Catharsis: The Royale @ ACT

Show: The Royale: A Play in Six Rounds; by Marco Ramirez

Theatre: ACT; Seattle, WA

Tickets: ACT Pass

Date & Time: Sunday, September 26, 2016 @ 2pm

Okay, an important bit of information is that I went to see this play after spending around 24 hours over 4 days taking an ArtEquity intensive. For four days we worked on establishing a basis for understanding and identifying white supremacy, oppression, and inequalities due to gender, race, sexuality (to name a few) in society that have been perpetuated for hundreds of years in our country. It was a very intense experience and to finish it off by watching a play that drives each of those points home was, as my title alludes to, an extremely cathartic experience.

The Royale is inspired by the historical, groundbreaking boxer Jack Johnson who was the first black heavyweight champion from 1908 to 1915. Ramirez's play explores Johnson's story leading up to his first fight against the fictional white heavyweight champion Bernard "The Champ" Bixby. The script deftly runs Johnson's desire to be the best boxer alongside his struggle against racism and Jim Crow Laws, pitting his egoism and selfish lifestyle against his dedication and love of his sister. The play itself is beautiful and cutting at a time when our nation is struggling with extreme violence against men and boys of color. During an interview with press, Johnson tackles the fact that his athleticism and talent are explained away by the fact that "his kind" are prone to violence, so of course he would be drawn to boxing.

But, as is the case with many plays, it is the entire package that makes this a memorable show. Because I follow these things, I was excited to follow the interviews and write ups about director Ameenah Kaplan's approach to the show. Kaplan was part of the original company of STOMP and, per her wikipedia page, has been drumming since age 12. Her relationship with movement and percussion shine through the staging of The Royale. As she says in the interview found in the program, "...rhythm.... It calms, it soothes, and it informs." The rhythmic performance of the script, from the boxing moves to underscoring important lines, most definitely informs the story and pushes this play beyond a simple "based on the life of" and into the realm of immediate, necessary, and heart-rending.

I also must comment on Carey Wong's beautiful set. If you know anything about my own aesthetic, it will come as no surprise how much I believe that the bare stage of this show with just four stools is exactly what this show needed. The barebones of a boxing ring, the platform allows the story, the words, the people to take precedence over the visual world, which is exactly how scenery should act. It also makes the moment when the boxing ring is created for the final face-off of Johnson that much more powerful. The caging of "the grizzly bear" is complete and the audience can't help but be struck by Johnson's courage in the face of societal and personal demons.

But more than the excellence of this production, which ACT rarely disappoints on, is how important it is that this story was chosen for the main stage season of a LORT company. When so many seasons at the leading theatres in Seattle and the country are written and directed by and starring predominately white males, to have a production that celebrates and analyzes the racial injustices of then and now while celebrating talented artists that are often relegated to second string companies is important. My ArtEquity training is showing, but I have been so disappointed by the lack of diverse stories available to my communities by the theatres I work with and/or admire. The day before I attended this performance, I was fortunate enough to attend The Black Women Wisdom Summit, curated by Valerie Curtis-Newton and hosted by The Hansberry Project and Intiman Theatre. During the rich, honest conversation between the 11 black women playwrights and Curtis-Newton, a simple truth of the lack of diverse representation became clear. Dominique Morisseau said it best (and do go read the article/transcript from Seattle Weekly linked above for more pearls of wisdom):

"Whose universe? Saying that work should be 'universal' is code for work that should be appreciated and understood by a white audience. So universal becomes code for white, and then we’ve got a white universe, and I’m like, hold on. The thing about universality is that we are all a part of the universe, so every work is universal. And if you aren’t writing from a specific place, where are you writing from?"

This question of "where are you writing from" can be broadened to include directors and designers who shape the world on stage, and the artistic teams that are programming what worlds are on the stage in the first place.

If you are on the fence about seeing this show, go! It runs through October 9th. There are a ton of ways to get discounted tickets at ACT that you may not know about. Including Pay What You Can on Sundays, $20 on Tuesdays, and $15 tickets to students/Under 25! You will not be disappointed to spend your money to see this production.

--

And now, some stats:

# of Actors: 5
# of Female Characters: 1
# of Non-white Characters/Performers: 4

# of Artistic Team Members Listed on Title Page of Program: 9
# of Female Artistic Team Members: 4
(including: Director, Costume Designer, Asst Lighting Designer, and Production Assistant)

Then is Now: Daisy @ ACT

Quarter-Inch Scale Model of the Set Design of Daisy
designed by Shawn Ketchum Johnson

Show: Daisy; by Sean Devine

Theatre: ACT; Seattle, WA

Tickets: ACT Pass

Date & Time: Friday, July 29, 2016 @ 8pm

I went into this show 100% skeptical that I'd enjoy myself. A play about the advertising campaign to elect Lyndon B Johnson in 1964? Didn't we JUST do this at The Seattle Rep and Oregon Shakespeare Festival with All the Way and The Great Society? Why are playwrights so obsessed with this time in American politics? As a 32-year-old, the pitch of the parallels of the political climate of LBJ's terms with today feels more like a half-ass attempt to make a story that appeals to the majority of the aging theatre audiences appeal to my demographic and younger.

Which means that I was pleasantly surprised by this evening of theatre.

It started by attending the ACTPass Member Party on the roof of ACT. As a former audience services employee, I was totally down to be on the receiving end of the carefully constructed social event to entice members/subscribers to feel invested in the theatre beyond the usual ticket purchase. That is why I was able to snap a picture of the set model above. Peppered around the room that the gathering was held in were costume plates, scenic drawings, and models for Daisy and the shows that had come before (Stupid Fucking Bird and The Mystery of Love and Sex). As a designer, this kind of insight is super cool to me and I always nerd out over seeing the art that will be full-scale, 3-D that evening. I was not the only person inspecting these artifacts, so I know it's not just my specific brand of nerdiness that this appeals to.

