From Page to Stage: Adapting Vermilion Sands

In May 2015, as part of an academic practice as research project, I produced an adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s *Vermilion Sands* (1971). The project was tied in with a production module at the University of South Wales, had a budget of less than a thousand pounds, a cast of sixteen and only four weeks to prepare. Performed to an invited, private audience, *Vermillion* was intended as a scenographic experiment in theatrical adaptation practices but it also became an exploration of Science Fiction writing in theatre. This paper explores as a case study some of the dramaturgical and scenographic decisions made when adapting the New Wave Science Fiction of J. G. Ballard’s *Vermillion Sands* (1971) for the stage. It examines how theatre SF sits between literary and cinematic definitions of SF and argues how SF in theatre is not just a matter of applying an iconographic skin of SF design, but must become a narrativized element of the drama.