A huge bronze sculpture depicting a young female actor about to spring into action is taking shape in a foundry in a Welsh village ahead of its installation in front of a Devon theatre next spring.

Theatre Royal Plymouth announced on Monday that it had commissioned the £500,000 piece, Messenger, as part of a £7.5m regeneration project.

Weighing in at nine-and-a-half tonnes with a height of seven metres (23ft), the theatre said it was the largest bronze sculpture ever created in the UK using the ancient process of lost-wax casting.

The idea of the piece is to make a bold statement about the creativity and ambition not just of the theatre but of the whole of Plymouth as it gears up for the 400th anniversary celebrations of the Mayflower’s pioneering journey from the Devon port in 2020 and the opening of a new cultural centre, The Box.

Thirty craftsmen and women are working on the statue under the guidance of the artist Joseph Hiller at the Castle Fine Arts foundry in the village of Llanrhaeadr-Ym-Mochnant in Powys.

A team of 30 craftsmen and women are making the sculpture in sections. Photograph: Andrew Fox/PA

The work is based on a single, fleeting moment – a pose by a young female member of the chorus in a rehearsal for Othello at the Plymouth theatre in 2014 as she was about to spring up from a crouched position.

Hillier said one of the major challenges had been to create something huge but to maintain a sense of energy and lightness. “The thing is not to be too frightened of the scale.

“There’s a lot of work, a lot of graft but the biggest challenge is keeping the freshness of the original idea intact, keeping the lightness of that moment.”

The title Messenger refers to the role of an actor in breathing life into the words of a writer. It is intended to embody the theatre’s – and city’s – energy and creativity.

The lost wax process, in which molten metal is poured into a mould made from a wax model, is one of the oldest forms of metal working in the world but the project has also used very modern 3D scans to capture the actor’s pose.

Messenger is so big she is being made from more than 200 bronze panels. Each section must be cast individually before being welded together. When completed, she will have been worked on at the foundry for nearly a year and the theatre says she will be by far the largest bronze sculpture by volume in the UK.

The lower half of the sculpture has already been assembled – other sections are still waiting their turn.

Hillier said he felt it was important that the sculpture was that of a woman, a counterpoint to the many male statues that dominate in Plymouth and other cities.

A campaign has been launched in the city to set up a statue of the first woman MP to take her seat in the Commons, Nancy Astor, who represented Plymouth Sutton. But as long as there are no hitches, Messenger should be in place before Astor.

Hillier argued that it was also important to keep on investing in ambitious art projects even in times of austerity. “Art is fundamental,” he said. “Before we built houses we painted in caves. We have got to get on with life, keep on doing what we can.”

Adrian Vinken, the chief executive of the Theatre Royal Plymouth, has twice visited the foundry and declares Messenger “magnificent”.

“Plymouth is a city on the move,” he said. “We’re proud of our historic naval past but we’re not locked into it.” Theatre-goers will be able to walk under the legs of the sculpture as if it is a “triumphal arch” on their way to shows.

Vinken added: “We always knew we wanted this piece to have scale and impact but it’s only when you see a small section of it and feel the excitement and pride from the guys working on it, when it starts to really dawn just want a big undertaking the project is and how many people are involved in bringing it into reality. It’s a bit mind blowing really.”







