An Object-Lesson

Good Theatre & Teaching Philosophy All Rolled Into One

2011-11-07T09:41:00.000-05:00

I wrote this recently and while it is a little less polished than it should be, I had a lot of revelations about my thoughts on theatre and teaching theatre that I think are important to share.

As a working theatreartist, my philosophy on teaching is deeply intertwined with my philosophyabout theatre as an institution. Thus, let me quickly outline my thoughts onwhat makes good theatre.

First, good theatreis truly collaborative. By this I mean it is more than a few artists comingtogether to make one artistic piece. True theatrical collaboration is about afew artists coming together to influence each other’s work and input increating one cohesive artistic piece. In order to do this, a scenic designermust not only welcome suggestions from the lighting designer about, say, whatmaterial is used to build the set in order to facilitate an interesting lookscenically and through light, but also know enough to suggest specificalternative footwear to the costume designer if the deck poses trouble for anactor who is supposed to appear barefoot. Furthermore, I believe trulycollaborative theatre allows the designers to work alongside, rather thansubordinately, with the director so that all ideas can and will be considered.

Second, good theatre is more than the final product and the bottom line. Whileit is important to create a product that will garner recognition enough to getthe proverbial “bums in seats,” theatre cannot be an example of “the endsjustify the means.” Theatre is an art form that has allowed countlessplaywrights, directors, designers, actors, and audience members explore societyfrom new and engaging ways. When we answer “Why are we doing this show?” withanswers like “It is a crowd-pleaser” or “It will make money” we are not doingthe art justice. As theatre artists we must engage with the production fromstart to finish, finding the important reasons to tell any story, from Oklahoma! to Orpheus Descending, from TheCherry Orchard to The Little Mermaid.Furthermore, theatre is a living, breathing art-form. It changes in the design,rehearsal, and performance process because of the many different people—includingthe audience—that are a part of making it happen. Good theatre and goodtheatre-artists recognize that not only are the public performances important,but also the journey from conceptualization to realization.

Lastly, goodtheatre is vital to our society. Sadly, theatre’s popularity is rapidlydwindling in the face of the instant, often-free media offered up by ourever-wired life in the twenty-first century. Too often theatres face concernsover the rising age of their dwindling audiences. Nevertheless, as theatreartists we know that theatre is important. Why else would we be in the business?But, more than that, good theatre is important. As hinted above, it is easy tolook at theatre as merely a money-making operation and pander to manyaudience’s desires to be transported from their mundane lives by specialeffects and happy endings. While there are some truly remarkable plays andproductions that do happen to have those elements, more often than not, much ofthat theatre is Peter Brook’s definition of deadly theatre. Historicallyaccurate, devoid-of-life productions of Shakespeare for the Canon’s sake.Ridiculous farces that make the audience laugh but leave them with hardly a newthought in their head about life. But good theatre, vital theatre, is moreoften the spark that reignites the people’s passion for our art. Productions ofAugust: Osage County, Ruined, Next to Normal, SpringAwakening, Rent, The Lion King,to name a few, all brought audiences back to the theatre through grippingstories or amazing theatrical magic (or both). And all of those productions ofgood theatre proved to artists and audiences alike that good theatre is avital, unmatched way of dissecting and understanding our world. Only throughthis live, collaborative art form can the audience commune in real-time withliving, breathing, nearby people on and off stage. Through these types of productionstheatre becomes, even for an instant, important again.

Now, how does thistranslate into my teaching philosophy? Do I envision myself using my role asteacher and mentor to grandstand about these points on theatre? No. My passionto be an artist who makes and takes part in good theatre drives me to be aninspiring and demanding teacher of theatre. I want to give my students thetools to define good theatre for themselves and know how they can contribute tothat theatre if they choose to pursue it as a career.

Theatre as acollaborative art form is most directly applicable to my work as a teacher.While I was more than content to work solo on projects during my time as astudent, group work and discussions allowed me to grow the most as a criticalthinker and artist. As a teacher I translate my desire to bounce ideas off ofpeople into encouragement of a collaborative way of learning and, thus,creating art. As a design professor I envision projects that mimic thecollaborative process of designing with 2 (or more) other designers and even adirector. This teaches students about the process of designing, and encouragesa growth in communication and public-speaking skills. It also can create thespace for students to learn about very important traits as a collaborativeartist: humility and compromise. Undergraduate theatre students often have themost exciting ideas about art (because they don’t know what is “impossible”yet) but also have the most challenges either overcoming or building up theiregos. A good theatre teacher will nurture the exciting possibilities that theuntested artist brings to the table while identifying which students need tolearn how to step back and those that need encouragement to step forward insharing ideas about a given project.

My second assertionthat theatre is more than the final product and the bottom line is more in linewith my philosophy on (theatre) education as a whole. It speaks to the questionof what is more important, the process or the product. Many of the educationalinstitutions I have had contact with have struggled with this concept. It iseasy to say on paper that the theatre department is committed to the process ofputting on a show, but, when push comes to shove, the product takes precedenceover the process because of ticket sales or institutional oversight. I firmlybelieve that my role as a theatre teacher and mentor is to highlight theprocess as a learning opportunity for the student as student and as artist. In her book The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp assertsthat the best productions for her have been critical failures because shelearned the most from them as an artist. Through critical evaluation of theartistic work during and after the process, I wish to instill in young artistscritical thinking both for their own, their peers’, and their mentors’ work. Aswell as encourage them to see that the act of making art is as vital as thefinal artistic product.

Furthermore, as awoman in a male-dominated area of theatre with an underprivileged childhood, Ipersonally have struggled to define what the process of design is for me. As ateacher I not only expose my students to the traditional design process as discussedby the forefathers of design (Robert Edmund Jones, Adolph Appia, Lee Simonson),but also encourage students to define their own process based on how theyartistically interpret and experience space. During my time at UNCG I wasfortunate enough to read and discuss new design pedagogy, including that ofveteran theatre professor Richard Isaacks of UT Austin. He has challenged thescript as the sole jumping off point for design, instead creating exercisesthat force students to create the visual narrative and then apply it to thewritten word. As an artist I’ve challenged myself to break out of the processin this way with great and eye-opening results. As a teacher I aim to challengemy students to approach design from every angle and to question not only whatthey are choosing but why they are choosing it to represent the world of theplay. This ties directly into my paper on the intersection of feminist theoryand the design process, which is less about a gendered approach to design butmore about the individual’s response and synthesis of their world into thepicture created for the stage and what role that plays in creating meaning forthe actors and the audience.

Finally, as a studentof theatre for seven years I was painfully aware of the professors that nolonger cared about our art. I worked with professors who had been in academictheatre for so long that they were out of touch with the current trends intheatre and only viewed the art form through an academic lens. While academictheatre can be vital, it is often too bounded by curriculum and communitydesires to challenge its audiences and artists. As a theatre teacher I believeit is important to continue to work professionally. This not only allows me tocontinue to grow as an artist, but keeps me up to date with artistic andthematic trends that my students will face as they pursue a career in theatre.I aim to mentor them on their theatre, not merely my own.

