The $15,000 prize, given annually to a professional Canadian costume designer in mid-career working in Ontario, allows recipients to further enrich their careers through research and travel. Osborne received her award June 18 at a ceremony at the council’s Toronto office.

One of Dana Osborne’s renderings for Hosanna, Stratford Festival, 2011

“I was thrilled,” said Osborne. “I plan use the award to travel to London, England and New 91��ɫ City, plus purchase some drafting and rendering programs for my computer and some new art reference books.  This comes at the perfect time with everything that’s going on in my career and my life. I’ve been very busy lately and was desperate to take some time to recharge.”

Osborne was selected as the winner from an outstanding group of nominees. Citing her strong, creative interpretations, the jury of theatre professionals said: “[Osbourne] is a modern designer for today’s theatre. She uses her strong sense of today’s fashions, cleverly blended with historical looks, to give her shows unique designs. She also makes excellent use of found objects and has strong technical skills.”

Osborne has been working as a theatre designer across Canada for 15 years. In this, her 12th season at the Stratford Festival, she is the creative force behind the costumes for the mainstage production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and the world premiere of Morris Panych’s musical Wanderlust. Her other Stratford credits include costumes for Hosanna, As You Like It, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Moby Dick, The Comedy of Errors, The Lark, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Timon of Athens, Agamemnon and set and costumes for King Henry IV, Part One.

Dana Osborne (centre) with the Ontario Arts Foundation Vice-Chair John McKellar, and friend of Virginia Cooper (left) and  Alan Walker (right), executive director of the Ontario Arts Foundation (right)

Her work can also be seen this season in Soulpepper Theatre Company’s Speed-the-Plow, currently playing at the Young Centre in Toronto’s Distillery District, and Pacific Opera Victoria’s upcoming production of �Ѳ�������ٳ�.��Osbourne's designs have graced the stages of Regina’s Globe Theatre, the Grand Theatre in London/Ontario, and Canadian Stage, Young People’s Theatre, Pleiades Theatre and Factory Theatre in Toronto.

Blossom Lady from As You Like It, Stratford, 2010

After earning her BFA at 91��ɫ, Osborne began her career in costume management, working with the Canadian Opera Company, Shaw Festival and Mirvish Productions, before choosing to specialize in design. She was named one of the Young Designers to Watch in Entertainment Design in 2004 and received the 2010 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Costume Design for Theatrefront’s production of The Mill.

“Studying theatre at 91��ɫ gave me a great foundation to build upon,” said Osborne. “It taught me how to navigate the politics of the theatre, how to survive working long hours under stress, and to be flexible and creative. Theatre design is a collaborative art. A lot of people are involved in getting it from the page to the stage and they will all leave their mark on your design, so it’s important to embrace that.”

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The event, Queering Theatre in Toronto, will take place Thursday, Jan 5, 2012, from 2 to 4pm in Winters Senior Common Room, 021 Winters College, Keele campus.

Right: Marie Rickard

Newton, a recently appointed Winters College Fellow, is the founding artistic director of Ecce Homo Theatre. His newest musical, , is scheduled to run from Jan. 5 to 15, 2012, as part of the 2012 Next Stage Theatre Festival at the Factory Theatre in Toronto.

Written and directed by Newton, Loving the Stranger or How to Recognize an Invert, introduces the audience to Montreal’s Peter Flinsch, a theatre designer, visual artist and gay survivor of Nazi Germany, who was arrested in 1942 for kissing a friend at a Luftwaffe Christmas party. It takes in everything from the cabarets of 1920s Berlin and the battle over gay marriage to the office of the Prime Minister, and is billed as a provocative expressionist cabaret.

“The goal of my work is to balance politics and entertainment, to combine dance, music, text and design into a total theatrical experience in the hopes of challenging my audience intellectually and emotionally,” says Newton.

“I agree with Schiller's notion of the stage as a moral institution and I endeavor to create work on big themes for troubled times. My output as a playwright and director with Ecce Homo Theatre seeks to achieve intimacy through artifice using a queer aesthetic as a tool for destabilization, to draw attention to hypocrisy and deflate the un-ironic. As one of my former teachers, Charles Marowitz, once said, “Laughter can be a hammer-stroke in the hands of deft satirists.”

Newton is a contributor to the forthcoming collection, TRANS(per)FORMING Nina Arsenault: An Unreasonable Body of Work (Intellect Ltd.), edited by 91��ɫ theatre Professor Judith Rudakoff.

His previous work includes three consecutive productions for the SummerWorks Theatre Festival in which he was playwright and director of The Pastor Phelps Project: a fundamentalist cabaret, The Ecstasy of Mother Teresa or Agnes Bojaxhiu Superstar and Loving the Stranger or How to Recognize an Invert. Newton’s work has also been performed at the Rhubarb Festival – Leni Riefenstahl vs the 20th Century – and the Victoria Fringe Festival – Woyzeck Songspiel.

