Blyth Festival 2024: Amanda Wong designs with an ethical eye
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
For her first season at the Blyth Festival, Amanda Wong will be bringing her compassionate approach to costuming and eye for sustainable design to town. The Toronto-based multi-hyphenate artist will be working out the wardrobe for not one, but two, of this season’s brand new plays - Mark Crawford’s The Golden Anniversaries and Birgitte Solem’s Resort to Murder.
When she got the call from Artistic Director Gil Garratt, asking her to work on these two plays as part of the Festival’s 50th anniversary, she jumped at the chance. “He gave me a little summary of both the shows, and they both just sounded like so much fun, for different reasons. The Golden Anniversaries is so funny, and so touching, in the way that Mark Crawford is brilliant at creating. I love the way he writes - it’s poignant, but still so fun. And it’s easy to fall in love with his characters and understand their points of view, without sacrificing the opportunity to talk through some bigger themes in life for the audience. Resort to Murder is fun in a different way. I think there’s some characters in there we’ve all seen before, and I think there’s some fun plot twists. The overall world of the murder mystery is always a fun one, so I feel like I’ve struck gold with the shows I’ve been offered.”
An added bonus to the gig is that Wong will get to work with her partner, Lyon Smith, which is an unusual opportunity. Smith is a Festival sound designer who will be working on The Farm Show: Then and Now out on The Harvest Stage this summer, and will also be joining Wong as part of the creative team building the world of The Golden Anniversaries.
Wong’s first encounter with Blyth came early on in her relationship with Smith. “He was designing there, and I came up to see him working at the Festival. I just found the town to be so charming, and the community around the theatre to be very alive. It’s such a different pace than so much of what I see and work on in the city. It was really lovely.”
These two plays are very different in tone and structure, but that doesn’t change Wong’s design process. She approaches all scripts the same way - as openly as possible. She sets aside all preconceived notions about what the show could, or should be. “Usually, there’s a character in there that I either kind of fall in love with, or kind of breaks my heart. That’s my first entrance into the world. Empathizing with those people and caring for those people makes them much more clear to me. And that’s my first step in. Then all the other characters in relation to those characters - I develop a real caring for or I identify with, maybe. And then everything becomes more clear.” Wong and the director then decide on what they agree and on what they don’t agree. “It’s always a fun dance when that happens,” she mused.
Once a consensus is reached, Wong begins collaborating with the actors for whom she’s designing, which is one of her favourite parts. “Some people you just click with. Costumes are such a personal design element. If they’re wearing something that’s holding them back, it’s like clipping their wings. But if you find a way to collaborate with each other, and the actors feel really taken care of and comfortable, it really serves the show… the relationship you create is so beautiful.”
There are three things that Wong wants in a good costume. One - It has to serve the show, and be correct for the character. “Sometimes people want to wear something that’s more fancy or flattering than the character they’re playing, and that gets in the way.” Two - It should be sustainable. “Ask ‘did we create more harm in the world by supporting a company that takes advantage of so many people?’ If it’s not bought off Amazon, and wasn’t created from fast fashion - that’s a big piece for my design process, personally.” Three - It should hold up through the whole run of the show. “If you choose the wrong materials, and they rip on the second night, you’ve got 12 hours to replace or repair. That’s an unfortunate feeling for the whole team.”
Once her part is done, Wong relishes getting to watch the whole piece in action. “When the whole world comes together, and there’s harmony between departments - set, costumes, lighting, the right props, the right scenic paint treatments, and then direction and all the acting - everything coming together in harmony and fitting together just so… the audience gets this beautiful experience from it, or super enjoyable, or heart-wrenching experience. I love when things sync up well. It’s like there couldn’t have been any other choices, because that’s how it’s supposed to be.”