Lara Booth is a costume and set designer with an interest in both period and contemporary adaptations for story telling. Through her design practice she aims to explore space and create environments and costumes that will serve the actors and the text as well as bringing an immersive experience to the audience. Each work is unique and comes with its own set of challenges, whereby the design should enhance the production but not overtake the integrity of the story telling, it is one element of a whole collaborative process that is needed to create progressive theatre.

After graduating from Edinburgh Collage of Art with a degree in Performance Costume Design (2003) Lara gained one of 4 places on the Post Graduate Stage Design Course at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School graduating with Distinction and winning the John Elvery Prize for Design (2004). On leaving education Lara set up her own freelance design practice establishing a varied professional portfolio of set and costume designs for the stage. Her portfolio includes designing for childrens theatre, drama, opera and immersive site specific performance. She has designed for theatres across the UK including Bristol Old Vic, London’s Arcola and Southwark Playhouse, Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum and Manchester’s Library Theatre. Lara has most recently designed the set and costumes for the Welsh National Opera's touring production Rhondda Rips It UP! Which was developed to coincide with the centenary of women getting the vote. 

As a child Lara was drawn to books that provoked the imagination to explore characters and fantastic worlds such as the writings of Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis and Mary Norton. This passion soon developed into a strong ambition to create or design characters and tell stories visually. Theatre then, with its possibilities for exploring and expressing immersive story telling, for Lara provides a place where the imagination can run riot and magic can happen.

Lara’s educational practice at the University of Huddersfield (since 2009) includes lecturing in design and illustration on the BA Costume Design with Textiles. Teaching has been a natural expansion to her design career and it is hoped that through the combination of a passion for her subject area and continued links and a practice within industry she is able to provide an insightful and inspiring education for her students.

• Story telling for classical texts
• Devised pieces, touring shows, enacted on Proscenium arch stages or in intimate studio environments formed as round or traverse stage or as immersive and interactive performance