Individuality and Interconnection: 360º Video Interviews of Performance Designers in Canada

Curator: Snezana Pesic
Digital Designer: Paul Cegys

As performance design and scenography continues to expand the ways in which we perceive our world, so too has the landscape of creators, designer, and performance makers whose work is drawn from a complex network of diverse inspirations and backgrounds. This project aspires to uncover the ‘unseen’ creative process of performance designers in Canada in order to better understand the underpinnings of their artistry, from the designer’s individual perspectives as seen from their own spaces of creation. The project seeks to explore the relationship between identity, individuality and the collaborative nature of live performance in a 360º immersive video.

Conceived as a segment of the Canadian National Exhibition at PQ2019, 360º Video Interviews of Performance Designers started with four interviews that capture both the individual and collaborative process of the designers featured in the Canadian Exhibition this year. After these initial interviews, the conversation continued, expanding to include three other next generation Canadian designers whose work is not included in the exhibit. As the project develops further, the intention is that this is the starting point for a larger more inclusive exploration of the work of Canadian designers – and how the ways they work has changed and is influenced by where they work. This pilot project is the first step in advance of a more comprehensive, nation-wide examination of the cultural and artistic diversity among Canadian designers.

Rachel Forbes

Rachel is a Toronto based Set and Costume Designer. Her work has seen several stages and other spaces in and around Toronto including The Shaw Festival, Factory Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Buddies in Bad Times, Tarragon Theatre and a few of Toronto’s historic house museums. She has had the pleasure of working with many great companies including Obsidian Theatre, Trey Anthony Productions, Watah Theatre, Video Cabaret, Pro Arte Danze and Canadian Rep Company.

Rachel is interested in the point of intersection of the visual arts and installation world with that of theatre and live performance. She has created costumes for many pieces that combine movement and dance with textual theatre. Rachel has a specific interest in and has been exploring the artistic expressions that are part of the African diaspora.

Rachel is a graduate of Ryerson Theatre School’s Performance Production program. She has been mentored closely by Astrid Janson and Obsidian Theatre Company.

Camellia Koo

Camellia is a Toronto based set and costume designer for theatre, opera, dance and site specific performance installations. Recent designs for theatre include collaborations with numerous independent to regional theatre companies including Cahoots Theatre Projects, Buddies in Bad Times, fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Smash, The Second City, The Shaw Festival, The Stratford Festival, and Young People’s Theatre. Recent designs for opera and ballet include collaborations with Ballet Jörgen, Banff Centre, Canadian Opera Company, Minnesota Opera, Edmonton Opera, Pacific Opera Victoria, Boston Lyric Opera, Against the Grain, and Tapestry New Opera. She has received six Dora Mavor Moore Awards (Toronto), the Virginia and Myrtle Cooper award for costume design, a Chalmers Award Grant, and 2006 Siminovitch Protégé Prize.

She is a graduate of Ryerson Theatre School (1999 Technical Production) and holds a MA in Scenography from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and University of the Arts Utrecht.

David Mesiha

David Meisha is a Canadian award-winning composer and sound/video designer, known for music composition, projection design and multimedia installations alike.

David’s artistic practice includes creation of immersive and interactive work that blurs the lines betweendisciplines of Theatre, Performance, Visual Design and Music Composition. With the support of Theatre Passe Muraille and The Theatre Centre, he is currently leading creation of an ambitious multidisciplinary new work titled Same Difference, for Theatre Conspiracy.

David has been nominated for and won multiple awards for many shows and across multiple disciplinesfrom music composition to projection and innovation. Among these shows are Project (X) by Leaky Heaven, Terminus by Pi Theatre, A Streetcar Named Desire by Leaky Heaven and The Busy World is Hushed by One2 theatre. David co-created and composed the music for Foreign Radical which premiered in Vancouver in 2015 to critical acclaim and won a Jessie Richardson Critic’s Choice award for Innovation and a Fringe First Award at the 2017 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

In 2016, David was nominated for a Dora Award with L’Oquenz for his role in the sound design inOraltorio, a complex multimedia theatrical piece that saw him design and implement a new piece of software to serve as the control hub for the sound design and live processing of audio throughout the show.

Other credits include The Humans by Arts Club Theatre in 2018, for which he received a JessieRichardson Award nomination , Antigone by Young People’s Theatre and Sound Of the Beast by Theatre Passe Muraille.

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