Sew, This is What You Have To Do

2011-10-25T00:51:00.001-04:00

My apologies for the silly pun in the title, but how could I help it? What is this blog entry about: sewing. Specifically, the importance of being able to sew if you are a scenic designer/painter/carpenter/prop master. Yes, seriously, even if you have a penis.

So I learned to sew from my mom when I was young. She actually sewed me clothes and costumes and barbie outfits. Yep, my mom is pretty awesome. This is her the spring after I was born (it's the most readily available picture I have of her and I like it):

I never really thought much of sewing until I got to college where I had to sit through the "costume" portion of stage crafts. Basically, we sewed on some closures (button, hook and eye, skirt hook, etc) and learned to use the sewing machines and serger. I was pretty proud of my ease with all that, and low-and-behold, after successfully completing Intro to Stagecrafts, I got a job in the costume shop. And my knowledge of basic sewing blossomed into the awesome power to whip stitch, cut patterns, and be awesome. Yeah, that's right, working in the costume shop makes you awesome. (I apparently like the word awesome tonight.)

Even when I transitioned into the scene shop at Grinnell, I kept working in the costume shop because I was a work study student and I wanted to work anywhere but the dining hall. This lead to an tell-tale event my junior year. I was assigned to assist a visiting scenic designer. I had not met him until the first production meeting, which was at 4:30pm on some weekday, after my weekly shift in the costume shop. Before the meeting, I was happily hand-sewing a strip of fabric to the inside of a kimono collar. I had about 5 inches to go and the meeting was just down the hall from the costume shop, so I figured why not take the project with me and finish sewing while all the grown ups talked about the show. During the introductions, the scenic designer shook my hand and said, "I see that you can sew." He had a bit of a glint in his eye, and the next day I found out that my primary job as his assistant would be to hand sew the tatami mats (we were doing a Japanese play, can you tell?). I never set foot into the theatre during the entire process because he kept sending me down to the costume shop to sew props. I am still a little bitter about it, mostly because it was my first assist on a scenic design and I really didn't do much scenically.

However, since then I have put my sewing skills to great use in a non-costume way. From building a crazy quilt for a production of Intimate Apparel:

To sewing 6 32'x5' lenghts of white polyester together to create "Antarctica" for Angels in America:

To repairing a scrim after an actor rammed a piece of scenery right into it during a performace.

But other than being able to put my sewing skills to good use, my knowledge of sewing and fabric and even costume construction means that I can make better decisions as a scenic designer. For instance, when I came up with the idea for Pericles last year, I was drawing upon my experience with the variety of fabrics I had worked with in creating dresses and flowing costumes. I could articulate how the design of fabric panels spoke to the costume designer's ideas about Diana's costume. Overall, I would not have felt so confortable including such a dramatic design element without the knowledge that my years of sewing for pleasure and theatre had taught me.

This is all to say that, be you male or female, learn to sew! And stop complaining about it. Right now I am working at a theatre where I am a team of two in the scene shop. So when I designed a creepy tree branch border/leg combo, it's on me to make that happen. No problem! And, it hasn't been. I went and picked up the fabric and sewed the two pieces together, and tomorrow I will cut the branches out and attach some bird netting as a cheaper stand in for scenic netting. Yeah. All because my mom taught me how to sew a button when I was five. Thanks mom!

Mermaid's Horatio and Such

2011-10-14T00:22:00.000-04:00

I am fired. So unbelievably fired. My only excuse for not having written since my last post is that I'm just tired and worn out and there are things I want to talk about but cannot in a public forum. One day, promise, but for now, things are better left unsaid.

So, what have I been up to? Well, The Cherry Orchard is over and done with and I'm trying to get CTC's The Little Mermaid ready to open on Monday. OMG, on Monday. And then I have a week to do all the stuff for CTC's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow... oy vey.Things for Mermaid have been going well. I carved a statue for the show. Yes, see the pictures below of Horatio in progress:

Step One, Draw him out on pink foam.

Step two, Cut out his basic form.

Step Three, Start to carve on the Z-axis... and freak out a bit.

Step Five, Continue to carve and question what you're doing.

Step, um, nine? Chisel his face with a hot knife and make him look weird... Are those Mick Jager's lips?

I need to 1. Take my camera to work and 2. Get a picture of him now that he is painted. Because he looks so much better looking like stone, trust me!Here is a picture of part of the set:

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the show. The crunch of time and energy has been trying, but that's what theatre is all about. And, damn, designing for a touring show is hard. :( But I suppose I will get the hang of it. I hope so, because otherwise the rest of the season at CTC is going to feel like a constant up hill battle. And, for reasons best unsaid, I'm very done with uphill battles in theatre.

I just want to work in this business I love, creating amazing art in a collaborative way, and with people that are generous and awesome. Sure, things go wrong; we're only human. But let's not stab each other in the back. Okay? Thanks.More blog updates soon. Maybe even something of substance... I'm working on it. ;)

Work Where You Live & Live Where You Work

2011-09-25T15:42:00.000-04:00

Okay, The Cherry Orchard opened on Friday and I have finally been able to stop driving to and from Martinez. The one thing I realized during this process is that commuting to and from theatre is not fun, especially when you are the only crew and you are holding down another job.

This was my commute

View Larger Map

It takes 1 hour 14 minutes according to Google, but really, it's an hour. But when you add in traffic... one day it took me almost 2.5 hours to get there. And on the way home I had to stop at a sketchy gas station, at midnight, to get gas because I wasn't sure I would make it home otherwise. Not cool.

So, while it might seem great to get a professional gig and some extra money, I think when I factor in what I spent on gas and the amount of years shaved off my life from the stress, was it worth it? Probably not. And despite realizing this during the project, I had made a commitment to the show and what's done is done. So I put in my all, or as much of my all as I could spare as I got back to work at CTC and chalked it up to a lesson learned.

Next up: CTC's The Little Mermaid. I have had some trouble wrapping my head around making a touring set, but I'm going to make it happen. And it will be great! Pictures to come after final approval tomorrow.

For those of you who may not have seen them on Facebook: Some photos from my phone of The Cherry Orchard & process for the cyc:

Raw Materials for the cyc.

One garland done.

Many garlands hanging in my window.

First part of the install... I did not have enough, even with the store-bought ones added in.

Not quite done, but you can see where it was going.

Pretty much done, though there was still work to finesse some stuff.

Making Prop Money

2011-09-12T13:14:00.009-04:00

Okay, one of my biggest pet peeves as a designer and as an audience member is prop money. I don't know if it is because it's just left to the last minute or proppers assume that the 30 foot rule will absolve them of all sins, but too many times I see prop money the wrong size, the wrong color, the wrong everything. And, yes, I'm likely a bit pickier than your average audience member, but you could have a numismatist sitting in the audience. (Yes, go look it up.)

The first thing to consider when setting out to make realistic prop bills is color and size. I find that the worst prop money I've seen on stage is often the wrong color, even American Bills have a specific kind of green. And European bills, while not always a known entity to your audience, have a certain look (often more colorful) and are bigger than we're used to (well, unless it is the Euro, then it's pretty much the same size).

