Scenic and costume designer Richard Hudson is the winner of the Robert L. B. Tobin Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatrical Design, presented by TDF, the not-for-profit service organization for the performing arts, at the Irene Sharaff Awards in New York City on April 5, 2024.
Born in Zimbabwe and trained at Wimbledon School of Art, Hudson has designed operas for Glyndebourne, Covent Garden, The Metropolitan Opera in New York, Teatro alla Scala, Maggio Musicale Florence, English National Opera, Scottish Opera, Kent Opera, Opera North, Wiener Staatsoper, Munich, Chicago, Copenhagen, Athens, Bregenz, Amsterdam, Zurich, Barcelona, Madrid, Brussels, Houston, Washington, Venice, Pesaro and Rome. He has also designed for the Aldeburgh Festival, The Royal Ballet, Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Royal Court, Almeida and the Young Vic. In 1988, he won an Olivier Award for the Jonathan Miller season at the Old Vic.
Hudson's set designs for Disney’s The Lion King have won him numerous awards including a Tony in 1998. He is a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI). In 2003, he won The Gold Medal for Set Design at the Prague Quadrennial and in 2005 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Surrey. Recent work includes Leopoldstadt (West End and Broadway), La Bohème, Gianni Schicchi (Greek National Opera), The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty (American Ballet Theatre), Romeo and Juliet (Bolshoi Ballet), Four Seasons, La Bayadère Le Coq D’or, and Raymonda (The Royal Danish Ballet), Das Rhinegold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung (Teatro Massimo, Palermo), Versailles (Donmar Warehouse), La Bohème (Bologna), Peter Gynt (National Theatre), Morgen und Abend (Royal Opera, Covent Garden and Deutsche Oper, Berlin) and Ballo in Maschera (Verdi Festival, Parma).
Live Design chats with Hudson on the eve of his award:
Live Design: What got you interested in scenic design, and what is your education and career path in a nutshell?
Richard Hudson: I was born and brought up on a farm in Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) in Africa. My godfather built me a puppet theatre when I was a little boy, and at the age of seven I was sent to a boarding school in the nearest town. Drama played a big part in both schools I attended (everything from Shakespeare to Gilbert and Sullivan), but I had no experience of professional theatre, ballet or opera until I went to England at 18 to attend Art School. While completing a Foundation Course in Leeds I discovered that one could actually train to be a stage designer and I successfully applied for the three year course at Wimbledon School of Art.
LD: Are there designers or visual artists who served as mentors or inspiration?
RH: On graduation I started assisting Nicholas Georgiadis, a Greek designer who lived in London, who originally trained as an architect in New York, and who principally designed ballets for Rudolph Nureyev and Kenneth MacMillan, and Yolanda Sonnabend, a fellow Zimbabwean. I also helped build costumes and props, tried my hand at scene painting, dyeing, and screen printing while designing small fringe productions and student operas in London and Manchester.
My first big break came from an invitation from the director Jonathan Miller to design a season of seven plays at The Old Vic Theatre. He introduced me to the work of contemporary European designers like Achim Freyer, Axel Manthey and Yannis Kokkos, and the directors Peter Stein, Ruth Berghaus and Giorgio Strehler, amongst many others.
LD: How does a designer such as yourself develop a signature style — or does one?
RH: When I started my career I was very aware that I hadn’t really found my own style and this was something that was quite slow to develop. It came with practice and experience, a process of editing and deciding what was important and what not. I've always believed that one should only put what is essential on stage, enough information to tell the story and support the drama. A few years ago, Santo Loquasto paid me the very great compliment of saying I have a very distinctive ‘hand.'
LD: How do you approach a new project in terms of research and process?
RH: Every project starts with conversations with the director or choreographer and this is then supported by extensive research and background reading. For each new production I keep a file of relevant images, colors, textures and inspiration. I also start a sketch book for preliminary drawings and notes.
LD: Do you have a preference re: opera/dance/plays/musicals?
RH: One of the joys of what I do is the immense variety — every project is unique, from a single performer in a fringe venue to a five-act opera with seven hundred costumes. I don’t have a preference for any particular genre, and I relish working in different venues with new teams of collaborators, especially in different countries and cultures from which there is always so much to learn and appreciate.
LD: What advice would you give to young designers entering the field today?
RH: There is a tendency nowadays to expect instant success or notoriety because of the internet and social media. My career didn’t really take off until my late thirties and I’m thankful for the years of quietly learning the ropes and honing my craft. My work is very firmly based on handmade scale models and hand drawn sketches and renderings. The technical resources available to young designers now are not something I have really explored. It is a very different world to when I was young. What I do think is important is to accept every challenge and never say no to a new experience. You learn just as much from bad work as good, and the instinct to distinguish one from the other.
Sets & Costumes: Richard Hudson (Tamerlano)
Credits for photos in slide show: Sets & Costumes by Richard Hudson
Götterdammerung, Richard Wagner, Teatro Massimo, Palermo, 2015-16, Photo by Franco Lanino
La Forza del Destino, Giuseppe Verdi, La Monnaie, Brussels, 2008, Photo by Bernd Uhlig
Tamerlano, George Frederick Handel, Teatro Real Madrid, 2008, Photo by Javier del Real
The Rake’s Progress, Igor Stravinsky, Lyric Opera Chicago 1992