Closing Curtain

For you who found your way to this blog, you are welcome to take in any of the past posts. I am no longer maintaining it regularly, and have shifted my interests to a new journal, Cohannet Commentary. The topics of Stage Picture have related to my professional life in art, theater and learning, with digressions. I have now retired from that profession entirely. I have given up my work in theater art and criticism, withdrawn from organizational responsibilities and no longer teach or design. Should I return to discussions of art and performance, I likely will revive this writing.

The focus of Cohannet Commentary currently relates to my work on family history. In that forum I try to articulate my evolving discoveries and awareness of past times and people, research challenges, dilemmas and achievements, and observations on the work. It's an informal research journal that, like Stage Picture, will evolve its character over time.

I hope to reward readers with thoughtful ideas, possible insights, shared frustrations, and collegial discussions on topics with a connection to history, family history, and historical research and writing.

Scenemaker

18 Oct 2014

Watching a World Go Away

The nature of this journal may take a different turn as I move away from active participation in the production of theater, teaching, consultant responsibilities and production reviewing. I expect it to enter a more broadly reflective phase.

It's our nature to grow up thinking that the world is all about what we refer to in theater as the pregnant present. Certainly momentous things have brought us to this point, but this moment now is only about now. As we age we become more fascinated with how we got here and the history of it all.

I grew up in western Kansas and watched the parade as my town celebrated it's Centennial. There were people knew the first settlers personally. I had friends whose late grandparents were among the first settlers. Before 1861, most of the territory was grasslands and prairie that had only been surveyed for benchmarks, along with the rest of the West.

1870s Limestone farmhouse in western Kansas

But there were old homesteads. Growing up in the 1950s we could find them. Splintered old farmhouses, some with evidence of yards, old root cellars, yard pumps and windmill parts still standing. Trudging around them one had to watch for rattlesnakes. The most fascinating ones were the prairie homes made out of the old limestone quarried nearby because there were no trees. Many of those were canibalized for foundation stones under newer structures. Most remaining were on old ranch lands miles away from towns on lonely roads. Some that weren't too remote were repurposed, added onto and modernized.

In much of the rest of the country the old structures may be harder to find buried in woods. Reforestation happens when you aren't looking. Heavily forested land once was farmed, as the thrown stone walls here testify to old land clearing. The power of the forests to reclaim ground is immense where it thrives. A trip up Rt 9 to Saratoga Springs, NY, once showed miles of deteriorating resorts being reclaimed by the woods - and may today. The expressway passed them by.

It is no secret that way too much of our land goes into parking lots. Single story shopping structures spread over acres and acres with immense lots and toxic drainage. The roads themselves eat up huge amounts of land, the wider and safer we make them. Failure to concentrate development stretches infrastructure. It also affects groundwater, waste disposal and other ecological conditions. We spend too much fuel and time transporting children to and from school and other activities, and we increase commuting time and impacts. Instead of developing local economies we build bedroom communities. A substantial part of any residential community travels into or half-way around Boston to go to work because that's where the work is. People from north of Boston travel to our area to work, rather than move their families from established surroundings. We can't seem to create an appropriate rail system to solve the transportation issues in a comprehensive way. We've been told repeatedly how bad this is for our ecology and communities, but we seem powerless to change things.

Rural farm, Lyons, Kansas, dates from late 1800s.

It's no revelation that we're caught in an ongoing struggle between legitimate urbanization and perpetual cancerous residential sprawl. In some ways we are luckier than parts of the country where the sprawl becomes a sea of blocks and crossroads. We are less lucky that we have failed to develop an efficient and effective alternative to private individual transport. Part of me feels great concern that we have reached a tipping point and that we are determined to return to the meagerly forested world of Nineteenth Century New England. But instead of replacing the woods with farms, we are eating it away for acre plots and McMansions, or for a half-dozen cheap duplexes put up in a week on an acre of land bulldozed out of the woods. We spread out the population creating school transportation problems. We thin out commercial development into even more dozens of little plazas that eat up land and require way too much driving to reach. We pave over huge acreage for parking lots because we have to drive. And we compound the transportation mess that we can't build our way out of. We have very little vertical development outside of 128.

What's the answer? Lets value living closer together. Instead of building new McMansions, let's reward better land use with higher density goals in rural towns, and improved services for concentrated populations. Let's reduce lot sizes and really tax people for non-agricultural land use above a certain size. And encourage focused and even more high-quality multifamily development - condominiums and quality apartments with garages and amenities, to allow concentration of schools and businesses. Let's up the game for sewer hook-ups and other services in rural areas, and get rid of septic systems and other ground disposal of waste. Then perhaps we can work on public transportation issues. What if it was really cheap and convenient to ride? We ARE going to have to deal with it someday and it will just get messier and more expensive.

It could be a tough pill for some, who value the rural world that has nothing to do with farming or animal husbandry. But it won't be long before those forests will be gone again, and most of the farms. Density is coming there, too. The population of Taunton has indeed grown ten percent in twenty years we've lived here, but the town is geographically very large. Old woods are falling under the bulldozer for new developments, instead of redevelopment of blighted properties. The huge woods behind my house is half the size it was when we bought.

I suppose much of this is inevitable, and alternative perspectives are cogent. But it shouldn't happen without a protest.

Arthur Dirks
March 10, 2014

The Theater Lives in the Young

It is (very) early spring and the time of the year when fortunate youth in many high schools are investing their energies in competitive theater. As in many states, the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild encourages and supports theater with its annual round of competitions. I have been fortunate to have judged festival presentations for many years, and truly have been astonished at many, many of those forty-minute productions.

I'm aware that there is tremendous investment that these students and their teachers carry in creating and presenting their work. As judges, we are kept well away from all that, but see only the final invested expression of all their anguish of creation.

It's no walk-in-the park for judges. We see eight or so, 45-minute productions in a day, and we take every spare minute to try our best to say useful and helpful and encouraging - but artistically and intellectually honest - things about each of the eight or so works we see before us in the long day. We look like 1940s reporters dashing back to our computers (now) to write lots of profound things, rank performers, catch a bathroom break, and be back in our seat with a clear head in twenty minutes. We spend the lunch hour desperately trying to catch up, refining our observations and trying gently to frame some advice. In the 1980s we wrote in longhand with one or two carbons. The writing room held three really intensely focused judges, often around the same table. Electric typewriters were made available in the late 1990s and some judges brought their own portables, but many judges continued to longhand the responses. Today we have a computer station and a prescribed template to fill in our thoughts. It's faster and more efficient, with a chance to write more. Our assignment also is more refined with expectations for observations on particular points.

Only after the awards ceremony are the judges available to directors when they pick up the written critiques for their school. But there's not much basis for conversation. It's been a long day for everybody.

The circumstances of the festival are very measured and obsessively observed. There are strict rules about time limits and run length, and the strike and setup times in the swing between performances. All of the students remain captive for the day and must be counted in the school's section of the theater before each of the performances and activities.

The organization requires that new and past judges attend a development workshop each February. Part social and part useful, the meeting is to review the rules and changes, discuss goals, share approaches and receive a pep talk. While I found it annoying to give up an additional Saturday (for which we were paid), I had to admit their value.

I have been fortunate to judge the festival in all its three rounds of elimination. My preference has been for the initial round, when I feel that my comments will be most considered, both by those who move on and by those who don't. At the intermediate level, only the winner moves on, and the rest have heard all they care to. Both are one-Saturday commitments. The final state round is a four-day affair, held in Hancock Hall in Boston, and judges are sequestered incommunicado in a Boston hotel for three nights, ushered everywhere by handlers. Throughout the festival at all levels there is real investment in keeping the judges away from all participants until the awards are given at the end of the day.