The reason I am thinking about this is that I just finished a bundle of rubles for The Cherry Orchard and had to go in search of some images that would work for turn of the century Russian money. But Google-searching for an image of a Russian Ruble is not as easy as so many of my generation seem to think it is. As is with any image you want to print rather than see on your screen, you must must must pay attention to the size and resolution of the image. How many times have you taken a picture off the internet that seems big enough, only to print it out and it be the size of a postage stamp. Or all pixelated and ugly. That, my friends, is because of the resolution of the image. So, here are a few things to know and do when making prop money:

1. Get a hold of the real thing. Yes, if you can scan a real bill, you are in luck. Scan it with a high resolution (pixels per inch). At least 150 dpi, but if you can, go up to 300 dpi. This is the magic number that graphic designers for print like because it gives them enough pixels per inch to resize, but isn't so big that the computer freaks out about the file size.

2. If you don't have the actual bill, by all means, do an image search. But PAY ATTENTION TO THE SIZE of the image. Do this: Google image search "Russian Ruble." You will probably get this picture as your first result:

When you moused over it, more info should have popped up that told you what size the source image is. In this case "700 x 303" . That means that the image is 700 pixels by 303 pixels. Sounds pretty good (and if you follow the link and then right click "show image in new screen" you can see that it is a pretty good-sized image.) But, you are not out of the woods yet. If you copy the image into a photo-editing program, like Photoshop, you will have even more info to determine whether this image is worthwhile.

3. Once you save the image (right click>save as) open it in Photoshop. Go to Edit>Image size. Look at the info that is there. There will be a place where it tells you the resolution, at the bottom of the dialogue box.

The number in that box tells you how clear and crisp your picture will be when you print it. (Okay, little known fact to non-computer geeks and graphics people of the web: your computer monitor of non high-def fame will display beautiful, crisp images with a DPI as small as 72. And the lower your DPI, the smaller your file. So most web people [and programs that compress images for people who don't know what they are doing] save their images to be published on the web at 72 DPI. Do not let the pixels on the screen fool you.) Okay, so you now know that this image has a 72 DPI... is all lost? Not necessarily.

4. The next thing you need to worry about is the printable dimensions of your money. Look at the size of the image, which is just above your DPI in inches and a little further above in pixels.

Now, you need to know or decide what size your bills need to actually be. Because if your bills need to be 9" x 4", then you're going to have super pixelated bills on stage. But if you're making these for a performance where the nearest audience member is thirty feet away, that might be okay. However, if you want an image for your bill that isn't going to look like a weird Magic Eye puzzle, then you need to find a better image.

5. So, google images has come a long way in the last few years and now it allows you to sort through images by size as well as relevance. So if you go back to your original google image search of "Russian Ruble" you'll see on the left side options to choose size. Obviously, click on "Large" rather than "Any size" because Bigger is Better! In this case, I'm going to talk about the fourth image result:

Because it has a very important element that you may not have thought about when planning to make your prop money: The back of the bill. Yes, money is two sided. And yes, you should strive to have the matching artwork for the same bill on both sides of your prop bill. Obviously, you are not always so lucky, so you can fake it with two different bill images and some time spent in Photoshop, but let's assume you get as lucky as I did and get a large enough digital image of both sides of your bill. Hooray!

6. So, download it and open it in your image software and look at your image size. What do you see?

Yep, that's right, the resolution is 72 DPI. But what else do you see? The dimension of the image is 12"x12". I don't know about you, but a 12" long bill seems a little beyond the large scale of European bills. For whatever reason, when this image was created, it was compressed to 72 DPI, but the image dimensions blew up. This means if you printed it out on your printer, it would be bigger than sheet of paper but be pixelated. And this will work in your favor.

6. You can change the resolution of an image like this (where the actual dimensions are much larger than the dimensions you need but the resolution is too low). Do that. Type in 300 into the resolution box instead of 72. You'll notice that the pixel size changed (because you've told the computer that per square inch, you want to have 300 pixels, not 72... this is not hard math). But before you close the box, you also have to change your width dimension. In this case, I changed it to 7" because I feel like that will give me the right size bill (give or take some centimeters). Note: you only have to change either the height or the width dimension because Photoshop assumes that you want to proportionately scale your image, and so it links them and changes them as you like.

7. Okay, now that you've done this, you're ready to crop your images so that you will have two different documents, one with the front of your bill and one with the back. If you don't know how to do this, get Photoshop for Dummies. And now, all you have to do is create two identical-sized images in, one of the back and one of the front, that you can print back to back on a piece of paper. When you cut apart these two sides of the bill you can actually print two bills per page, so I ended up stacking my fronts and backs:

(PS. I changed the DPI for this image to 72 because otherwise it would have taken an hour to upload. So, don't try to cheat and use it.)

8. With two images, one front and one back, you just have to do one simple thing: print one side of the image in photo shop (don't worry about resizing the image or canvas to match your paper size because Photoshop is cool and will automatically center your image, and you want it to do that because when you print on the other side of the paper, your back image will be automatically centered). Once you print the first side, flip over, rotate, whatever it is you need to do with your printer to print on the backside so you get a double sided piece of prop money which, once you cut away the paper border, looks awesome.

A few final thoughts:

REPLACE YOUR INK CARTRIDGES! I worked on a production once where the American dollar bill used to create the bills on stage was printed with a printer that was running out of color ink. The bills looked teal. Check your colors, please. Especially when you're trying to duplicate American Money.

NULL AND VOID THE BILL! You can see on the example image I used it has a big ol' stamp that says "Speciman" and the web address of the company I pulled it from. The company that uploaded it did that so no one could try to counterfeit with it. If you come across an image (or you scan your own bill) that does not have a watermark on it, put something on it that, when the Feds look closely at your fake bills, won't lead anyone to think you were trying to get rich quick with your Canon printer and Google image search. I knew one prop designer who changed the blurb about the American bill being legal tender into a statement that said the "bill" was intended for theatrical use only. DO THIS! It saves your butt! Especially with American currency.

AGE YOUR MONEY! Have a big party while you're watching TV where you crumple up ever last bill that you've cut down and then uncrumpled them (unless you need crumpled bills) because, trust me, unless you have to have crisp bank bills (and I hope you don't because those are really hard to replicate) your crumpled and then uncrumpled bill will look so much more realistic (and it breaks down the paper you printed it on because, well, printer paper and the paper they print money on is different. Go figure.).

USE PARCHMENT PAPER!Go to the office supply store, go to the resume and nice paper section, by a box of parchment paper. Trust me. The base paper of any bill around the world is not 92bright copy paper. It is usually fiber based and off-white. Save yourself the tea-staining headache and start with an off-white paper that already has some texture to it. Trust me.

Any questions? Let me know and I'd be happy to help.

The Blossom Cyc or Reality vs. The Dream

2011-09-08T22:02:00.005-04:00

Okay, so I haven't updated for a while not because I've been putting it off but because I've been hunched over a sewing machine making paper flower garlands for The Cherry Orchard. This past weekend I had made enough (9) in order to determine what I thought I would need in order to complete a 20' curtain. By my estimation: 125 garlands total. And I have been completing about 3-7 a day. Yeah, you do the math and say what I said: Ummmm, what was I thinking?

