Designing a new future—after 28 years at UVic

With Summer & Smoke, Allan Stichbury takes a farewell bow from teaching

After 28 years in the Department of Theatre, design professor Allan Stichbury says his favourite show continues to be whatever he’s currently working on. And while his beautiful, Mississippi-inspired set for the Phoenix Theatre production of Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke (running March 10-19) is no exception to this rule, it will be his final play before retiring from UVic this spring.

Stichbury’s path to theatre was a little circuitous, but it started right here at UVic. After high school he traveled the country, with plans of returning to his native Saskatchewan to attend university in the fall. But upon visiting Victoria and learning of UVic’s new law school, he decided to stay. But pre-law political science classes didn’t capture his imagination. “In 1971, there were not a lot of women in political science courses,” he recalls, “but in my English course, there were a number of women from the theatre department, so I began to hang out there. And theatre was much more interesting. So I dropped some other classes and registered for Theatre 100—and by second year, I had changed my major.”

At UVic, Stichbury saw his very first play, took up acting and learned how to design and build sets, working with then-design professor Bill West. He realized that he loved it—so much so, that he dropped out of school after second year and began working at Victoria’s Bastion Theatre. After two years, this work experience solidified his resolve to return to school for theatre design, this time at the University of Alberta. Since then, he hasn’t looked back. With a career designing scenery and lighting for major theatre and opera institutions across Canada, Stichbury has also designed shows for Broadway, in Washington DC and Bangkok, Thailand.   

For Summer and Smoke, the director wanted to stay true to the realism exemplified in the original 1948 production, but in a way that would help translate it to a 2016 audience. Instead of having more traditional scene locations on stage left, stage right and centre, Stichbury has designed the various locations using a revolving turntable. “We can maintain the poetic symbolism of having everything on stage at one time, but the revolve allows us to select which scene we feature, and bring that location downstage so that the communication between the actor and the audience is the strongest it can possibly be.”

With a vast southern sky and a nod to Mississippi architecture, Stichbury’s designs for Summer and Smoke have a beautiful and elegant sense of minimalism. But he’s clear that, as well as serving the play, his designs for the Phoenix are also about creating opportunities for student learning and exploration. “It’s important to use design elements every few years—like a turntable or a cyclorama screen to project a huge sky onto—so that each cohort of students can be introduced to and explore these concepts.”

As for retiring, Stichbury feels “it’s not stopping. It’s about changing your focus and moving on to something else.” With a Bangkok University production of West Side Story opening at the same time (where Stichbury recently helped set up a UVic exchange program for theatre students), and upcoming plays across Canada, he is definitely not stopping soon. “It will be a variation of what I do. Will it involve teaching? Will it involve designing? Probably.” Stichbury pauses and chuckles, “It will probably also involve some time at the beach.”