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Fox, Julie

Julie Fox
Julie Fox

Set and costume designer, with an extraordinary wide range of work in Canadian theatre, dance, and opera, based in Toronto Ontario and the Czech Republic. Julie Fox grew up in Waterdown, near Hamilton Ontario, where she was involved from the age of nine with Waterdown Village Theatre, an ambitious amateur company run by Lisbie and Mike Rae and Gord and Janet Raymond. At 18, she moved with her family to New Zealand, and then travelled to Australia, where she worked as a stage hand for a year with the Sydney Opera House. There, she experienced a wide range of theatre from the wings, including Kabuki. After travelling throughout South East Asia, she returned to Canada in 1990, where she encountered the work of Carbone 14 in Montreal, and was inspired to pursue a career in theatre. She graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in 1994.

Her first set design was for Theatre New Brunswick with Artistic Director Michael Shamata. Since then, she has designed sets and costumes in Toronto, including a long history with the Theatre Centre, and in regional theatres across the country. She has particularly enjoyed working with director and playwright, Daniel Brooks, for whom she has designed sets for Possible Worlds (Theatre Passe Muraille), Insomnia (Theatre Centre 1997), Endgame (Soulpepper Theatre Company), and The Full Light of Day (Electric Company Theatre/Banff Centre for the Arts 2018). She has also worked with Brendan Healy at Buddies in Bad Times, and Chris Abraham, who introduced her to the Stratford Festival to design his production of For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again (Patterson Theatre, 2010).

Julie Fox has designed for eight seasons at Stratford at the Festival, Avon, Patterson, and Studio theatres, including productions of Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, and The Best Brothers by Daniel MacIvor. Her 2017 design for Tartuffe (Festival Stage, dir. Abraham) created a flexible domestic space complete with bar and expresso machine, that brought Moliere’s play into present time while suggesting the original historical context. Her extraordinary ornate 18th century set and costumes for The School for Scandal (Avon, dir. Antoni Cimolino), introduced the audience to the opulent room of a hypocritical, privileged society.

For Soulpepper Theatre Company, she has designed sets for A Brimful of Asha (2016), The Play’s the Thing, The Long Valley and A Christmas Carol. For Crow’s Theatre, she designed The Wedding Party, The Watershed, The Seagull, Someone Else, Seeds, I, Claudia, and The Country. For Buddies in Bad Times, her work includes Arigato, Tokyo by Daniel MacIvor, The Maids, and Blasted. She has also designed for Canadian Stage, National Arts Centre, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Necessary Angel, Why Not Theatre, Volcano Theatre, Citadel Theatre, Theatre Junction, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Grand Theatre, Blyth Festival, Segal Centre for Performing Arts, adelheid, and Chartier Danse. In 2019, she designed opulent period costumes for Cyrano de Bergerac at the Shaw Festival, which was remounted in 2022.

Julie Fox has received four Dora Mavor Moore Awards -- including for Insomnia (Necessary Angel) and Possible Worlds (Theatre Passe Muraille), and has been nominated many times. She has also received the Virginia Cooper Award for costume design; META and Sterling Award nominations.

She teaches at the National Theatre School of Canada.

Source: www.thetitleblock.com

Profile by Anne Nothof, Athabasca University.

Last updated 2022-03-03