Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Tondino, Guido
One of Canada's top designers, born in 1951. Guido Tondino has been working professionally since graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada/NTS. He also studied at Tulane University.
For Centaur Theatre - with whom he has had a long relationship - he designed the premieres of Vittorio Rossi's The Chain and Paradise by the River; David Fennario's Moving; Kit Brennan's Having (1999); as well as Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, David French's Salt-Water Moon, and Paul Ledoux and David Young's Fire.
He has also designed for the Saidye Bronfman Centre (Cold Storage), Neptune Theatre (Les Canadiens) and Tarragon Theatre (Something Red).
From 1986-91 he was the associate director and resident designer for Theatre Calgary where he designed, among other works, Hamlet and Waiting for Godot. He has worked extensively at the Stratford Festival, drawing critical raves in 1997 for his design for the company's Death of a Salesman. For the company he also designed Filumena (1997), Much Ado About Nothing (1998), The Night of the Iguana, The Little Foxes, The Diary of Anne Frank (set, 2000), and The Count of Monte Cristo (scenic design, 2004) (among others).
Tondino designed set and costumes for Present Laughter (Soulpepper Theatre Company 2001); Lenin's Embalmers by Vern Thiessen (Winnipeg Jewish Theatre and Harold Green Jewish Theatre 2010); La Peau d'Elisa by Carole Fréchette (2011); L'Homme du hasard, Grace & Gloria by Tom Ziegler (trans Michel Tremblay (2011); and Porc-épic by David Paquet (2012) at UniThéâtre. He has also designed in the United States, where he lived from 1980 to 1986, for the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, and the National Theatre of Romania.
From 1998 to 2002, he was the director of design at the National Theatre School of Canada. Since 2002, he has been on the faculty of the University of Alberta Drama Department, for which he designed set and projections for Iphigenia at Aulis in 2015 at the Studio Theatre.
He has said of theatre, "I've always had the feeling it's an interpretative art, the theatre, and in fact doesn't really exist until it gets on stage." He defines theatrical spaces "as an extension of the inner meanings of text (and recently dance) in contrast to a practice which sets out to define theatrical space as a reflection of a play's givens and a play's narrative necessities. The setting of a play becomes a metaphor for the play itself. The architecture of the space is driven by the play's themes" (quoted from ualberta.ca/drama).
Profile by Gaetan Charlebois and Anne Nothof. Additional information provided by Christopher Hoile.
Last updated 2022-02-09
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The Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia web site was originally conceived and developed in 1996 by Gaetan Charlebois—theatre critic, playwright, and actor.