Once we sat down to see the show, I was immediately impressed with the scale of the wall of TVs that was created for the show. An innovative way to both incorporate the media that the story of the play centers around, but also allow for projections that indicate place, time, and other story elements that advance the story. Interestingly, my date for the evening, a friend from high school, and I compared notes about the first TVs we remembered being like one of the TVs in the back wall. Despite our generational distance from 1964, we still felt a connection to it. This got me to thinking about the kind of nostalgia that I worried that this and plays like All the Way and The Great Society produce in the average theatre patron of the large theatre houses. Looking around the audience last night, I can attest that we were two of the youngest people sitting in the theatre. Even during the usual last-minute rush-ticket seating, the average age of the audience pushed well north of 50.

And that's unfortunate.

Unlike Robert Schenkkan's plays, which really operate as historical dramas of the LBJ presidency, Daisy, while based on true events, analyzes the human component of people grappling with the changing political landscape of the 1960s, specifically the terror that gripped the country on the verge of a war with Vietnam. The play centers around the ethics of a ground-breaking commercial that aimed to paint Barry Goldwater as a nuclear-trigger-happy candidate for president while not outright saying that. The advertising team struggles with the manipulation of praying on America's worst fears in such a blatant way. See the ad below:

As the dramaturgical material in the program and throughout the lobby, it is eerie how many people of America viewed Barry Goldwater as a crazy, off-kilter candidate who could not, should not be the Republican nominee, let alone the next president of the United States. This ad, nick-named "Daisy" by the team, was a calculated move to incite fear at the alternative to voting for LBJ. The team went on to receive harsh rebuke by the public and other politicians, but also to receive praise for the change in advertising tactics that the spot marked.

This glimpse into history is enough to make this play worth a viewing.

But this world-premiere at ACT of a play that they helped develop in the Icicle Creek New Play Festival, is one of the most deft productions I've seen at ACT. From the set design (see more work by Shawn Ketchum Johnson) to the staging, this piece gives me hope that theatre in Seattle is not just stagnating.

That said, I still took issue with some things. In order to diversify the cast, the one non-white actor was a composite character made up of newspaper journalists and civil right's leaders. The female character in the piece existed because the playwright up and changed one of the real-life ad-men into a woman. I appreciate the effort, but let's be honest with ourselves about how the choice to program a play about this time period means that the diversity of gender and race on stage is going to be lacking. To completely change historical characters so that the diversity numbers check some boxes is as much a pandering to the audience as it is a disservice to the people that the story is about.

Also, why isn't this play being peddled in such a way to attract a diverse audience base? As it stands, if this play only primarily reaches the typical ACT audience base, it is a piece of nostalgia (per my anecdotal experience of listening to the audience sitting around us). Without a wider audience base that is younger and more racially diverse, then the lessons to be learned about how we are doomed to repeat our mistakes through inaction at the polls this fall are only things written about in the program and The Seattle Times. And yes, I believe the marketing efforts and ticket prices are as much a point to review as the production itself.

The show runs for another week. I recommend heading out to see it if you can. There are a ton of ways to get discounted tickets at ACT that you may not know about. Including Pay What You Can on Sundays, $20 on Tuesdays, and $15 tickets to students/Under 25! You will not be disappointed to spend your money to see this production. AND you'll likely be more terrified of what we are facing in 2016.

---

And now, some stats:

# of Actors: 6
# of Female Characters: 1
# of Non-white Characters: 1

# of Artistic Team Members Listed on Title Page of Program: 12
# of Female Artistic Team Members: 3
(including: Costume Designer, Assistant Costume Designer, and Dramaturg)

Light and Frothy: Singin' In The Rain @ Leavenworth Summer Theatre

Show: Singin' In the Rain; book by Betty Comden & Adolph Green, lyrics by Arthur Freed, music by Nacio Herb Brown

Theatre: Leavenworth Summer Theatre; Leavenworth, WA

Tickets: Comp

Date & Time: Thursday, July 21, 2016 @ 8pm

First, let me lay out the why of seeing this show. I headed to the little Bavarian town east of Seattle to support my friend, Phil Lacey, in the lead roll of Don Lockwood. As he put it, I was being given the opportunity to see a rare treat as he has more recently transitioned to working primarily as a director.

Now that you know why I drove three hours to see a show, it's also fair to admit that I went into the evening with low expectations. In part because the last time I saw a production of Singing' in the Rain was at a community theatre in Rockwall, TX, starring a bunch of teenagers. But also because Leavenworth Summer Theatre is true summer stock theatre. With a cult-like following among the returning artists, the three shows produced every summer are rehearsed and performed in grueling repertory in three different locations that LST has the fortune of renting from the Parks Department. As you may be able to tell from my photo above, Singin' in the Rain is performed on a covered stage at the Leavenworth Fish Hatchery run by US Fish and Wildlife. The audience sits on folding chairs that are arranged on a gentle slope. Other than the folding chair part, the opportunity to sit outside, surrounded by the beautiful backdrop of hills and evergreen trees as the sun goes down in midsummer is pretty special. Which I'm sure contributes to why the house was packed. For instance, the two families that were sitting beside me were taking a break from their camping vacation. The family to my right had been coming to LST for many, many years and were convincing another neighbor to be sure to catch The Sound of Music as it was "the best year yet." As a newbie to the LST experience, the utter lack of cynicism that you often catch snippets of sitting in the Seattle theatres was refreshing and downright infectious.

Low expectations aside, the show was really quite enjoyable. The stage version was adapted from the 1952 movie staring Gene Kelley, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds. Without a big budget and technically advanced theatre space, creating the scenic world of Singin' in the Rain is a difficult task.The show jumps between interior and exterior locations ranging from "outside Graumann's Chinese Theatre" to "An Empty Soundstage" to "Hollywood Boulevard." The stage version feels shoe-horned into the musical conceit of in-one scenes to allow for scene shifts to happen upstage of a curtain or scrim. This particular production relied on wagons that were changed out upstage of a red curtain. And, most importantly, they had the requisite rain during the titular song that closes Act 1. (The show I saw in Rockwall, TX relied on a mylar rain curtain.) I also have to mention that I was downright floored by some of the costumes that walked on stage. On that stage was proof that there are some really well-maintained stocks that can give the big rental houses a run for their money for one of the hardest parts of costuming a musical: matching chorus costumes.