So, the reality of the situation is while I'd like to make an entire 20' curtain made up of my garlands:

I have to supplement what I've done with something prefabricated. I think I've found some options, though the colors are wrong wrong wrong. And with all this paper I fear that the set is going to burst into flames... But whatever.

Then today I came across a blog post about a flower curtain which is a far more remarkable version of what I envisioned, but still awesome:

No Betweens, 1996, sculpture | silk, cotton, polyester, and thread, by Jim Hodges

Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/collection/artwork/20917##ixzz1XPwk0R23
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

And it is at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art!

Anyway, what this all boils down to is that, while I wish I had more time and more labor and more money in order to create this curtain of flowers like this image (and maybe it is a good thing I didn't see this image until after I'd started in this vein), it's the sad truth about theatre that the artistic vision is often watered down due to the lack of those things. Nevertheless, I have faith that my design for The Cherry Orchard will rock socks, if and when it gets built. :)

Procrastination

2011-08-26T16:51:00.003-04:00

Okay, if Josy is reading this, I promise I'm doing work.

No, seriously, I've been putting off Cherry Orchard stuff like I just don't have a deadline. For the record, I do have a deadline and it is Monday afternoon when I drive to Antioch for the first read through.

This is pretty par for the course for me. At UNCG I put off doing work until the last minute too. It was this weird desire to feel rushed and stressed in order to get stuff done that I think grew out of my busy, hectic life in high school and, especially, Grinnell.

And now that I have nothing else to do but this design, I am sitting on my hands and dragging my feet. (And watching lots of stupid TV on-Demand.) One of these days I have a feeling that this is going to bite me in the butt. Fortunately there isn't much more that has to be done with the design. The prelim drawing was approved, I just need to get a floor plan together and working drawings from which to build. And since there are only 4 set pieces, which are all identical, I think that will be pretty easy.

In the meantime, does anyone have any thoughts on putting a chandelier on a traveler?

A Blossom Cyc?

2011-08-18T14:38:00.006-04:00

Hello! Two posts in one week! It's because I have been busy busy busy trying to make headway on this design for The Cherry Orchard. Keep in mind, it's hard to be that bus or productive (or excited) when I only have one floor plan out of two for the spaces the show is performing in. And no sections. And no idea what space #1 looks like (that's right, I have no idea what the first space the show is performing in looks like... wah-wah).

BUT! I have done some sketches. Based off of this research image of a Victorian sun room:

I like it because it's open and airy and has an linear quality that evokes the idea that the house is made of those taut strings that snap at the end of Act II.
And so I rough-sketched this:

And, though you may not be able to see it, have been toying with the idea of a cyc (that's short for cyclorama) that is composed of "cherry blossoms."

I've since sent my sketches and thoughts off to the director, and now I wait. Fortunately I have a walk through scheduled at theatre #1 on Tuesday, so that will also answer a lot of questions, and potentially dash some of my hopes and dreams. So woo?

In other news, I'm also updating my website with my big paint show for CTC. And just realized I never got photos up for Orpheus Descending. Must go remedy that now. Or after lunch. :)

The Horse and the Cherry Tree

2011-08-15T19:26:00.006-04:00

In many things, once you fall off the horse, it is hard to get back on. You beat yourself up for faltering, you feel embarrassed that you didn't get back up sooner, etc. That's how I feel about this blog. What started as a creative outlet for writing during the spring semester of my second year at grad school has turned into something I dread sitting down to write. In part because I'm embarrassed that I have been away so long, and because all I can think about are things to complain about.

Well, it's time to "Suck it up, Buttercup" as my friends at CTC are want to say. Okay.

So, what have I been up to lately? A whole lot of not much. CTC is on summer hiatus Aug 3 to Sept 16th. So for 6 weeks I am left to my own devices and unemployment. I did manage to snag a job at Hapgood Theatre in Martinez/Antioch, about 1.5 hours north of here. It's a bit of a stretch, but it's for The Cherry Orchard and after my design for The Seagull a couple of years ago, I was more than happy to make arrangements to make it happen. It will be a bit of juggling because the show opens a week after I'm back at CTC. But I'm a masterful organizer, so I'm going to make it happen and not let either theatre company down.

This also means that I'm racking my brains for ideas for the show. The time period is staying the same, but the directer wants to strip it down. (She really liked my design for The Seagull.) I have the added bonus of having to move the piece from the theatre in Martinez to a theatre in Antioch... so it can't be anything too big or complicated. I've got some great ideas swirling in my brain, but my big thing right now is trying to get up there to see the spaces in question. [Update: Not happening until next week... we're going to start drawing tomorrow w/ no idea whatsoever about the spaces. Check!]

So, my ideas about The Cherry Orchard include focusing on windows, and the way that they denote looking in and out. And the fact that they can indicate an interior/house/exterior without being very heavy visually or in real life (remember, changeover). For me, The Cherry Orchard's surrealist feeling is epitomized in the sound of string breaking that happens in Act II. I want to know if I can include that in the design. Perhaps there are intentional strings hanging the windows in place and indicating the wall expanse that they are floating in. Perhaps there is a sense of the trees, or the linear qualities of the trees, indicated by taut rope. I'm not sure. The one thing I am sure of, which is both good and kind of saddening, is that Chekov didn't set any of the scenes in the cherry orchard. So, while it feels like the orchard should somehow be visible, the fact that Chekov doesn't show it to the audience is significant. This is because the orchard only exists as each character describes it. And it means something different to each one. It represents hope and longing and the past and the future (once it is torn down) differently to each character. So if I tried to visualize the orchard, I would be taking away the ephemera that it represents. Thus, no cherry orchard in The Cherry Orchard. At least not directly.

Like I said, sketching will begin in earnest tomorrow. I've got lots of research images. But I will leave you with one that is both research and inspirational:

Life Thus Far

2011-07-11T09:44:00.005-04:00

With no one holding me accountable to updating this blog, I have failed. That and life is busy and rather depressing right now.

The Intermediate/Advanced conservatory has begun. This means we're working with 11+ y.o. It's both great and frustrating, all at the same time. Some of the kids are interested, engaged and superbly well behaved. Many are still a little immature. But what gets me is the short timeline to create things. We go into tech for the Advanced shows on Friday and we have yet to erect the set on the main stage. This worries me immensely. But John and I are pretty much our own crew of 2 for 6 shows. And have to teach and visit Core Conservatory sites on a regular basis... just not sure how things are supposed to get done.

I'm just grateful that I came up with a design that does not involve a lot of shifting between shows. There is a rep set of platforms that is not going to move. We're just going to be dealing with things hanging in the air that have to come down and change out. Phew.

In related news, I've been soul-searching a bit about whether design is really my chosen path. I enjoy it, don't get me wrong, but having to do all the grunt labor for it: building/painting/propping is frustrating. I feel like some kind of lazy humbug when I admit this to myself, but I really would like to have a less physically demanding job. And I'd like to wear non paint-clothes on a more regular basis. Is that too much to ask?