All of the performances I saw at state level were interesting, challenging, first-rate works of theater. The critique there is much different. Since all of the performances are excellent, the response is not about the principles, but more about imagination and commitment to sophisticated choices, deftness in the refinement and execution, and ability to astonish. And ultimately, why this one is better than that.

It's been a real pleasure for me over the years to see and critique these festivals. I've seen much theater that is exciting, imaginative, and very adept. But most importantly, in every case I've seen young people really invested in craft and collaboration, creating something artful together.

Scenemaker
February, 2014

Astonish Me

With apologies to critic John Lahr, who wrote an excellent volume of discussion of the new approaches to the theater in about 1970. What theater experiences will stay with you? I will remember many, but I think these did something important to shape and affirm my understanding of what theater is and can be as an aesthetic adventure.

A Fernando Arrabal in a studio at the University of Kansas. 1970s

Lansdowne street club. 1990s

Wings of Desire at American Repertory Theater. 2000s

Ryan Landry's M at Huntington Theater. 2013

No. 1. In graduate school at the University of Kansas, in the early 1970s, there was a kind of intensity of work going on that I barely understood at the time. Theater in America was undergoing tremendous change from the Broadway model. A graduate student whose name I don't remember did a studio production of a play by an intense Spanish writer Fernando Arrabal, the title of which I also have forgotten. I only remember the experience of the play, whereby I first understood that theater had a real intensity that was much deeper than text. I became aware of the idea that theater did not really have to be ABOUT anything, except its own experience. I still retain mental images of that spare, dark production and an intense, mysterious, emotionally charged hour or so, that had nothing to do with the stuff of mysteries or horror movies.

A broken statue in a yard in Halifax
provokes wonder and curiosity -
Out of context, unexpected, incomplete.

No. 2. In the 1990s, a younger couple took Diane and me to a club in Boston, across from Fenway Park on Lansdowne Street, named after the surrealist photographer Man Ray. Many details escape me over the twenty years since, but it was a new way to think about theater. We arrived shortly before ten o'clock and it was the usual loud, clubby dance-trance music with decor that suggested dark pocket-like dance rooms, shot with energetic, shadowy lighting. After about a half-hour, the music stopped, lights came on and the crowd moved toward a large open corner of the floor with a five-foot high platform against one wall. A couple uncolored, unartful spotlights illuminated this stage. Within a few minutes, skits began of bawdy parodies of fairy tales, with actors in outrageous, comedic sexualized costumes. Dialogue was shouted. There was no curtain or wings. Costumes were emblematic and satyrical. Props were handed or thrown in as needed, mistakes were applauded, people pushed each other around to the position they needed to be onstage, and everybody had an hilarious time. Maybe two or three such skits transpired, and then the crowd gathered around a giant pinata, lowered in from the ceiling. Patrons were given swings with a stick, and it finally broke, spilling condoms, sex toys, and other unidentified merchandise over the crowd. A few minutes later, the music began again, the lights dimmed, and the dancing went on. I realized that theater can thrive where it has vitality and imagination, and an audience that wants to invest in it. I would later see this kind of performance as the clear legacy of European cabaret in the 20s and 30s.

No. 3. In 2006, American Repertory Theater mounted a production of Wings of Desire, a stage version of the story that was the film (not a stage version of the film). The story is about an angel that falls in love with a mortal and descends to become mortal to be with her. It was staged in association with a theater in The Netherlands, and was shaped by director Ola Mafaalani in the European metaphoric style. The production was open and full of actions to provoke thought, association, surprise, and wonder. The play began in the dark with four dimly lit large columns of sand pouring from the grid. It was difficult to identify what they were, and it went on for many minutes, eventually filling the stage floor with piles of sand. With lights up, two male angels in modern street clothing sat on the roof of a food vendor's wagon as aromas of fried onions filled the theater. They were discussing one angel's infatuation with a mortal and his choice to join her. He descended from the cart, and the play progressed with representations of common life and its trials, which he observed. Throughout the performance, his mortal love was a dancer entangling and dancing in a long swag of bright fabric suspended from the flies, an inversion of the earthbound-mortal - celestial-angel dichotomy. As I recall she never touched the stage until the end when they met in an embrace. The stage was open to the walls without draperies.

No. 4. In 2013, an impressario of those Lansdowne club events above had studied theater and developed his chops as a writer, and created one of the more interesting nights in the formal theater in my experience. Ryan Landry participated in the Huntington Theatre's playwright development programs in association with Boston University. They gave him a season slot at the Wimberly, their South End second theater, where the Huntington stages their new works. Landry took the basic story line and characters of the 1931 Fritz Lang movie thriller "M" and rewrote it. In his production Brecht and Pirandello met Man Ray (artist and Boston rave club) big time. all structured around a rich vocabulary of pop and old movie references, loaded with iconic surprises, cheesy cartoon imagery, giant props and wonderful metaphors. Shouted dialogue, broad gesture and obvious takes and gags, all at a break-neck pace almost leaving one breathless by the end. The plot moved from the "M" deviant into a serious "Six Characters" hook that made it all make sense. In the end the eraser of a giant pencil from the flies took out everybody, including the author, except the last two characters who exited out the back door of the stage to end the play.

These have not been all of my theater highlights - I have many others in the 300 or so productions I've seen over the years. Certainly these have enriched my life immeasurably.

Engagement

Engagement

I've been thinking about how different designers are in the theater, compared to other people involved - notably the director. No big revelation - we frequently refer to the difference in perspective. But it's another dimension of recognition for me.

First, I've been an actor and director in other lives - before I became a designer. So it's not like I don't get it, the act of directing is very social. The act of designing typically is not - at least for me.

The difference became evident at the retirement tribute for a long-term (40-year) faculty member who directed at least one production a year in the program, and sometimes another off campus. There were many, many testimonials by former students about his guidance and friendship, arising out of the very social nature of the production experience. To be fair, he also had some experience as a gaffer and a little lighting design, but his overwhelming relationships were forged in the process of directing productions. In the academic environment, those relationships also extend to other classes.

I was thinking about what was important to those students. For them the relationship was forged in the collective, informal give and take of the rehearsals, when the director must engage the actor, teasing out the best expression and forging a collective dynamic in an ensemble. With young actors, this engagement is very personal. The engagement is with the personality and psychology of the actor.

In the production experience, my mind is really elsewhere and my connections are less engaged with the actors - or even the technicians. I'm thinking about the mechanics of the stage, certainly, but really about line and mass and color and light and sound. About period and style, context and meaning, nuance and things that will make differences nobody will notice. Along with the director I also think about facilitating the movement of the play and the life of the moment - the impact and experience of the moment.

Glass Menagerie in Sketchup

For technical directors there is the team engagement of the production crew. It is an important collective activity at the beginning level, and there is great pride in achieving Herculean feats of production. But it is intended to be out of sight, known only to those involved, and actually prized for not being evident. The engagement isn't at the same interpersonal level as the director and the actor. It's about shaping the work, doing the job well, and making it happen on time.

At least this is true in the educational environment. In professional work, directors can be more demanding of actors. Actors know how to go about the creative process of the role, and they know the shorthand of directing. Give them goals and they know how to get there. The director can focus on getting the metaphor just right - the expression and timing of it all. Designers and technical directors assign tasks to trained technicians who focus on doing the job.

