On Salt Spring Island, it’s easy to feel haunted by the ghosts of personalities past. You constantly spot people who look like they used to be someone, or perhaps still are. Faces in local stores seem familiar, like a new photo of an aging relative you haven’t seen in years. Was that Valdy? Raffi? Randy Bachman?
Which brings us to Susan Benson, not quite a household name, but certainly a woman with an interesting past. She worked for decades as a theatre designer, creating costumes and stage sets, most notably for the Stratford Festival.
Over the years, she rubbed shoulders with stars like Maggie Smith, Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn. Many of the productions she worked on were shown on CBC Television. One, The Mikado, toured to London’s Old Vic theatre back in the 1980s… read more
From the article by:
Portia Priegert, editor of Galleries West.