My Neighbour Totoro: an interview with Wimbledon alumni Tom Pye and Kimie Nakano

A floating cat bus, giant cascading forests, moving houses and jaw-dropping puppetry: translating Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro from animation to stage was always going to be a challenge. Production designer Tom Pye and costume designer, Kimie Nakano, both alumni of Wimbledon College of Arts, rose to the occasion when they joined the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production team back in 2019. The show has enjoyed an extraordinarily successful run at London's Barbican Centre since it's debut in October 2022, breaking the Barbican box office record for ticket sales in 1 day.

Graduating from Wimbledon College of Arts in 1989 and 1994 respectively, Tom and Kimie have embraced the collaborative spirit Tom says is critical to working in theatre, as they come together for the first stage adaptation of the popular animation.

Kimie, a lifelong fan of Studio Ghibli and the work of Miyazaki, started work in the industry as an assistant for Oscar-winning Japanese costume designer Emi Wada, who Kimie says taught her the fundamentals of costume design for screen. Kimie is also an experienced set designer, and her varied career includes working at Paris Opera, as well as work on films such as Kit Monkman’s 2018 adaptation of Macbeth.

With just as varied a résumé, Tom Pye’s work covers film, TV, opera, ballet and theatre. Tom’s early career included work on Comic Strip Presents and MTV Europe. More recently, Tom has been working on a major new series for Disney Plus, alongside a production of Cinderella for The Royal Ballet.

Tom and Kimie tell us about their entry into the world of theatre, their time studying at Wimbledon, and the successes and challenges of bringing My Neighbour Totoro to the stage.

Hi Tom and Kimie! Can you tell us a bit about your background and entry into theatre and costume design?

Tom: I grew up in Lincoln and school wasn't particularly great for me because I was dyslexic, and they didn't really know what to do with me. Art was always the one thing that made sense to me. I left school at 15 and went to do a 2-year foundation at Lincoln Arts School, which was a saviour for me. I completely fell in love with it. From there I applied to Wimbledon and did a 3-year course in Theatre Design, graduating in 1989.

Kimie: I was born and raised in Japan. I originally studied ikebana – the Japanese art of flower arranging – before studying literature at Musashino University in Tokyo. At the time, there was no option to study costume design in Japan, so I decided to move to Paris. While there, I studied theatre costume at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre, where I learned all the basic skills in costume design. After completing my studies, I moved to London and studied MA Theatre Design at Wimbledon, graduating in 1994.

Why did you choose to study at Wimbledon College of Arts?

Tom: I liked how hands on it was. We did everything from prop making, scene making and painting, to costume and set design, and I really liked that you could acquire so many skills and try your hand at so many different areas.

There was a real buzz about the place too, with everyone helping each other out. I remember Mark Tildsley, who was a couple of years above me, and Alice Normington, who was the year below me I believe. We all worked together and would help put on shows for each other, which I liked. I think collaboration is so important in theatre and it’s still a big part of what I do now.

Kimie: I visited a lot of universities, but I liked that Wimbledon had its own theatre and the opportunity to learn so many different skills. I remember being keen to learn basic skills in audio, so when I found out I could learn about this, animation, video, and so much more, I knew that Wimbledon was the right place for me.

While studying there, I really loved that there were so many other international students in my class. All the students had different experiences and there was always a very interesting exchange of ideas.

Tell us about your role on My Neighbour Totoro and how you initially approached the project.

Tom: I call myself production designer rather than set designer because I feel like set designers are thought of, particularly by the press, as the people that choose the wallpaper and just come on at the last minute. But it's actually a very conceptual role that I start very early on.

I started with the research process. I remember when I studied at Wimbledon, I had an amazing tutor called Richard Negri, who was an extraordinary theatre designer. He would talk about the mountain of research that you have to create for yourself in the initial stages, and then the job of a designer is to whittle away at that mountain and find the diamond. And that’s great advice. That image of the mountain and the diamond is still how I approach every job.

I spent a long time looking at the house, which features throughout the show, and I had an inkling that if I could make the house come apart into very manageable pieces and make it as lightweight as possible, it could become a puppet in itself.

