Desmond Heeley (1 June 1931 - 10 June 2016) was a British set and costume designer who had an active international career in theater, ballet and opera from the late 1940s through the 2010s.

Career

Heeley was born in

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

, England and began his career as an apprentice designer at the

Royal Shakespeare Theatre The Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) (originally called the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre) is a grade II* listed 1,040+ seat thrust stage theatre owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company dedicated to the English playwright and poet William Shakespe ...

in 1948, and soon established himself as an important designer at that theater and at

Sadler's Wells Theatre Sadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue in Clerkenwell, London, England located on Rosebery Avenue next to New River Head. The present-day theatre is the sixth on the site since 1683. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500-seat ...

in London. In 1957, he designed his first set for the

Stratford Festival The Stratford Festival is a theatre festival which runs from April to October in the city of Stratford, Ontario, Canada. Founded by local journalist Tom Patterson in 1952, the festival was formerly known as the Stratford Shakespearean Festival ...

in Ontario, Canada, with whom he established a very long professional relationship, designing sets for more than 40 productions through 2009. He also designed sets and costumes for several Broadway productions and at the

Metropolitan Opera The Metropolitan Opera (commonly known as the Met) is an American opera company based in New York City, resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, currently situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The company is operat ...

Awards

Heeley has won three

Tony Awards The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual cer ...

. He was notably the first designer to win Tony Awards for both sets and costumes for the same production with his work on the

Royal National Theatre The Royal National Theatre in London, commonly known as the National Theatre (NT), is one of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House. I ...

production of ''

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead ''Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead'' is an absurdist, existential tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare's ''Hamle ...

'' in 1968. His third Tony Award win was for the costumes for ''

The Importance of Being Earnest ''The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People'' is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious ...

'' in 2011.

References

External links

Desmond Heeley designs and production files, circa 1880s-2016 (bulk 1955-2014)
held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division,

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, is located in Manhattan, New York City, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side, between the Metro ...

Interview
with Stratford Festival costumer Cynthia MacLennan on working with Heeley (Theatre Museum Canada). {{DEFAULTSORT:Heeley, Desmond 1931 births 2016 deaths British costume designers Set designers Tony Award winners