Sally Jacobs (née Rich, 5 November 1932 – 16 August 2020) was a British stage designer and director.
Early life
Jacobs was born in
Whitechapel
Whitechapel is a district in East London and the future administrative centre of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is a part of the East End of London, east of Charing Cross. Part of the historic county of Middlesex, the area formed ...
, London on 5 November 1932. Her parents were Bernard and Esther Rich (née Bart), a furrier and milliner respectively. She studied at Dalston County secondary school in
Hackney and then
St Martin's School of Art
Saint Martin's School of Art was an art school, art college in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1854, initially under the aegis of the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Saint Martin's beca ...
, leaving school at 14. She worked initially as a secretary at a film company. However, experience of film continuity work, and particularly seeing theatre in the mid-1950s, made her return to study of stage design
at the
Central School of Art and Design
The Central School of Art and Design was a public school of fine and applied arts in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1896 by the London County Council as the Central School of Arts and Cr ...
in London.
Career
Jacobs commenced her career as an assistant scene painter and then began designing.
She began working at the
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and produces around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, St ...
in 1962 and brought a very different appearance to many of their productions with her stage and costume designs.
Between 1967 and 1982 she lived in the U.S. and continued to work as a designer and director for theatre and opera companies. In 1982 she returned to the UK.
During her career Jacobs has designed costumes and sets for a very wide range of theatre and opera productions. She has worked with organisations including the Royal Shakespeare Company,
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal Op ...
,
The English National Opera, The
Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a non-commercial West End theatre in Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, Englan ...
,
Paines Plough
Paines Plough is a touring theatre company founded in 1974 by writer David Pownall and director John Adams.
The company specialises exclusively in commissioning and producing new plays and helping playwrights develop their craft.
Over the past f ...
,
The Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre in New York.
One of her best known set and costume designs was for the innovative production of
''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' by
Peter Brook
Peter Stephen Paul Brook (21 March 1925 – 2 July 2022) was an English theatre and film director. He worked first in England, from 1945 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, from 1947 at the Royal Opera House, and from 1962 for the Royal Shak ...
, in 1970. She was inspired by a production of the Beijing Opera to provide a blank white box as the stage and clothe the actors in brightly coloured costumes. This contributed to the lasting impact, and controversy, of this specific production.
In 1984 her design for ''
Turandot
''Turandot'' (; see below) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, posthumously completed by Franco Alfano in 1926, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. ''Turandot'' best-known aria is "Nessun dorma", whi ...
'' at the Royal Opera House used mirror images and colour contrasts to suggest an audience all around the performers.
Jacob also taught stage design in the U.S. (including
California Institute of the Arts
The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...
, University of California Los Angeles, New York University, The Actors Studio and Rutgers University) and UK, including the
Slade School of Fine Art
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...
.
She was a senior lecturer in stage design at the Central School of Art and Design and was a Fellow at
Goldsmiths University
Goldsmiths, University of London, officially the Goldsmiths' College, is a constituent research university of the University of London in England. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Wo ...
.
Recognition and awards
In 1971 she was nominated for Best Scenic Design in the
25th Tony Awards and awarded the
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design
The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design is an annual award presented by Drama Desk in recognition of achievements in the theatre among Broadway, Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway productions. In the 1998 ceremony the category was separated ...
when the Brook ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' was on tour in the USA.
Harvard University has added her archive to the Harvard Theatre Collection at the
Houghton Library
Houghton Library, on the south side of Harvard Yard adjacent to Widener Library, is Harvard University's primary repository for rare books and manuscripts. It is part of the Harvard College Library, the library system of Harvard's Faculty of Art ...
.
Personal life
She married
Alexander Jacobs
Alexander Jacobs (1927 – 26 October 1979) was a screenwriter best known for his work in the action field. His writing style for ''Point Blank'' was very influential on Walter Hill.
Biography
Jacobs was born in London. He entered the British fil ...
(a screenwriter) in 1953. They had a son. They separated but did not divorce and he died in 1979.
She was a very independent and adventurous person.
She died 16 August 2020.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jacobs, Sally
1932 births
2020 deaths
English costume designers
Set designers
Royal Shakespeare Company members
Alumni of the Central School of Art and Design
Alumni of Saint Martin's School of Art
People from Whitechapel
University of California, Los Angeles faculty