In this 2023 extended interview British theatre designer Tom Pye talks about his career in dance with Jonathan Gray, dance writer and former editor of Dancing Times magazine, who was also a fellow student with him at Wimbledon School of Art during the late 1980s. Pye talks about his work on The Royal Ballet’s new production of Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella in 2023, and how a thorough understanding of the construction of ballet costume has helped him find some surprising solutions to designing authentic period costumes for television.
Born in Lincoln in 1968, Tom Pye studied for a BA Hons in Theatre Design at Wimbledon School of Art from 1986 until 1989. His best-known work as a designer includes the BBC television series Gentleman Jack, and the award-winning stage productions of My Friend Totoro and Paddington The Musical, as well as West End productions of Medea, Brokeback Mountain and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In opera, he has worked with the director Deborah Warner on productions of The Turn of the Screw, Death in Venice and Eugene Onegin, as well as English National Opera’s acclaimed production of Akhnaten directed by Phelim McDermott. For ballet, Pye has worked closely with the choreographer Yuri Possokhov on a production of The Seagull for the Bolshoi Ballet, as well as Anna Karenina, Eugene Onegin and The Nutcracker in the USA. For The Royal Ballet, he designed the sets for the new production of Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella in 2023.
","author_name":"Voices of British Ballet"}