Vancouver costume designer Nancy Bryant shortlisted for Siminovitch Prize
Four finalists will join an online forum on theatre design on October 28 at 4 pm
Costume designer Nancy Bryant
Betroffenheit. Photo by Michael Slobodian
Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika. Photo by David Cooper
VANCOUVER COSTUME DESIGNER Nancy Bryant has made the shortlist for the country’s biggest annual award in theatre.
The Siminovitch Prize follows a three-year cycle, celebrating a professional mid-career director, playwright, or designer whose work is transformative and influential. The finalists for the 2021 award, which focuses on design, are Bryant, along with Montreal’s Linda Brunelle, and Toronto’s Gillian Gallow and Michelle Ramsay.
Bryant works across dance, theatre, opera, and film directors internationally and across Her work with Crystal Pite’s Kidd Pivot and Electric Company Theatre, including Betroffenheit and Revisor, have earned acclaim here and around Europe. Locally, she’s worked closely theatre visionaries like Morris Panych and Kim Collier (including both acclaimed installments of the Arts Club Theatre’s Angels in America), as well as for national productions for the Shaw Festival, Canadian Stage, and the National Ballet of Canada. Known for her attention to detail and unbridled creativity, she has earned numerous Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards, the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, and two Olivier Awards.
In the announcement, jury chair Vanessa Porteous said: “The artistic excellence of these four is unquestionable, yet as mid-career artists they continue to grow, stretch, and push themselves to explore new aspects of the craft. They operate at the leading edge of their practice, yet they embody innovation in art making in its truest sense, because their investigations go so deep. They approach their work and their collaborations in a perpetual state of inquiry, seeking new territory and forging unexpected encounters, within the material, the world we live in, and themselves.”
Catch the nominated designers in a special online Forum on Design October 28, at 4 pm Pacific Time; you can register here. Hosted by James Lavoie, the panel will tackle topics like the importance of innovative theatre design in transporting audiences through time and space and what the future of Canadian theatre design looks like.
And watch for the winner to be announced December 2. The winning laureaete receives $75,000 and selects a protégé who receives $25,000. Past Vancouver laureates include Maiko Yamamoto and James Long for directing (2019), Marcus Youssef for playwriting (2017), and Kim Collier for directing (2010).(
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