Thank you Tony Awards for awarding Best Scenic Design to The Lehman Trilogy: At the start of our first design meeting, Sam Mendes took a black marker and a large sheet of card and wrote down five precepts - they formed the basis of our design process and of much of my studio’s practice ever since - they remain stuck on the studio wall where he left them a few years ago: 1. Animate the idea 2. Make concrete the shape of history 3. Understand the order present in chaos 4. Understand it in your head.. ..because you can feel it in your gut 5. Reveal the simple human needs behind the creation of complex human systems The script at this stage was expansive and open to interpretation: previous productions had lasted five hours and featured large casts. We explored a range of visual languages: one version was entirely formed of cardboard boxes, another was a very wide naturalistic board room. The only thing we knew for certain was that we would need a trained tight rope walker. We cast one of the best tight rope walkers in London and had several meetings with him and the technical team at the National Theatre to ensure his rope could be stretched over the audience - much discussion was had about the length of his pole, and what would happen if he were to drop it..