Setting the stage for a career

This is a set, says Amanda Hogan, looking around the high ceilinged near-empty restaurant. Luckily the waitress doesn't hear and continues to work, laying tables and collecting wine glasses. In fact, it could very well be a stage set.

"You find as a set designer that all these things interest you. This is a set, to me. Restaurants are sets," she says. "A lot of homes are sets," she points out, adding "but with their interiors you are trying to interpret a person as opposed to a play."

As a freelance designer, she's used to waving her magic wand and creating a set. "You work very closely with other people from other disciplines, with the people who do the lighting and the sound. Once you have the design the biggest thing is your construction people."

The Seagull, the Chekhov play, which was produced by the Corn Exchange Theatre Company a few years ago, was her first solo design project. "I tried to make the set like a light box. I always imagine these wonderful melancholic characters moving in and out of a space - whoosh - as if on draw-strings. There was a white floor. It had a dream-like quality. You don't want to hinder a performance or an actor with your set. Sometimes it's quite difficult to hold yourself back. It has to be an enhancement of the production as a whole. It's like a cushion for the actor, and it stands in contrast to the actor."

At school, Hogan had her sights set on a career in law, but the influence of her grandmother, Mary Hogan, a Bristol woman who set up the now disbanded theatre group, the Old Charter Players, when she came to live in Callan, Co Kilkenny, finally won out. Hogan realised at Our Lady's School in Rathnew, Co Wicklow, that she was passionate about theatre. She registered with TCD in 1987 to do a four year degree course in drama studies and classical civilisation. "That gave me a sampling of everything," she recalls. "I was mainly into acting but I was involved in set and costume design as well."

As a student she worked on plays including two by Irish playwright, Michael West - A Play on Two Chairs and Scene Around Six. Being involved with the university's theatre group allowed her work in a number of areas - "working more as an ensemble".

Graduating in 1990, she left for Paris to study acting, completing a diploma at the Ecole Nouvelle du Teatre. Again she was involved in the set design. "I was always asked to help out in those areas and I enjoyed being involved in the overall activity." She worked in London and then in Barcelona for a number of years, working sometimes in theatre and learning all the time about design.

Coming back to Dublin with a friend, she began to work again in theatre. Working with the Corn Exchange, "you build a relationship with people. You speak the same vocabulary", she explains. For small theatre companies, it's important to remember the budget and that "they need a set which can go up and down very easily, be transported and adapted. It's kind of like a circus."

Hogan works in a number of areas, designing interiors, television sets and stage sets. "The opportunities to do very interesting scenic (theatre) work are limited in Ireland," she says.

"The world of theatre is small."

One of her most recent projects was designing a set for an arts programme on NTL television. "I am busy," she continues. Work comes along largely through word of mouth. "I love it. I don't know any other set designers in Ireland." For Hogan it's early days in her career. As to the future: "I'd like to do some film sets, that would be interesting.