The Stage Is All the World: The Theatrical Designs of Tanya Moiseiwitsch

April 14–June 12, 1994

With over 100 sketches, models, costumes, notebooks, and masks, The Stage Is All the World celebrated the life and work of noted theatrical designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch.

Moiseiwitsch spent her childhood in the company of great men—whether it was her father Benno Moiseiwitsch, the great pianist, his colleague, Mark Hambourg, or her step-father John Drinkwater, noted Shakespearean expert. It was in this environment that Tanya discovered and nurtured her talent as a designer of sets, props, and costumes for the stage, a calling that would fill the next fifty years with masterpieces of engineering, creativity, ingenuity, and economy.

Her works include sets for Cambridge’s Oxford Theater, in its productions of The Merchant of Venice and Sweeny Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street; Cyrano de Bergerac at London’s New Theater, The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford—upon—Avon’s monumental production of Shakespeare’s History Cycle (Richard II; Henry IV Parts I and II; Henry V); Richard III and The Winter’s Tale for Canada’s Stratford Festival; The House of Atreus for the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis; and the Phaedra Britannica at the Old Vic in London.

Designs for each of these and many other shows were part of a traveling exhibition organized by the Smart Museum, the Parnassus Foundation, and the Stratford Shakespearean Festival Foundation of Canada.

Curator: Former Smart Museum director Teri J. Edelstein.

Organized by the Smart Museum, the Parnassus Foundation, and the Stratford Shakespearean Festival Foundation of Canada, the exhibition tour included: Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto; Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota; and Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio.