Recent Order of Canada recipient's extensive theatre career shines in new book
Credit to Author: Dana Gee| Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2019 18:10:34 +0000
For 40-plus years, theatrical designer Susan Benson built whole worlds for theatre, ballet and opera performers to call home.
Patricia Flood’s new book, Susan Benson: Art, Design and Craft on Stage, now pulls back the curtain on the recent Order of Canada recipient’s award-winning work.
A native of Kent, England, Benson studied painting and worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company and BBC Television before coming to Canada.
“It’s funny, coming here in 1966, I would have never dreamed that I’d have the book and that I would be awarded an Order of Canada,” said Benson, who these days spends her time on Salt Spring Island with her lighting designer husband Michael J. Whitfield. “It’s so special.”
The book is a lovely dive into a world that many of us fans of live theatre, ballet and opera appreciate but don’t really know much about. Packed full of Benson’s beautiful paintings (which is how she begins her creative process), the book is a visual celebration of a job well done. But it is also a kind of manual on how that job was done well in the first place.
“What I always wanted to do was promote a better understanding of what designers do,” said Flood, who is an old friend of Benson’s and herself a sought-after designer for theatre, film and TV. “It’s important to me that people understand that designers are not technicians, but artists who choose to work in the theatre.
“I am hoping it can be used in education as well and start a dialogue,” added Flood, who lives in Toronto. “It’s celebrating our history, which we don’t do a lot in Canada. Especially theatre.”
Susan Benson: Art, Design and Craft on Stage by Patricia Flood. Photo credit: Courtesy of Firefly
Flood and Benson’s own history goes back to Stratford and 1980, when Flood was one of a group of assistant designers who were brought on board the festival by Benson.
“One of the first things she did was hire a bunch of young assistant designers, all of whom were Canadian,” said Flood. “That was a big thing at the time as Stratford kind of had a legacy of having all British designers. You couldn’t really design or direct unless you were trained and British. She is a British immigrant herself, but her idea was to train Canadian designers to work in large theatre companies.”
Flood added that those eight young designers Benson brought onto her productions went on to healthy careers in design.
“She has a real passion for the theatre, an incredible attention to detail. Things needed to be high-quality. A level of excellence and a sense of humour,” said Flood. “It was always fun. You needed to have fun in order to be creative.”
Designer Susan Benson Photo: credit: David Borrowman
While she is not designing for theatre anymore, Benson is by no means sitting on her many laurels. Last year, she produced a large series of paintings (174) of people who live on Salt Spring.
“We’ve really found our home here. It’s a wonderful little island. It’s very stimulating,” said Benson, who is currently working on pastel landscapes she calls restrictive vision. “It’s when you look out a car windshield or when you look at a cellphone. Where you don’t actually see the full picture.”
When she was designing shows she began the process by listening to the director’s and choreographer’s ideas. She followed those conversations with research and the “scribbling of ideas.” Rough drawings and models were next before Benson dug deep into her muse.
“This is often unusual, but I go for the people first,” said Benson a chuckle rising in her voice. “I find the people, then I find the world around the people. But I like to find the faces. If I can find the face of the character, I can build the clothes off it, and then the set will work out from there.”
While many materials have been in Benson’s hands, it is painting that sits firmly as her creative base.
Susan Benson’s vision of the look for Cabaret lead character Sally Bowles. Photo credit: Courtesy of Firefly
“That has been a very important basis for my work as a designer. It has given me a flexibility in putting things down on paper,” said Benson.
Benson studied painting when she was still a student back in England. She relies on that skill to communicate, and encourages other designers to embrace a similar approach.
“I think it is really important that designers go through an art school training,” said Benson, whose mother and grandmother were very active in the theatre world. “All the things you do as a painter you are using when designing on the stage.”
A scene from Cabaret at the Stratford Festival in 1987. Photo credit: Michael Cooper
While Benson is the focus of this book, she hopes it will draw attention and help shine a bit of the spotlight on the other talented people who put together productions and build the shows from the ground up.
“I said to Pat, who has worked on this so long and so hard, I said to her at the time that I do want to make people aware of the people behind the scenes who produce the show because often it’s just a name in the program and they don’t get the recognition,” said Benson, whose designs have landed in collections from the Portrait Gallery of Canada to National Arts Centre to the Museum of Civilization.
Those who do get the recognition are the stars, and Benson has worked with many during her career. She had an impressive 32-year-long run with the Stratford Festival that included productions of Cabaret, Julius Caesar, A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Macbeth, Guys and Dolls, The Crucible, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The latter 1976 Robin Phillips-directed show featured Jessica Tandy as Titania and Hippolyta. Then a year later, Maggie Smith took over the gig.
“She was lovely to work with. She was kind and respectful,” said Benson about the legendary Smith. “I have to say some young actors these days get too big for their boots. But she never did. All the great ones never do that.”
Benson considers the Shakespeare comedy a career high point, but is quick to add she really liked working with director Brian MacDonald on The Mikado. That production originally ran at Stratford from 1982-84.
While she is now out of the theatre game, Benson is no less opinionated on the importance of it and other arts.
“How long have you got?” Benson said when asked how important it is to expose people to live theatre. “If you take the creative arts out of the schools, you have generations with no imagination. Imagination and compassion are linked because you imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes and somebody else’s situation. Theatre does that. Either it gives them happiness and joy, for instance with a musical, or it can give something deep to think about. Something they can associate with in their own lives,” said Benson.
“I think it is so important these days for the arts in general, but especially for theatre. Theatre even rather than film because film is another screen in front of our eyes. All the time we are looking at screens and we’ve got to keep connection with fellow human beings. Eye-to-eye.”