Emerging Perspectives: Mayumi Ide-Bergeron

Mayumi Ide-Bergeron and cast in Mizushobai (The Water Trade), with headshot. Costume design by Mayumi Ide-Bergeron. Photo by A J Korkidakis.

Lately, Mayumi Ide-Bergeron has been thinking a lot about Tinkerbell. She’s assisting props designer Karine Cusson on a new production of Peter Pan the Musical, and they’ve been assigned “La Fée Clochette,” as the iconic sprite is known in French. She tells me she has rewatched all the Tinkerbell made-for-TV movies – who knew there were any – and she’s struck by Tink’s penchant for bricolage. “She tries to build things out of random objects to create something useful,” she explains. “She’ll create a car out of nuts and just build something out of trash.” As someone with a lifelong love of making things with her hands, Ide-Bergeron can relate.

Childhood summers spent with her grandmother in Bayfield, Ontario often included a family trip to the nearby Stratford Festival, and she credits a 2015 production of Taming of the Shrew with sparking the idea that she could combine her love of visual arts with theatre to make a career. After a couple of years at the Collège Lionel-Groulx in Sainte-Thérèse, she was admitted to the National Theatre School in Montreal. That’s where she lives now, working, somewhat unusually, in both French and English theatre. Doing the best job in the world, as she puts it: “I get to do craft and art. To create a magical piece with a bunch of new people?” Nothing better.

English and French theatre practice can be quite different, even down to how they handle props. Often, in English theatre, one designer is assigned both set and props, whereas in Québec, it’s more common for props to get their own, dedicated designer. “I’ve been called to do prop design because the set designer says specifically they don’t want to do ‘the little things’,” Ide-Bergeron says with a laugh. She designs set and costumes too, but she has an evident affinity for props. Even her student set design project at [National Theatre School] had a prop-ish quality. At first glance, it was a kitchen, but it was full of details that transformed in unexpected ways: a spice rack became a ladder, for example, and a pantry door turned into a bathroom. Since her schooldays, her eye for detail has only increased. She shares that recently, she was watching a hospital show on TV with her mom, and she noticed all the binders on the administrator’s office shelves were empty.

Ide-Bergeron is inspired by multi-disciplinary theatre designers like Cédric Lord, who runs Le Salon Particulier in Montreal, a combo of woodshop, rehearsal space, art gallery, and gathering spot. “My dream office would have prop storage, all the tools I need, a lot of everything,” she fantasizes. “I’m a maximalist for props and a minimalist in every other aspect of my life.”

That minimalism is no doubt influenced by her commitment to sustainable design. “I love talking about eco-design,” she enthuses, “I’m a city girl, but I feel the most alive when I’m in the forest, hiking.” At NTS, she took a class with sustainable practices leader Anne-Catherine Lebeau, which led to a job as a researcher at Lebeau’s organization Écoscéno, a company that consults with arts companies on how to reduce their environmental footprint. That experience opened her eyes to the many wasteful aspects of conventional theatre production, with its resource-intensive, short-term builds that get tossed in the dumpster the day the show closes. Now she thinks about environmental impact right from the beginning of her process, researching sustainable materials, breaking her design down into reusable structures, and trolling through thrift stores and markets “with a prop in mind, thinking, how can I do stuff with the things I already have?”

In the future, Ide-Bergeron would love to travel for work, and hopes to expand her practice to include circus and dance, more costume design, and in general, “learning as many things as I can.” She is currently looking into paper-making, for example, which she plans to pursue during an upcoming trip to Japan. She is travelling with her Siminovitch mentor, Sonoyo Nishikawa, who promises to introduce her to theatre-makers there. They’ll be accompanied by 2015 Siminovitch Laureate Annick Bissonnière, another connection made since Ide-Bergeron was named Protégé by Nishikawa.

She relishes the opportunity to spend more time with Nishikawa in Japan, and during a two-week residency in Banff this fall, offered by the Siminovitch Foundation in partnership with the National Arts Centre and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She recalls: “I remember seeing [Nishikawa’s] name in the credits for a show I’d been hired for, and thinking, that sounds like a Japanese name, and getting really excited. She was on my way home from the theatre; sometimes I’d give her rides, and we got to talk. When I found out she was nominated I was extremely excited for her, but I never thought she’d name me. I’m a lot less shy to contact her now. We went to a few plays, and now we’re planning our trip.”

People are a big part of what Ide-Bergeron loves about theatre. When asked how her collaborators might describe her, her thoughts circle back to Tinkerbell. “I’m good at problem-solving with the means that I have,” she muses, “but I like learning new things. I’m always tinkering.”

Mayumi Ide-Bergeron was selected as Siminovitch Theatre Foundation Protégé by 2024 Laureate Sonoyo Nishikawa.

Vanessa Porteous is a theatre artist, filmmaker, and writer based in Calgary. From 2018 to 2021 she was Jury Chair for the Siminovitch Theatre Foundation prize.

