About our hosts
Helen Pond and the late Herbert Senn are internationally renowned set designers, who first collaborated at Columbia University in New York City in the 1950s, and whose first sets were built at the Cape Playhouse in 1956. They then went on to create over 350 more sets, including 50 opera sets, until their retirement in 1994. Their sets are still used by the Boston Ballet for its annual Nutcracker performances. They were the principal scenic designers for the Opera Company of Boston with Sarah Caldwell, and also designed sets for the New York City Opera, London’s Drury Lane, Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, and Theatre Guild Cruises around the world. In 1993 they received the first Eliott Norton / Robert Edmond Jones prize for life-time achievement in scenic design. Their home, a lovingly restored New England meeting house, built in 1836, has its main rooms decorated in romantic Gothic, using Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, England, as their inspiration. Trompe l’oeil decorations abound. The restored pipe organ may be one of the oldest in New England, dating to c. 1830.

Directions
Strawberry Hill is just off Rte. 6A, across Rte. 6A from the Edward Gorey House, at 17 Church Street in Yarmouth Port. Parking is available at the Edward Gorey House, around the green in front of the EGH, at the Colonial House Inn and the Yarmouth Port Library, along Church Street, and in the various parking areas behind the Post Office and the Bangs Hallett House (which are accessed next to the Post Office).