World Scenography 1975-1990 documents lighting, set and costume design

The book covers set, lighting and costume design for all forms of performance, from theatre and dance to opera and spectacle. Encompassing material from hundreds of contributors, it highlights some 430 significant works from more than five dozen countries.

Co-editors Peter McKinnon, professor of stage design and production in the Department of Theatre, Faculty of Fine Arts at 91��ɫ, and Eric Fielding, professor emeritus of scenic design at Brigham Young University, Utah, led an international team of researchers and associate editors for the project.

The editors point out that the publication is neither encyclopedic nor a collection of "greatest hits".  The intent, they say, is to showcase, contextualize and document for posterity “designs that mattered, that made a difference”: seminal designs that had a major impact on the development of the art form, its practice and reception.

Groundbreaking productions cited in World Scenography 1975-1990 include the political puppetry of the American Anti-Bicentennial Pageant at the University of California (1975); English director Peter Brook’s Mahabharata (1985), which was staged in quarries in France and Australia, as well as in theatres in the US and Spain; and the opening ceremony for the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland, New Zealand.

Notable designers featured include Tony and Drama Desk Award-winner Maria Bjornson of France/UK (Phantom of the Opera, 1988); German designer Achim Freyer, winner of the Prague Quadrennial lifetime achievement award (Woyzeck, 1989; The Magic Flute, 1982); Sun-Hi Shin of Korea (A Bicycle, 1983; An Encounter, 1990); Canadian designer André Caron (Cirque Réinventé, 1987,  for Cirque du Soleil); veteran Broadway designer Robin Wagner (A Chorus Line, 1976; On The Twentieth Century, 1978; Dreamgirls, 1981); and 91��ɫ theatre  Professors Teresa Przybylski and Phillip Silver.

World Scenography 1975-1990 is the first publication in a projected three-part series. It builds on the foundation established by Stage Design Throughout the World, a four-volume series edited by René Hainaux that concluded in 1975. McKinnon and Fielding are already planning volumes two and three of World Scenography, to span 1990-2005 and 2005-2015, respectively. When complete, the World Scenography series will be the largest, most comprehensive scholarly work on theatrical design ever created.

McKinnon notes that the motivation and passion behind this epic endeavour is the transitory nature of design for live performance. “Theatre design work is as ephemeral as the work of the actor,” he says. “Once the show is over, it disappears. If we don’t photograph, catalogue and preserve our design work, we run the risk of losing it forever.”

The editors of World Scenography are themselves leading contributors to the field.

Peter McKinnon

McKinnon has served as lighting designer for some 450 shows, principally dance and opera, across Canada and internationally, and has produced shows off- and on-Broadway and in Edinburgh, Scotland. A past president of the Associated Designers of Canada, he was an organizer of the Canadian exhibit at the 2007 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. His editorial credits include the international lexicon Theatre Words�����Ի� One Show, One Audience, One Single Space by Jean-Guy Lecat.

Fielding has designed scenery and/or lighting for more than 250 productions for stage, film, television and special events. He designed the gold medal-winning American exhibit at the 1991 Prague Quadrennial and created the World Stage Design exhibition, directing its premiere showing in Toronto in 2005. He is a 30-year member of United Scenic Artists 829, a Fellow and former vice-president of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology, and former editor of the journal Theatre Design &Technology (TD&T).

World Scenography 1975-1990 is designed by Randal Boutilier (BFA '00), an alumnus of 91��ɫ’s Visual Arts Program. The series, to be published both in print and online, is an official project of the International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians (OISTAT). Both McKinnon and Fielding are long-serving executive members of OISTAT, a UNESCO-recognized organization that draws together theatre production professionals from around the world. The long list of international supporters of the World Scenography project includes the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

McKinnon and Fielding will be in attendance at a reception marking the Canadian launch of the publication on Thursday, April 5, 7 to 10pm at TheatreBooks, 11 St. Thomas Street, Toronto.

For more information, visit the World Scenography series website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Established and emerging artists in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Fine Arts bring their collective talents to a riveting new production of a baroque classic: Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas. This epic story of love and betrayal plays out at the Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan Theatre on 91��ɫ’s Keele campus for two performances only, March 1 and 2.

