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Janson, Astrid

Set and costume designer born in Germany in 1947, based in Toronto, who has worked in opera, ballet, theatre, and television. Astrid Janson has a B.A. in philosophy from Waterloo Lutheran University (1969), and an M.A. in theatre design from the University of British Columbia (1972), where her fellow students were John Gray, Larry Lillo, and Richard Ouzounian. She also studied metal work at the Vancouver School of Art. She moved back to Ontario for design work, and began with Toronto Dance Theatre. Her early interest in political theatre drew her to work with George Luscombe at Toronto Workshop Productions/TWP, where she helped to create sets for Ten Lost Years (1974), You Can't Get Here from There (1975), and Les Canadiens.

Astrid Janson is well known for her striking, innovative work at the Stratford Festival (thirteen seasons), notably for A Long Day's Journey into Night (1994), The Stillborn Lover (1998), Othello, Macbeth, The Seagull (2001); and costumes for HMS Pinafore.

Her set and costume designs have been seen on many stages across Canada. She has worked with the Grand Theatre, London (The Miracle Worker 1994, Blood Relations, 1988/89); the National Arts Centre (on their co-production of Oleanna)); Tarragon Theatre (The Glass Menagerie 1999); Shaw Festival (where her set for The Cherry Orchard in 1980 was designed to deconstruct at the end); at the St. Lawrence Centre; and the Citadel Theatre (Three Tall Women 1996).

Other productions include: Jason Sherman's The League of Nathans at Factory Theatre; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Mirandolina, She Stoops to Conquer, The Maids, Absolutely Chekhov, A Streetcar Named Desire, La Ronde (August, 2001), and Sharon Pollock's Doc (2010) for Soulpepper Theatre Company; Djanet Sears' Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God for Obsidian Theatre Company and Nightwood Theatre; Anything That Moves at Tarragon Theatre (May, 2001); Fernando Krapp Wrote Me This Letter at Canadian Stage (2010); costumes for Blood Wedding (Aluna Theatre/Modern Times Stage Company (2015).

Early costume design for television included King of Kensington for the CBC and the Home Fires series. She then designed the interior of the Ontario building for Expo 86 in Vancouver as a theatrical walk through the provinces's history, using lighting and infinity effects. Ken Gass wrote a script.

Astrid Janson has also designed in Germany, Amsterdam, Sweden, Paris, Philadelphia, Houston and New York.

She taught for fourteen years at the University of Toronto (1993-2007), and was a guest scholar at Queen's University.

She has received eighteen Dora Mavor Moore Awards, including for the costumes for thirteen of Michael Hollingsworth’s “Village of the Small Huts” play cycles for VideoCabaret; and a Toronto Drama Bench Award for distinguished contribution to Canadian theatre (1980). In 2016, she received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Wilfrid Laurier University.

In her designs, Astrid Janson invites the audience into the performance space through the use of significant or symbolic detail and light. She often uses projections onto everyday materials such as Plexiglas, garbage bags, balloons to bring the stage to life. Or she may illuminate screens in different ways to suggest interior or exterior walls, and changes in perspective (Natalie Rewa. Scenography in Canada: Selected Designers. Toronto: University of Toronto P, 2004). She is inspired by her materials, which are often recycled, such as paper towelling; and she is drawn to materials that are beautiful on their own, and which are transformed on stage. She begins by reading the script several times, removing stage directions, then working in terms of a three-dimensional space to establish the relationship between play and audience that often disrupts the traditional "fourth wall." She prefers to work with directors who don't begin with their own "concept," so they can work together to realize a visual idea.

Website: http://astridjanson.blogspot.com.

Profile by Anne Nothof, Athabasca University. Information from Lindy Cooksey, Pierre Karch, Christopher Hoile, Claire Sedore, and Michael Kruse (The Title Block Podcast, 25 Feb 2019).

Last updated 2021-02-11