But the love affair of former students with my colleague was genuine. He had done things that shaped their lives in a good way. That is something to be applauded.

Scenemaker
8 May 2012

Animal Crackers

The end of the academic year is just over the next hill, and those of us who teach are steeling ourselves for the final push.

.....

I had several paragraphs of whining here, which I have deleted. How can I whine about the greatest job in the world!

It is opening night for our final production of the year, and this year it is The Glass Menagerie. It is an unusual choice for a major production in a program such as ours, because there are only four characters. Of course, everybody knows Tennessee Williams' somewhat autobiographical piece. It is heavily taught in classrooms because it has such relevance to personal development and frustration with family constraints and values. There is a huge amount of critical material and curriculum guidance for this piece available online.

Our production is really unusual in an attempt to realize Williams' stated intentions in a technical way. In our production the interior of the apartment is completely behind a white scrim, for which we had to install a separate truss proscenium frame. Text and images are superimposed upon the action in the apartment. Current lighting and projection technology makes it possible to do what it seems Williams had envisioned in writing the work. The action in the apartment appears clear but slightly hazy and distant, as if in memory or a dream, as Tom states. The original production abandoned the scrim and much of the projection because the technology wasn't up to the aesthetic in the 1940s.

For us this means a great deal of light control. There is hallation off the lighting instruments above and behind the scrim that casts a slight haze on it. Even the bright aisle lights are a problem. And there is a really tricky lighting problem in a candelabra scene. How do you light people behind the candelabra and cast their large shadows on the walls, without lighting the candelabra itself and casting its shadow? Our lighting designer did achieve it well.

In addition there are narration scenes on a fire escape outside the apartment, and access to the fire escape is from below, from our orchestra pit. Add the need for powerful equipment for bold enough projection and wireless mics for actors behind the scrim to be heard well in a large hall. It's easy to understand why most productions of this play are more simply realized.

....

Back to whining.

We always end the year with a major theater production such as this, which means the student work to be graded piles up while I focus on making the show happen well. Sadly, most feedback to the student at this point is moot - it won't be read because it has no future utility - except to argue a poor grade.

Meanwhile, the appeal of large blocks of potentially free time are a magnet for meetings and work groups.

There is little wonder we see commencement come around with mixed feelings.

Scenemaker
20 April 2012

Student Work and Tutorials

On this last day of spring break I'm gathering my resources to return to classes. It's been a busy quarter and I've had less time to post.

Our student-mounted productions transpired well. Lysistrata, Aristophanes' 5th Century BC anti-war comedy, played well. The play is still outrageous with prosthetic phalluses, costume jokes and bawdy gags that predated all Christian modesty. The show alternated with the musical A New Brain, very well sung and played. Each had its accommodations to the small 28'w x 18'd thrust playing space, but they worked, playing in rotating rep for three performances each.

Lysistrata was directed by a graduate student who had not directed before, but she pulled it together and learned a great deal. A busy area director was brought in for New Brain, which is all sung and was heavily rehearsed by the music director. It was good to see new student faces in these shows. A member of the shop staff designed the Acropolis facade for Lysistrata. I put a curtain in front of it for New Brain and the director provided projections.

We move now into Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie. A full-auditorium production, although we are limiting seating to the center section. The director is doing the play through a scrim, which means viewing angle is important. I found in researching the design that there is a tremendous amount of material about the play online, probably because it is a standard on many high school reading lists - right up there with Hamlet and MacBeth. I'm sure one analysis I read far exceeds the length of the play. We'll give the show a first-rate production, since with only 4 characters there can be such focus on acting (not that the 20 other acting majors are happy about that cast size). With a couple daytime performances and lots of school tickets, we can afford to pull out the stops.

Guys & Dolls setup

I spent my break updating tutorials and templates. I have developed them for things that my students need to engage and learn -- most requiring some sophistication with technology. There isn't enrollment or class time routinely to teach them well, but my production students require this background. These include templates for formatting a stage manager's production script, for an Excel lighting hookup and for Vectorworks CAD drawings in our theater, tutorials for common graphics applications and mechanical perspective drawing, and process manuals for stage management and designing lighting. [Find these at http://www.dirksdesigns.com/ddc/ald/tuts/index.html They are all my own copyright, but some rely upon the contributions of others. They are free to use, but please give credit.]

As happens, some of my former students, many who intended only to be actors, have found their way into positions where they need to return to these materials.

When you teach in a largely liberal arts based program, you understand two things (at least): 1) There are so many legitimate program requirements there is little room for both exploration and concentration. 2) Almost everybody is an actor until they learn their opportunities, affinities and limitations. By the time they comprehend them they have missed the chance to develop with depth as a designer and/or technician at the university. Often they find their way later into production work, often in the schools, and too often make it up as they go.

In New England there also is a lot of community theater, much parent-supported high school theater, and numerous people involved who "took a course in college." There also are English (and math) teachers pressed into guiding productions for competition who never had a production course. Beyond that, some former students discover after they leave us that they prefer the opportunities for creative contribution in production work, and they want information and guidance they missed or need to review.

There are books, but they're usually too general, and who goes there any more? I post my materials for all these folks.

Scenemaker
11 March 2012

Finding the Edge

I have the annual pleasure to work with my theater design and production students at the American College Theater Festival for our region. The ACTF is a 4-day festival of theater work in college and university theater programs held at a university in each of 8 regions. We're fortunate to have a geographically small region in New England, though I sometimes wonder what we trade for such travel convenience. We took a dozen students, supported by institutional grants.

My acting and directing colleagues spent a lot of time watching and coaching performers through their acting competitions while I spent a day in the room of design displays. I listen to critiques of student work - particularly my own students - but otherwise I hang out, talking about the displays and the work with other faculty, while balancing a cup of coffee in one hand and a doughnut in the other. It's my time to assess what we're teaching and what my students are achieving in relation to other programs.

My students did well enough for their experience and I hope they will be energized for more opportunities in the design and technical crafts, stage management and other production activities. There was excellent work on the tables and it is such a help for our students to see the character of the programs and the work of other schools. We'll hope for a bit more engagement, a bit more energy toward making their own educations competitive. My design and tech students often come home more focused and energized.

I'm both proud and a little embarrassed to say I was around in the early days of the ACTF, back in the 1970s. In that more precarious time I once slept in my car to attend. I have participated almost annually since, sometimes with a participating production.

The learning at the festival is important. In Kansas and Nebraska things like theater - the academic and serious kind - were a good deal further apart than in more urban parts of the country. A few places, like my University of Kansas and the University of Iowa were consolidating the avant-garde and new scholarship on performance. They participated actively in the national conversation that grew with the work of the National Endowment. But unless you lived right there, it was a long drive. That annual ACTF gathering of theater faculty, students, and guest artists was critical in knitting together the study of the practice of a highly fragmented art form. Typical academic conferences are about anything but practice.

The art of it all is critical, but commercial theater design organizations have a strong orientation toward technology, and that is a continually moving target. They use anything that will make them competitive. They increasingly meld the work of related art forms and incorporate every cost-efficient practice they can. Designers, technicians, and managers are moving among many modes of live and recorded entertainment, all with their own special conditions. The practice of one influences the practice and the artistic perspective of others as artists and technicians move among the modes.

