Gary McCann

Originally from Northern Ireland, Gary McCann trained at Nottingham Trent University, graduating with first class honours in Theatre Design. With bases in London and Berlin, his work as a set and costume designer for opera, musicals and theatre takes him all over the globe, creating new productions with some of the world’s most significant companies. 

At school McCann really enjoyed literature, music and art, and his teachers at Portadown College filled him with enthusiasm for the arts. When it came to choosing a degree course he found it impossible to choose between English Literature and Fine Art.

Eventually he came to the conclusion that in studying Theatre Design he would be able to pursue both of these interests in his studies and career. When he graduated, he was warmly welcomed by Belfast-based theatre companies; The Lyric, Kabosh and Ransom, which were a tremendous help in the early years of his working life. Early on his career he worked on new plays, which were essential in developing the habit of listening carefully to the unfolding of freshly written, still changing narratives and working closely with director and actors on how to put this story and these characters on stage for the first time.

McCann usually designs both set and costumes, seeing them as absolutely derived from the same conceptual approach, with essential comment to be made about the world they occupy and the characters’ relationships with their unfolding narratives.

As a set designer McCann is less interested in ‘tricks of the mind’ and more focused on making psychological spaces - how the volumes and textures of the space reflect the relationships and emotions that drive the drama. For McCann the scenography exists in various planes - the concrete physical space of the staging, in the fusion of the image and the music, in the imaginations of the audience who interpret and personalise the experience. He is always interested in spaces which evolve and transform, helping the story unfold and keeping the audience guessing.

McCann’s design process is one of building an architecture in which, at each successive moment, the lone figure, or choreographed chorus complete the space. Through each picture the audience’s understanding of the narrative, the juxtapositions and layered meanings develop. These are achieved through scale, altered perspective, reveals and groupings of specifically coloured and styled characters and chorus. McCann and director Christian Räth achieve this in starkly formal settings for both Macbeth, 2015 and Der Freischütz, 2018 at Wiener Staatsoper.

For McCann the world of opera has a timelessness, where past, present and future meet. He believes that audiences are drawn to it even though the stories may be centuries old, the characters experience the same sort of human conflicts and connections that we do today, the music is still able to stir and speak to us. As a designer McCann sees it as essential to bring something to first discussions with the director so that the journey can take off. He talks illuminatingly about the process of getting a concept, working often with elaborate opera librettos and mythological plots which seem initially remote, but nearly always come down to the fallibility of human nature. In asking, of an opera or play now, “What drives it? Where is it going, what does it need to do?” he looks to the structure of the piece, as does British designer Richard Hudson, who, similarly talks about the importance of solving scene changes because they drive the visual narrative in the way that they transition: “It is vital for a designer to think about the set changes and the way a set is revealed and taken away from the audience... the set changes (are) also part of the design solution.”

His notable productions from recent years - Die Fledermaus for Norwegian National Opera in which all of the outrageous party costumes were a pastiche of contemporary haute couture. McCann is equally at home researching, plundering and representing period and cultural styles and status, as he is referencing and extending contemporary fashion extremes. He has said of this production: “Opera to me has much in common with the world of avant-garde fashion - where wild creativity and a conceptual approach are fused with modern technologies and processes. I’m much more interested in this than in slavishly recreating precise replicas of authentic period garment.”

For the atmospheric Carmen at Opera Philadelphia with director Paul Curran (2018 and at Seattle Opera in 2019), skeletal structures of advertising hoardings provide galleries for chorus and create perspectived alleys which are of evocative Hispanic buildings. His work with director Curran also includes La Traviata, Becoming Santa Claus, a family opera by Mark Adamo commissioned by Dallas Opera, The Flying Dutchman for Ekaterinburg Opera in Russia, and Handel’s Faramondo for Göttingen Festspeile in Germany, which subsequently formed the centrepiece of the inaugural Brisbane Baroque Festival in Australia - where it won Best Opera Production at the 2015 Helpmann Awards and was also nominated for Best Costume Design. 

In 2007 he designed the world premiere of The Pitmen Painters by playwright Lee Hall for Live Theatre in Newcastle. It subsequently transferred to the National Theatre in London, where it ran initially at the Cottesloe Theatre, and then due to phenomenal audience demand moved into the Lyttelton, toured nationally, then opened on Broadway at the Friedman Theatre in conjunction with Manhattan Theatre Club. When it returned to the UK it had a further life in the West End at the Duchess Theatre. A separate production was also made for the Volkstheater in Vienna in a new German translation by Michael Raab.

Between 2007 and 2009 Gary worked as interior designer on the new Kestrel super yacht range constructed in Antalya, Turkey. Between 1999 and 2004 he worked as Art Director on major TV events for Channel 4, ITV, Endemol, and India’s Zee TV. From 2007 to 2011 he was Lecturer in Design with the School of Arts at the University of Kent where he ran a masters-level course in Scenography. 

Where he has been able to be a hands-on artist is in commissions by the National Trust to create site-specific work for historic sites. For Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire in 2015, McCann responded to two 18th century Follies, with, Scavenger, a giant crow in one, and Lost Property, an equally giant nest in the other. For Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk in 2018-19 he has been able to explore this stately home’s attics and cupboards, using his findings to create four cabinets of curiosity for visitors to investigate. Each piece of furniture is, itself, highly eccentric - amplifying the strangeness of the objects it houses. His work has been exhibited at the V&A museum in London three times - as part of the Collaborators, Transformation/Revelation and Make/Space exhibitions.

I chose to look at McCann due to his impressive ability to transform historical references into abstract, bold and contemporary sets. For my design I wish to incorporate the way he plays with levels and angles so dramatically. The distortion of the expected will be a key feature in my set, as I wish to make rooms with an illusion of depth.