In addition, Newton was a participant in the inaugural presentation of The Ark at The National Arts Centre English Theatre in 2006, and is a past member of the BASH! Emerging Artist Program at the Canadian Stage Company, the Ante Chamber Creator’s Unit with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and the Director’s Lab of the Lincoln Center Theater.

He has also served as apprentice director for the Ensemble Studio of the Canadian Opera Company for its 2009-2010 season, where he directed a production of Pergolisi’s La Serva Padonra. Newton’s recent work includes a stint as director/dramaturge for Bella: The Color of Love with Teresa Tova and Mary Kerr at the Philadelphia Theatre Company. It was a commission for the 2011 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.

The show is being supported by the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Next Stage Theatre Festival and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

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The 91��ɫ fine arts professors co-founded to present drama, dance and opera in novel, multidisciplinary projects performed in one-of-a-kind venues, such as nightclubs and other ‘found’ spaces. This more intimate experience, that Mackwood and Dobie refer to as “lounge opera”, encourages audiences to sit on carpets, pillows, chairs, or couches. Their productions use music and movement to provide an emotional and spiritual experience expressive of the human condition. Their unique aesthetics attract new and diverse audiences. 

Although Out of The Box Productions is always interdisciplinary, the freedom of performance fusion can be problematic. Mackwood, a professor of production and design in 91��ɫ's Dance Department,  admits that funding is a constant issue. Multidisciplinary work often does not fit into any one category of performing art.

“Committees have a hard time classifying us, hence our name,” quips Mackwood. “But having said that, both the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council have granted much appreciated development funding for Bugzzz.”

On the other hand, artistic tension is the kind of conflict Mackwood welcomes. He explains how everyday artistic visions vary to create a healthy tension in which everyone has a voice – evidence of a creative team hard at work. 

aims to challenge the notion of progress, particularly our uncritical obsession with technology. The project proceeds as if human civilization has self-destructed because of our over consumption of resources. Only insects remain and it is they who take an archeological look at the value of civilization through art, specifically through Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Tosca.����

Mackwood enthusiastically admits: “I’ve always wanted to do a play inhabited by insects.”  

Bugzzz will be an exciting musical, movement, and design challenge. 

As co-creator, Dobie, a movement professor in 91��ɫ's Theatre Department, will be the dramaturge and co-produce, direct and choreograph the production. She will interpret how different insects move, implementing core proprioceptive training (CPT). CPT develops one’s awareness of direction, orientation in space, and the extent and rate of limb movement based on information relayed from sensory receptors in the joints, tendons and muscles.

The staging for Bugzzz is also contemporary in its rejection of Brecht’s principle of defamiliarization (or verfremdungseffekt) in favour of recent mirror neuron theories that emphasize the human capacity for emotionally empathetic response. 

Thomas Sandberg is on board to work as Bugzzz’s composer. One of his creative challenges is to imagine an insect interpretation of the original Tosca score. He must compose the piece using found objects, imagining what bugs might use for musical instruments. 

Mackwood will write, co-produce and create the lighting design. By working with the approach of sustainable “design on demand”, which involves all members of the production for the creative process, Mackwood is able to explore choices in colour, texture and imagery instantly, on the spot. This approach to lighting design allows for more flexibility and efficient collaboration between directors, choreographers and designers, while also being ecologically friendly. 

Mackwood’s interest in “green” or sustainable theatre practice was sparked by James McKernan, with whom he worked on Sound in Silence (2008). Noting the lack of money allocated to sets in dance, Mackwood recognized a desire in the industry for materials that could be recycled such as lights, projections and soft goods. Green initiatives, however, need to produce superior quality results if they are to offer an alternative to current production practices.

Mackwood experimented with LED lights with great success during the remounting of Opera Erotique (2010). LEDs use one third the power and produce less heat than conventional lights, providing savings on electricity and air conditioning, while making it more comfortable for the performers. The LED lights are also almost always built with red, green and blue optics for full colour mixing. 

Professor Don Sinclair joins the Bugzzz team as the sound and interactive projections designer. Sinclair will map performers’ bodies on stage using 3-D motion capture technology to create a mesh outline. From the 3-D model, Sinclair can manipulate exact projections of colour, image and light onto performers’ bodies, permitting them to be illuminated without background spill.����

The software developed by Sinclair will advance the field of interactive technology in theatre performance. Undergraduate and graduate students in 91��ɫ’s dance and theatre programs will have access to the technology in a new course, The Interactive Stage: Developing Digital Design Tools for Live Performances. 

