An article about the decline of stage design impacting:<P><B>Slade's school of stage design to close <BR>Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent<BR>Guardian</B><P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Competition from video and new media design courses has vanquished one of the world's most famous schools of stage design, at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. The course will close in two years' time when the present students graduate. <P>Moritz Junge, who yesterday won the £4,500 Linbury biennial prize for young stage designers, is a Slade graduate, as were four others of the 12 graduates shortlisted. He called the decision to close the course scandalous. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4296304,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>more...</B></A>

As we hear last week that the Slade's stage design school is to close, we hear this week that stage design is in boom and audiences applaud the set as much as the performances of the individual artists. Plus we hear that the prestigious Linbury Prize for stage design has been known to go to a Slade pupil:<P><B>They just love making a scene<BR>British set designers continue to lead the world, but, asks Rupert Christiansen, who are tomorrow's stars - and what are their big ideas?</B><P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>SOME 40 years ago, a New York Times critic famously emerged from a spectacular but tune-free musical "humming the sets". This witticism seemed to start a trend, and today the theatre seems to have become as "design-led" as the rest of society: it's the look of a show as much as the beauty of the script or the skill of the actors that draws the crowds. Judi Dench and Harriet Walter may be disappointing the West End in that feeble comedy The Royal Family, for example, but Anthony Ward's recreation of a lavish 1920s Manhattan apartment is getting nightly rounds of delighted applause.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P> <BR> <BR><A HREF="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=006545347634575&rtmo=QeLSQaHR&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/01/11/14/btset14.html" TARGET=_blank><B>more...</B></A><P>