I spoke a lot with Kimie, whose help was invaluable in considering the crossover between traditional Japanese culture and Western European culture. Kimie explained that in 1950s Japan there was a significant Western influence and people often added Western-style wings to older houses. That's what you see with the Totoro houses; a perfect marriage of East and West, which I think is an interesting theme throughout the show.

Just at the point when I would have normally been inviting producers into the studio, COVID-19 hit. This meant that 90 per cent of the production moved onto zoom, which had its challenges. I guess my job as a production designer is to be the conduit for all the designers to make sure that we're all making the same show.

Kimie: It was Tom who offered me the costume design job. He knows I love Totoro and being Japanese, I was able to offer a unique perspective.

I started by researching Japan in 1955, when the show is set. I looked into Hayao Miyazaki, the director of Studio Ghibli and writer and director of My Neighbour Totoro, and researched his childhood memories, which inspired him to create the film. I think you've got to have that baseline of research before you can start anything.

At the point I joined the show, Tom had mostly finished the set design, which meant we had the colours and the storyboard complete. I examined the colours used in the set and thought about the different styles I would incorporate for the costumes. In the film, the traditional farmers wear kimonos, but the city people have more American European costumes. Miyazaki understood this when creating the film, and his drawings gave me a strong starting point. I knew, however, that I wanted to stylise it in my own way.

I designed unique textile motifs, and we tested many different traditional Japanese fabrics, conducted countless dye tests and lots of print tests. After we decided on the design, we printed it by computer. Each character’s costume is different, with special design motifs; each unique in their own way.

What were some of the challenges you encountered?

Tom: The main challenge was how to put the film on to stage. We had lots of conversations about the fact it was a 2D film and we were making it 3D and how we would celebrate that. For me it became the answer to a couple of real problems in the show. We deliberately started both acts with a 2D presentation. For example, there's a scene with a tuk-tuk travelling across the landscape. This couldn’t have really been done on stage three-dimensionally, so it solved a problem, but it also acknowledged the journey of going from 2D to 3D. It celebrated it and gave us a real opportunity to open up the whole stage with the house and have that be a wow moment. I love that idea of using and controlling the space to maximise the emotional impact, but it was a real challenge getting to that point.

Kimie: The challenge with the costumes was two-fold. Firstly, the lead actors, both of whom are adults, play a 4-year-old and 7-year-old. That was really challenging, because we needed to work out how to make the lead actors look young, without it seeming comedic.

The second challenge was that we didn’t want it to look like cosplay, and we discussed this challenge extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I didn’t want to do a direct copy of the animation, which would’ve felt like cosplay, so I tried to see how we could create our own version for stage. There were naturally elements I could not change that were in the script, but it was about finding a balance.

What made the production so special to work on?

Tom: It’s truly a project like no other. I've never, ever worked on a project that had such big demands. There's a house on stage, then there's a forest, and then there's big Totoro, and then a giant cat bus. And none of these things are easy or cheap. But it was so much fun collaborating with Phelim McDermott, the director, and Basil Twist, the puppetry director. The whole thing was a real head scratcher to make work, but we did it.

Kimie: As someone who is Japanese and likes Studio Ghibli, working on Totoro has been so special for me. The challenge, as Tom says, was the enormous task of translating the film onto the stage and bringing this to an international audience. But what I enjoyed is that we never worked separately; we always worked together. That is important, and it made the show special.

Do you have any advice for students currently studying or about to enter the world of work?

Tom: I would say you use your time to develop as many different skills as you possibly can that are on offer.Take classes in TV, in costume, in painting, in props. Learn it all because it’s always going to benefit you. It’s still useful for me.

At the moment, I’m having a set built out in Essex by the Royal Opera House, and when I’m talking to the painters, it's very useful for me to be able to talk technically with them. I’ve worked as a painter as well, so I understand the techniques they are using.

Kimie: The people I assisted early in my career always said that I needed to do my best on every production, regardless of whether it’s a small budget or big budget show. Each production is very important. You never know, somebody in the audience may see your work and, through word of mouth, people may offer you jobs.

My other piece of advice would be to travel if you can. Visit different countries, try the food, get a feel for your surroundings, the smells, the light, the touch. The theatre is not like a fashion show. We create a theatre to reflect humanity and that includes everything from philosophy, culture, to myths. It’s important to experience different places for yourself if possible. Everywhere is unique.

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