Ensemble Bios

Peter Hartwell

Peter Hartwell returns to the Shaw Festival to design sets and costumes for John Guare’s His Girl Friday.

Other Shaw Festival credits include designer for The Cherry Orchard, Serious Money, The Devil’s Disciple, The Entertainer, An Inspector Calls, A Month in the Country, Summer and Smoke (set), The Crucible (set), Rosmersholm, Gypsy (set), Man and Superman, Misalliance, Happy End (2003/2005), Six Characters in Search of An Author (2000/2001), Heartbreak House (set), A Foggy Day(set), The Madras House (set), Waterloo (set), Passion, Poison and Petrifaction, Brothers In Arms, The Seagull, The Two Mrs Carrolls (set), The Devil’s Disciple (1996/2009), Marsh Hay; The Voice of the Turtle, Waste,Too True To Be Good, Eden End and Ten Minute Alibi.

Peter has designed for theatres across Canada, the United States, and abroad. He has designed in England’s West End as well as at the English National Opera, the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court Theatre, Newcastle Playhouse, Leeds Playhouse, Liverpool Playhouse, Germany’s Stadt Theatre, Heilbronn, and at the Sydney Theatre Company in Sydney, Australia. In the U.S., Peter has designed on Broadway as well as at the New York Shakespeare Festival, The Guthrie, the Mark Taper Forum, Steppenwolf Theatre, and the Folger Theatre. In Canada, he has designed for Stratford Festival, Soulpepper, the Canadian Stage Company, Toronto Free Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Alberta Theatre Projects, the Belfry Theatre, The Grand Theatre, Theatre Aquarius and Thousand Islands Playhouse.

Selected design credits include Richard III, King of Thieves, Fuente Ovejuna, Shakespeare’s Will, The Glass Menagerie, The Threepenny Opera, Medea, Inherit the Wind, Good Mother, Orpheus Descending, Twelfth Night (sets) (Stratford Shakespeare Festival); Medea (Manitoba Theatre Centre/Mirvish Productions); Olympia, Hamlet, Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Soulpepper Theatre Company); Counsellor-At-Law, Saint Joan (Theatre Calgary); The Turn of the Screw, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (The Grand Theatre); Boy Gets Girl, The Beard of Avon (Canadian Stage Company); King Lear and Cloud Nine (Royal Court Theatre); Top Girls (set), Aunt Dan and Lemon (set), Rat in the Skull, Serious Money (Royal Court Theatre and New York Public Theatre); Our Country’s Good, The Recruiting Officer (Royal Court Theatre’s touring production); the Chicago and Off-Broadway productions of Unidentified Human Remains; The Country Wife (Royal Shakespeare Company).

Peter received his theatre design training at Sadler’s Wells Opera Theatre Design Course. He hails from Dundas, Ontario.