Our Professional Theatre Training Program (PTTP) offers financial support for unique and flexible training with a chosen mentor in any theatrical discipline (except performance.)
Erin Gerofsky trained in set and costume design with Judith Bowden
(July 19, 2017) At long last, my rambling journey through Design for theatre with Judith Bowden through the Professional Theatre Training Program has come to close. Over the past seven months I have had the great fortune to go fabric shopping in NYC, observe the differences of American theatre in Washington D.C., collaborate with Judith as Associate designer on The Emancipation of Miss Lovely—the first show I have worked on to be nominated for a Dora award, return “home” to the Shaw Festival for tests on a tech heavy production of Saint Joan, and have my first experience backstage at the Stratford Festival to tech The Changeling. Each of these experiences gave me a particularly useful tool to carry with me through my career, two of which stand out as having equipped me with skills I have already had the chance to put into practice in my design work, leading to more successful completed pieces as a direct result of my experience with the PTTP.
Fabric shopping in NYC was incredibly informative and helped me to get a handle on the tools I needed in order to stay organized in the face of great, great, GREAT variety. Keeping clear notes and organizing swatches with a clear system will help differentiate two similar fabrics when you are sorting through the options and have to make a decision based on budget and availability. Notes like these should stay accessible throughout the build process, as you never know when you will need to source a fabric at a late stage, and having this information already available saves you valuable time. I was able to put such skills into practice when shopping for The Penelopiad, for which I designed the costumes at George Brown Theatre School this spring. The Penelopiad was the first show I ever had built from scratch, and as such, fabric shopping was particularly important to the success of the project. Walking into Affordable Textiles on my first day of swatching, equipped with my binder ring of manila tags and stapler, I felt confident in my ability to shop for what we needed, make smart choices based on budget, and gather enough information to present to my head of wardrobe to put her at ease as I was a first time designer with the company. Thanks to those three days of shopping in NYC I was in a position to exceed their expectations, and was invited to design a show in their next season as a result.
The Emancipation of Ms Lovely was an unexpected addition to our “curriculum”; a one woman (plus two musician) show being given a more production-heavy treatment after a couple of more “bare bones” runs in previous years. Judith was asked to design the set with a tight timeline, and an already rather full plate, so she asked me to take on some more of the conceptual responsibilities than normally asked of an assistant, and associate or co-design the set with her. This meant I was in on the design conversation from nearly the complete beginning, allowing me to contribute more fully to the vision and be of more use to fill in the gaps without supervision as we pieced it all together in the space. This also means when there wasn't the money to hire a scenic artist, Judith and Zack and I all rolled up our sleeves and painted the set ourselves (simple flat or glossy black only, thankfully).Two of my main concerns with the set were making our seat count while maintaining fire code standards and drafting the set and communicating with the builders at McWood. Having never heard the word “egress” or hired an outside build team before, the learning curve on much of that was immediate, but I was glad to have had Judith and the rest of the team to get me up to speed. This experience was particularly useful in preparing me for my first opera this June. Having some idea of what percentage of my budget I should be allocating to different elements helped me keep the show on track throughout a long build process, and my previous experience with McWood made me feel confident in working with them on the build for the opera. Plus, when we were worried about meeting the fire code standards with our ginormous orchestra, I had a few suggestions ready. Without the experience of working on Ms Lovely, and seeing the incredible extent of teamwork that accomplishes a project of that scope in such a short amount of time, I think I'd have torn my hair out for the stress of the sheer size of the opera; instead, once again, I was in a position to exceed the company's expectations, and was able to turn a boat load of work into a really fun and fulfilling experience.
While those previous two examples offer neatly packaged examples of a direct cause-effect benefit due to this mentorship, there have been countless moments that have strengthened my approach to collaboration, simply by way of observing how these shows have been put together. Dozens of anecdotes that have helped to begin filling the gaps between the work I am doing and the work I would like to be doing. Not all of it is yet within my grasp, but I feel started on a path with a newly refreshed sense of purpose.
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The next application deadline for the Professional Theatre Training Program is October 2, 2017.
Theatre Ontario’s Professional Theatre Training Program is funded by the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
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