Beloved Peterborough costume designer and artist Howard Berry passed away on Thursday (March 3) in his 84th year.
Berry, who designed costumes for the Peterborough Theatre Guild for almost 40 years, had a lifelong passion for colour and design.
“I was just born this crazy creative person,” he told kawarthaNOW in a 2017 interview, in advance of a three-day retrospective of his work at The Mount Community Centre. “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.”
Born in Toronto and raised in Huntsville, Berry returned to Toronto in 1956 to enrol in Ryerson’s fashion design program. After they refused to admit him because he was a man, he enrolled in a three-year course at a private design school run by Toronto designer Galasso.
After he graduated in 1959, his father offered to either send him to Paris to work as an apprentice or help him set up his own design shop. For three years, he designed custom-made clothing from his shop on Avenue Road in Toronto.
After a series of other jobs, including one designing costumes for the early days of the Shaw Festival, in 1977 he moved to the Peterborough area. He eventually opened Howard Berry Designs in Charlotte Mews and, in 1980, began designing costumes for the Peterborough Theatre Guild.
“I will never forget going over to the Theatre Guild shortly after I arrived in Canada,” writes playwright Robert Ainsworth in a Peterborough Theatre Guild tribute to Berry. “The production was Oliver, directed by Gillian Wilson. I was so impressed with the production that I had to go backstage to see the behind scenes of this amazing local theatre.”
“The first person I met was the costume designer, Howard, who was altering the costume of a cast member, and boy did he know what he was doing! He was in charge and had everyone hopping. He was loud, direct and totally dedicated to his art. I have to say I was actually a little star stuck by his persona. That was 1982, and anyone who knows Howard will agree that dedication to his art never waned.”
“Over the years I got to know Howard’s work. I would chat to actors backstage before the production. When the curtain opened and those actors walked onstage they were totally transformed into their characters by Howard’s amazing costumes. You could walk into the theatre and know immediately who had dressed the set. The audience would be transported to nineteenth century France or fourteenth century Italy.”
“Howard was known to research not only what people wore in that country in that time period, but what materials were used, even down to the exact buttons and gloves. Much more than that was the man we all loved. Howard was a beautiful, talented man who always had a smile on his face.”
One of Berry’s final accomplishments for the stage was designing both the costumes and the set for the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s acclaimed 2015 production of of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats.
“For Cats, you didn’t just make a costume.” Berry recalled in his 2017 interview with kawarthaNOW. “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,” Berry said. “That 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.”
The Eastern Ontario Drama League recognized Berry’s talents with a set design award in 1990, a best visual presentation award in 2008, and a costume design award in 2009. In 2009, Theatre Ontario also recognized Berry’s talents with a costume design award. In 2015, he and the cast and crew of the production of Twelfth Night received a cultural betterment award from the City of Peterborough. In 2018, Berry was inducted into the Peterborough Pathway of Fame.
According to the Peterborough Theatre Guild, a celebration of Berry’s life will be announced at a future date in the spring.
“When I pass I don’t want a big funeral,” Berry told Peterborough This Week in a 2017 interview. “I want a party at The Guild with six bottles of Scotch and someone singing ‘I Did It My Way.'”