If we take Singin' in the Rain for what it is--frothy entertainment--and put it in communities like Leavenworth built around charming the pants off tourists with the faux-Bavarian facades, then my evening was a success. I got to see my friend tap dance "in the rain" and to congratulate another talented actor, Morgan Bader, who I worked with on South Pacific on yet another hilarious turn on the stage. And, as I overheard one woman in the audience, it's refreshing to just enjoy affordable theatre rather than feeling fleeced by the ticket prices in Seattle for shows that leave you feeling meh. Next time I hope I'll have more time to enjoy Leavenworth and take in LST's crown jewel: Sound of Music set atop the ski hill.

--

And now, some stats:

# of Actors: 24 (approx)
# of Female Characters: 5 named (+ 8 ensemble)
# of Non-white Characters/Performers: 0

# of Artistic Team Members Listed on Title Page of Program: 15
# of Female Artistic Team Members: 9
(including: Director, Assistant to the Director, Choreographer, Assistant to the Costumer, Scenic Artist, Sound Board Operator, Light Board Operator, Props Master, and Costume Mistress)

Bubblegum Part 2 : The Mystery of Love & Sex @ ACT

Time to put this idea into practice.

Show: The Mystery of Love & Sex by Bathsheba Doran

Theatre: ACT in Seattle

Tickets: ACTPass Membership

Date & Time: Sunday, June 19th @ 7pm

One of the things I've been told I need to do with these is to lay out my expectations of the show. In that vein I must divulge that I went into this show a little unsure. This was the show that was labeled "bubblegum" by a colleague a few weeks ago. I tried to go into this viewing with an open-mind, but that critique was there and to pretend it wasn't is a disservice. Keeping that in mind:

Overall, the show was good. Despite being three weeks into the run and the last night of a long week of shows, the energy of the cast was there. I was wholly impressed with the commitment to the characters on stage by the actors. I'll admit I spent an unnecessary amount of the first act trying to remember that I'd just recently seen Emily Chisholm in Outside Mullingar at The Rep last season. But I tend to obsess over things like that until I can re-read the program looking for an answer.

Since I chose to lead with the assessment of the energy of the piece, that might point to whether I, too, imagine it to be bubblegum. To be clear, the explanation of bubblegum theatre is: "Sure it has flavors of racial struggle or LGBT oppression or meta-theatrical-revolution. But then you chew on it for a couple hours, it loses all flavor, and it ends up being tossed out with the program." I found myself saying to my husband at intermission, things felt too superficial. There were so many issues being tackled by the play--race, religion, sexuality, politics, socio-economics, gender roles, etc--that no one thing felt, at that point, to be given enough attention to feel worthwhile. I still felt that way at the end of the show, my opinion countered with the observation that, well, isn't that life? Do we actually spend every waking moment dealing with one or two BIG issues or are they all converging at the same time, bouncing off of one another, and changing with every passing moment and interaction? True. And perhaps it's my cynicism, but I want theatre to gob-smack me a little bit more and not feel so nicely tied up in a bow at the end.

And here's an important thing to ask: Am I the intended audience for this play? Or is the intended audience your average person who makes their living outside of the arts and who might, in fact, not question gender and sexuality politics on a daily basis. The average person who needs to unpack their feelings about being titillated by the nudity of the young female character in Act 1 but feeling like the nudity of the young man in Act 2 is gratuitous. Maybe the average person who thinks it's unlikely that both young characters explore homosexual relationships and have no interest in exploring a heterosexual relationship with one another. Etc.

No, I'm not really the intended audience member. The goal of this production is not to wow the theatre artists in the room. If it had been the set probably wouldn't have been such a simple answer to the many locations called for in the play (6, if you're counting, ranging from dorm room to backyard). It was elegant and effective and I think quite well done, but it was, for me with my set designer hat on, a little too static (despite multiple moving pieces). If it had been about the theatre artists in the room, they probably would not have used the door sound effect that I've heard in other productions in the Allen Theatre because for some reason when an actor walks into the vom* we won't intuit they go through an imaginary door in the imaginary walls unless we hear the sound of it open and close. Really, if it had been about the theatre artists in the room, would the play have been presented at all? Or, if it had, would it have been done in a post-apocolyptic, gender-bending manner that so many theatre artists employ to inject something into your average play? Maybe. Maybe not.

So again, the play was good. I laughed. I thought some things (often quickly brought out of deep thinking by the jokes). I even teared up at the end thinking of the meaning of friendship as the bow was tied nicely around the story. However, it isn't going to stick with me long term and maybe that means it's bubblegum. Or maybe it's just a production that exists. I feel neither robbed of my evening nor galvanized to make changes in the world at large or in my small circle of relationships. I could take it or leave it.

And, readers, that's not okay.

Leaving aside my feelings about the aesthetics of the show because, let's be honest, I picked apart the Tony-winning costume design of Hamilton so clearly I'll critique anything, the play itself should move me. I'm still a person who is married; who has questioned her sexuality; who is navigating the building, destruction, and definition of friendship; who has divorced parents; who went to college; who who who who who.... I am seeking, as implied by the title, to solve the mystery of love and sex. For me to have this "take it or leave it" feeling about the play just as an audience member, well, then I, as a theatre-maker, ask: "Why?" Why spend the resources to put that show up? It checks a lot of boxes: contemporary female playwright, diverse cast (25% is black!), dealing with Big Issues of the day (LGBTQ, race, religion, gender), and strong female characters to name a few. But a production should do more then check some boxes, which, when all is said and done, is about what this play has accomplished. Perhaps that's harsh. But let me leave you with this last observation: 35-50% of the house last night was empty and a noticeable amount of people left at intermission. Ticket sales, my friends, are hard to argue with.

And now, some stats:

# of Actors: 4
# of Female Characters: 2
# of Non-white Characters: 1

# of Artistic Team Members Listed on Title Page of Program: 10
# of Female Artistic Team Members: 5
(including: Director, Costume Designer, Production Assistant, Asst. Lighting Designer, & Dialect  Coach)

---
*vom: short for vomitorium

Peer Review?

