Blyth Festival 2025: Mulcahy brings a painterly approach to Quiet in the Land
BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN
Set designer Sean Mulcahy is coming to the Blyth Festival for the first time this summer and before him sits a monumental task, designing the world of Quiet in the Land, Anne Chislett’s masterpiece that was born at the Blyth Festival and still, obviously, holds a special place in the heart of the community.
While much of Mulcahy’s work focuses on theatre - specifically costume and set design - he also works in production design for print and media. He says he’s often been described as a “painterly” designer and, in many ways, that’s no surprise. He did some of his studying under a fine art painter and that shows through in his work.
However, in regards to the show at hand, he’s not the first one to cite John Ferguson, the set designer on the premiere of Quiet in the Land, as a big influence on his career. To be able to pick up where he left off with this show, he said, is a very exciting prospect.
As a young person interested in theatre, Mulcahy said he would watch shows and become fascinated with the parts of the show that weren’t moving or speaking, noticing the sets and the lights and everything else that created its own little world there up on the stage.
When he headed to York University to study theatre, he was introduced to all aspects of theatre and, in his second year, he moved to the set design stream of his education, after missing the real hands-on aspect of design that work can provide. Doing his part and bringing that level of practical art to the stage to aid the work of the performers has been especially rewarding to someone as artistically-minded as Mulcahy, he said.
And this all came about at a time that Mulcahy didn’t necessarily know it was an option. He had an eye for the artistic, but had an interest in theatre. It wasn’t until he attended university and learned about all of the work that goes into a production that he discovered how he could apply his talents to the world of Canadian theatre in a very real way. He didn’t know it was even an option until that first year of university and now, after more than 25 years, the rest, as they say, is history.
Since then, he has worked for some of Canada’s biggest theatres, including Theatre Aquarius, Drayton Entertainment, the Shaw Festival, the Stratford Festival, the Obsidian Theatre Company, the Grand Theatre, Canadian Stage, the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company and the Neptune Theatre, winning several awards along the way. Meanwhile, on the production design side of things, he has plied his trade for clients like The Bay, The Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Loblaw and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, among others.
He has also taught in his spare time, bringing the theatre professionals of tomorrow along at Toronto Metropolitan University, Dalhousie University, the Fountain School of the Performing Arts and the Chang School for Continuing Education
And Mulcahy has an interesting wrinkle to tackle for this show with it being outdoors at the Festival’s Harvest Stage under the watchful eye of director and Festival Associate Artistic Director Severn Thompson, though, again, this is not new for him. He says he has designed for about eight or nine shows that have been performed outdoors and that working with the natural environment brings about its own set of challenges, as well as some exciting opportunities.
However, at the core of this show are two homes and the key is to make each of them feel different and lived-in and representative of the families inhabiting them, especially when they are two very different families.