Hand-drawn work documents once had a focus on energy, art, clarity, and acceptable accuracy. Clarity, accuracy, speed and distribution have won out over expressiveness in production communication - it mostly exists in my sketchbooks and quick diagrams. The technology allows greater precision, greater detail, more repetition, more distribution and more capacity for collaboration. I still move a pencil on a page to shape ideas, but it all moves quickly to the computer. Younger designers may make that move earlier than I do. I still decorate my doodles.

The festival work I've seen in the last decade or so seems much less adventurous than it once did. There are times of change - pregnant events, evolving aesthetics and reactions to reactions. This is not that time. We seem to feel we have a handle on it.

After years of edginess, there may be a sense of "that's been done." Today's edges seem calculated and stylish. For our students in today's culture there is great pressure to earn, and that narrows the conversation. Commercial competence and versatility is required. If that's a trend it's a sure sign that the edge has moved on.

I'm always looking for the edge. Of what, I'm not really sure. It's out there, everywhere. Wayne Gretzky had the right idea. I'll just keep trying to skate to where the puck is going to be.

03 Feb 2012
Scenemaker

Designer Library 5: Illustrators 29

Illustrators: Society of Illustrators 29th Annual of American Illustration. Society of Illustrators, Watson-Guptill Publications. New York (1988) Or any of the subsequent annual volumes.

My last choice of five books I have found most valuable for design is the annual of prize-winning illustration by the American Society of Illustrators, now up to the 52nd annual. These quality print editions on coated stock are not inexpensive, but well worth the $45 from the Society of Illustrators. Times, styles and artists evolve and change, but this 25-year-old 1988 book and my 12-year-old Illustrators 40 seem to be the most thumbed. I find that prowling these collections of prize winning publication art are a useful step in resolving a design.

As designers we find inspiration and sources wherever we can. The reading of a script and its visual interpretation is influenced by its context in the life of the moment. We have our own history with the script and its story, and with many associations already made. We also have a context for the new production that has a cluster of requirements of varying importance. Those requirements are both tangible and aesthetic, both limiting and freeing. And somehow our design must arise within these boundaries of production practice to meet the aesthetic goals.

There are highly imaginative, creative artists whose original brains may reach and grasp fully original possibilities. My sense is that it doesn't come as easily as it appears for most of us. Lightning strikes the prepared mind, to mangle a metaphor, and such collections as the Illustrators Annual are about possibilities. We can see the work of other artists who have found imaginative and artistically profound ways of vividly communicating the ideas of the text through imagery and art.

Fine art also has its value for inspiration, as does architecture and film and other art forms. Historic, geographic and other factual material is critical in developing a design for any production, but it is the art forms that shape an artistic attitude, and deliberately and creatively embody ideas in sensual terms. Illustration is an art of intentional statement.

The Illustrators Annual is over 600 pages of prize-winning illustration divided into sections for book, editorial, and advertising publication. In addition there are hall-of-fame tributes to important illustrators that place the current work in a stylistic context, and there are agencies showing work by their artists and illustrators. It's all in high quality full color art print.

The Annual is a wealth of stylistic ideas. Color qualities and combinations. Stylistic approaches to line and shape. Visual senses of texture. Any and all forms of abstraction. Fresh ideas of balance and proportion. Ways to illustrate particular objects and people. Qualities of mood and tension in imagery. Evocation of our experiences with other illustration and art forms. And so on.

These images typically seek to communicate more literal concepts than high art does. This work intends to create a strong, specific connection to the viewer's references and imagination. In many cases, these are literally the scene designs for the text. They illustrate an object or idea by implying a narrative about it.

Every illustration image is incomplete. It challenges viewers to substantiate the idea through their own experience. Every image provokes a question about its subject, while conveying intensive clues to the way one is expected to respond. Many illustrations tell a fragment of a story that the viewer is led to complete. Even what appears to be pure design is full of narrative impulse. Illustration design builds upon a wide world of associations - with real and fictional experiences, with demons and fears, with aspirational identities, with intrigue and suspense, or with beauty and life.

This is the world of the stage and the province of the drama. Illustration is a frozen moment of theater - an artful expression of drama. Theater is the history, present and future of the moment. Illustration is an abstraction of an entire story that theater plays out in time. It is a rich resource for theater. We are in the same business.
___________________

I hope this list of best books has been of interest. Upon reflection when writing, I noted that they are older than they seem to me. I'm not sure if it is meaningful - the list isn't intended to be limiting. Perhaps this list suggests and argues that there are books of value and that it continues to be worthwhile to have resources in hand, not only on a screen.

Scenemaker
November 24, 2011
Happy Thanksgiving

Designer Library 4: Contemporary Stage Design

My fourth of five selections as an influential design book is Contemporary Stage Design USA published in 1975 by the Theatre Institute of the United States, Inc. It was edited by Elizabeth Burdick, Peggy Hansen and Brenda Zanger. As of this writing it is available used from Amazon.com. Two other collections have been published: American Set Design by Arnold Aronson (1985) and American Set Design 2 by Ronn Smith (1991). These also are valuable and include extensive interviews with the designers. I find myself returning most to the 1975 publication for inspiraton.

Creative juices are stimulated by seeing the possible. The challenge is to explore the possible in order to shape an end that seems to have an inevitability. Given the circumstances, the conditions and the requirements of a production, the "inevitable" design is the most artistically satisfying result. Once one becomes invested in a design it takes on a life of its own. The task is to prod it along and keep it on track. In the end it really wants to have a kind of unique perfection.

As a goal this approach has merit, but it can be a liability for divergent thinking. It asks for the logical result of dramatic connections, not the most interesting and provocative result, so the challenge is to provoke divergent thinking in exploring the possible. Looking at the designs of others can challenge an artist to consider the problems in different ways and imagine provocative alternatives.

In my own design experience, I need to see a way out of narrow ideas that feel easy and unimaginative. I'm always looking for a better answer. An imaginative possibility. A clever expression. Something arising from a different impulse. There are many creativity exercises one can use to explore approaches and unlock the expression of a play. I do use a few techniques to break out of conventional thinking but they can be time-consuming and can extend the incubation period beyond the calendar limit. A reasonable supplement for me is to look at excellent published production designs by others of all kinds of plays.

There were a couple books of designs put out by the International Theatre Institute that I had made a habit of consulting in the college libraries where I taught, including Stage Design Throughout the World Since 1960 by Rene Hainaux, and an older collection since 1935. These volumes of artful approaches to dramatic texts remain invaluable for exploring exciting and different visual ideas for designs. They helped me resist my tendency to design like a housing contractor rather than an artist. I started recognizing metaphor and cleverness in design, and my work became more conscious and focused.

Eventually, I began to find a few books of interesting new designs that I could afford and didn't have to keep rechecking from the library. One of the first in my collection and most influential is Contemporary Stage Design U.S.A. It is 140 pages of designs selected by the Institute, supported by 10 essays by designers. It remains a primary inspiration resource and the most frequently thumbed of the design collections I have since acquired. I recommend it highly.

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

Designer Library 2: Payne

This is the second in a series of entries about my most valuable books for scene design. One of the most useful books on how to design is Darwin Reid Payne's The Scenographic Imagination. I have the 1981 edition, but Amazon lists a 1993 third edition. The book is an expansion and development of his 1974 Design for the Stage: First Steps. Payne was chair of theater at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and he wrote several books on scene design and model-making. There have been displays of his exquisite scenic model work at USITT conferences. I have never met him.