In my last post, Bubblegum, I discussed Peter Brook's indictment of directors/designers and audience members in their role in creating "Deadly Theatre." There was one other part of the chapter that has been bouncing around in my head, begging for more writing (and something else, which I'll get to in a moment): the role of the critic.

It should come as no surprise that Brook believes the critic's role in promoting deadly theatre is in being too soft and not calling for competence when the piece falters. Brook calls the critic a "pathmaker" towards a better theatre, a necessary part of the ecosystem: "like the fish in the ocean, we need one another's devouring talents to perpetuate the sea bed's existence. However, this devouring is not nearly enough: we need to share the endeavour to rise to the surface." (32) Brook knows that this is not easy for the critic or the artists' on whom the critiques are being made.  Nevertheless, it is necessary as a bridge between the art and the audience. "When the status quo is rotten... the only possibility is to judge events in relation to a possible goal" (32).

There have been countless articles and blogs written about critics in theatre today. In Seattle, the theatre community is very on edge about the role of critics as seen in a Facebook comment discussion  in April of this year after Battleground Productions posted "An Open Letter to Seattle's Theater Community", a satirical lambasting of the critics in Seattle "written" by the late George Bernard Shaw. If you happen to be a part of the Seattle Theatre Artists Facebook page, please, go read the comments. Producers, actors, directors, and even our critics joined in on a, mostly, healthy and civil debate about why the critical response to Seattle theatre has been falling short. Ranging from accusations that only the large theatres are getting print space at The Seattle Times and The Stranger to the usual, touchy belief that reviews are too critical to the point of warding off potential audience members, the conversation boiled on for over 72 hours. Ignoring the personal attacks that floated to the surface, one thing was clear to me: Seattle Theatre Artists are really intelligent, thoughtful people who I'd like to hear more from when they see a show.

And then I read Brook's thoughts:

"It is for this reason that the more the critic becomes an insider, the better. I see nothing but good in a critic plunging into our lives... I would welcome his putting his hands on the medium and attempting to work it himself... [Because the] criticism that theatre people make of one another is usually of devastating severity -- but absolutely precise. The critic who no longer enjoys the theatre is obviously a deadly critic, the critic who loves the theatre but is not critically clear what this means, is also a deadly critic: the vital critic is the critic who has clearly formulated for himself what the theatre could be -- and who is bold enough to throw this formula into jeopardy each time he participates in a theatrical event." (32-33)

I have long wanted to write publicly about the theatre shows that I have seen but have avoided for one very important reason: my career. The idea of reviewing my peers, bosses, and potential bosses seemed like a really bad idea if I wanted to advance in this field. Actually, it still seems like a bad idea. However, perhaps emboldened by Brook's words and my own desire to shape the Seattle theatre community into what I know it can be, I'm going to embark on just that. Kind of.

I am not setting out to be a theatre reviewer or critic in the traditional sense of the term. I'm not going to search out or even take press tickets if they are ever offered to me. I am not aiming to tell audiences one way or another if they should see a show, though that may be a by-product of my writing if more than 5 people ever read my work. I am not going to hide the fact that I am a designer or that I have an agenda in both choosing the plays I see and the ones that I think are important. I am not even going to guarantee this project will last very long.

I am going to be transparent about why and how I am seeing a show. I will divulge how I came by the tickets. I will only write about shows that I see after they've opened out of respect for the preview process. I will be clear about any connections I have with anyone involved in the cast or the creative team. I will strive to be honest and thoughtful in what I write, which brings me to why I am going to try this out.

In life, I try, mostly successfully, to be honest and truthful with people I encounter. I don't talk behind people's backs; anything I say about you to anyone else is something I would say to your face (again, I am only mostly successful in this). For the last nine months I have taken a conversation with a fellow designer to heart: the mark of an amateur is that you do more theatre than you see.  At the time, I wasn't doing much theatre, so I decided to go see it. After every show I had thoughts, so many thoughts! If I'd been so fortunate to have a companion who'd shared my evening at the theatre, then the thoughts could be mulled over, dissected, and processed in conversation. And there it would end. What good does that do? If, as Peter Brook asserts, the critic and the artist has the same goal of shaping theatre into the as yet undefined art-form that is not deadly, then why not make my thoughts more public (and polished). And invite my fellow artists to do the same. I cannot tell you how much more I've valued my peers' opinions about my work, even when negative, over the reviews I've read.

So, after years of contemplation, I'm going to take the plunge and write publicly about the theatre I see. One might call it reviewing, but I hope it will be not only more than but also different than that. I don't plan to write formulaic-ly about the shows--touching on every design element, the directing choices, the stand-out performances--but instead to discuss the things that strike me and also how the show fits into the regional and national dialogues about our art form. And, because I have an agenda to make our industry representative of our society and more diverse in gender, race, culture, ability, among others, I'm going to touch on that when I write. This will probably take the form of a statistical breakdown, but we'll see. Much of this will be a "we'll see." I hope good things will come of it. Perhaps my fellow artists will join me in this endeavor. In fact, I'll be looking for someone to write about my upcoming show at Sound Theatre next month. In the mean time, stay tuned!

___

Brook, Peter. The Empty Space: A Book About Theatre; Deadly, Rough, Holy, Immediate. Touchstone: 1995. Print.

Bubblegum

Recently a colleague wrote to me about seeing a professional show currently opening here in Seattle. His overall assessment of the show was that it was good-- good acting, good designs, good directing, good themes-- but that it was still lacking. He said it reminded him of bubblegum: "Sure it has flavors of racial struggle or LGBT oppression or meta-theatrical-revolution. But then you chew on it for a couple hours, it loses all flavor, and it ends up being tossed out with the program."

Just a few days later, I picked up Peter Brook’s The Empty Space again. I first read The Empty Space in my Introduction to Directing class in undergrad, just over ten years ago. As a young theatre student, the book was read and notated based on what I thought was important, but mostly what the professor highlighted in class. Flipping through the pages, my margin-notes are quite sparse. I'd wager this is due to the simple fact that as a 21-year-old whose primary exposure to theatre had been in the cornfields of Iowa, I just didn't know what Peter Brook was on about.

