Scenography and print design for junk ensemble‘s Dolores at the Chocolate Factory, Dublin, 8 – 13 May 2018.
Dolores was a multi-room, site-specific promenade dance/theatre production at the 2018 Dublin Dance Festival.

Inspired by Vladimir Nabokov’s visual and disturbing novel ‘Lolita’, Dolores is a powerful and uncompromising work finally told by a silenced girl. Dolores gives a voice to the neglected and traumatised child, the candy girl full of hope and the enraged woman full of fire and revenge. Dolores digs into the poetry of the novel and exposes the unsettling abuse and tragedy of a young girl through imagery, song, dance and text.

“…superb scenography, Dolores combines visual eloquence with the gut-punch of a victim impact statement”  ★★★★ The Irish Times   

“Dolores sees designer Valerie Reid crafting a promenade experience informed by a multitude of spaces which a split audience, following either a black or white ribbon, are guided through, suggesting a second visit could reveal further riches. If Reid works with a stripped back canvas, she ensures each detail counts. Traversing the various spaces, visual hints reminiscent of 1950s movies are infused with a faded, jaded elegance, like the dusty remains of a time long past, juxtaposed with images of glaring clarity, the whole often suggestive of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Like entering rooms in a cheap motel, each space harbouring its own dirty little secret, the audience enter, voyeuristically, to watch a young girl lying on her bed as the inner Dolores twists as if possessed, her shabby bedroom replete with the paraphernalia of puberty: magazines on love, posters of boys, her dolls house an echo from her fading childhood…”
★★★★ The Arts Review

“Discovery is everywhere in this promenade production. Guided by girls’ batons, we’re ushered between tattered house rooms, a garden, and a stark roadside – all transformed by Valerie Reid’s painstaking design.”  Exeunt Magazine

Proper photographs taken by Luca Truffarelli; the rest by me.