A vast amount of work goes into the production of a show like Key of Dreams. Some things you might expect and others that you may not even think of. When you have a show with so many moving parts, it’s essential that all he pieces move together and when something is dropped or missed, then it doesn’t just delay the production and completion of one thing, but of the several other things that are also relying on it.

Let’s get physical

One of the key aspects of our shows, both Locksmith’s Dream and Key of Dreams, is that we insist that everything is high quality and everything is diegetic. There won’t be any point when you are asked to believe something is not what it appears to be, or where we tell you what you should be feeling.

A lot of time is spent on acquiring and adapting props and even more on making them. If you came to Locksmith’s Dream, you will have handled the spintriae and jigsaws, seen and used the beautiful slate coasters and read the travel tristichs around the property on a range of different materials. All of these fabulous items were made by our partner Marianne who spends a significant amount of time playing with lasers and amazingly not setting fire to our house.

For Key of Dreams the brief got even bigger - cryptex, more puzzles, leaves (oh so so many leaves!) books, bottles, frames, interactive models - Marianne does it all (with some help from her crew occasionally).

Even when in a design meeting we have an idea that results in a bizarre drawing that looks like we want to summon an ancient deity, Marianne can take it and make something spectacular.

Unfortunately for all concerned, despite our 10 years together (25+ for Ivan and Marianne!) our working patterns have not aligned. This largely means I’m most productive first thing in the morning and Marianne late at night - well after I have retired for the evening. We do get a lot done and, occasionally, we even manage to have a conversation like actual humans who care for each other!

What’s that sound?

We’ve been lucky enough to have Ben Reid, musician, composer and lovely fellow return after working with us on LD. When we started designing sound for LD, we had high aspirations but we’d never done anything like it before. We had themes, and ideas and the differences between day and night and the sound tracks for each room for that production were superb.

When it came to design for this show, we had even more crazy plans, and Ben has got really busy. And yet, he’s back, bringing us amazing sound design and has even composed us our very own Key of Dreams theme which weaves through all his design! (lots more on sound design in a future blog post)

Once you have sound though, you need to play it. In rolls my old housemate, and all round good egg, Steve the software developer. At LD, sound was simple - one soundtrack for day, one for night and done.

But we had IDEAS and PLANS. Steve had the know how and a desire to play with ‘toys’ I don’t think he knew quite what he was getting himself into but boy is it good! I’m so excited to see it all in action.