For almost 40 years, Howard Berry has been one of the most prolific members of the Peterborough Theatre Guild as the man behind the costume designs featured in many of the company’s most successful shows.
With a lifelong love for design and colour, a celebration of Howard’s costume work at the Guild — as well as his work a fashion designer and painter — is being featured at The Mount Community Centre this weekend in a three-day event titled “Howard Berry’s Passion for Colour: A Design Retrospective”.
“Colour has always been my only vital energy of life,” Howard says. “I was just born this crazy creative person. My mother would say that by three years of age, if she went and changed and put something on and came out and I didn’t like something, I’d scream and push. She thought it was the colour. She’d go and change and I’d be fine. By three or four, she’d take me shopping for clothes because it’d save a lot of angst.”
Featuring 26 of Howard’s most memorable costumes from the Peterborough Theatre Guild, 22 original paintings, original custom clothes designed privately by Howard, photo displays, Powerpoint presentations and more, Howard Berry’s Passion for Colour is a multimedia display that highlights the many aspects of Howard’s long career in design. Along with special events being held nightly and general viewing during the day, proceeds from the show are going to the Mount.
“Jane Werger called me in April of last year and said that she had considered doing an event,” Howard explains. “She said that the Theatre Guild had just had their 50th anniversary and she didn’t understand why they didn’t do anything to include the costumes I’ve designed for nearly forty years. That was fine by me because it’s not my style. I don’t like going around and tooting any horns. I like to stay quietly in the background and let the stuff I do be out front.
“But finally we agreed to do something, and she and I went to a couple of venues to see about holding something, and they were either not interested or the space was not appropriate. So suddenly The Mount came into our mind, and it was perfect. So I said ‘Why don’t we do a fundraiser for the Mount?’ So this became the project.”
Howard explains his eye for design and fashion started at a very early age.
“All my life I’ve been interested in design,” he says. “My father bought me my first sewing machine at the age of five. It was a little hand-cranked one. By age eight, I had a regular Singer machine and was making clothes for my mother and my sister.”
However, when Howard went to pursue fashion design as a student in the mid 1950s, he hit a bizarre stumbling block.
“When I was in high school, the school arranged for me to go to Ryerson to be interviewed to enroll in their design program,” Howard recalls. “When I got there, the woman at Ryerson said ‘Oh, you’re a man! We can’t have a man in the course. There are no men designers.’ I said ‘Who’s Christian Dior?’ She said ‘Well, that’s Europe. We don’t have men designers here.’
“So I had traveled by bus from Huntsville to Toronto all by myself for nothing. But I remembered that there were plenty of designers on Bloor Street. So I walked up to Bloor Street and went into a place owned by a designer named Ritchie Mosher and told him what had happened. Ritchie said ‘Oh, give me a break! You don’t want to go there — what you want to do is go to Galasso.'”
Howard signed up for a three-year course with the prestigious private design school run by Toronto-based designer Galasso, where Howard honed his talents. Howard wasn’t the only man under Galasso’s training, who took in 10 students a year. But upon graduating, Howard had some more choices to make.
“Having graduated, my father gave me a choice,” Howard recalls. “He said he’d send me to Paris to work as an apprentice and pay my way, or he’d set me up in a shop. So when you’re young and think you’re smart, I wondered why I’d need to go to Paris. So we opened a shop in Toronto on Avenue Road and we lasted about three years.
“So that has been my career all my life. All my life, I’ve done custom-made ladies clothing.”
Although Howard as worked at many jobs throughout his life, he has always returned to fashion as his main calling. Not only did he operate a shop in Toronto, but also one in St. Catherines where he was involved in designing costumes for the early days of the Shaw Festival. Upon relocating to Peterborough in the 1970s, Howard quickly found his way to the Peterborough Theatre Guild designing costumes for a production of Oliver!.
“They must have realized I was something crazy,” Howard says. “On opening night of Oliver, they didn’t like one of the costumes from the rehearsal. So I ran up to wardrobe and grabbed something, and then I was downstairs on the floor, cutting the hem and cutting the neck and completely redoing the costume before they went on stage.”
With his costumes spanning decades at the Guild, the costume rooms at the theatre are filled with Howard’s designs. Often the dresses will be recycled and rented for different productions. However, Howard can remember what show each dress was for, and often exactly who wore the costume.
