
A Year With Frog and Toad designer inspired by nature
Set and costume designer Jackie Chau wants to inspire kids to have a relationship with nature. She imagines the audiences lying on their stomachs surrounded by tall grass on a hot summer day, when watching A Year with Frog.
“I want kids to be inspired to build something when they leave the theatre. I want them to get out there and into nature.”
To achieve this, Chau played with scale when she was designing the show. When audiences enter the theatre to watch A Year With Frog and Toad, they will be greeted by giant flowers and large pencil crayons. Chau wants everyone to feel like when they were a child and everything seemed larger than it actually was.
“I’m trying to pull the audience out of their own space so when they walk in they feel smaller in size because of the oversized aspect of the set,” says the designer.
Some of the delightfully inventive costume sketches from A Year With Frog and Toad
MTYP premiered A Year with Frog and Toad in 2019, the show was performed in an alley, with audiences on both sides. The 2024 production uses a proscenium stage, with the audience all together facing the stage.
Chau says the changes between the two shows are subtle. “We angled the houses and kept the footprint the same. This way the original blocking and actor movement could remain. Because we are in proscenium, we added a cyc (or backdrop) to capture the sky and elevated the negative spaces around the houses. It also gave us an opportunity to add a stylized ground row.”
The new format also gave Chau the opportunity to include some items on her wish list. “Some set elements got upgrades and costume accessories were added, all to enrich the show.”
A Year With Frog and Toad is a show about best friends whose friendship endures throughout the seasons. After waking from hibernation in spring, they plant gardens, rake leaves, go sledding and learn life lessons along the way.
Together, co-directors Pablo Felices-Luna and Sarah Topham, with designer Chau have taken a show that previously leaned toward vaudeville and given it a more contemporary look. “The style is rustic hipster with a dash of whimsy,” says the designer with an infectious laugh. “I don’t want their costumes to look like costumes. They could be someone walking down the street with a very unique style.”
Chau says the best example of the street fashion in the show is what the snail wears (pictured in the large image at top, centre). ”He is in a see-through raincoat that is transparent with a slimy texture. The spiral shape is a backpack. They’re deconstructed elements inspired by the real animal.”
Chau says this is not the first time she has reimagined a beloved story in a new way. “I’m interested in looking at things from the perspective of a person who might not be from this country or for whom English isn’t their first language,” she says. “Because every culture has their own vocabulary of storytelling. Or colour and texture that people can relate to visually without words. Traditionally, we see the story through a very Western lens, the characters are in tweed suits and vests and newsboy caps, but that doesn’t mean the same thing to everybody.”
Chau is also inspired by watching her two daughters at play. “They have made me more open about how to do things. My daughter only needs ears to be a cat. How would they interpret Frog and Toad? What’s the one thing you need? They would find creative ways to tell the story.”
The designer met Pablo when he was working for Carousel Theatre in Ontario. Their first project was Peg and the Yeti, which was presented at MTYP a few seasons ago. “It was meant to happen,” she says, having become close to Pablo and his family ever since. “Pablo and Carrie are warm and they see me as a whole person and as a whole artist. They respect that I’m a creative person and a mother. It makes everything easier.”