This isn't a slick, commercial textbook on design. Payne writes with a kind of personal volubility about his processes in designing for the stage. Some chapters feel as if they were drawn from a collection of lectures for a design class, which gives the writing a more personal feel than just "the way it is done." Parts of the text are a bit self-conscious and over-written, with some steps or ideas getting more or less emphasis and space than their significance, but the book does have a lot to say. I came into contact with Payne's first book when I was working on my MFA. I have found this expanded text on scenography most useful to re-read when I'm stuck in a design. When I can't find my way into the play, or maybe I have a design but it doesn't rise to art.

The text of Scenographic Imagination takes an expansive view of the scenographer and her contribution to the production. If there's a fault with the text it is that it ignores the reality of working with a director. It focuses entirely on ways of thinking about the dramatic text and designing for expression of those ideas. I have always argued that a designer needs to be able to think like a director - and perhaps have directed a little. This text is about thinking like a director about the imagery and action. Each chapter concludes with a brief commentary by a significant director or designer.

Payne puts value in the terms and titles we use, referring throughout to the scenic designer as the scenographic artist. It's a little self-conscious, but it works in emphasizing the overall artistic responsibility of the role, expanding beyond the concept of the designer as background painter. There are chapters on The Scenographic Artist, The Scenograher and the Physical Stage, Communication through Scenographics, The Scenographer and the Written Text, Creative Research in the Theater, and The Scenographic Vision Employed.

The first chapter on The Scenographic Artist deals with the attitude and education a scenographer needs and the reasons for it. The second chapter deals with more than just the physical space - it also discusses the place of the scenographer in the production process. Payne lays out his arguments about the meaning of scenic space and its semiotic and symbolic values, which he builds on in later chapters. The arguments are clear and well presented, and they seem to be knit together in a comprehensive philosophy. Payne's use of the term scenographer here really applies to the scenic designer. In the international theater community scenography involves lighting and sometimes costume as well as scenery .

Payne's third chapter is about communicating a design. He begins with a rationale for graphic art training for the designer and discusses an ideal studio space (generally pre-computer). He stresses training in drawing and identifies the various sketches, diagrams, drawings and draftings that are inherently part of he design process. It is clear that he expects a designer to know how to do these things, and there is some sense he is covering required ground. He describes the concepts of perspective in the theater and how they apply to the design. There also is an essay on design portfolio standards.

Chapter 4 is how to analyze a text for design, and my copy is well-marked and well thumbed. This section is an invaluable discussion about how to find the ideas, recognize the intentions of the playwright and support those through stage imagery. He writes about the physical and spatial expressions implied by the text. Here the designer has to direct the play in his imagination, thinking deeply about dramatic moments and the best way to present then scenically. For this Payne analyzes Gounod's Faust. He discusses clues to thinking about and understanding the action, leading to a design that, in effect, directs the staging of the play. One might object to Payne confusing the roles of director and designer, but that is why you have communication between them. As a designer I find directors vary greatly in how much "base" they like to work with. Some want to own all the ideas, others are more open to a designer's contribution.

Chapter 5 is about Creative Research in the Theater. Payne begins with a bit of a rant, and I think rightfully. There is an extensive discussion about how to look at and see the world as a designer. He discusses internal and external research questions, and he describes a process of feeding creative ideas. He concludes with how to compile personal research resources for designers.

In Chapter 6, The Scenographic Vision Employed, Payne lays out his approach to design. These 60 pages are the most significant chapter in the book as he steps through the analysis of moments, and he explores what the scenic environment does to participate in telling the story and all of it's rich connections and content. Here Payne implicates the designer as a director of the play by means of enabling the action and suggesting meaning.

As near as I can tell, this is one of those unique texts that exists in a kind of middle ground. It is not a beginning design text. It gives excellent discussion of how to think about design, and good discussion of design practices that you should consider. While it is theoretical, it is about how to find and apply that theory. I have pulled it out many times when a design doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Next, my favorite scenic how-to book.

Scenemaker
November 4

Designer Library 1: Speltz

Designer Library 1: Speltz

My October 20 post mused about the place of books in scenic design today, and proposed to look at the ones that have been most significant for me. I have a special fondness for five books, the first of which is a reprint of a fairly well-known text on historic ornament styles.

I don't remember my first contact with Alexander Speltz' 1906 The Styles of Ornament. I think it was in grad school. I had submitted a design for an assignment in which I had placed the show in a particular style era. I don't recall the show, but it probably was one in which I had moved the period, like a Shakespeare. I produced the ground plan and rendering, and presented it to my graduate project teacher and the senior designer. They asked me what I thought I was doing and I explained what I intended. They looked at each other and mumbled knowing and pitying comments to each other about my design and asked me some more questions. It soon became painfully obvious that I had not chosen my style particularly well, and that I had expressed it in a flawed and insecure way.

I had not taken any period style classes, but I had taken the required costume history courses and I thought I had a bit of a handle on it. I had begun to grasp the style but I didn't have the feel right and I was timid. I didn't get to the real conviction of statement. They mumbled more knowing things to each other and said, "I think you need to spend more time with Speltz."

Up to that point, I won't say I hated style, but I had been dismissive of it. In my naive way, I felt it was all too fussy and mostly irrelevant to real life. I thought I understood line and scale and texture, but I was impatient with arguments over style. It all just seemed too arcane to be understood easily, except by people who wanted to make a fetish of it. Certainly, I was wrong. It is that, but it is such an important tool of design and it communicates intensely.

I've never seen the original English edition of Speltz, which may have been distributed exclusively in Great Britain. The only copies widely available today are published by the reprint house Dover Publishing since 1959. My paperback copy cost all of $6.50 but now is listed at $14 on Amazon.

The book deals with the major strains geographically and by period, considering variations mostly among European cultures. There is Prehistoric and Primitive and a section on Antiquity. The section on The Middle Ages includes Early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque, Russian, Mahometan, Gothic, Chinese and Japanese ornament. The Renaissance and Modern Times section includes Renaissance and Later Renaissance, Rococo, Colonial, and Classical Revival. Because the book was originally published in Germany in 1906 it ends with sections on Empire, Biedermeier, and German Neogrec, but there are many available resources for later periods.

The fat 650-page book has very little text and is anything but academic. It is filled with exquisite plates of line illustrations of cornices, furniture, friezes, and architectural and personal objects that illustrate the styles of each period. The cover advertises 3765 illustrations. The plates are printed quite small in this 5-1/2"x 8" paperback edition, where the original must have been much larger. But they still are quite clear and visible for study. If it is a problem for particular images, enlarge them on a copier.

It has been my practice over the years to sketch my research. My sketchbooks have many pages of fragments of cornices and objects and floral motifs from Speltz, all abandoned half-complete because I felt I had "got it" about the style I was exploring and moved on. The idea is to train my eye and my hand to the style by sketching it, with particular attention detail. My purpose is to understand the qualities of mass, line, texture, shape, and color, and to develop a feel for the proportion and scale. I sketch many objects from Speltz, in additon to architectural ideas from other sources.

The result is that when I work on the show, I'm thinking about the style world of the play and working more closely to the aesthetic of the period. It is possible to be more confident about the sense of space, the character of the line and the density of detail in the period or style that I'm working in. These things have a subliminal effect and bring conviction to the feel and finish of the design of any show, not just period designs. They allow the designer to make a more finished statement through her choices. And they help the audience to feel confident that whatever is there, is there by choice for a purpose and makes an intentional statement.

Every designer should own this book.