Okay, off to work today. I leave you with a photo of the drop design for Los Altos 2 for a show called "Romeo and Winnifred."

These Are a Few of My _______ Things

2011-06-19T10:22:00.003-04:00

It's Sunday, a week after my last blog, and I'm updating! Whoa.

This week I will touch on some stuff because I actually have to leave for tech in 1.5 hours as well as call my mom and get ready, so this will be more listy than usual.

1. This week I "designed" a backdrop for the first Summer Conservatory here at CTC. I did this by taking all of the ideas drawn and colored by the kids and mashing them together into something coherent based on the two director's opinions. It was fabulous! All my creative input was layout (which I actually enjoy) and some toy ideas, but the majority of what made it was the kids' drawings. Including an awesomely spiky, lime green dinosaur. (I will get a picture, promise). Then, after drawing out the final design on 18'x24' piece of paper (finally getting some use of of my huge sketch pad from Grinnell) I went to the site and drew it on 4 king-sized sheets sewn together.

Again, it was freeing. I can be so anal about drawing, but when you're outside in 80+ heat, in the noonday sun, on a blacktop w/ no shade, drawing w/ a permanent marker, you just accept the lines you draw. And it turned out great. I cannot wait to see how the kids paint it. :)

2. Tech! Is today, as I mentioned. Tomorrow is my day off. Seem strange? Yes, it is. While I do not mind coming in tomorrow to work if I need to (this is the first time the designer has seen any of the set), I also don't know if I get a day off instead. I really wish I had control over my own schedule. It would make me feel better about the hours I put in and more likely to work more, actually.

3. I applied to some jobs yesterday, and sent out feeler resumes for the 1.5 month that I have off at the end of summer. While I would like to be employed, it isn't life or death since CT will be bringing in money and I am planning to put as much away as I can to cover that open gap of income. So it was nice to send out resumes and not freak out about all the details. If they like me, great. If not, oh well. I do kind of hope that I can wrangle a job somewhere to start getting my name out there in the Bay Area. We'll see.

I think that may be it for this week. Next week starts 2 more Conservatories--so 2 more drops!--and Black Coffee opens on Friday. Followed by my own Intermediate/Advanced Conservatory teaching experience. I am definitely enjoying myself this summer. Perhaps I am more cut out to teach younger kids than college students. :P

The Business of Theatre

2011-06-12T13:15:00.004-04:00

I make no claims that I am business-minded in any way. However, having worked at a fair number of theatre companies, from professional to opera to regional to community, I have learned a lot of what not to do. And, as might be expected, what I would do differently if I were heading up the theatre, or, for that matter, my own theatre.

Yesterday, CT and I had a very long conversation about theatre as a business. I've said before that many theatre practitioners do not view theatre as business; they view it as art. The problem is, if you're taking in money for a product, then you've got a business on your hands. And while most theatre companies do not have "make money" as part of their mission statement, it's a necessary goal in order to achieve whatever the mission statement is.

Along with thinking of theatre as business in relationship to your customers (aka audience members), is thinking about how to run the most effective business for your employees. I've worked at some really spectacular, morale-boosting theatres and some soul-crushing theatres (all of which will go unnamed so no one feels called out one way or another). And I know that I've done better work as an artist and wanted to bring more people into the theatre as a spokesperson at the former. But when, as an artist, you are working under crappy circumstances, you wonder, why am I doing this? Do I really want to sacrifice having a comfortable bank account for this? It's not a good thing. And I think, if there is any reason I would want to start a theatre company, it would be as much about having an artistic vision that I believe in, as it would be having a group of artists feel taken care of and happy in choosing a profession that burns you out with little financial reward to show for it.

This is all to say that, more so than ever, both because I'm done with school and was charged by many faculty members (not personally) to go out and start my own theatre, and because I am tired of being taken advantage of (I am more a rug than anything else sometimes) that I am, more than before, seriously considering starting my own theatre. I think it helps that CT seems to have a head for business ;), if I could convince him to take that financial plunge with me. Meanwhile, any of my awesome colleagues and peers want to join me?

Rhythm, Rhyme, Reason

2011-06-06T16:08:00.003-04:00

Okay, so I have been trying to find a schedule that will allow me to post more. Ha ha. We are in the midst of the Summer Repertory at CTC and just opened Around the World in 80 Days last Friday and will open A Servant of Two Masters this Friday... so yes, schedule sh-medule. But, hey, we now have a chair! Which makes sitting down to write is easier.

Well, the things that I have been thinking about to write about are the following:

1. Weekly schedules are not the best, but can be dealt with. However, getting the calendar less than 24 hours in advance of the beginning of that week makes it difficult to deal with. :( And not having a full day off, super :( .

2. The reason it is nice to have a paint/design assistant is not really to have someone fetch your coffee or do the grunt work, it's nice to have the company. Last night I had to stay to line the stage (AGAIN!) and was by myself. It was very lonely. Especially in a mostly dark theatre (because I didn't want to have to go to the booth to turn off the lights). I kept thinking about my awesome assistants in the past and how much I miss them for their help and company (and input).

3. Being a scenic painter for someone else is hard. I already knew that, but this summer really hit that home with me, in part because the designer is only around a few times a week. So I have to make decisions (without complete renderings) so I can continue and move on, hoping that when the designer is around, I didn't waste my time. I vow to be a more available designer, or, barring that, have complete renderings available.

4. Children's theatre is interesting. I have more to say about this, but I need to get my head around the best way to talk about the importance of the genre compared to the stigma and quality often associated with it. So more on this later.

On that note, it's my first full day off in 14 days. Time to go get my oil changed and go grocery shopping. Woot. Such a life.

PS. CT is employed!!

CTC's publicity photo for Around the World in 80 Days:

California Theatre Center

2011-05-25T10:08:00.009-04:00

I have been remiss in writing in my blog. Right now I am steeling my nerves to get going on the day so I figured I could update quickly.

CTC's theatre is small but functions. It does not have a real fly space, which makes me very sad, but I suppose with touring shows, that doesn't make much difference. The company rents from the city of Sunnyvale, so there are all kinds of rules and regulations to follow including not being able to build on stage (though I suspect that has more to do with rehearsal time/space), which makes the small, postage-sized shop get crowded very quickly.

The one thing I know for sure is that it gets tough to come into a situation in the middle of things. As the official summer scene painter, it is frustrating to find that paint for shows opening this morning was not labeled as such. And there isn't a stock of basic colors. And things are a mess. But I'm getting a handle on that (organized a lot yesterday while also doing paint touch ups the best way I could with mystery paint). I also mixed a lot of color and am ready to jump in and paint columns and arches a lovely speckled sandstone.

Hopefully by Friday I will be more on top of the show we load in on Sunday.

Okay, probably should get going then, huh? More soon.

California or bust

2011-05-08T06:00:00.001-04:00

Today we leave. Today my world changes and shifts. Today I feel like I jump off a cliff.

Moving is scary, stressful, and expensive. But I am excited. And I am so glad to be doing this with CT. Despite all the stress and arguments and questions. Yep, I am one lucky girl.

First stop, Jackson, TN. Stay tuned.

