Hello friends! This month we are taking a peek into my art as a university student. The art I am going to share this month won’t exactly be paintings, but I promise it will be interesting!
For my undergraduate degree, I studied Theatre Set Design at York University (Toronto). I had become interested in theatre production while I was in high school and thought it would be fun to major in it for university. [Please excuse the quality of the photos in this post. These were from the early 2000s and they’re the best ones I have!]
At York, all the first year theatre students studied the same courses and it wasn’t until second year that students could specialize in a stream. I remember having to take a semester of acting along with all the actually aspiring actors and actresses and doing an exercise where we had to move like the colour blue (I’m serious!). I thought I wanted to be a lighting designer when I had applied to York, but over the course of that first year, I realized I connected better with the set design professors, so I decided to major in set design instead.
My set design class had 8 women. We shared a studio room in the theatre building and spent many a late night/early morning working on our projects in there. Each year, the department would mount three shows, which meant that out of the graduating class, three set designers would get the chance to be part of an actual production.
In my fourth year, I was chosen to design one of the shows. It was called Shakuntala and based on an ancient Sanskrit tale, and the director was a post-grad student who was of Indian background himself. Three days before the design was due, I was called into a meeting with the director. He had had an epiphany and wanted the overall aesthetic to look like ivory carvings. Re-designing the project on such a short timeline was one of the most harrowing parts of my studies! The set turned out to be quite stunning and visually striking though.
When the show was over, one of the woodshop teachers offered to bring one of the archways from the set to my home for me to keep. Thankfully, my parents’ house was large enough for it! The school would keep another archway and I think the rest of it went to the dump, unfortunately. I was pretty thrilled that the theatre department went on to use photos of “my” show on their website and publications for a number of years.
Aside from my thesis project, during my fourth year, the university hired me and one of my classmates to create a maquette (scale model) of a tent they were hoping to use for an upcoming convocation ceremony. My friend (who went on to become an award-winning set and costume designer) and I spent hours upon late night hours cutting out a thousand tiny paper heads to fill up the rows. It was a memorable project and one of the bonding experiences in our friendship.
After I graduated from York, I ended up shifting my focus to missionary work for a number of years and I never went back to doing theatre. The hours would have been too long and unpredictable for me to sustain anyway. But I still love attending shows and I don’t think I will ever tire of the magic of live theatre.
Questions for reflection, if you want to go deeper: Live theatre is an experience of being in the moment. Once the performance is over, it is never repeated again. The same can be said of our lives. Holding that perspective, what would you want to keep in our life? What would you want to change?
If you enjoyed this post and want to read a monthly art story, remember to sign up so future posts get delivered to your email! I usually post them the second Friday of each month. (Add me to your contacts list or you might need to check your promotions or junk folders if you don’t see the email.)
As always, I love to hear from you! If something in this story resonated with you, if you’re interested in commissioning a painting, or if you have other thoughts, feel free to email, or connect with me on Facebook or Instagram. Thanks for being part of my journey and for letting me be a part of yours!