“I love the period shows, like A Doll’s House and The Heiress and shows like that,” Howard says. “I love researching the period and trying to accomplish that. Fabrics that were used then are not the fabrics that are used now. So you need to come up with a fabric that looks right. Sometimes I have to dye the costumes in a laundry tub to get the colour I want.
“But I also must say I love the big crazy musicals. The Mikado was spectacular to do. La Cage aux Folles was a designer’s dream for colour. We have a team of ladies at the Guild who always sew with me when we do a show. We take over the upstairs, and it took ten ladies each one month to make each individual robe for La Cage aux Folles. That was a very exciting time.”
But possibly one of Howard’s most outstanding productions was in 2015 when he took on both costumes and set design for the Guild’s outstanding production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats.
“Cats was a whole other story,” Howard recalls. “It was a biggie. I did sets and costumes for that. But the thing was that, for Cats, you didn’t just make a costume. A cat’s head matches its body, so I worked with Carol Jones who was in charge of makeup at the time, and we went through catalogues to order wigs that would be the right colour to match the makeup and costume.
“Then I had a friend come in who styled each wig to get the character of each cat. Then when it came to the makeup, we had to match that in the face. So we had to make the costume to match everything else. That was a lot of fun. We had a huge team of workers on that. We had twelve ladies doing costumes, and another eight ladies doing hair and makeup every night.”
All the events for “Howard Berry’s Passion for Colour: A Design Retrospective” take place at The Mount Community Centre (1545 Monaghan Rd., Peterborough). Tickets for the special events are available online (links provided below) or at Happenstance Books & Yarn (44 Queen St., Lakefield, 705-652-7535), Fabricland (1154 Chemong Rd., Peterborough, 705-748-4985), Grainger’s Cleaners (885 Lansdowne St W., Peterborough, 705-742-3831), and Brant Basics (296 George St. N., Peterborough, 705-748-2291).
First, on Friday, May 26th, there will be a Wine and Chocolate tasting event featuring musical performances by Warren Chambers and Rick Hiltz. The event takes place from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. with five pairings served every 15 minutes. Tickets are $20, available online or at one of the ticket locations listed above.
On Saturday, May 27th, there will be a tribute to Cats in the Mount auditorium with members of the original cast donning their original costumes and wigs and entertaining attendees from 7:30 until 9:30 p.m. The event costs $20 and will have food and drink samples provided by The Publican House and SKH Catering. Tickets are $20, available online or at one of the ticket locations listed above.
On Sunday, May 28th, there will be a “Sweet & Savoury Sunday” in the Mount auditorium from 12 to 2 p.m. featuring chamber music by Hiltz and Company and food donated by The Kawartha Butter Tart Factory, Black Honey, The Magic Rolling Pin, and Chasing the Cheese. Tickets are $15, available online or at one of the ticket locations listed above.
For those that are unable to attend the special events, public viewing of the exhibit is available on Saturday, May 27th from 10 a.m. and noon and from 2 to 4 p.m. and then again on Sunday, May 28th from 2 to 4 p.m. The suggested donation at the door is $5, with all proceeds going to The Mount.
“What I’m trying to create is an event where people walk in and are amazed,” Howard says. “It’s a passion for colour. I’m staging it so, at the moment they walk into the foyer to buy their ticket, there will be a colour behind the ticket seller. The La Cage cloaks will be hanging on the open doors, and when they walk through I want everything to just be a mass of colour. I want the whole thing to just be over the top.”
I want everything to just be a mass of colour. I want the whole thing to just be over the top.
Howard will be at the exhibit to meet guests and talk about his decades in design and the theatre. Howard is a wonderful storyteller, and his memories are witty and often hilarious. He could fill a book of tales from designing costumes for the Guild alone.
But what is Howard’s next project? That’s a little less clear.
“There was a point where I was doing three or four shows a year, but I’m doing less now,” Howard admits. “You need to be careful because it can become your whole life. It’s fun, until you realize you need something else.
“I don’t know if I would do another big musical. They are a lot of work. I might, if the temptation came and the right one was offered. There are about two I’d like to do. I’d love to do Mamma Mia. I want to design those crazy jumpsuits they wore. I think that’d be fabulous. I’d also love to do Pirates of Penzance. I think that would be a hoot.”
Howard Berry’s Passion for Colour is a tribute to one of the true treasures in our theatre community. For more information, visit www.howardspassionforcolour.com.