Lead artists Joseph Farahat and Charlotte Gagnon

Based on a chapter from The Aeneid, penned by the Roman poet Virgil in the first century BC, Dido and Aeneas recounts the tragic tale of Dido, Queen of Carthage, and the Trojan hero Aeneas. Dido loses her heart to the fierce, handsome warrior Aeneas after he is shipwrecked on her shores, only to be devastated when he abandons her to continue his quest to find Rome.

This story of doomed love has resounded through two millennia. 91��ɫ’s production, a collaboration between faculty and students from the departments of Music, Theatre and Dance, is a strikingly contemporary but timeless re-imagining. Thirty performers play the characters as well as the place, forming a living set on an otherwise empty stage.

“T�󾱲� Dido project is the realization of a dream I’ve had since I joined 91��ɫ,” said Professor Catherine Robbin (left), who heads 91��ɫ’s classical vocal music program. “There’s so much talent and expertise in our performance programs, and it’s a joy to bring it together in an opera production. The experience of combining our creative energies is tremendously exciting and rewarding, both for the students involved and for those of us who teach and work professionally in the field.”

An internationally renowned mezzo soprano, Robbin fills the dual roles of music director and producer for the production. She is no stranger to Dido and Aeneas, having sung the title role in the 1982 Stratford Festival production, which earned her critical accolades as  “a voice which is unquestionably the greatest, in its range, that Canada has produced in several decades” (The Globe and Mail). Her discography features many baroque composers, including Purcell, Handel and Vivaldi, in collaborations with leading conductors such as Christopher Hogwood, Trevor Pinnock and John Eliot Gardiner.

Presiding over the orchestra pit for 91��ɫ’s Dido and Aeneas is Robbin’s Music Department colleague, award-winning choral conductor and composer Professor Stephanie Martin (above). Martin, who serves as music director for the historic Church of St. Mary Magdalene and conductor of Toronto’s Pax Christi Chorale, directs the 16- member 91��ɫ Baroque Ensemble.

The stage director is theatre Professor Gwen Dobie (left), who brings extensive directing credits in contemporary opera and theatre to the table. Dobie‘s most recent productions include ���������������dzپ���ܱ� and Sound in Silence for her company, Out of the Box Productions; the Canadian premiere of the Danish opera On this Planet by Anders Nordendoft; and the world premiere of the opera Eyes on the Mountain by Canadian composer Christopher Donison.

Susan Lee (BFA ’90, MFA ’10), an alumna and current faculty member in 91��ɫ’s Department of Dance, brings her long-standing interest in interdisciplinary collaboration to Dido and Aeneas. In a performance career spanning two decades and three continents, Lee has originated roles in almost 50 world premieres by some of Canada’s most highly acclaimed choreographers. Her own choreography has been described as “… a tour de force of magic and mystery” (The Globe and Mail). She brings that magic to bear on this production, contributing original choreography to the work.

Starring in the role of Dido is fourth-year music major Charlotte Gagnon. Gagnon recently won first prize at the Newmarket Voice Festival Senior Scholarship Competition, as well as two awards for opera performance and the prize for outstanding performing ability and career potential in classical singing. She also placed second in her class at the 2011 National Association of Teachers of Singing Ontario chapter competition.

First-year music student Joseph Farahat sings the role of Aeneas. Both young artists are studying with eminent soprano Norma Burrowes in 91��ɫ’s classical vocal performance program.

In total, the cast for Dido and Aeneas features 21 singers, four actors and five dancers. Not only performers, they also play an active role on the production side. Dressed all in white, they have designed their own costumes based on their personae in Purcell’s opera – or  in the case of the non-speaking roles, inspired by characters drawn from the classical literature of five centuries, who were betrayed or betrayers in their time.

Eschewing a physical set, Professor Elizabeth Asselstine, chair of the Department of Theatre, and Professor William Mackwood, who teaches design and production in the Department of Dance, have created elaborate lighting and projection designs for the show. Working with a technical team of four theatre students, they paint the white-costumed canvas of the performers with evocative colour and special effects.

Tickets are $17, or $12 for students and seniors. For tickets, contact the Box Office at 416-736-5888.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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

Newton, recently appointed a Winters College Fellow, is the founding artistic director of Ecce Homo Theatre. His newest musical, , is scheduled to run from Jan. 5 to 15, 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.

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.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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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.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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