other places, the colour coordination resembles her set designs.

“I’ll never run out of stuff, it will find me. I think I have a special relationship with stuff. I understand the universe of stuff – stuff moving out, stuff moving in, stuff stuff stuff… I can call stuff and it comes,” explains Nemov, who has found notoriety as the designer on such high-profile projects as Balkanology and the Freshlyground Pot Belly music video.

However, in some ways Nemov sees herself more as a professional shopper, always on the listen for the whispers that lead her to stuff. As such she is a loyal devotee of the Milnerton Market in Cape Town, getting up every Saturday morning and being one of the first shoppers to arrive. “I don’t even go out on a Friday night,” laughs the 29-year-old.

“A lot of my work is object-informed and I let objects dictate the design. For instance, it might start with a beautiful teapot but then the lid wants to pop off and a bird wants to come out. It comes from the object – rather than the other way around where you think you need a teapot and then spend six weeks looking for the perfect teapot,” enthuses Nemov, whose incurable passion makes her speak faster and faster in an effort to beat her breath running out.

Most recently, Nemov won the Hilton Edwards Award for design and direction at the Fifth International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival in Ireland, for her work on Dalliances by director Matthew Wild. Designed initially for travelling, Nemov’s concept for the set simply entailed stickers and boxes, while costumes were cheekily mix’n’matched from mainstream fashion outlets.

Of course elegant solutions are most often the result of many hours, much research and high degrees of perfectionism. For its homecoming performance at Artscape Theatre Complex, Nemov redesigned the Dalliances set and spent four days reblocking the play with Wild on a scale model of the new set, before detail working each individual element for production.

As a long-time collaborator with the Rooster Theatre Collective – writer-directors Wild, Myer Taub and Milton Shorr – Nemov has made her role of designer quintessential to the pieces. She works with other directors too, but even in her contract she stipulates that her name should be the same size font and receive the same prominence as the director. She earns the recognition by being involved from the conceptual phase of the productions, often even working with the writers.

“It’s just that I love this idea of creating worlds, which is why Balkanology and theatre work is so nice. You make a world for a play to happen in and you lay out the boundaries, rules and ways that it works. I’m an inventor of worlds. And in theatre, people are actually living in my worlds,” enthuses Nemov, who admits to a penchant for fantasy novels and kids’ books like The Magic Faraway Tree.

As an inventor of worlds, Nemov keeps a strict eye on what gets admitted to the world. For the puppetry-driven In Medea Res, which launched at the 2008 Grahamstown Festival and was directed by Aja Marneweck, Nemov made an early intervention to ensure design continuity of the props. From the very first meeting, the cast was presented with a toy box of fun items around which the puppetry was workshopped. It is this contagious manner of ideas related to objects that seems to primarily inspire Nemov.

“Objects aren’t even the beginning of the story, clothes are the real problem. I collect clothes like…. Clothes that I don’t even wear because I’m a designer and I wear jeans and practical things that I can sweat and paint in. But I have all these clothes that I find and keep and love and they find me. Then my sister might put on a jacket and I’ll freak out that it’s my favourite jacket. And she’ll say that I never wear it. And I’ll say I don’t wear it because it’s my favourite. And then it’ll just be so right for a play and then I wonder where’s the balance that my sister can’t wear it but I’m going to give it to this sweaty actress…”, Nemov draws breath for the first time.

Working on Andrew Putter’s work, Secretly I Will Love You More, Nemov found a kindred spirit. Winner of a Spier Contemporary Art award, the work shows Maria Della Quellerie, wife of Jan van Riebeeck, singing a love song to Krotoa, daughter of one of the Hottentot chiefs at the Cape. “Andrew, like me, knew that every tiny piece of lace in the world was the most important piece of lace in the world. So I was happy to care about the lace on his behalf – I would have made it by hand if I needed to,” explains Nemov, who created the costume.

In the real world, however, there is not enough theatre work to keep Nemov out of the red, and she has been forced to find a balance between commercial work and her passion for live performance. Working on the Pot Belly music video for Freshlyground introduced her to a new creative outlet that particularly intrigued for its finite framework of 3.5 minutes coupled with complete freedom. “In music videos you can push your design as far as you want to take it. There’s no-one saying that it won’t fit with the client or that there’s no exits or entrances. There’s nothing holding you back, which is why it’s such an amazing medium,” she explains.

However, Nemov says that the South African industry still has a way to go. Because music videos are seen as a marketing exercise with no income, most bands aren’t prepared to spend more than R25 000 – which certainly doesn’t include an art department. “I’ve been lucky in working on big jobs for Freshlyground, but Freshlyground’s also the ceiling in local music!” she exclaims.

Only three years into her seven-year plan, this may seem like a limitation, but the Pot Belly video also gave Nemov the opportunity to participate in the 2008 Berlinale Talent Campus, giving her work an international audience. Besides, she’s still got a lot of stuff to rehouse and where there’s stuff, there seems to be a way: “I renovated my room recently, creating a walk-in wardrobe where I could let my clothes pile up in clutter, and then allow my room to be a quiet zen space. It lasted all of five minutes,” she laughs.

