(Catalogue of an Exhibition Curated and
Designed by Sean Breaugh and Patricia Flood)

Theatre Museum Canada/University of Guelph

92 pages, $ 29.95   

ISBN: 978-9-88955-571-6

            In a fundamental sense, all theatre design is an attempt to risk the void, taking the void to mean “the space waiting for creation, for solution” (as designer Sean Breaugh puts it in his Introduction to this full-colour catalogue of Cameron Porteous’s extraordinary scenography for a touring exhibition of his work last year). Of course, the void assumes a greater significance when theatre design is viewed in the light of scenography rather than as mere decoration or embellishment of a physical space. But what is scenography?  Patricia Flood (a co-curator with Breaugh for the exhibition, and who contributes some of the best essays in this loosely arranged catalogue), reminds us that the word came into more general use in Canada in the 1970s, and tends to be associated with European designers in Poland, Germany, and Czechoslovakia in particular, whose work greatly influenced North American theatrical design. A British critic (who is quoted by Flood) once explained: “The scenographer visually liberates the text and the story behind it by creating a world in which the eyes see what the ears do not hear.” A scenographer is a visual director, according to this critic, which is a large claim but not without merit, although it is necessary to add that the scenographer, rather than supplanting the director, works in concert with him in order to clarify a text through colour, light, proportion and dimension.

            Cameron Porteous (born in Saskatchewan in 1937) is a scenographer. His best work (and it is in theatre more than in film or television) has always been an example of sculpting space and of envisioning a text in three dimensions. He himself claims to start his designs with a black box into which he puts the first thing you see, i.e. the actor as character. His second reality is the costume because an actor finds his way into a character also by clothing. Porteous then seeks those moments in a play to which he has a strong visual response, either by way of an image of the character or a sound or a quality of lighting. Rather than decorating a space, Porteous will add only what is necessary to support the actors tell the story. However, he is quite capable of being flamboyant when it is necessary for the good of a show. Some of his favourite devices are projections in order to add to texture and communication. But his projected images are not simply background; they interact with the actors and fuse in a dynamic synthesis that is a hybrid form and force. A vivid example was in his design for The Madwoman of Chaillot, but another excellent example was his design for Cavalcade (1985-86; 1995). Noel Coward’s epic play, spanning 40 scenes and thirty years of British history from 1899 to 1929, was given a stunning central image: glass, or, more specifically, the glass dome over London’s Victoria Station, with train steam rising through the air. Porteous used elaborate mechanical systems to transport entire scenes on and off stage, and the production’s numerous kaleidoscopic backgrounds were created by six enormous slide projectors. The result was something that “enhanced the evanescent spirit of change and evolution central to the theme of the play.” (Flood) I own the rough sketch that Porteous created for the dome, showing one of the projections, and I count myself singularly lucky to own this souvenir of what was an amazing technical feat brilliantly executed.

            Porteous, who once tried acting before moving into design, studied painting at the Banff School of Fine Arts and then at the Wimbledon School of Fine Arts in England. In Vancouver, where he really began his long career, he came under the influence of expatriate Brit Brian Jackson at the Vancouver Playhouse, who was painterly in his method, and this gave Porteous a good grounding in his craft. However, it was not until he began his artistic collaboration with Christopher Newton that Porteous showed his full mettle. As Martha Mann claims in her essay “Cameron Porteous and the Canadian Theatre,” “This proved a meeting of true minds.” I would go further and call it “a marriage of true minds.” Newton made him Head of Design at the Playhouse and later at the Shaw Festival, appreciating fully his ability to make “theatrical moments that connect viscerally with an audience, unexplainable images that are both true and relevant, and windows into other worlds that parallel our own.” These are Newton’s own words from his essay “Cameron Porteous: An Appreciation,” that is both heartfelt and accurate. Blissfully free of jargon or a dry academic style, it gives succinct impressions of Porteous’s craft: a Satyricon, much influenced by Fellini in its evocation of a decadent Rome of “rough beauty,” and a moment when Barbara Gordon entered through a door in a painted monolith, “back lit, clothed but momentarily naked, the audience ravished”; the stage turned into a large mirror for Camille; “Piranesi staircases and galleries” for Saint Joan; or the beds that disappeared into the clouds over London in Peter Pan. However, it is not Newton but Scott McKowen who articulates some of Porteous’s debts to great painters in his designs, for McKowen points out how Porteous “found his inspiration for the wide range of moods and images” for the great Cyrano de Bergerac production, starring Heath Lamberts, in “the works of specific European painters throughout history”: Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Boucher, Watteau, Fragonard, Velazquez, Hals, Van Dyck, et cetera. McKowen’s compressed piece should be required reading for all students and critics of theatre, even if only to better understand Porteous’s resourceful use of Egon Schiele later for Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma.

            Of course, no great theatre designer limits himself only to painting for reference. Porteous has made remarkable use of film (specifically cinema noir and grainy Hollywood melodramas) and black-and-white photography as referents for his designs for Counsellor-At-Law and The Front Page, extending the control of his colour palette into the costumes and makeup. And the list of his artistic references can go on and on. Suffice it to say that there has not been an extended article on his craft that is worthy of his genius.

            Decades ago, I discussed my idea of doing a large coffee-table book on Porteous and other eminent Canadian theatre designers. Alas, that idea proved to be impractical, given the expense of glossy full-colour illustrations and a limited readership in Canada and abroad for such a topic. So, Cameron Porteous has to be content with this catalogue. Superbly enhanced by generous full-colour production shots (most by the great David Cooper), costume and set designs, and set models, it offers ample topics: Cameron Porteous and the Canadian theatre, the value of Porteous’s mentoring (of such individuals as Sean Breaugh and Kelly Wolf, both of whom contribute to the catalogue), theatre design in English Canada, a biographical sketch of Porteous, individual appreciations of specific productions, and an essay on scenography. It also has Leonard W. Conolly writing on the Guelph theatre archives named after him, and Michael Wallace indulging in a brief but necessary promotion of the Theatre Museum of Canada. However, the organization is arbitrary. Topics that should be grouped together are not, and there isn’t enough of Porteous’s own voice—unlike the exhibition itself that offered videotaped interviews with him. So, it is not a perfect catalogue, but it is a handsome, very useful and necessary one, and I recommend it to anyone interested in the exercise of scenography by one of this country’s greatest theatre designers.

 photos: David Cooper
pic 1: Catalogue cover
pic 2: Set design sketch for The Madwoman of Chaillot (1985)
pic 3: Production shot from Cavalcade (1985-86; 1995)


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