Susan Benson + Camellia Koo

CAMELLIA KOO: How did you get your start in the industry?

SUSAN BENSON: Both my mother and grandmother were in the theatre. I grew up in that atmosphere and it was always something that I wanted to be a part of. In the early 20th century, my grandmother trained for what was then “grand opera.” She had a beautiful voice but it was not considered a good profession for a young woman to enter; however, with the First World War attitudes changed, and because my grandfather had been gassed in the war, she became the breadwinner. She ended up performing musical comedy in the West End, not opera. My mother acted, taught and directed in the UK and in Canada when we first emigrated here; much of my knowledge of theatre came from her. I studied fine arts in the UK then went into theatre, which was my main focus at that time. In the early 1970s, I got my start in opera design when I went to the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois, where I was the resident designer for the theatre, dance and opera programs. I returned to Canada in 1974 and started my design history with the Stratford Festival with two operas at what was then called the Third Stage: Menotti’s The Medium, starring Maureen Forrester, and The Summoning of Everyman, a new Canadian opera. It was after working with Brian Macdonald and Lotfi Mansouri in the 1980s that the focus of much of my design work became opera.

My introduction into theatre also came from my