Thursday, November 10, 2011

Designer Library 3: Pecktal

This is the third in a series of entries on books that I have found most valuable in my scenic design practice and teaching. I must point out that these are not necessarily the best, most current resources, but they have been quite valuable to me. I believe they are worth consideration by others.

Designing and Painting for the Theater was written by Lynn Pektal in the early 1970s, and covers a lot of territory. Pektal was a designer and scenic painter in New York, and he also wrote a book on drawing in the 1990s. The books use a similar approach of framing the detailed discussion of practices with interviews with working designers. Some people find the Designing and Drawing book more helpful and it does have rich resources for design, but the earlier Designing and Painting text remains a more useful reference text for me. As a designer who also must build and paint my shows, I found Pektal's book to be a godsend before the internet. It remains a rich resource, regardless of the effect of changed technologies and more readily available information. One can find inexpensive used editions on Amazon.

Before the late 1970s, if you worked elsewhere than in the few theater-rich cities, your access to information about production practice was quite limited. A handful of theater production programs in universities outside of the northeast, such as Carnegie-Mellon, Illinois, Iowa, Texas and USC taught what was needed to feed the commercial theater, but most practice had not evolved much since the 1930s and 40s. The artistry was a practice of the trades and was still passed on largely through apprenticeship. Scenic practices began to evolve quickly with the explosion of technologies and materials in the last decades of the 20th Century, and the trades began to lose their exclusive grip on how things were done. Entertainment technologies evolved and expanded into whole new worlds of working practice. More people began to work between and among the components of the entertainment industry: theater, film, television, and trade shows. But the basic structure of the traditional practices and techniques continued to guide the work in the theater.

Pektal's book is over-written in places, with a lot of detail in the interviews with designers on some arcane aspects of practice as applied to particular productions. But most usefully, the book is filled with real cookbook detail on design and painting practice for the stage. Some of those practices have been affected by the computer revolution and digital technology, but many have not. It also is illustrated heavily with scores of images of drops, designs, settings, and scenic practice. In fact, the illustrations are invaluable for understanding the expectations and qualities of the practices and techniques. The images of designs are very useful as examples and models of design practice.

Where Payne (Scenographic Imagination) goes into detail on analysis and how to think about the setting, Pecktal is very much concerned with the application and practice. Each chapter concludes with an interview conversaton with one of the major designers of the late 20th Century American theater - Mielziner, Smith, Edwards, Lee, Oenslager, Bay and others. These interviews are not as insightful as one might expect, but informative nevertheless, attending to the specifics of scenic and design practices and the experiences of the designers.

The first two chapters deal with the basic ground of New York theater design practice. They run through the fundamentals of starting out, and the working world of the designer. The third chapter on developing the design is mostly about the steps and the artifacts - the drawings and models. It is helpful to see what is expected as union practice. Chapter 4 is concerned with the theatrical scenic studio. It attends to the various jobs and the activities of the designer in working between the studio and the production.

At this point, the book becomes a catalog or reference work for a wide variety of scenic processes and practice. Chapter 5 is drawing the scenery - in full scale, and chapter 6 is on scenic painting techniques, only some of which have been superceded by changing technology. Chapter 7 is about paints, binders and equipment. Eight is about backdrops and fabrics, nine is on decks and furniture, and ten is on sculptured scenery and the materials that can been used to create the sculpted effects. Developments in materials and the economics of shop operation have modified some of the practices, but the underlying principles and artistry remain.

Pecktal's book is no substitute for thorough apprenticeship with a working scenic studio, but it does its best to lay out what has been adopted broadly by commercial studios and other theater scenic production environments. Without a doubt, the book is most valuable because of it's extensive illustration and intention as a reference manual for scenic practices. It also is very useful in understanding just what the professional theatrical environment expects as a matter of course.

Some of the practices in this text are becoming dated as digital technologies are developing. Other environments are doing large scale fabrication and applying newer answers and efficiencies as the technologies evolve. Yet we continue to rely on many traditional practices where there is no economy of scale, and these approaches are very useful to know and be able to apply. This book is a solid reference resource.

Scenemaker
November 10, 2011

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