Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Cameron Porteous has been designing new worlds for more than fifty years.
“I start with the black void of an empty theatre, and just start to build around it,” said Porteous, a scenographer and costume creator.
“I usually start drawing, sketching in three dimensions, using things like sugar cubes, anything you can find to fill the space. Once you discover the space, I might draw a plan.”
Now a St. Marys resident, Porteous works out of a studio at the Station Gallery designing theatre sets and painting. A collection of his intricate and miniature models of theatrical sets are on display at the Station Gallery in an exhibit that runs until June 3.
The models he designs – called maquettes – are full of incredible detail. There are the pots and pans hanging from the wall of a kitchen in a Fiddler on the Roof model.
Or the teeny, tiny, green tablecloths in the patio scene designed for a production of Doctor's Dilemma.
“The model is the most important thing of all, because they see it in three-dimensional, not flat,” Porteous said.
He's careful about the materials he uses for these intricate mini-sets, because the models have to stand up to travel and lots of re-working by directors and artistic teams.
“I'm into using basswood, the kind of woods that model train people use. Not so much balsa, which was the old standby, because it's too fragile,” Porteous said. Often, he'll make what's called a “white model” using cardboard before he goes all in with a wooden design.
And these maquettes aren't safe from revision until they're out of the studio.
“I've been known to take a model that's damn near finished and take my knife to it, start cutting it up. I don't hold them precious, at all, until it's absolutely finished,” he said.
For Porteous, inspiration isn't hard to find.
In the last five decades he's traveled all across the country and around the world to design sets and costumes for theatre productions, operas and films.
During a visit to Istria, Croatia, he couldn't help but break out the sketch book.
“I felt it was sort of the fantasy land that Shakespeare had written about for Illyria, because it is a rocky coastline, it's known for pirates, it's known for shipwrecks throughout history,” Porteous said.
He ended up getting a call to direct Twelfth Night soon afterwards, which was designed around the idea of shipments and boxes creating a home.
Then there was the set for a production of The Crucible that was designed to be built by the cast.
“What you thought you were watching was one of these Amish or Quaker barn-building ceremonies, where the community builds the society. (But) what the community was building was a gallows,” he said.
It took some convincing, but the actors had a blast and the set won multiple awards.
Many of Porteous' operatic designs used an innovative workaround to protect the beauty of a classic European street.
“You can have a beautiful period Baroque street, absolutely impeccable, but it's filled with power lines and telephone wires. What do you do? Well I invented this idea of hanging laundry on them all,” Porteous said.
His take on Peter Pan was another chance for creativity to shine.
“(The director) said 'I don't want you to do Peter Pan in the traditional way. Get me something fresh and different that no one's ever done.' I said to my friend who was artistic director at the Shaw Festival, 'where the hell is Never Never Land?'”
Her safe place to be alone and dream was under the bed. So Porteous designed a set where the beds floated upward as the characters flew through the air and the city of London revolved underneath.
Porteous describes scenography as the chance to tell a story that the audience doesn't hear from the actor.
“It's the relationship between the actor and the space that's telling the story,” Porteous said. “That's what (scenographer) Pam Howard always says. 'Design is what the eyes hear.'”
And for an artist like Porteous, design comes naturally.
“I just love creating worlds from my imagination,” he said.
“The most exciting thing is when the actors walk on stage and the whole space becomes alive.”
By Megan Stacey for www.stratfordbeaconherald.com/
Photo: Cameron Porteous in his studio in St. Marys. ©2017 Megan Stacey.
2017-04-15
St. Marys: Set models by famed designer Cameron Porteous on display at the Station Gallery to June 3