Ralph Koltai (1924-2018) trained at the Central School of Art and Design. In 1965 he became Head of its Theatre Design Department, a post which he held until 1972. Koltai designed sets and costumes for over 250 productions in theatres and opera houses around the world. He began his career designing for the London Opera Club in 1950 and worked for all the major British theatre, opera and ballet companies. Koltai believed in the importance of finding a theatrical concept and his settings became a metaphor for the work being staged. That did not mean that his designs were always abstract: his 1978 Love's Labour's Lost for the Royal Shakespeare Company took place in a realistic autumnal parkland which captured the elegiac mood of the production. However Koltai was best known for creating settings which had a strong sculptural quality and used contemporary materials. Metals, plastics and reflective surfaces featured strongly in his work.

Koltai dated his interest in reflective material to his designs for the National Theatre's all-male As You Like It in 1967. He interpreted the play as a romantic dream and created a setting which implied the location instead of creating it realistically. The trees in Koltai's white Forest of Arden were made of clear perspex rods with hanging cut-out panels suggesting leafy branches. When lit from above the 'tree trunks' reflected the light and the panels threw dappled patterns on the white stage floor.