Tanya Moiseiwitsch, 88; Designed Theatrical ‘Thrust’ Stage

Tanya Moiseiwitsch, a stage designer who influenced the shape of modern theater stages based on the “thrust”-style stage from Shakespeare’s era, has died. She was 88.

Moiseiwitsch died Tuesday in London, according to Canada’s Stratford Festival. No cause of death was revealed.

The founding designer for the Stratford Festival, Moiseiwitsch also created its Festival Theater stage, which became a model for other stages in North America and Britain.

She was born in London in 1914, the daughter of pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch and violinist Daisy Kennedy.

The designer attended London’s Central School of Arts and Crafts and worked at the Westminster Theatre, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Abbey Theatre in Dublin and Duchess Theatre in London’s West End before her first collaboration with the Stratford Festival’s founding artistic director, Tyrone Guthrie, at the Old Vic in Liverpool in 1945.

When Guthrie became director of the festival in the Ontario city of Stratford before its first season in 1953, he hired Moiseiwitsch to design a stage that would return to the thrust style used by Shakespeare’s own company.

Her design, first in the theater tent and now in the Festival Theater, has been widely imitated. Moiseiwitsch created variations of it for the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the Crucible Theatre in England. Her designs also influenced stages of the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York, Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre in England, Swan Theatre at Stratford-Upon-Avon, and others.

Moiseiwitsch was also a designer of stage sets and costumes, including work on more than 40 Stratford Festival productions -- the two plays of the inaugural season among them.

During her career, she was principal designer at the Guthrie, consultant designer at the Crucible and associate director laureate at the Stratford Festival.