Desmond Heeley designs and production files

circa 1880s-2016 [bulk 1955-2014]

Desmond Heeley was born in England on June 1, 1931. He was adopted and raised in the English Midlands. As a child, he created displays for the windows of his family's store. In 1948, he became an apprentice designer at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company (now the Royal Shakespeare Theatre), where he worked with director Peter Brook. He went on to design sets and costumes at the Sadler Wells Theatre in London, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, and England's National Theatre. Internationally, he has designed for the Vienna State Opera; Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival Theater; the National Ballet of Canada; the Australian Ballet: the Lyric Opera of Chicago; the Stuttgart Ballet; and La Scala in Milan. Heeley designed productions of Brigadoon and South Pacific for the New York Metropolitan Opera and Theme and Variations for the American Ballet Theatre. On Broadway, he won three Tony Awards for the 1968 production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (one award each for costume and set) and the 2011 production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Other Broadway productions he worked on include Amadeus and The Snow Maiden.

Heeley collaborated with playwrights, directors, and choreographers such as Tom Stoppard, Peter Hall, Brian Bedford, Joe Orton, John Cranko, Graham Greene, Gian Carlo Menotti, Michael Langham, and Tyrone Guthrie. His costumes have been worn by actors and dancers including Vivien Leigh, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, Placido Domingo, Beverly Sills, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, and Judi Dench. He was known as a skilled painter and an inventive, detail-oriented designer who transformed mundane materials and found objects into glitteringly ornate environments and lushly elegant costumes. Heeley often used lighting and reflective elements to great dramatic effect.

Apart from his paid performing arts work, Heeley also painted as a hobby throughout his life. Later in his career, Heeley taught theater design at New York University's Tisch School for the Arts. His partner, Lance Mulcahy (1931-1995), was an Australian-born musical theater composer who worked on Broadway. Heeley died on June 10, 2016 in New York City.