Es Devlin

Esmeralda Devlin (born 24 September 1971 ) is an English artist and stage designer who works in a range of media, often mapping light and projected film onto kinetic sculptural forms. She has received several accolades including a Tony Award and two Olivier Awards. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2015 and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2022 by Queen Elizabeth II for services to design. She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2013.

Devlin is known for her extensive work in the theatre. For her work in the West End she won two Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Set Design for Chimerica (2014), and The Nether (2015). She was Olivier-nominated for Hamlet (2016), The Lehman Trilogy (2019), and Dear England (2024). For her work on Broadway she won the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design of a Play for The Lehman Trilogy (2022). She was Tony-nominated for Machinal (2014), and American Psycho (2016). She is also known for her The Hunt (2019) and The Motive and the Cue (2023).

Early life and education
Devlin was born in Kingston upon Thames, London, on 24 September 1971. She attended Cranbrook School, Kent.

She studied English literature at Bristol University, followed by a Foundation Course in Fine Art at Central St. Martin's eventually specialising in theatre design. While undertaking her studies, she prepared the props for Le Cirque Invisible, the circus company founded by Victoria Chaplin and Chaplin's husband, Jean-Baptiste Thierrée.

Career
Her practice began in narrative theatre and experimental opera After a period working for London's Bush Theatre, she first worked for the National Theatre in 1998 when Trevor Nunn asked her to design the set for a revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal. She has since worked on sculptural designs for the theatre.

In 2005, she was hired by Kanye West to work on his tour Touch the Sky.

Devlin designed the UK Pavilion at the 2020 World Expo in Dubai. She is the first woman to be commissioned by the UK since world expositions began in 1851.

Her luminous fluorescent red Fifth Lion sculpture roared A.I. generated collective poetry to crowds in Trafalgar Square during London Design Festival September 2018. The Singing Tree, her collective choral carol installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum, fused machine-learning with sound and light and was viewed by over ten thousand visitors during Christmas 2017; her Mirrormaze generated queues around the block in Peckham in 2016. Further explorations of labyrinthine and map based geometries led to the 7000 square foot hotel room odyssey Room2022 at Art Basel Miami 2017 and the projection-mapped ovoid model city MASK at Somerset House 2018.

The designer collaborated with the theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli on an interpretation of The Order of Time read by Benedict Cumberbatch at the rooftop art space, BOLD Tendencies in Peckham in September 2018. Devlin has made large scale touring stage sculptures in collaboration with Beyoncé, Kanye West, Adele, U2, The Weeknd, Lorde, Pet Shop Boys, and the Royal Opera House in London. Devlin also designed the London Olympics closing ceremony in 2012 and the opening ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympics.

In 2019, Devlin delivered a talk at the TED conference in Vancouver entitled 'Mind-blowing sculptures that fuse art & technology'. It was later selected by TED curator Chris Anderson as one of the best talks of 2019. Her collaboration with rapper Dave and producer Fraser T. Smith won an Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song 2021. She also collaborated with the artist Yinka Ilori on the design of the Britannia statuettes for the 2021 Brit Awards.

Her work on the 2022 Super Bowl Half Time show featuring Dr Dre, Kendrick Lamar and Eminem won 3 Emmy Awards including best production design while her work on Adele's Griffith Observatory performance also won 5 Emmys at the same ceremony. She received widespread attention and a Tony Award for Best Scenic Design for her work on the Sam Mendes directed play The Lehman Trilogy. She did the scenic design of the Rupert Goold play The Hunt (2019), which transferred to New York at St. Ann's Warehouse in 2024.

Work
The Poem Pavilion she designed at the 2020 World Expo in Dubai - following the UK's theme "Innovating for a Shared Future" - featured an illuminated "message to space" to which each of the Expo's million visitors would be invited to contribute.

Using plastic trees, sellotape, stretchy mirrored sheeting, string, she builds "dream-like constellation of things" explaining that “the piece happens between those objects,”

"Each of her designs is an attack on the notion that a set is merely scenery" wrote Andrew O'Hagan in The New Yorker in 2016. Devlin "is in demand because she can enter the psychic ether of each production and make it glow with significance." For Hamlet director Lyndsey Turner, Devlin “doesn’t design what a play wants but what it needs.”

Personal life
Devlin is married to the theatrical costume designer Jack Galloway; they have two children and live in London. Her husband works on the Lion King musical franchise.

Recognition

 * 2006: Olivier Awards for Best Costume Design for The Dog in the Manger
 * 2014-2015: Olivier Awards for Best Set Design for Chimerica (2014) and The Nether (2015)
 * 2015: Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)
 * 2018: Royal Designer for Industry for Theatre Design
 * 2022: Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to design


 * Fellow of University of the Arts London

Devlin is the subject of episode three of the Netflix documentary series Abstract: The Art of Design.