Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Dinning, John C.
Designer trained at the National Theatre School of Canada from 1976, and who occasionally teaches there. John Dinning was born in 1955, and grew up in Hamilton Ontario. He was inspired in his teens by frequent trips to the nearby Stratford Festival and Shaw Festival.
Dinning began designing for amateur theatres in Burlington and Hamilton, while selling shoes to make a living. He has since worked across Canada, notably at Vancouver Playhouse, Theatre Calgary, Alberta Theatre Projects' playRites festival, where he would design four productions in five weeks in 1992. He has also designed for Citadel Theatre, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Shaw Festival, Theatre New Brunswick, Piggery Theatre, and the Saidye Bronfman Centre/SBC.
For Centaur Theatre he designed Angels in America Part II (1998), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1999), and the 1998 English-language premiere of Michel Tremblay's Encore une fois, si vous le permettez/For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again. The full range of his talents could be seen in this production, which went from a stark, haunting dreamscape to a thrilling coup de théâtre brilliantly rendered. Dinning has designed four separate versions of the Tremblay play, including the Canadian Stage/Centaur Theatre co-produced Canadian tour, starring Nicola Cavendish. In 2004, director Michael D. Dobbin brought Dinning with him to design another version of For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again for the W!ld Rice Theatre company at the Victoria Theatre in Singapore.
Dinning also delivered a lovingly detailed set for the SBC production of Sleuth (March, 1999, directed by Dennis Garnhum). For Dora Wasserman's Yiddish Theatre, he designed twenty-five productions.
Also, for Centaur again, he designed set and costumes for The Crucible (January, 2000), Marianne Ackerman's new play Venus of Dublin (April, 2000) and Oliver! (April, 2001); and the SBC's productions of Having our Say (May, 2001) and Salt-Water Moon (November, 2001). More recently, he designed an imaginative world for The Hobbit (Globe Theatre 2018).
Dinning has also designed for the Grands Ballets Canadiens.
His sets are notable for their careful attention to detail, eschewing technological gimmickry. He believes in the primacy of drawing and painting in design.
Source: Donna Nebenzahl. "Ready, Set!," The Gazette, Montreal 29 March 2001.
Further Reading: http://charpo.blogspot.com/2011/04/fords-focus-john-c-dinning.html
Profile by Gaetan Charlebois and Anne Nothof.
Last updated 2020-07-22
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