Angela Nemov’s house is crammed full of stuff, top to bottom. Rope lighting, a view finder and a red wetsuit; a xylophone, a wooden telephone and a Little Prince calendar; glass jars full of knick-knacks, plastic jars with more knick-knacks and irrigation-pipe joiners; two floral teacups, a green teacup and an orange coffee-pot; a hat box, 10 or so hats (not in the box), invisible thread and pick-up-sticks. Just stuff, everywhere, lots and lots of stuff. In parts, the piles seem to teeter in gravity-defying balancing acts and, in other places, the colour coordination resembles her set designs.

“I’ll never run out of stuff, it will find me. I think I have a special relationship with stuff. I understand the universe of stuff – stuff moving out, stuff moving in, stuff stuff stuff… I can call stuff and it comes,” explains Nemov, who has found notoriety as the designer on such high-profile projects as Balkanology and the Freshlyground Pot Belly music video.

However, in some ways Nemov sees herself more as a professional shopper, always on the listen for the whispers that lead her to stuff. As such she is a loyal devotee of the Milnerton Market in Cape Town, getting up every Saturday morning and being one of the first shoppers to arrive. “I don’t even go out on a Friday night,” laughs the 29-year-old.

“A lot of my work is object-informed and I let objects dictate the design. For instance, it might start with a beautiful teapot but then the lid wants to pop off and a bird wants to come out. It comes from the object – rather than the other way around where you think you need a teapot and then spend six weeks looking for the perfect teapot,” enthuses Nemov, whose incurable passion makes her speak faster and faster in an effort to beat her breath running out.

Most recently, Nemov won the Hilton Edwards Award for design and direction at the Fifth International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival in Ireland, for her work on Dalliances by director Matthew Wild. Designed initially for travelling, Nemov’s concept for the set simply entailed stickers and boxes, while costumes were cheekily mix’n’matched from mainstream fashion outlets.

Of course elegant solutions are most often the result of many hours, much research and high degrees of perfectionism. For its homecoming performance at Artscape Theatre Complex, Nemov redesigned the Dalliances set and spent four days reblocking the play with Wild on a scale model of the new set, before detail working each individual element for production.

As a long-time collaborator with the Rooster Theatre Collective – writer-directors Wild, Myer Taub and Milton Shorr – Nemov has made her role of designer quintessential to the pieces. She works with other directors too, but even in her contract she stipulates that her name should be the same size font and receive the same prominence as the director. She earns the recognition by being involved from the conceptual phase of the productions, often even working with the writers.

“It’s just that I love this idea of creating worlds, which is why Balkanology and theatre work is so nice. You make a world for a play to happen in and you lay out the boundaries, rules and ways that it works. I’m an inventor of worlds. And in theatre, people are actually living in my worlds,” enthuses Nemov, who admits to a penchant for fantasy novels and kids’ books like The Magic Faraway Tree.

As an inventor of worlds, Nemov keeps a strict eye on what gets admitted to the world. For the puppetry-driven In Medea Res, which launched at the 2008 Grahamstown Festival and was directed by Aja Marneweck, Nemov made an early intervention to ensure design continuity of the props. From the very first meeting, the cast was presented with a toy box of fun items around which the puppetry was workshopped. It is this contagious manner of ideas related to objects that seems to primarily inspire Nemov.

“Objects aren’t even the beginning of the story, clothes are the real problem. I collect clothes like…. Clothes that I don’t even wear because I’m a designer and I wear jeans and practical things that I can sweat and paint in. But I have all these clothes that I find and keep and love and they find me. Then my sister might put on a jacket and I’ll freak out that it’s my favourite jacket. And she’ll say that I never wear it. And I’ll say I don’t wear it because it’s my favourite. And then it’ll just be so right for a play and then I wonder where’s the balance that my sister can’t wear it but I’m going to give it to this sweaty actress…”, Nemov draws breath for the first time.

Working on Andrew Putter’s work, Secretly I Will Love You More, Nemov found a kindred spirit. Winner of a Spier Contemporary Art award, the work shows Maria Della Quellerie, wife of Jan van Riebeeck, singing a love song to Krotoa, daughter of one of the Hottentot chiefs at the Cape. “Andrew, like me, knew that every tiny piece of lace in the world was the most important piece of lace in the world. So I was happy to care about the lace on his behalf – I would have made it by hand if I needed to,” explains Nemov, who created the costume.

In the real world, however, there is not enough theatre work to keep Nemov out of the red, and she has been forced to find a balance between commercial work and her passion for live performance. Working on the Pot Belly music video for Freshlyground introduced her to a new creative outlet that particularly intrigued for its finite framework of 3.5 minutes coupled with complete freedom. “In music videos you can push your design as far as you want to take it. There’s no-one saying that it won’t fit with the client or that there’s no exits or entrances. There’s nothing holding you back, which is why it’s such an amazing medium,” she explains.

However, Nemov says that the South African industry still has a way to go. Because music videos are seen as a marketing exercise with no income, most bands aren’t prepared to spend more than R25 000 – which certainly doesn’t include an art department. “I’ve been lucky in working on big jobs for Freshlyground, but Freshlyground’s also the ceiling in local music!” she exclaims.

Only three years into her seven-year plan, this may seem like a limitation, but the Pot Belly video also gave Nemov the opportunity to participate in the 2008 Berlinale Talent Campus, giving her work an international audience. Besides, she’s still got a lot of stuff to rehouse and where there’s stuff, there seems to be a way: “I renovated my room recently, creating a walk-in wardrobe where I could let my clothes pile up in clutter, and then allow my room to be a quiet zen space. It lasted all of five minutes,” she laughs.