Cameron Porteous

Cameron Porteous was born in Forgan, Saskatchewan in 1937. He studied art and design at Wimbledon College of Art in London, England. In the early 1970s he began a long collaboration with artistic director Christopher Newton first at the Vancouver Playhouse then at the Shaw Festival from 1980-1997. He has designed for the Citadel Theatre, Edmonton; the Vancouver Playhouse, and The Canadian Stage Company, Tarragon, Young People's Theatre, Toronto; National Arts Centre, Ottawa; and the Stratford Festival. He worked on the Emmy Award-winning film, “Beethoven Lives Upstairs,” and he has also designed for opera and television. His designs have been exhibited at the Rodman Hall Arts Centre, St. Catharines, and in Vancouver, St. Petersburg, and Toronto. In 2012, the Associated Designers of Canada chose Porteous as one of two Canadian designers to showcase in a design retrospective at the Prague Quadrennial.

For the Shaw Festival he designed Trelawny of the `Wells', Mrs. Warren's Profession, Peter Pan, Major Barbara, Cavalcade, Androcles and the Lion, Caesar and Cleopatra, Cyrano de Bergerac, Saint Joan and A Flea in Her Ear. He returned to the Shaw Festival in 1998 to design sets for Joy and costumes for John Bull's Other Island, and again in 2000 to design Lord of the Flies. In 2005 he designed Journey's End for Shaw, and in 2011 Play, Orchestra, Play with director Christopher Newton at the George Theatre. In 2014, he created a claustrophobic apartment interior for A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur in the Court House Theatre.

The fonds consists of technical drawings, set and costume designs, set models, photographs, audio-visual materials, notes, reviews & other files,