Peter Cazalet

Peter Cazalet (1934-). Highly regarded and influential designer of costumes and sets for opera, ballet and theatre.

Biography

Born in 1934 in a small Zambian mining town.

Peter Cazalet retired to Sedgefield in 2009.

Youth

Training

He originally trained as an architect at the University of Cape Town. It was while studying for his degree in Architecture that he was exposed to the graceful and strenuous discipline through the University Ballet School.

Career

The Sadler Wells Ballet Company was the first of many dance companies he danced with until in 1960, at age 26, he found his niche in the Western Theatre Ballet based in Bristol. He gained recognition locally and overseas as a dancer, spending 13 years in the UK, finally as principal dancer for the Scottish Ballet.

To supplement a meager pay in those days, Peter dabbled with designing ballet sets, unorthodox choreography and drawing cartoons for Dance and Dancers. However, on a tour to Scandanavia he was fortuitously asked to design some costumes and sets for a production back in the UK and this gave him opportunity to express his innate artistry in a new way.

When a broken back ended his dancing career, he began designing ballets and returned to Cape Town in the 1971 to work for CAPAB and later Artscape as a freelance designer and later head of design. In the time he designed approximately 30 ballets, 25 operas and many plays. After 1994 he gradually began working internationally as well.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Among his major productions have been the many of the Shakespeare productions done by CAPAB, Maynardville and (in 2005) the Baxter Theatre. **As You Like It, Maynardville, 1984,

He has designed sets and/or costumes for productions such as Aap in die Mou, Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, Diepe Grond, Falstaff, Die Jogger, Mirakel, Ons Hou Konsert, Richard III, Amadeus, Annie Get Your Gun (including choreography), Arms and the Man, As You Like It, Boy Meets Boy, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, Wuthering Heights, Jocasta Rising, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, On the Razzle, Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, The Wizard of Oz, The Dybbuk, Peace, Ghetto, Travesties, Francis, The Madness of George III, Love's Labour's Lost, In the Summer of 1918, The Merry Widow, La Bête, Twelfth Night, or What You Will (Maynardville 1989 and 1998). Cry, the Beloved Country.