Mizushōbai (The Water Trade) at the Segal Centre Studio Space
Photo: A J Korkidakis

Playwright: Julie Tamiko Manning
Director: Yvette Nolan
Set Designer: Jawong Kang
Costume Designer: Mayumi Ide-Bergeron
Lighting Designer: Zoë Roux
Sound & Composition: Christine Lee
Graphic Design: A J Korkidakis

Cast: Yoshie Bancroft, Hanako Brierley, Brenda Kamino, Katelyn Morishita, Dawn Obokata

Emerging Perspectives: Hina Nishioka

Actors perform in a neon-lit nightclub-inspired set during Measure for Measure at Bard on the Beach Studio Theatre (2024), featuring performers in eclectic costumes with a live DJ and surreal props. Photo by Tim Matheson.

Hina Nishioka is a long way from the Pacific Ocean.

As an aspiring ballet dancer in Japan; a student the University of Victoria where she turned to theatre after a knee injury; as staff on a cruise ship, seeing moving stage lights for the first time; or, these days, living and working in Vancouver, Nishioka has always relied on the ocean to bring her serenity and joy. But she’s spending this summer on the shores of Lake Ontario where she’s got a job as an assistant lighting designer at the prestigious Shaw Festival. No whales for miles.

Still, the gig is a good one, soaking up wisdom from renowned lighting designers like Bonnie Beecher and Kevin Lamotte. How to talk to directors for example, or how to “trust the process and let’s move on. The detail will come”, as Nishioka puts it, quoting Lamotte admiringly.

Nishioka thinks a lot about light. When she first came to Canada, she remembers fumbling around interior spaces, looking for more brightness. In Japan, she says, “we have ceiling lights in all the rooms.” Her interest encompasses rock shows, dance, film, and commercial events, as well as theatre. “Lighting design is almost DJ’ing for the music,” she marvels, recalling her internship with designer Gigi Pedron, who tours with Queens of the Stone Age. “It changes the music, for sure.”

Lighting design can be mysterious even for theatre insiders, who might glimpse the designer for the first time at a run-through, scribbling esoteric diagrams into a tablet. After hanging what can be hundreds of lights with the crew, the designer’s true artistry begins. They often work late into the night, selecting the instruments required for each cue, determining intensity and fade timings, mixing colour on a digital palette, and programming complex live moves. The process is technical and time pressure can be extreme, yet it’s also instinctive and spontaneous, as they paint the story of the show in light.

Lighting supports the narrative in many ways, says Nishioka. It can be realistic, moving us from a sun-filled room to a moonlit glade. Or it can reach into metaphor, using saturated colour, rhythm, and contrast to lift a moment beyond the here and now. Lately, Nishioka has been exploring colour theory, especially the effect of colour on emotions. She studies watercolour for its endless variations of shade, tone, and tint, and observes how light is used compositionally in representational paintings too. Bright light may make a central character the focal point, she has noticed, but someone in the background might also be subtly highlighted. “And I don’t want to lose that background character,” she says, “because that might be something important in a later scene. I try to light everything!” she laughs, “Only, in different ways…”

Nishioka’s favourite part of working in theatre are the conversations, “seeing rehearsals, and secretly listening.” Maybe because of her background in dance, timing is very important to her. Nothing is more satisfying than when a cue completes on the exact word she was aiming for.

As an early-career artist, Nishioka knows all about financial uncertainty. The year she graduated, the pandemic shut down live performance for two seasons. She pivoted to film and TV and continues to work as a programmer in media, live music, and recently, corporate events, to subsidize the low wages in theatre. Working across so many media as both a programmer and designer gives her a unique perspective – and an edge. “I have more technology knowledge to help designers, and myself,” she explains, “to achieve what I want to do in lighting design, doing complicated sequences.”

Nishioka dreams of one day lighting Classical ballet. After all, that’s where she started, and now that she’s developed an eye for design and an appreciation of story — all those theatrical conversations — “I’d love to try doing Swan Lake or something.”

For now, she finds inspiration in unexpected places. She likes watching animé, especially the work of the great Hayao Miyazaki. “He is so mindful about where the light is coming from,” she marvels, “he has beautiful shadows (…) which he uses for emotional depiction. You can see it on the character’s face when the emotion is changing.” In contrast she cites the animé show  Mononoke, “completely opposite for my aesthetic,” but stimulating in its colourful, organized chaos.

But Nishioka seems to gain the most inspiration from nature. “One thing that is completely different in Japan is the moon,” she says. “It is whiter in Canada. We always think of the moon as yellow in Japan.”

One thing is certain. Wherever she may have started, and wherever she’s going next, Hina Nishioka looks at the whole world with eyes wide open to the light.

Hina Nishioka is a 2024 recipient of the Siminovitch Theatre Foundation’s inaugural Emerging Artist Grant.

Vanessa Porteous is a theatre artist, filmmaker, and writer based in Calgary. From 2018 to 2021 she was Jury Chair of the Siminovitch Prize.

Photograph: Measure for Measure at Bard on the Beach Studio Theatre (2024), photographer Tim Matheson; director Jivesh Parasram; set Ryan Cormack; costume Alaia Hamar; lighting Hina Nishioka; performers Scott Bellis, Leslie dos Remedios, and Craig Erickson.