Centaur Theatre is finishing off their season with the moving For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again. Gabriel Tsampalieros is bringing his extraordinary talent in set design to the stage for this special production. I got to ask Gabriel about this show, his work outside of set design, and what’s coming up next for him!

Could you please introduce yourself to my readers and tell us a bit about your role with For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again?

My name is Gabriel Tsampalieros and I am the set designer on the production of For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again at the Centaur Theatre. I am trained as an architect and scenographer and have been working for 27 years as a set designer, mainly for the performing arts.

Along with actively working in the community, you also teach set and costume design at the National Theatre School. What is your favourite part about teaching the next generation of theatre creators?

Teaching for me is an active dialogue. I enjoy being in contact and exchanging with the young people of the new generation and witnessing expressions of new talent. I love hearing their ideas, their ideals, and also their reactions to the content of my courses which are essentially history courses: history of architecture and history of scenography. I like to inspire them to use history as a precious design tool, and in return, I definitely am inspired by them.

Where did you find your inspiration for the set of For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again?

In a single sentence in the text, at the very beginning of the play when Michel Tremblay gives this indication about where the action takes place: ‘’The stage is empty’’. Since the narrator brings his mother back to life in the form of memories, it is exactly that aspect that inspired me: to make the stage the space of his memory, through layers of which Nana appears and disappears.

You’re actively involved in so many media forms! What motivates you to try so many different forms of art?

It’s mainly because I was invited to, by directors who believed that I could bring a touch of theatre in those different media forms, like dance, opera, circus, exhibition design, and production design for film and television. I love new challenges and I was never scared to dive right into it. In return, each of these extra-theatrical experiences have nourished my own language as an artist and added precious tools to my kit, by applying in theatre something I’ve learned elsewhere.

Is there another upcoming project of yours that you’re really excited about?

Other than renovating my ancestral house this summer, I am actively working on a project for a master’s degree that would combine architecture and set design, that would explore spatially a possible new type of relationship between the stage and the house, in every aspect of it, and that would extend to the architecture of the whole building itself where a new, unconventional interaction between the actors, the set and the public would take place. 

I want to thank Gabriel for taking the time to answer my questions! For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again runs until June 1. For more information and tickets, visit: For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again – Centaur Theatre

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