Reading through the first chapter, “The Deadly Theatre,” I can attest that my newly underlined passages and notes are much more prolific and emphatic. As a working theatre-maker with many more years of theatre viewings and designs now under my belt, I profoundly recognize Brook's definition of Deadly Theatre over the course of my career. He indicts every person involved in creating a theatrical production --from actor to director to playwright to audience to critic--no one is innocent in the creation of deadly theatre.The two passages about the role of the director (and designer) and audiences in creating deadly theatre stood out to me and give me pause as I look around at the Seattle Theatre community, my theatre community.

Let us first look at Brook's complaint against designers and directors:

"Deadliness always brings us back to repetition: the deadly director uses old formulae, old methods, old jokes, old effects; stock beginnings to scenes, stock ends; and this applies equally to his partners, the designers and composers, if they do not start each time afresh from the void, the desert and the true question --why clothes at all, why music, what for? A deadly director is a director who brings no challenge to the conditioned reflexes that every department must contain." (39)

The word that stands out to me in that passage is challenge. I think back to the work I did to apply feminist theatre theories to theatrical design practices and am reminded of Dolores Ringer's four questions of design:

1. In the production I am currently working on, what are the explicit and implicit messages about power in gender relations?
2. How does visual language contribute to these explicit and implicit messages?
3. How do I as a woman and designer relate to the visual language and the world around me? How do I visually process information?
4. How have my relationship with other artists in the theatre and the creative and working process I use been constructed? (299)

Ringer specifically charges designers with always questioning what has brought them to the the visual language they are using. What in their lives and their sensibilities, but also what in the world and society as a whole underpins the meaning of our design? If we do not challenge ourselves as designers, how can we possibly expect to be challenging our colleagues or audiences? And, as Brook so pointedly says, an unchallenged audience is a part of the problem.

Brook begins his criticism of the audience with something beyond their control: the price of tickets. He is not making an argument for affordable tickets to increase audience access, but says that the ticket price represents a buy in from the audience that they are wary of for fear of being disappointed: "...the risk is too great, too many disappointments." But that is merely a prelude to his larger complaint of audiences: that their complacency around and acceptance of Deadly Theatre is perpetuating that cycle of disappointments. He baldly says, "If good theatre depends on a good audience, then every audience has the theatre it deserve" (21).

This brings me back to the use of bubblegum to describe "good" theatre that is, ultimately, just Deadly. Good technically and in content, much of the theatre of Seattle, as my colleague put it, is ready to be thrown out with the program in only a few short hours. The theatre I have seen in Seattle over the last two years have left me with only a handful of productions I am still thinking and talking about. Two of the three were touring productions. Seattle leaders and artists that I chatted with early on all said similar things about how the theatres taking risks were our fringe theatres. Unfortunately, they also noted, Seattle audience's fear that they might end up at a “bad” show in a fringe theatre and so still head to the larger, professional houses instead of the cutting-edge fringe theatres when looking for an evening of theatre. Thus, the status quo doesn’t change in the upper echelons of our theatre community because it is being reinforced through ticket sales and, unfortunately, standing ovations.

What then can be done?

At this point, I sense a dire need for the professionals of Seattle to talk earnestly about our community and the theatre that we are producing. In  a recent interview with City Arts Magazine, theatre-leader Valerie Curtis-Newton discusses the Seattle theatre community's tendency to praise artists to their faces but then to turn around and criticize them behind their back. This isn't helping our community of artists and that needs to change. Brook even discusses the need for open, honest communication between professionals so that we can all grow and be better. Even more than that, though, much of the Seattle theatre audience are other artists and practitioners. If we're afraid to be a part of the conversation to raise up the standard of our product than we are, in fact, being served the theatre that we deserve.

___
Brook, Peter. The Empty Space: A Book About Theatre; Deadly, Rough, Holy, Immediate. Touchstone: 1995. Print.

Ringer, Delores. “Re-Visioning Scenography: A Feminist’s Approach to Design for the Theatre.” Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics. Ed. Karen Laughlin and Catherine Schuler. Madison, Farleigh Dickinson UP: 1995. 299-315. Print.

Gesamstkunstwerk: The Total Work Of Art

The Flying Dutchman @ The Seattle Opera, 2016
Directed by Christopher Alden, Set & Costumes Designed by Allen Moyer, Lighting Designed by Anne Miletello

Last night I had the pleasure of going to see The Flying Dutchman at Seattle Opera. At times both awe-inspiring and sleep-inducing (specifically when the super-titles go out during the Third Act and you can't understand German), the production was just what I needed.

I began my love-affair with opera in high school, taking part in Seattle Opera's education program that brings high school students from area-schools in to see dress rehearsals of the productions. I found this opportunity late in my high school career, because it was, oddly, administered by our Latin teacher and senior level English teachers. However, as a theatre student, the opportunity to see the scale and scope of opera was eye-opening and as much a pivotal point of deciding to be a scenic designer as anything.

Not surprisingly, my exposure to opera trailed off while in school in Iowa, but was reawakened when I moved to Dallas, Texas and took up a part-time job in the box office at The Dallas Opera. As a part of my work in the box office, I was encouraged/required to attend dress rehearsal performances of the shows in the season. The first production was Verdi's Macbeth, directed by Bernard Uzan and designed by Robert Israel. Interestingly enough, a new production that premiered the year before at Seattle Opera.

Paying witness to the entire 2007-08 season at The Dallas Opera played an important role in shaping my design aesthetic as well as reminding me how much I wanted to be designing. The term Gesamstkunstwerk, popularized by Wagner to explain his aesthetic ideals, translates to "total work of art", "ideal work of art", "universal artwork", "synthesis of the arts" etc. Wagner in particular used the term to explain how all art could be unified through theatre in his essays "The Art and Revolution" and "The Art-Work of the Future". More than Wagner's (and subsequent aesthetes') use of the term to speak about control as an artist, this philosophy appeals to the artist in me that loves theatre (and opera) for it's most important and unique quality: collaboration.

