ABSTRACT
In actuality, a truer date for the emergence of American design might be 1911 when Viennese designer Joseph Urban arrived at the Boston Opera Company where he was to design their 1912 season. Until this point, design in the US and Canada was the domain of the scene painter, stage manager, and producer and was intended primarily to indicate time and place. Many of the facilities built as part of the explosion of new theatres and performing arts centers across the US and Canada in the 1960s and 1970s included thrust stages as either their mainstage or as secondary "experimental" spaces. Other British designers, notably Leslie Hurry, Brian Jackson, Daphne Dare, and Ann Curtis working at Stratford helped lay the foundation for the development of Canadian scenography. The avant-garde and experimental companies that employed environmental scenography often saw political implications in this approach.