Kindness and Generosity

2011-05-01T11:37:00.004-04:00

The best part of moving: having to clear out your pantry. This means you can justify eating pancakes for lunch. :)
The worst part(s): too numerous to count.

Though my silly eating habits may seem interesting, what I did want to write about is how awesome people are. A while ago I posted on Facebook that I was accepting donations for my "Sunnyfund" and in return people would get some framed art. And I got some donations! As well as family who have offered money with no expectations at all because they want to make this move the best it can be. I am so extremely blessed.

And what this got me thinking was how much I cannot wait to be employed and able to help other people out. I've donated to a few charities when I've had some extra money (especially when I came into money that was purely gifts, like scholarships/refunds). But I've had to turn a blind eye to some of my family's troubles in the recent past and that sucks.

My family hasn't always had a lot, but one thing that I will never forget is how amazingly generous they all are. Seriously. When I broke up with S., my grandmother sent me $300 to help me get through the winter with the sudden shock to my finances. And now my mom and her person, Bob, are sending me a little money for gas. It's nice to be surrounded by people that will share their last dollar with you. I look forward to being able to do that someday.

Okay, back to to the pancakes.

The Real World

2011-04-17T08:23:00.005-04:00

Okay, most of you already know this, but in three weeks I'm moving to California. And in 4 weeks I start my job at California Theater Center as their Set/Prop Designer & Painter. For reals, I have a job. I will have an MFA and I will have a job. And I also have an apartment. In California. Sunnyvale, California.

Do you know what else I have: CT Hall. It's weird to think that a little less than 2 years ago I broke up with "The One." I was devastated about being alone, but I embraced all the exciting possibilities I felt I had, being untethered to someone. One of those exciting possibilities was getting to date people! And then, 8 months ago, I had coffee with the last guy I was planning on having coffee with, not because I felt that sure of his awesomeness, but because classes were starting up again and I knew dating was going to have to take a backseat to my last year in grad school.

Little did I know that the man sitting across from me would be the last person I "had coffee with" because he would be "The New One."

CT and I have come a long way in the last 8 months. And this update isn't about being super gushy about him, but I do want to give credit where credit is due. His dedication to making our relationship work and his excitement about all of the possibilities that lay before us (remember that part of the break up before?) has helped cement in my mind why we are still together. And, as far as I can tell, I probably wouldn't have take the CTC job so easily and light-hearted if I didn't know I'd have such a wonderful person by my side.

Now, you may be wondering, like me, whether I am just incapable of being alone since I am talking about my love for CT via my need for a companion. And while I will not lie and say that that hasn't cross my mind, I honestly believe that people come in and out of our lives for a reason. In many ways, I would not have made it to graduate school if I hadn't been at the point I was with S, believing him to be by my side on that harrowing journey. And it was fortunate that we didn't break up until I was entrenched in my second year, or I may not have stuck out the rest of the program. This is not to say that CT is merely my pillar of strength to get me through this big move. This is just an example of how much better we can be together. (That's the universal "we.")

I expect that over the next few weeks I will be posting a lot about my fears and stresses over the move, but I wanted to start by talking about the sanity that CT brings to my life. Poor guy has been dealing with some very strong personalities in my family this weekend, and has been nearly a saint (but he is human, as am I, and I don't blame him for that).

Consider this a preface to the next chapter in my artistic life. I won't gush too much more about CT (really, what you will get will be merely what has to be said), but know that behind every entry is this person, who holds my hand and massages my neck and reminds me how very fortunate I am.

At Wrightsville Beach, NC

Paula Vogel on Darwinian Theatre and Love Letters

2011-04-01T21:38:00.006-04:00

This evening I had the opportunity to listen to Paula Vogel in a question and answer setting at UNCG. Like Tony Kushner last year, my head feels like it is about to explode. In a good way.

Professor Vogel said a lot of really amazing things, much of which I am still trying to process. But one thing she mentioned was the importance of theatre pedagogy that does not insist that there will be only one person standing at the end of the program. Instead, fostering an environment that encourages people to collaborate (shock!) and work together, to lift one another up in our pursuits and, in turn, be lifted up by our peers, that is what we should be striving for in education (and the art form). As a student and (soon-to-be) educator, I definitely agree with this opinion. I sincerely believe that it's not about hoarding the opportunities and connections, but instead sharing with peers, students, mentees, and fellow artists the same things you hope to have shared with you. It goes back to Twyla Tharp's idea about generosity and how, in this collaborative art form, we must work together as a team to make our art viable, desirable, and beautiful. From these two amazing women is an important idea about art and theatre. I will definitely keep coming back to this because I know I was fortunate enough to have people who were generous and did not treat my education like a Darwinian fight for survival.

The other thing Professor Vogel mentioned was that her plays are Love Letters to the actors, directors, audience, and people who inspired her. I love that. I love the idea that as a playwright she is in conversation with everyone who will make her play come to life (and that she admits that designers [and directors] will know where the furniture should go) through her work. Sometimes I feel like designers don't give the play enough credit as a piece of work by a person. They take it for face value and don't wonder about who wrote it, what had happened to them, what was going on around them. I think it is important to remember, just as we were taught in our English classes, that to understand the written word, one must understand the writer. Oh, so important. And to think of it as a Love Letter, written to the creative team, that makes it that much more special and important.

In short, this was an amazing evening. I feel energized to work with amazing artists and put my philosophies to work. Thank you to the anonymous donor that helped pay the honorarium for Professor Vogel's visit. And I cannot wait for Suzan-Lori Parks keynote next weekend!

Getting Overwhelmed Again

2011-03-29T06:39:00.003-04:00

Actually, that's a lie. I have just been trying to fill my life with things that don't involve the computer.

Right now my life is 1 of 2 things:

1. Working on Orpheus Descending. Getting all the last minute details put together and trying to be ready for tech a week from now.

2. Waiting on jobs. I have sent in about 20 applications. I have interviewed for three. One I am definitely being considered for. Two I am not so hopeful. And the rest, who knows?

Thus, stealing a few hours to read (even for class!) and hang out with CT makes getting through the last 4.5 weeks of school more manageable. It's a tough time to care about the immediate future when the great wide open part of life is beckoning. It's not so much senioritis is not caring and being lazy but being crazy excited about what is around the next bend in life. That is where I am at. But for now I just wait and avoid my computer because I feel like I'm sitting next to the telephone waiting for a boy to call. And that's just silly.

In the meantime, enjoy my favorite shot from the Orpheus photo shoot the other day:

Financial Strain

2011-03-13T10:46:00.005-04:00

As one can imagine, after attending two conferences back to back, my finances are dwindling. This makes me think about the financial burden of being an artist, specifically a theatrical artist.

In my third year of undergrad, my mentor took my design class to Actors Theatre in Louisville, KY for the Humana Festival of New Plays. It was one of my top-ten theatre experiences, including my time spent in London. One of the students with us was looking at one of their internships and one of our own was, at that time, one of their interns. I remember being drawn to the idea of working with ATL because of the work they did with new American plays, but was devastated to learn that they paid their interns nothing. Not only that, but interns were expected to work so many hours that they had no hope of holding down any other kind of paying job. My dreams of working at ATL left me with a sigh.