Sitting in the audience of Dutchman last night I noticed a few things that only my particular brain would pick up on. The first was the rapt attention paid by a full and age-diverse audience. I've seen opera in San Francisco, New York, Greensboro, Dallas, and Seattle. Last night was one of the more multi-generational audiences and I think that had much to do with the fact that this production, originally devised in 2010 in Canada, brings the opera not only in content into modern times, but also in aesthetics and quality. Compare the above image with the below, from the Seattle Opera's rental page for their 1980s Dutchman.

The Flying Dutchman, Seattle Opera 1989/90
Directed by Stephen Wadsworth, Set Designed by Tom Lynch, Costume Design by Dunya Ramicova

The new, arguably Brutalist, set design by Allen Moyer I saw last night is striking, not only because of the dynamic yet sparse use of the stage, but also because that box and the wheel and the staircase are it (plus cameos of some chairs, tables, and a sail). That's both ships, the women's work space, the meeting hall. It is everything. After 2.5 hours I wanted there to be a little more dynamic use of the space. But to the average audience member, the simple nature of the space on stage allowed for the sung-story to take center stage, which, in turn, allowed for the emotional turmoil of the characters to be a stronger point of reference than many traditional stagings of opera allow. Furthermore, a simple design like that encourages the audience to play an active part in constructing the visual narrative of the space. It commands imagination. And, the creative team's choice to do that means that it trusts the audience not only to fill in those visual blanks, but also to be a part of the evening of storytelling in a way that, I'd argue, otherwise makes opera feel stuffy and flat to a generation that suckles so heavily at the teat of Hollywood. It expands the collaboration of the the art form to include the audience. It is a more total work of art.

Working part time at The Dallas Opera and other Dallas-area theatres, many of the traditional theatre people thought I was working on the productions at the opera and they scoffed at the "opera people" and the aesthetics of opera. I rarely corrected them, but I did talk about how exciting it was to sit in the dress rehearsals and see such grand designs. My excitement fell on deaf ears. Designing for opera exists, in live performance, at the pinnacle of little-to-no budgetary and scale constraints, which is generally why productions go into the vault to be rented out or revisited so often. Unfortunately, the recycling of past productions has also bred an expectation among a segment of opera patrons for "traditional" and "classic" designs. (I spoke to many TDO subscribers who were not fans of the 2007 Macbeth we'd brought from Seattle because of it's, also, Brutalist/modern design.)

In turn, the expectation of recycled performances bleeds out into the lay-persons perception of opera. Because it's not only the designs that are recycled. Often it is the staging and the impulses behind the show. Any performer can tell you that replaying the same thing over and over again is a monumental hurdle to overcome when trying to breath life into a character. Add onto that the language barrier that usually exists when viewing opera and, well, a night at the opera can feel tedious, maybe even deadly. This attitude towards opera is only magnified when dropped into a den of theatre people who already have Opinions about theatrical form and what is "worthwhile" on stage and off.

My point, however useless as just a freelance designer in Seattle, is that the poor opinion of opera (specifically by theatre practitioners) is really misplaced. As evidenced by the positive response across a multi-generational opera audience as seen at The Flying Dutchman last night, there is a desire to see new and innovative work. But, more importantly, there is much that even older productions can teach designers. I think back on the production of Faust I dragged a poor, unsuspecting date to at San Francisco Opera in 2010. It was a very traditional design and staging. It was hellish (pun intended) to sit through the three hours of the production and stay awake. However, the style of stage design that uses forced perspective as well as a heavy-handed color-coding for costume design is what I'd read about in the history of theatre design. To have the opportunity to peek back into working history, on occasion, is a reminder of where we've come from as a field of art and, thus, where we need to keep going.

I hope that more new productions of contemporary and older operas are developed by opera companies across the country. I think about the excitement around developing Moby Dick, which premiered 2 seasons after I left The Dallas Opera. The newness about it, though an old tale, breathed new life into the opera companies that have chosen to produce it. It got people in the door to not only see what a newly written opera looked and sounded like (in English!), but also suggested that the art form was maybe not dying after all. And, not unironically, I hope that it will get recycled in a city near me some time soon so I can see a live performance of it.

Are Musicals Trying to Kill Me?

South Pacific @ Seattle Musical Theatre

I had a wonderful meeting with a Producing Artistic Director yesterday who is considering me as a designer for his next season. As is the case in many of these meetings, I was asked to talk in-depth about the process of one my most recent projects. Given that it just closed, the topic at hand was my costume and co-scenic design of South Pacific. More than just a conversation about how it went, I was asked a question I've been asked by many non-theatre people: How did I manage to do a show with so many costumes with such a small budget, no help, and a tiny stipend? Well, most non-theatre people ask simply, how do you do that? But behind both questions is the same implied question: Are you crazy?

My husband, who has seen me through five years of freelancing as a scenic and costume designer, has, on numerous occasions, questioned my sanity when I tell him about a costume design I've been offered. He knows, as a former pit musician, that musicals are not small. He also knows, as the poor soul that has yet to have a dining table to actually dine at regularly since meeting me, the work needed to costume 10-30 people in multiple, dance-worthy costumes is no small feat. And he has, on more than one occasion, tried to talk me out of certain projects because, he says, the work I do on musicals might kill me.

But the reality of the situation is that while musicals can be deadly theatre, they are not actually out to kill me.

Musicals, like any show, require organization and communication. If those two things are in working order, death is not a given.

Organization is in the hands of the designer. I read the script, I create character and costume plots, I make lists, tables, graphs, on and on and on. Organization is at the heart of any successful completion of a project. Even those artists that are messy and scatter-brained have an organization somewhere in their head. Often, though, because bringing elements of a theatre design (be it lights, costume, or scenery) from idea to fruition is not only affecting that artist, many theatres have shops and staff and assistants that help keep those artistic souls on task, or at least organized, despite themselves.

