Draft:Mark Louis Negin

Mark Negin (born Louis, 16 March 1932), British-Canadian stage designer and illustrator. He was born Louis Negin in London, son of Nathan Negin, a Master Tailor and Miriam (nee Freedman). Mark’s grandfather had been a founder member of the Synagogue in Dean Street now the Soho theatre and Writers’ Centre.

Louis became Mark in 1955 when he and his older actor cousin Louis Negin found themselves working in the same company at Stratford, Ontario.

Mark’s career started in Winnipeg, after emigrating with his family to Canada, when he joined John Hirsch and Tom Hendry in what was to become the Manitoba Theatre Centre. Mark left to join the Stratford Shakespearean Festival to work on Tamburlaine directed by Tyrone Guthrie for its 1956 Broadway opening. On winning the Guthrie Award in 1957 Mark studied in Paris and London before returning to design at Stratford. In 1963 Mark co-designed with Tanya Moiseiwitsch the touring production of ‘Love’s Labours Lost’ which appeared in the opening season of the Chichester Festival.

Mark designed for the major companies across Canada including, The Manitoba Theatre Centre, The Théâtre du Nouveau Monde (TNM), St Lawrence Arts Centre, The National Ballet of Canada, L’Opera du Quebec. For the National Arts Centre in Ottawa designs include Handel’s ‘Rinaldo’ which transferred from Ottawa to New York as Canada’s gift to the Metropolitan Opera as part of their centennial celebrations.

Mark’s teaching career started in 1961 after his return to Canada from Paris when he joined Francophone Robert Prevost as the Anglophone member of the Design section teaching staff in the newly formed bilingual National Theatre School in Montreal. Mark was later asked to join Renée Noiseux-Gurik, a former NTS student, in forming the Scenography Department of the Quebec Junior College, CEGEP Lionel Groulx.

In London he taught at the Central School of Art and Design, Southampton Row, as Project Supervisor.

In 1965, at the invitation of William Ball for whom he had designed ‘The ‘Yeomen of the Guard’ at Stratford, Mark left for Pittsburgh to design the first season of the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) now in San Francisco.

On 1st July 1967 he was awarded the Canadian Centennial Medal.

Later Mark was to work again in the States, at Long Warf Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut and at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre. It was in 1970 that Mark was invited to design costumes for ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at London’s Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park. He returned to Winnipeg to design John Hirsch’s ‘The Dybbuk’at the MTC for its North American tour before returning to England permanently in 1974.

Based in London, Mark designed for most of the major regional companies of the UK including Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum and Wales’s Theatre Clwyd.

His costumes were seen in Scottish Opera’s ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and in Shaw’s ‘You never can tell’ at the Royal opening of the restored Lyric Hammersmith in 1979. His costumes were also seen in Lindsay Anderson’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’ at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

In 1988 Mark moved to Ramsgate where he began artwork inspired by his Anglo-Jewish roots. Much work was commissioned by art collector Marton Braun. His gilded illumination on vellum of ‘The Haggadah’ or ‘The Book of Esther’ was seen in the British Library’s 2007 exhibition ‘SACRED’. Mark also began painting murals including the Royal Coat of Arms for Holy Trinity church, Ramsgate, to celebrate Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee. The triptych in the waiting room of the East Cliff practice of the Montefiore Medical Centre and Prayer Boards at the Thanet & District Reform Synagogue are by him.

Mark’s involvement in communal affairs started when he helped found ERA, the East Cliff Residents’ Association. He worked to protect the Grade II* Listed Montefiore Synagogue and to establish the RMH, Ramsgate Montefiore Heritage. He became Keeper of the Synagogue for several years before retirement,