It may be worth mentioning that Dover also has published a similar book since 1957, Handbook of Ornament by Franz Sales Meyer, with 3002 illustrations. This also is a good reference, but I have not found it as valuable as Speltz.

Next, my favorite book on scenic design.

Scenemaker
October 30, 2011

Design Research 1

In design class each year I bring in an assortment of reference books periodicals and other resources from my personal library. When I pass them around the students pore over them with interest. Yet each year it seems slightly less relevant because I find even myself using them less for design reference. The world of design research has changed, and I have to recognize how that plays out with my students. But I just don't think the Web is enough.

Let's start by noting that I've been designing shows and collecting research resources for a long time. Over time what used to be pilgrimages to a few specific library resources have become browsing sessions in my own studio as I have been able to acquire them. What might one expect to find in an academic theater designer's studio? I can't remember ever having visited another working scenic designer's studio, so I may not really know. The couple costumers' studios I have seen have resembled my eclectic jumble, but with more fabrics and textures, and less accumulation of dust and bits of scenic models in the corners. And they're infintely better maintained.

On one wall of my studio I have a generous library of books and periodicals on art works, architecture, historical periods, stage production, costume, scenic designs, illustration, art techniques in various media, and all things related. And I have two long file drawers of tear sheets from Smithsonian and many other magazines over the years that illustrate periods and subjects that might turn up in a play I need to design.

So how much of this do I use for scenic design? Less and less it seems, although I do still find it essential. For one, I'm designing fewer plays in a year than I once did. And I now do a tremendous amount of visual research online, as I'm sure everybody must. My library can't really compete with the volume and diversity of image resources that are readily available, or the historical and critical commentary on even the most obscure theatrical work.

When I teach design I still argue for students to collect resources. I argue first that there's too little context for online materials, and that by focusing on the visual alone, the design itself may lack conviction. I find myself struggling to avoid a pastiche of ideas when I haven't really researched a show well enough. Or sketched long enough. And in the less-is-more world of contemporary visual metaphor, what is there must be evocative and powerful. In a larger sense, the collection also becomes an anchor for one's artistic vocabulary. One's ideas are referenced to, and indebted to this collection.

Still, I have been designing for a long time. Perhaps I've not covered every period and style, but I've certainly covered some ground. I usually can connect to ideas fairly quickly, but sometimes I can't find the way in. There are still books I turn to in order to unblock - some I have been using since my grad school days.

And there always is a block, at least one - always, in every show. If not, I don't trust my design because it hasn't been proven by doubt.

For me, the books and tear files are invaluable for building my way out of the doubt. I look at pictures and wade through the resources, flagging dozens of images. As I review the flags repeatedly I catch an image idea or two or three that begin to shape a sense or feel or fragment of the environment I'm working on. That becomes the foot in the door I need.

I start pulling together the imagery. I have to force myself to sketch as I go and scratch out words and thoughts so that fleeting images and ideas don't get lost. Here an idea, there an idea, a faint and hesitant shape begins to appear, and I go back and re-read the scene. And so on - that's another essay. The sketchbook begins to fill with bits and pieces and doodles that will lead to a design.

So if I had to recommend, say 5 books, what might they be? What have been my most referenced print resources for theatrical scene designer? Check back.

Theater economics: Location, location

I just received a PR notice from the Huntington that with 2 weeks to go, Candide has become the Huntington's highest grossing musical at $1.2 million. It is the second highest grossing show, behind Butley with Nathan Lane in 2003. That provides some insight about the Huntington's patrons and target audience.

It also says something about the theater market in Boston. We don't pretend to have the population or tourist traffic of the Apple, but this shows the difference.

I'm guessing Candide will bring in a record-breaking total of maybe $1.7m for the run of 7 weeks or so. The Huntington probably gets the highest gross per production in town. For comparison, last WEEK's grosses in New York were $1.3m for Spiderman and Book of Mormon, $1.4m for Lion King, and $1.5m for Wicked. These are all up from the previous week, along with Follies at $1.1m and Jersey Boys at $1m.

Average ticket prices are a bit steep in New York, comparable to top seats in Boston: $100 for Spiderman, $105 for Lion King and $111 for Wicked, but $149 for Book of Mormon. At the Huntington, top seats on weekends are about $100, but there are plenty of $65 seats, and good seats for a touring musical at the Wang or Shubert for 3 weeks or so are in the $90 range. The economics of production clearly is different for commercial shows in New York.

Scenemaker
7 October 2011

Candide Indeed

A production of the Voltaire/Bernstein/Zimmerman play Candide is in performance at the Huntington's BU Theater for its season opener. It is a vigorous and pleasurable, if long performance. It originated in Chicago at the Goodman a year ago, then played at Shakespeare's Theater in Washington, D.C., in December. I couldn't find if it went anywhere between then and now.

Candide is famously a work by Voltaire published in 1759 satirizing a philosophy of predetermination in which everything that happens is "for the best" and is as it should be. Candide receives the teaching from his mentor Pangloss while growing up comfortably in Westphalia, which is overrun, forcing him out into the world where he experiences its many hardships. The story proceeds rapidly with vignette-like incident after incident of disasters and trials. Early he meets and falls in love with a baron's daughter Cunegonde who, with Pangloss, winds in and out through the odyssey that takes him from Europe to South America and back to Arabia. In the end Candide rejects the optimist philosophy for a more measured view of mankind.

The operetta is a reworking of what was once a Lillian Hellman effort with Leonard Bernstein in the 1950s that never got off the ground. The lyrics are written by Richard Wilbur and others. This production is done in a kind of energetic story theater style, with a cast of 19 and lots of sudden props and onstage costume transformations. It was directed and somewhat adapted by Chicago's Looking Glass Theater artistic director Mary Zimmerman. A few years ago she also directed a production of Journey to the West that played the Huntington.

The Boston Globe review by Don Aucoin is favorable and fairly uncritical. It's difficult to tell audience response because the Globe has gone all subscription, and I haven't found the reader responses though I am a subscriber. The unsigned Chicago Tribune review was fairly soft but complained that after the first scene change, "the carnival of multifarious acting styles returns, as does some needlessly fussy staging, especially frustrating when Bernstein's exquisite score needs to communicate without models of boats or balloons floating by." There were quite a few critical reader responses appended to that review, and it was evident that the McArthur Genius Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman has a reputation for the kind of mythical story-telling staging used here and as we saw in Journey to the West. As one Chicago review reader wrote:

"For the life of me, I will never understand the Zimmerman love in this town. It's the same thing over and over and over again. Someone dies, red fabric flies out. Time to cross the ocean, blue fabric shimmies across the stage. Two people have sex, they roll around the floor without touching in a choreographed move. Toy boats are handled by actors to show crossing the ocean. And this is genius???"

In terms of staging, it was no different at the Huntington.

The most common criticism of the Chicago production, other than Zimmerman's style, was the small orchestra and the disservice to Bernstein. There wasn't much to correct that in Boston.

The set was designed by Daniel Ostling, whose web site says he is based in San Francisco, in residence at the Looking Glass theater in Chicago and on the faculty of Northwestern University in Evanston, north of Chicago - I'm sure resulting in many frequent flyer miles. He has designed at many of the resident theaters across the country, as shown in the portfolio of his work . His site shows generally spare and open, quite uncluttered designs for a number of LORT houses. He has used the deep box design employed here, and a few other enclosed environments, but most of his portfolio shows what appear to be more open staging with arrangements of interesting pieces, shapes and necessary furnishings.

