William Schmuck

William Schmuck has been the Shaw Festival’s Design Director since 1996. He also designs for opera, including the Canadian Opera Company, Pacific Opera, Opera Atelier, and the Houston Grand Opera.
He designed the sets and costumes for 2014 season productions of The Philadelphia Story, by Philip Barry, directed by Dennis Garnhum, and The Charity that Began at Home, by St John Hankin, directed by Christopher Newton.
For the 2015 season, he is designing Light up the Sky, by Moss Hart, directed by Blair Williams (Acting, 1987); The Twelve-Pound Look, by J.M. Barrie, directed by Lezlie Wade; and The Next Whiskey, a Kurt Weill cabaret, created by Paul Sportelli and Jay Turvey, directed by Jay Turvey.
The following interview took place on February 26, 2010. (photo credit: Shaw Festival)
How long have you worked at the Shaw Festival?
I arrived at the Festival in 1993 as a freelance designer, my first production was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; I became Design Director in 1996.
On what projects are you currently working?
I am designing the set and costumes for The Women, by Clare Booth Luce, directed by Alisa Palmer, which opens May 12. The set is built and is being painted; I’m just about to start shopping for fabric and the cutters have started their work. The other show I’m working on is John Bull’s Other Island, by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Christopher Newton. The set is currently being built and this show opens on June 18.
On an administrative level, I am part of a team that meets regularly to look at the state of the Shaw Festival today, the direction we want to move in, the philosophical changes we want to make. We’re also planning for the 50th anniversary next season.
What is your favourite aspect of your work?
I think it’s the variety of it all. As a designer, you are often in situations where you are asked to repeat past successes. The administrative side allows me to avoid that, so there are always opportunities to keep learning. I love the freedom of it.
Are there any aspects that you enjoy less?
I suppose that model-making has become more challenging over the years. When you start out as a young designer, you make a lot of them. As you become older, you don’t have as much manual dexterity or patience, so that is something that I’m happy to delegate. I still do some model-making on my own, but it’s not my favourite part of the process.
What led you to a career in stage design?
I’m one of those rare people who knew what type of work they wanted to do at an early age. I grew up in Kitchener/Waterloo and we had lots of school trips to the Stratford Festival. As a teenager, I continued to go on my own. I realized then that there was a world of employment in that field.
Were you active in theatre at the time?
I acted in high school and amateur productions. There was a company called KW Musical Productions and we were fortunate enough to have Alan Lund (director and choreographer at the Charlottetown Festival, in PEI) working there, so I got involved in musicals. I enjoyed acting, but I realized that what I really enjoyed was the process leading up to the show, so that by opening night, the fun was over and I was ready to move on to other things.
However, that experience has helped me in my designing: I can relate differently to actors, I can imagine myself walking through the space, wearing a costume, etc.
What brought you specifically to the NTS?
During high school, I was always researching schools. I liked that the NTS offered conservatory-type training and seemed focused on what I wanted to get out of my education. And I liked the idea that it was in Quebec and that the French culture was part of it. I took French all through high school just in case I went there. I ended up being the only Anglophone in my class!
I really feel lucky, in a way, although it was very hard for me at the time. The French factor was a very rich part of my education. I feel that it’s such a great thing that I can pick up a French newspaper or watch French television and know what’s going on.
What did you learn at NTS that continues to influence your work today?
François Barbeau was the Director of the Design Program at the time and he taught me everything I know. He was very generous to me and made me realize that as an artist, you have to approach every project by making yourself happy. You have to express yourself in each thing you do. Even if you’re struggling with the director, you have to make your statement. This has given me a great deal of confidence. When I read a play, I can see it very quickly and I know how I want to move forward; I get that from him, from his approach. I can talk about the play in a larger way, outside of design even, that engages the director. You can keep up a livelier conversation about new ways of doing the play; you can move through the nuts and bolts very quickly and get to what is going to be great about your production. I tell young students that it’s always good to come to your first meeting with a developed idea. Because if they hate it, you’ll have had your chance to express the idea and they’ll know exactly where your mind is at so that they can get you onto their side. Or, chances are they’ll love it. It’s much better to come with something, to have something for the director to bounce off of, rather than coming with nothing. So that’s an extension of what I was taught by Barbeau.
What other advice would you give to young designers?
When actors graduate from theatre schools, they can get jobs right away, because there are roles for 22-year-olds. However, not too many people will hire a 22-year-old designer because they don’t necessarily have the life experience that they would need to be designing costumes for 40 years olds.
So, you have to work in other areas of design before you get to be a designer. It’s always good to develop one of your skills, whether you’re a painter or a draftsman, because that gets you into the bigger theatres, where you can learn more quickly than you can by struggling on your own.
When I was being trained in my theatre career, you had to pick a stream, like design in my case, and you were very much encouraged to be in that stream and learn everything there was to learn about it. Nowadays, I think there’s a lot more cross-over. No one would think twice about somebody who wanted to design, direct, write, and perform. It would be preferable, I think, to go into a world where you could move between the disciplines. It was scary graduating when I did because there weren’t even that many independent projects. You had to go to a theatre that was established and work your way up.
Are there shows that you dream of designing?
I love classical theatre, the big war-horse plays. I have a preference for Chekov and Tennessee Williams, and I’ve designed a lot for musical theatre. So I guess I would say the big classic pieces of the 20th century are what interest me the most.
Finish this sentence: “If I knew then what I know now…”
I would not have limited myself to a design career alone. Although I love what I do, I would have continued and developed in the acting and directing stream. Designers are lucky that they have such strong visual imaginations and memory. If these skills were applied to directing, I am sure we would have a generation of directors who are freer and more diverse in their approach to what is possible in producing plays. Most directors are trained as actors so their ideas are often exclusively text based. This is valid, but the theatre is equally a visual medium and sometimes developing imagery is left unexplored for the immediacy of language. Learning the language of acting when talking to an actor to give really useful information about how they can use my design, has taken my whole career. If we don’t separate the training of designers from the training of actors, both disciplines would be less mysterious to each other. I think this is happening now more and more.