Tanya Moiseiwitsch

The theatre designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch trained at the Central School of Arts and Crafts during the early 1930s. She started her career at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and at various theatres in London before collaborating for the first time with Tyrone Guthrie at the Old Vic in 1945. She was Guthrie's first designer at the Festival Theatre in Stratford Ontario and worked on many of his innovative Shakespeare productions there. Her design for the theatre with the thrust stage jutting out into the audience was enormously influential on later theatres such as the Vivien Beaumont Theatre in Lincoln Center, New York and the Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre, London. In addition to her work in Ontario, she designed for other companies including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera in London, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
She was posthumously awarded an Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada for her "enormous impact on theatre arts in the 20th century" .
Author: AB