Candide opened with an 18th century table scene within a small proscenium frame, backed by a red toile image of a period interior on a loose fabric curtain, all of which whipped away at scene end to reveal a full stage-sized box that walled in the production. Within this box the company continually transformed the space with movement, choreography, and ever-changing furniture piece or two to suit the story telling.

This oaken-beamed box had panels that slid aside for props and people to enter and exit at several levels. The entire back wall flew for skies and exterior scenes, such as a Rousseau jungle, or a sky of fluffy clouds for a scene with red fluffy prop sheep. There were traps in the floor that swallowed and disgorged people and props. The overhead lighting came through huge oak-paneled shafts in the ceiling, and there was a double row of lighting units with dozens of color scrollers slung right under the top of the proscenium arch to light tightly the downstage areas. You can get some feel of the setting from the image here, but I had to enhance it substantially to show the dark wood, resulting in some overall color distortion.

Costumes were by Looking Glass designer Mara Blumenfeld. I thought they were handled well and I was impressed with the attention to character and variety in the 18th Century dress, and with the onstage redressing and much doubling of roles. I did wish there had been a costume choice to single out Candide better because he sometimes got lost in the crowd in the narrow palette. Regardless of the variety of shapes and pieces, the whole show seemed very brown. The few shows on Mara's web site show facility with the 17th and 18th century period look in design, particularly her work on The Glorious Ones about Flaminio Scala and Company.

T. J. Gerckens, whose lighting credits are all over the regional theater circuit, was able to capture the moments well. With so much onstage scene-changing and transforming episodes, one into another, things were placed well and usually the focus of the scene was clear. Some clever lighting choices were used, but sparingly. I noticed the choice not to do a cliché lighting change for a couple of "slo-mo" fight sequences. Full-screen projections of period text on the act curtain accompanied the opening of each act.

As for the performances, the principals of Pangloss (Larry Yando), Candide (Geoff Packard), and Cunegonde (Lauren Molina) carried their roles quite well. Yando was a clear and distinctive tall and skinny Pangloss, later sporting a metal nose. Packard gave Candide much naivete and enthusiasm. Molina drew some fire in Chicago from those who thought she wasn't up to the operatic role, but I actually thought she was quite good. She engaged me in her performance. There were other distinctive performances from the 19-member cast, but the number of characters is too overwhelming to focus. One interesting moment for me came as the play neared its conclusion: the chorus went a capella for the anthem and Candide's discovery speech was presented clearly and directly.

This is a regional theater road show. I know it has become general practice to share productions, but I'm not sure how I feel about that. A wonderful show should travel and share the work everywhere it can, and the economics of production can be optimized. But I can't imagine that it is particularly good for developing and employing local artists.

Then, I have to wonder how much local talent the Huntington employs beyond production staff under any circumstances.

Scenemaker
23 September 2011

And so it begins (redux)

And so it begins. The last post was about the grand ideas. This is about the nitty-gritty.

Like every teacher, I'm deep in piles of old syllabi, academic calendars, production schedules, class registration lists, and a scramble of notes from past semesters. I look down my class lists and see students whom I know in the major courses, and all new names in my introductory class. Out of all of this I must come up with 25 or so scintillating learning experiences for each course, carefully linked to learning goals and sequenced for optimal development while observing all of the research and data on how students learn best. The good part is that this isn't the first time I've done it. The bad part is that although I have had some good classes, there always are students who don't achieve my learning goals for them. How does one deal with the disappointment that every student didn't get it . . . all?

I have my own history as an occasionally indifferent student, and I recognize that students do wind up doing triage on what gets attention. I always try to figure out how the courses that students do invest in can be the ones I teach. The content I teach generally is not very difficult in my introductory courses, and my measures do not really require much original thinking or conceptually difficult perspectives. Everybody can get a good grade, they just have to DO THE WORK.

So I review the syllabus and notes on these courses I've taught annually for years. I am facing those issues all teachers face: Which assignments worked well and which didn't. Why. Did the sequencing and the timing build toward the learning goals. How valid are all the learning goals. How much content is essential, beyond the curriculum framework. What would everybody expect students who succeeded in this class to know or to be able to do. What would we be appalled that a student who got a good grade didn't know or couldn't do.

How can we turn this lecture into an activity. How can we make these class experiences more active. What activity can we invent that will get at the goals that they don't get out of our lecture and won't get out of the reading they won't do. How can we motivate more through fascination than fear. Or even through fear. How can we create assignments that these students actually will invest in. Or will do at all.

Into all this, fit the new. What have we been teaching that is getting dated. What is happening on the topic today that we need to incorporate. What are the likely recognizable references for undergraduate students today -- they were born in the early 1990s and connect with historic and cultural references only since about 2000.

I have to think about how to make reference to current experience without sounding out of place and faux-hip. (See: the annual Beloit mindset list) And how to avoid dangerous dated references (like "hooking up").

And so . . . it begins. It will be great semester. I feel it.

Working Out the Path to the Goal Line

It's mid-August and we're now bending our minds toward school - those of us who benefit from a tradition of not opening school until Labor Day - or at least September 1. I cherish the slightly later start of New England colleges, after beginning my career in the central states where earlier report dates were becoming common.

I'm sure that compared to many of my colleagues, I'm quite late to the task. But now is when I really plan the course revisions I've been intending to make in courses I have taught many times.

I have watched the process become dominated by 21st Century tasks, and I am doing so much more without paper and pencil. I'm revising syllabi and verifying various links, revising my Blackboard sites and Classmate grade book for the new syllabi and class rosters for each course. I'm reviewing the online and digital classroom materials to see which ones require that I build in some revision time as the class dates approach.

Like most faculty, I do use paper in re-evaluating the content and sequence of each course. This involves scratched notes and materials with line-outs dropped into the folders when the courses were offered last. I pull out my paper calendar to scratch in sequencing ideas, but eventually that becomes dense and the arrows moving things around become confusing, so a digital version gets sketched in.

As I know current and former students can read this, they may have another perspective on their experience in my classes. These notes speak to intentions. As they say, your experience may differ.

As every teacher knows, building the course is always a struggle with content load and the learning experience itself, and . . . time. Content load isn't just about information retention and skill development - it's always about so much more. I imagine for faculty in most fields, the specific information retained actually is second in the instructional goals on the scale of importance and intention. Often skills are important, particularly at upper division level, but we can never deliver enough information.

So if not just content and skills, what is it really about?

It's about developing a state of mind, an attitude of discovery, an awe about the body of knowledge and hunger for more, and a commitment to real excellence. If the students develop this, the rest surely will follow. These are things that aren't easily reduced to a percentage grade. My difficulty, which I likely share with many faculty, is finding the balance of focus in the course between this developmental aspect and the content. I need to develop enough of a body of knowledge that the student can begin constructing her/his own connections among the elements, and enough skill and foundation of experience for another step in the curriculum. Ideally, I want students to develop the commitment to visualize a complete path - one that challenges them, promotes their growth, and one to which they can commit.

One consistent problem is the student who lacks desire to meet goals that require real investment of effort, often - to be fair - in competition with other personal and educational goals. Or perhaps they lack the foundation for continuing development. It's a problem as old as formal education itself. The grand goal may be desirable but some or many of the steps to achievement are too demanding or distasteful, or their application may seem irrelevant. In such cases, the curriculum certificate or diploma forces the commitment. We do what we can to make it effective and palatable, but in the end students must demonstrate that they have achieved certain skills and knowledge to be awarded something that validates that achievement, i.e. a diploma.