The unpaid or underpaid internship is not uncommon. In fact, the Federal Government has weighed in on whether or not labor laws are being followed for internships. Theatre, an industry that relies heavily on the unskilled worker being paid little to "learn" and further their craft, has been hard-hit by the Federal Government's "meddling." However, many companies have found loopholes in the system, calling what little they do pay things like "expense reimbursement" rather than pay so that they can continue to pay pennies for eking out every last drop of sweat from young, aspiring theatre artists time and energy.

But, more so than at the internship level, theatre artists are paid very little for the time put in. If we seriously sat down to tally the hours worked for freelance gig, that one-time stipend (for which we usually also must pay our own taxes), we are definitely working under minimum wage. And from that low pay we take out money to pay for supplies and tools, for computer programs and classes, for trade shows and conferences, all in the name of getting better and being the best. Yet, we are struggling to make ends meet.

I think about my own situation. I do not have a family that I can call up for support. For undergrad I walked away with 25% of the four year bill in student loans. My parents paid about 2% of the four-year bill. The rest was the magic of scholarships and grants that were predicated mostly on my academic abilities. For graduate school, I have been making ends meet on my small graduate assistantship. And this month, my ends needed to meet over two conferences (one of which I will get partially reimbursed for, one of which I didn't pay for registration), tire alignment, an oil change, a dentist bill, and my usual slew of bills. I'm cutting it close and praying for my tax refund to magically arrive in my bank account very, very soon.

This stress over money is why I am drawn to apply for work at the college level, rather than risk freelancing. While I am fortunate to have a partner with whom I can face the financial stress of adulthood with, I do not have the luxury of moving in with parents (or my partner) while I see if I can make a go of it between $500, $50, $2,000 gigs. I also really like my teeth and am tired of not having dental insurance. And yet, I don't want to enter into academia and shrivel up and die. I want to go out there and be passionate and take risks over my art. But, as Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Foundation said during his keynote at SETC this year, if there is any industry that has the most donated hours of work and time, it is the arts. Our passion, our field, our industry is predicated on our volunteer time and efforts because we are not paid enough to make it our job and our career.

What, then, can be done? What, then, can my path be? I hope that it will be full of theatre and jobs that take me to many different theatres to work with many different directors, but it will also include something that will pay the bills for a while. Whether that is a job at Starbucks or teaching theatre or answering phones or whatever, I will work myself to exhaustion so that I can make theatre come to life. As a child raised in a welfare home, I have fought not to fall into the typical career paths just so that I can have a well-paying job, but to follow my heart and passion into a career path that makes me happy and that I love. I hope, one day, though, that perhaps, like the public school educators that also deserve a break, that our country's artists will be able to do just what they want to do: create art. And not worry about that Vente, triple shot latte, half-caf, non-fat, three pumps of caramel drink they need to make for the well-paid customer who walks through the door.

Spring Fever

2011-03-11T20:40:00.004-05:00

Today I went to USITT... it was a trip. It's a lot more low-key than SETC, which probably has something to do with the lack of high schoolers and high-strung actors. But, what USITT lacks in stress, it makes up with over-stimulation. The Expo Floor is full of all the possible theatre companies and theatre schools... it's amazing. And if you're lucky enough, you get to pick up some fun swag from some of these companies. This year I scored an awesome tote bag from Syracuse Scenery made out of stage drapery. I also managed to get a USITT coffee cup.

But the thing that I really want to talk about is the fact that all of these conferences (SETC & USITT this year, KCACTF in past years) do one really unfortunate thing for me: make me feel incredibly inadequate. I look at work done by professionals and my peers and all I think is that I can't draw that well. While I figure I've got just as good design ideas as the next person, my inability to convey them through my sketches, well, that is a problem.

It makes me think about the holes in my education. I've gone through 7 years of schooling to be stamped with the coveted MFA diploma in just 6 weeks (yikes) and what do I have to show for it? The same level of sketching capabilities and, in some ways, less finesse in my model-making, the one place I feel like I had real talent leaving Grinnell. It also doesn't help when I get to catch up with my Grinnellian peers, one of which is finishing her first year of graduate school and one who is in his first year of freelancing (and headed to Prague in May). All I could think was that I haven't made any strides this way. I also don't know that I'm cut out for freelancing... I wonder what it is that I'm doing all of this for. What have I been striving for? What is this all worth? Am I going to try to make it by freelancing, hoping to be a resident designer, or becoming a teacher? What is it worth? Is this just a quarter-life crisis?

Or just the ramblings of a tired, overworked graduate student?

SETC 2011

2011-03-05T21:22:00.003-05:00

It's wrapping up now, and I'm about to get a good night's sleep before driving home tomorrow. I did want to share one idea that struck me during the keynote speech by Ben Cameron, Program Director of the Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Among many gems, Cameron said that the future and responsibility of not-for-profit theatre is "Epic imagination with intimate encounters."

YES!

That is exactly what it's about.

His keynote address was moving, and inspiring. And I want to write more about it and something that Triad Stage's Preston Lane said last week. For now, though, I'm going to focus on getting home in one piece.

Oh, PS, I did not win anything in the design competition, but my paper presentation went very, very well. :D

SETC 2011 Atlanta

2011-02-27T11:12:00.003-05:00

I'm in my office, FINALLY! really preparing to go. I am fighting the office printer to see if I can get some of my things done here rather than at Kinkos, but it does not look promising.

(I wanted to link to one of the pages, but Facebook's new photo viewing BS won't let me. WTF? Facebook. You are annoying.)

Anyway, SETC is going to be a crazy experience this year. I've entered two boards into the design competition: Oklahoma! and The Waiting Room. And signed up for Job Contact AND am presenting my winning paper on feminist design ideas. I'm not sure I'm going to have time to do any kind of workshops. :P Oh well. It should be fun, right?

Then I'll have 2 days off before USITT in Charlotte. Fortunately, I'm just going to USITT--no presentations, nothing. Hopefully I'll be able to enjoy it.

Wow, I thought I would have more to say, but, no. After the conference, I'll have plenty to say. :)

Being Better

2011-02-22T12:29:00.003-05:00

Well, Pericles is open and good. We never managed to replace the noisy jack-chain in the bottom of the curtains that fly in and get moved about, but I think that the actors have been able to manipulate them in such a way to reduce noise. We tried all kinds of other ideas for the weights, but it was too last minute. If we'd thought about it earlier, perhaps before the chain pocket was created in the first place, we would have been better off.

While the opening of the show has been a relief, things feel less than awesome right now for me. I'm still waiting for a job to emerge and I'm struggling with some personal demons, while also diving head first into Orpheus Descending and preparing for SETC in Atlanta.

I ask myself, as we get closer and closer to graduation (just over 2 months at this point) what I'm doing and why. I felt a lot like this as I was leaving Grinnell, having been embroiled in nasty department politics and feeling generally burned out from four years of school. My time at Portland Stage really helped heal me and remind me of the passion that I'd followed into my college major. And now that I feel that I've found myself in this very familiar valley, I hope that whatever happens after May 6th will involve some more healing.

