August 11, 2019

RAYMOND BOYCE, theatre designer;
b May 20, 1928, London; d August 1, 2019, Wellington;
m Geraldine Kean
Dominion Post Online
by Nikki Macdonald 05:00, Aug 10 2019
Sources: Dawn Sanders; Peter Coates; Serendipity by Design, by Raymond Boyce; Serendipity, by Peter Coates

When director Richard Campion telegrammed English designer Raymond Boyce to offer him a job with New Zealand’s first professional theatre company, Boyce asked advice from his mentor Margaret Harris. 

“Of course you must go,” the Old Vic Theatre School tutor told him. “It’s only eighteen months. Make all your mistakes in the colonies and come back and work for us.”

It was 1953 and this was Campion’s second attempt to lure Boyce Down Under, to design for his nascent theatre company The New Zealand Players. Living in London and busy designing two productions destined for one of the world’s most famous theatre districts, Boyce had already politely declined.

But then funding for those projects fell through, and Boyce found himself without a job. [More]