When you're a freelance designer at the community or fringe theatre level, you're often on your own. Especially if you're the costume designer. Rarely do companies have costume shops anymore, or if they do, they're not staffed. Here, use this space to sew, by yourself, in the wee hours of the night, if the machine works...? So, organization is key. Part of being organized is time-management and budgeting for the show. Again, in (more) professional theatres, designers are not responsible for these. As a freelance designer, it's a one-woman show. As any work-from-home-type will tell you, a schedule is key to getting up and doing your job every day. I can't tell you how many times I've squeezed in an hour or so of sewing in my PJs before heading off to my day job because, if not then, when? And when it comes to budgeting for the show, well, that's just common sense. Keeping track of expenses as you go allows you to manage your expectations as new ideas come from your director. But, more importantly, it either keeps you off the hook in accounting for the money you were advanced or keeps the company on the hook for reimbursing you. Be it a show of thirty or a show of two, organization is how I, as a designer, can manage any given project. Part of that organization is being able to accurately manage incoming project requests. Can I actually pull of a 25 person show in 2 weeks? Not unless you pay me enough to take a leave of absence from my regular job. Etc.

And now that you're ready to quote Robby Burns at me with "The Best Laid Plans...", I did mention another piece that was required: communication. Say it with me: COMMUNICATION. Unlike organization, this is not solely in the hands of the designer and this, my dear friends, is what is like to stab you in the back and kill you dead while working on any show.

A designer can do her due-diligence in this department by attending all production meetings, responding to all outstanding requests, asking questions about things that need to be asked, send e mails, warn producers the show is going over budget, contact the stage manager when actors don't show up for fittings, publish inspiration boards for the entire cast, etc etc etc. A designer, however, cannot force the director to respond to her e mails about character tracks for the ensemble. Or the stage manager to send out rehearsal reports. Or the choreographer to answer questions about dance shoe needs. Or the accountant to send a budget advance. Or the production manager to make keys available to stock. And the list goes on. These are the things that make designing a show with no shop, no assistant, no stitcher, no dresser, or no help apt to kill you. Or me, as these are all things I've experienced, often on the same show. And, on a musical, where the demands on costumes can be exponentially greater due to choreography, blocking, and, so often, the scope/time-period of the story, these little communication issues start to magnify really quickly. So quickly.

So when asked how/why I keep costuming musicals with the implied whisper of "you're crazy", my response is often this: I am good at what I do. Musicals are by no means my favorite genre to work on and I welcome a nice one-era, afternoon at tea drawing room show. However, when you've proven yourself a master of 75% of the mathematical equation of costuming a show (let alone actual design skills), you're going to get called back because the producers can tell when things fell through because of a disorganized, non-communicative designer or some other piece of the puzzle. Musicals also pay well because, hey, they are a lot of work. Now, when you find me taking on another musical for less than a grand without any help, then, honey, crazy and likely to die, I am.

Musings on Hamilton

Go Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour Podcast about Hamilton. Do it. I listened to it on the plane ride home and I was nodding along to it the entire time. It's nice because they have a musical nerd and a rap nerd and then normal people. It was a pretty perfectly well-rounded discussion that hits it on the head.

One of the questions I had to answer for myself when my husband and I decided to plan the trip and buy tickets on the orchestra level, was why it was important for me to see the show in NYC, on Broadway, with as much of the original cast as possible. I am pretty sure that my desire comes from both a place of fandom as well as a theatre-maker. As a fan, being able to see the people responsible for the show in the flesh was beyond words. When Lin-Manuel Miranda walked out on stage, the entire theatre erupted in joy, myself included. We knew he was going to be on stage (the program tells you who is performing that night and no other announcements about understudies or swings was made), but it was still pure delight to actually see him. To know that he was going to spend the next 2.5 hours with us sharing his precious musical with us. Truly amazing. Of note, we were fortunate to have the entire original cast perform on Wednesday evening except for Jonathan Groff because he recently left the show and a new King George III (Rory O'Malley of Book of Mormon fame) had been brought in recently. There really aren't adequate words to explain how cool it is to see the people who you've been listening to for months as disembodied voices. It really is the most amazing thing.

In the podcast, they use the word "kinetic" to describe the show. This is a very apt way of explaining what is, for lack of a better term, missing when you listen to the cast album. I'll admit I don't have a ton of recording-to-live experiences to draw upon, but I'd wager Hamilton's particular staging and choreography are in fact very special. The soundtrack tells you the story, you get the wit, the brains, the allusions to musicals and hip-hop/rap styles, and the beautiful music and arrangements. But that's only a part of what makes up musical theatre. The choreography, the blocking, the interactions between characters, the space, the costumes, the lighting... that's what you don't get until you're sitting in the Richard Rodgers Theatre, in the room where it happens.

As a designer, in my opinion the creative team pretty much nailed it. I'd say that the set isn't super special, but it is perfect for the show. It isn't a revolutionary set design, it is form following function, and also pretty to look at. It will be interesting to see how it changes for the tour. While not necessary, the nested turn-tables play a large role in how the show is blocked and how the furniture, which makes each different scene, is moved to and from the wings. For that alone I'll want to see the national tour. However, since the pictures started to come out from The Public, I've had some issues with the costume design. Overall, again, it's a form following function thing. It's pretty, not flashy, it tells the story. The mixture of period costumes with natural hair has grown on me, but sometimes it feels like it falls a little short of being more of a workshop feel vs. a fully realized play. I don't know how I'd have done that part differently, but it is ... something that makes me pause in heaping praise on the costume design. The thing that bugs the crap out of me in regards to the costume design is the ensemble, specifically the women. They had two base costumes:

one that mimicked the male ensemble, with waistcoats over their leggings and with boots

one that had them wearing corsets over their leggings, with high-heels

I get it. It's a way to allow the women to be women in some scenes (crowd scenes, Thomas Jefferson's staff, etc) and still be able to dance. An when they are wearing just the waistcoats, they're soldiers. In this costume, gender is erased from the narrative the way that the casting erases race. Cool. Totally get it. HOWEVER, women in leggings and a corset is ... sexy? It feels more incomplete than the male costumes. It looks more like they are wearing underwear and the guys are all wearing clothes (notice how the men now have shirts on under their waistcoats and we're not seeing their muscle-y, dancer-arms?). It's a small thing. It's a nit-picky thing, but it's also the thing that really shows that the entire creative team is male. And, to be sure, we don't know that Paul Tazewell (costume designer) didn't try something different, but... the final product is allowing the male gaze into the conversation when, in other places, gender is neutralized. So, that's my one complaint that, even seeing the entirety of the costume vision, still remains.