A.C. Lighting Inc. and managing director J.F. Canuel are uniting once again with Mackwood as industry partners for Bugzzz. A.C. Lighting previously worked on the LED remounting of Opera Erotique, providing outstanding support with equipment, technicians and Canuel’s participation in the round table discussion on opening night. The partnership with A.C. Lighting will provide Mackwood with a team of engineers and researchers to assist in the development of LED costumes and sets. In turn, by observing first hand artists’ design needs, A.C. Lighting gains useful information for the continued evolution of LED technology.

Knowing the value of a good story, Mackwood will soon shift his attention away from the design components and towards script development. 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Fine Arts has offered the use of studio space and a multimedia lab for rehearsals and creative development, for which Mackwood expresses his gratitude: “I have not had any issues – the staff and facilities are all world class."

Bugzzz will premiere June 2012 in Toronto, with the possibility of another performance in Vancouver and an international production in Copenhagen the following year. 

Written by Crystal Basaez, Faculty of Fine Arts research assistant, and reprinted from the summer issue of the Faculty of Fine Arts Research Newsletter

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, Petrowska Quilico’s 23rd CD and her seventh on the Canadian Music Centre’s (CMC) Centrediscs label, features works for piano and orchestra by Canadian composers Alexina Louie, Larysa Kuzmenko and Violet Archer, all recorded live for broadcast by CBC Radio over the past two decades.

Known internationally as a leading interpreter of contemporary and Canadian music, Petrowska Quilico is also a longtime champion of the works of women composers. She devised her 3 Concerti project for a graduate course in Gender and Performance that she teaches at 91��ɫ.

Right: From left, Christina Petrowska Quilico, Mary Morrison Freedman and Constantine Caravassilis. Photo by Frank Delling.

“I wanted the students to hear the brilliance of Canadian women composers, especially in live performance,” she said. “Thanks to CBC producer David Jaeger, I had recordings of a number of performances where I had premiered concerti written by women. From these, we chose works that all feature a virtuoso piano part, but are very different in compositional style.”

The CD presents Petrowska Quilico as piano soloist in Louie’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with the National Arts Centre Orchestra conducted by Alex Pauk; Archer’s Concerto No.1 for Piano and Orchestra with the CBC Vancouver Orchestra led by John Eliot Gardiner; and Kuzmenko’s Piano Concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Jukka-Pekka Saraste.

The recording can be purchased online through the or via ’s Web site.

While 3 Concerti looks back to previously recorded live performances, Petrowska Quilico’s next release, a collaboration with Canadian composer Constantine Caravassilis, will be a two-CD set of all-new studio recordings of Caravassilis’ composition cycles for solo piano, Book of Fantasias and Book of Rhapsodies.

Technically demanding and hugely expressive, the works will put Petrowska Quilico’s virtuosic skill and experience to good use. “Christina’s intent to record these works is a real honour for me,” said Caravassilis. “I have no doubt in my mind that this recording will be a stepping stone in my career.”

Caravassilis was the winner of the 2009 Karen Kieser Prize in Canadian Music awarded by the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music to a grad student in composition, and a triple gold medallist at the 2006 Vorgos Foudoulis International Composition Competition in Volos, Greece. He has served as composer-in-residence for the University of Manitoba's Contemporary Opera Lab, Toronto’s Cantabile Chamber Singers, Denmark’s Open Strings Festival and the London Song Festival in the United Kingdom.

Petrowska Quilico and Caravassilis were selected as co-recipients of the first Harry Freedman Recording Award by a national jury assembled from leaders in the Canadian music community. The jury said: “We were very impressed by the quality of the music of this outstanding young composer and by the fact that one of Canada's finest pianists and interpreters of new music had pledged herself to the proposed project.”

Named in memory of the pioneering Canadian composer, the Harry Freedman Recording Award contributes towards the creative costs associated with making audio recordings of the music of Canadian composers. Currently valued at $1,500, it will be given every two years through the CMC.

Petrowska Quilico and Caravassilis received the award at a public presentation on April 27 at the Soundstreams Virtuoso Vibrations concert at Hugh’s Room in Toronto. Freedman’s widow, Mary Morrison Freedman, a distinguished singer, teacher and member of the Order of Canada, presented the award and congratulated both artists on stage.

This is not the first time Petrowska Quilico has been honoured by the CMC. She was among a select group of Canadian artists featured at the CMC’s 50th anniversary celebration last fall at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, where she performed Glass Houses by Ann Southam. In 2007, she was presented with the CMC’s Friends of Canadian Music Award for her dedication to Canadian contemporary classical music as well as her unwavering support of this country’s composing community.

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