Almost no class ever really achieves all of my goals - which is not to say I haven't had some excellent classes. (If they all were to do so, I would feel I could have reached higher.) But the classes all begin with a commitment and hope and energy to inspire and get people excited about what they are learning. To build a connected body of knowledge and an array of connected skills and perspectives for artists and their audiences.

I think most faculty share these or similar intentions.

[Now, back to prepping the syllabi.]

Vocational Higher Education in Theater

About every couple years we get an extensive article trying to define what baccalaureate graduates need to know for our "industry," and it always reads like a superman wish list. Usually it is a compilation of surveys or focus groups of people working in the theater and entertainment industry and it is always quite long and specialized. It has taken me a while to learn to read them with a little perspective.

Sure. You ask people what they want in a new employee, and you get a description of a superman/superwoman who has a fantastic set of chops and varied experience in every task of the trade and doesn't need to learn anything except local practice, who is brilliantly creative and capable of reinvention, who knows history, literature, and art with the perspective and detailed recall of a savant, who is fabulously humble and eager to learn and please and work with/under any oddball personality, who can direct and supervise others with skill and empathy, who is completely free of personal encumberments and commitments that might restrict night and weekend work and travel, who is ambitious but not threatening, and especially who is incredibly loyal and is committed to working for you forever. And who will start at minimum wage and take a seasonal hiatus. And who owns a van or pickup.

So you have to have that in mind as you read through something like Heidi Hoffer's Spring 2011 Theater Design & Technology article "Preparing design/tech undergraduates for the entertainment industry." She did a lot of surveying of industry vendors of entertainment products and services, stage managers, and others who employ theater production graduates. I'll quote from her opening summary:

"Many of the people . . . shared the view that the fast pace of change in the industry might require a different kind of undergraduate training today. There was a fundamental agreement that the practical knowledge learned in school was the most valuable in the workplace. They also agreed that too many new employees don't work hard enough, they expect instant gratification, and they don't have a professional work ethic."(p. 51)

But she also provided a quote from an industry leader admitting, "There's just so blasted much that you really need to know that it's tough for a student to be grounded in enough disciplines when they first get out of school to be ready to get a job and work effectively and successfully." (p. 52)

The article goes on to discuss knowledge bases in stagecraft, costume technology, hand drafting, cad drafting, traditional rendering, digital rendering, lighting design, costume design, scene design, theater history, theater literature, scene painting, stage management, internships, job-seeking skills and life skills.

So what does that mean to me and my students? Well, there really isn't a lot that is very new here except the list is longer. What we didn't know, we did suspect. There is a phenomenal knowledge and skill base that needs to be developed, and it takes commitment. Specialization is valuable, but of course the liberal learning is important, too. As theater work, it's slightly more reliable than acting and directing. I'll be thinking about this as I prepare my classes, trying to figure out how to cover the necessary bases in the time we have, and yet inspire students to pursue and commit to something. I really can't get at the whole list, but maybe I can encourage and help them find a part that can appeal to them. What will drive it ultimately will be their love for the art form, their love for the people who work in it, and the imagination and commitment to success in the work they do.

A lot of this they must have the drive to do for themselves. Actors, directors, designers, technicians. And teachers. Our working world is different, and is highly dependent on initiative. We can attack it directly or wander through and try to sort it out. But it really is up to us and to what we are willing to commit. That's how we're different. And we'll find ways to learn what we need to know to keep up.

On the Fringe - really

This is the month of the fringe festival in Washington, D.C. I have to say I wish I could be there. There appear to be some interesting conceptual pieces being done, and I would love to be able to see them. The descriptions suggest they are playful and challenge assumptions about the nature of theater, or at least about the seriousness of the art form itself. They suggest an openness to the theatrical experience and above all, they provide a stimulus for discussion about theater and what theater is.

The biggest and best international fringe began in 1947 and runs in Edinburgh, Scotland every August, but many other cities host their own fringes. New York, of course, as well as New Orleans, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Hollywood, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Orlando - all periodically have a festival for odd and innovative theater performance.

I had to look around a little to find out about the New England Fringe Festival in Burlington. It does come at a busy time - September 17 to October 2 - and it seems to be out of the way, certainly from south of the city. But now that I have my attention drawn to it, I hope to take in some of the work. The titles of past award winners look intriguing, although I hope it isn't dominated by solo artists. I also hope they can get some information out to the world about what is going on. The internet is great, but real promotion has to appear in your path.

I have to wonder why I have been unaware of the festival before, which has been going on since 2007. The Washington Post website is all over the festival there on a daily basis, but I don't remember reading anything about the New England festival in the Globe.

One problem with a Fringe Festival necessarily is venues. Theater art requires a certain amount of overhead - and for whatever reasons, not much of the fringe seems to occur in the city here. Maybe it is more cost effective to concentrate the festival in Burlington, but it's not getting the kind of visibility from Boston papers that the Washington festival is getting. I can't help feeling that attention to a fringe festival would inject some life into the world of Boston theater and challenge some conceptions about what theater can be.

Boston tries to maintain a sense of itself as a theater town. It does have a richer legacy of theater history than Washington and some of the other cities with festivals, but I wonder if it isn't weighing us down. I think there may be some things going on in the Boston area that rise to fringe kind of experiences, but there's no critical mass or media focus to project their influence and freshness into the art form at large. We hardly ever hear much about them in southeastern Mass.

I have a clipping I use of a group that did a play in a working, operating laundromat a few years ago. The patrons were the audience. It was a consciously scripted and intentional work, not just a "happening." Few such challenges to traditional presentation rise to media consciousness with a byline story and a picture. Some experiments may be occurring but there's little collective influence.

I have fond memories of some remarkable theater events that were created by Mobius members in their studios in the Fort Point district back in the 80s and early 90s. Some of the pieces were thoughtful and prompted real reflection, others were joyful and raucous, and still others were just odd. Nobody ever tried to define it all for you, but let you meet the work on your own, making whatever sense of it you might. Those events did have a certain amount of thoughtfulness to them and they did intend to shape an experience to a purpose. The organization gave it a focus of energy and critical perspective. It is notable that these generally were created by performance and media artists, not theater people.

I think audiences have the capacity to embrace the new. My students today are no longer surprised much by weirdness, because it has emerged as a kind of pop meme. From internet sites to cartoons to high school antics and youth oriented media in general. Given the intensity of feature filmmaking, there's little that can shock my students anymore. I think they can see silliness for its own sake and make some astute judgements. They seem to be a bit more ready to find meaning in an experience, and will apply a critical perspective if they are led to it a little.

One of the more important aspects of a fringe festival is that it de-institutionalizes the art form. Few major art forms have the institutional overhead of theater, but we keep pretending it can be be done on a trestle and board. A fringe festival reminds us that something interesting can be done with less. And new ideas can happen with minimum investment.

Under the best of circumstances, in a festival there is a critical mass of new experiences that allow audiences to explore and compare. The artists themselves are influenced by what goes on about them, and can work more thoughtfully in the context of the stream of current activity. It's all good for everybody.

But we have to know about it. Boston still pretends to be a theater town. It really needs to game up and the media should help. It's not like it costs them a lot. But of course it means less time and space for the latest outrage or sports win. On TV there's no longer time even for Joyce Kulhawik, who only reported on the most mainstream theater.

July 17, 2011
Scenemaker