And, I'm going to dedicate an entire paragraph to tell you how the lighting design was one of the best parts of the entire show. Musical lighting is an entirely different beast than doing design for a regular play. It lives in this place that straddles reality and rock show. And this lighting design does just that. The entire ceiling of the stage was solid black with lighting instruments. Usually musicals are pretty light-rig heavy. However, I've never been in a space where I've only seen lighting instruments. In part because many other musicals rely on things flying in and out. I think the only thing that flew in were lanterns. So the lighting designer got to use up the air for all kinds of moving lights, LEDs, specials... the works. And DAMN, he deserves to win the Tony, no questions asked. When describing the aim of lighting design, it is often described as "painting with light." Using light to evoke mood, place, time of day, and enhance the physical world is a tall order. For the most part, as a designer, you want your design to support the story but not be visible. Something the audience appreciates -- hey, I could see their faces or hey, that sunset on the back wall was pretty or hey, when Sweeney Todd slit their throats, the red lights helped heighten the drama -- but for the most part isn't really its own character in the story. And that's not because it can't be but because it's really, really hard. It's better to aim to be a supporting, unobtrusive character because if something goes wrong (the actor misses their cue/light or the cue is called in the wrong spot or, heaven-forefend, the instrument doesn't work) it won't be noticeable. And then there are shows on Broadway in which the lighting design is more rock show than just lighting their faces. Hamilton is one of those and so much more. The designer very much painted with light. During the songs where the hurricane in Hamilton's life is evoked: there was a hurricane on the stage floor. When Hamilton is walking when it's "quiet uptown" those same lights made cobblestones for him to walk on. When Hercules Mulligan jumps out in his solo song and when the Marquis de Lafayette sings his song and when Burr sings "The Room Where it Happened" the lights were bouncing all over the place and would give a Beyoncé show a run for its money. AND IT WAS PERFECT. Perfect. Not too much, not too little, but magical and a way to direct focus and enhance the story. If this was what I was told lighting could do before I started down the road as a scenic/costume designer, I'd have more seriously considered lighting design. That's how amazing the damn thing was. (AND, let's not forget, that the reason it worked was because the stage manager did an amazing job calling the show and the cast hit their mark, EVERY SINGLE TIME.)

Lastly? I have to speak to the ensemble nature of the show. Arguably, typical musical structure really exists as a star vehicle. There are solos for the main characters, supported by the ensemble, then they leave the stage, the story is advanced with some big, flashy ensemble numbers, and then the stars come back on and sing, etc etc. This show doesn't do that. From the cast album you know that Leslie Odom, Jr. as Burr sings most of the show as the narrator. That's unusual to have one person carry both the narration and an actual character story line so exclusively. Listen to the rest of the show. Renee Elise Goldberry as Angelica sings the beginning of "Quiet Uptown"... why? It's moving to have Angelica sing that song about her sister and brother-in-law, but it's not necessary as part of the story, really. You have a sense when you listen to it that there is an ensemble nature to the performances, but when you see the staging, you see how the director has characters not in the scenes pay witness by being on the balcony of the set and in the wings, watching. It's a small thing, and again, most lay audience members aren't really going to get it on a conscious level. But they're going to have a sense that the telling of the story belongs to everyone on stage. Especially with the picking out of ensemble members to play the small but important parts: Charles Lee, Sebring, and George Eaker (they guy who duels with Phillip Hamilton). Those are ensemble members who dance and sing their asses off THE ENTIRE SHOW and then KILL IT in these parts. This is all a part of the nod to the over-arching theme that LMM is playing with right in the middle of the show: "You have no say who lives who dies who tells your story." Or, in the opening song when the cast sings "We're waiting in the wings for you." The breakdown of the fourth wall is there, subtly, but there to remind us that we're not watching a period drama about our founding fathers, we're watching talented, diverse people of the twenty-first century celebrating the life of a man who we've nearly forgotten using the tools we have now.

The ensemble nature of the show is related to the little lines in the album that some people have nitpicked. Three examples: When Hamilton says "That's true" after the tidbit about how Martha Washington named her feral tom cat after him. When Jefferson says "Don't act surprised you guys 'cause I wrote 'em" after he references "Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" during "Cabinet Battle #1". And when Adams says "Which I Wrote" after Jefferson (?) mentions the Bill of Rights a scene or two later. They all feel a little weird when you're just listening to them out of context on the album. But when you see how they are delivered to the audience (in the case of the first one), to a cast member who is just off stage with no lines (the case of the line from Adams), and a combo of both (in the case of Jefferson), you see, I'd wager, the evolution of the show through being performed by living breathing, talented actors. I can't say (maybe it is clear in the book that just came out about the process of writing the show), but I'd say these are examples of how the final script is often created in workshop and performance because, hey, theatre is not just what's written on the page. Theatre is an alchemy of the collaboration of so many artists coming together to tell a story and that is what makes it special and important as an art form. And that, specifically, is how Hamilton has become the phenomenon it is. When you read the articles and statements from artists about Lin-Manuel Miranda, from the beginning of his career with In the Heights, the guy is generous and humble and welcomes people in to his process from beginning to end. And he's brilliant with words and music and form and everything.

In the podcast that I linked to above one of the people mentions that sometimes she gets annoyed with the overwhelming response to the show, how it has become such a huge, commodified cultural phenomenon that exceeds what most theatrical turning points (Rent, The Lion King, etc) have been granted by the world. It can be annoying, but then she reminds herself that it's giving power to people like LMM and Leslie Odom, Jr. and Daveed Diggs and Renee Elise Goldberry and and and for their next project. It's gilding them with praise and granting them a place in cultural history that transcends Broadway and theatre and will propel them, as amazing artists and, more importantly, generous souls to help change the world we live in. And that is what makes all of this so incredibly exciting to be a theatre-maker during the time of Hamilton.