But what I have been trying to take away from the situation I find myself in is how I would do things differently. For instance, how will I be a better teacher and mentor? How can I keep students from being overwhelmed by academics at the detriment of their artistic development? How can I make the boring stuff, the red tape, the things that can't be gotten rid of be less important to the excitement of creating and collaborating and being involved in theatre?

I don't know that I have concrete answers as to what I would do, but I definitely can see the pitfalls. I had two lovely friends visit me this weekend and one asked me, where do you see yourself in five years. The honest/ideal answer is that in five years I'll be teaching. In five years I will be settling down with a family. But the reality is that I'm probably going to be teaching next year because that's the most tangible way that I can be employed. And while I won't have a lot of professional experience under my belt, I definitely plan on being the best theatre educator I can be, because I at least have a lot of experience in the system. And it's time to change it.

Pericles Tech

2011-02-13T15:56:00.007-05:00

We're in tech! It's going slowly!
I'm going mad!

But here's a picture.

Or two...

Education vs. Efficiency

2011-02-08T20:28:00.005-05:00

Design! Design! Design!
Read! Read! Read!
Prepare! Prepare! Prepare!
Draw! Draw! Draw!
Apply! Apply! Apply!
Blog! Blog! Blog!

I feel like there is a constant harping on all the things I have to do right now, including trying, trying, trying to keep up with writing. I apologize for not, really, but I feel like I might drop dead at any given moment. Which means, you guessed it, I'm about to head into tech. Sunday, in fact, will be Day #1 of Pericles tech... and we are running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get ready. Today was both rewarding and infuriating. Rewarding because we started planking the main rake of the floor (which, without pictures, probably doesn't mean much to you, but soon). Infuriating because Education and Efficiency went head to head, and I'm not sure who won.

As an educational institution, theoretically we are supposed to be worried about educating the students who are serving Practicum hours in the shop. Thus, we (grad students, undergrad assistants, staff, faculty) are primarily supposed to oversee their work, offer guidance, and not just shove them out of the way to stand looking at us stupidly rather than wielding the tools themselves. So today we started planking the floor at approximately 2:30pm with two teams of undergraduate practicum students running the show (well, I was running it, but they were operating the tools and what-not). By 4:45pm, only about 1/3 of the rake was done and it had to be done by 6pm. It was a nightmare. I had the Technical Director, staff, and various other higher-ups breathing down my neck, but I was specifically instructed to be the Artistic Eye and not the labor. BUT! We were not making progress. We managed to get it done, finding a rhythm in what felt like the eleventh hour (and then our amazing Master Carpenter jumping in with his mad stapling skills) and finished by 6:15... but, as I said, it was infuriating.

At a certain point I felt like all I was doing was cracking the whip rather than paying attention to how the boards were being laid out in regards to color and staggering the seams. Though I feel like no major problems occurred, per se, I am left wondering why we allow this broken system to prevail.

In a carpenter's shop (where they are making actual things like furniture or what have you rather than useless things like scenic elements), young, unskilled workers spend time as merely hands cleaning up or holding tools (and observing). Why can't we do that in the educational theatre setting? Why isn't that considered a valid way to learn? Is it perhaps because many of our poor, unskilled ~~slaves~~ undergrads are forced into our scene (and costume) shops because of requirements, not interest? Thus, we must entice them to want to be there by giving them tools and letting them slow us down and screw things up (oh, you cannot imagine how many times I just had to let go of having a perfectly spaced out deck today...). This is a problem. It is a disservice, not just to the show (and design/designer) but to the students who are being entrusted with the responsibility to build things that they cannot. They get yelled at or they at least can tell when whomever they are disappointing is, in fact, disappointed. (I had one young man apologize profusely for his team's slow pace today, but really, who am I to get angry? They were doing the best that they knew how.)

It is irksome, and, as I may have said, we're behind. I feel stressed in a way that is unproductive. I can't do anything about where we're at and I know that someone higher up is going to complain, going into tech, about shit not being complete. And because I'm not someone who passes the buck or points fingers, I'm going to feel incredibly guilty and like I failed my own design. Urg.

Let's hope that by February 18th, when Pericles opens, it will all have been worth it.

It's a Busy Time

2011-01-30T06:45:00.000-05:00

I want to write so many things, but I fear my brain isn't really awake this early in the morning.

I have been hard at work getting Pericles going and, hopefully, finished. We go into tech in 2 weeks. I will admit I've been a bit lax about it, trying to let the other students involved (like my Props Master & Paint Charge) be, well, in charge. But I think we're going to have step up our game. The show is deceptively complex. The two rakes, large wheel and fabric make it seem like there's not much going on. But this show is going to be about the details. A Shakespearean Odyssey, Pericles visits at least 5 different locales during the course of the action, and we've got to make the audience believe with props and furniture (and costumes) that we've gone somewhere new despite the lack of scenic shift. Hopefully it will all come out nicely as this is my last scenic design in my foreseen future.

I'm also in the midst of the design process for Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams. I am, shock! amaze!, designing the costumes for the show and having a good time trying to infuse them with meaning and character. Below are my thumbnails for Lady, the main character. She has these three costumes and then we see her 2 other times in her nightgown/robe. The idea is that she begins in a drab, unflattering dress (much like the other characters in the town) as she has been forced to conform to the societal norms of this small-town (aka Hell). But as she blossoms under the attentions of Val (the wandering drifter) and attempts to recapture her father's wine garden, her silhouette becomes more rounded and fanciful. She becomes more feminine and womanly and happy, despite her possibly unhappy demise.

The other character that I thought I'd share is the Conjure Man, to me the most interesting character and costume. He is the only Black character in the show, despite the script being infused with racial themes. The history of conjuring and conjure men is a part of Black spirituality and religion that traveled with them from Africa and became infused with the Christian and Native American beliefs and religions they were exposed to. Thus, I have tried to layer upon the Black body (which itself has social and racial implications) notions of the Native American and Colonial influences, making the Conjure Man not of this world, something apart, and yet very much influenced by it. We are still working out the details of his coat (does it make him too attached to civilization?) but this is really close to what you're going to see, I figure.

Other than the two shows, I am working on my 3 presentations for SETC. I have the two shows that I am competing with: Oklahoma! and The Waiting Room. And then I'll be presenting my paper on Feminist Design as well. (And doing Job Contact, which is a crazy free-for-all of talking to potential employers). I have a feeling that my SETC is going to be jam-packed! And it is in only 4 weeks!

On that note, I'm going to go do some more work. Or yoga. Perhaps I'll do some yoga to start the day off right.

Feminist Validation

2011-01-23T15:24:00.000-05:00

Almost a year ago I wrote a post I titledTempestuas Validation. In it I explored how not being named one of the winning entries at KC/ACTF had crushed my ego. It was introspective but fairly mopey. Since writing that I went to the SETC conference in Kentucky and was awarded second place in the graduate scenic design competition for my design for The Seagull. And I researched and wrote a paper about the ideas of feminist design. Which I submitted to three conferences. A few weeks ago, MATC sent me a rejection e mail.

Today, 6 weeks away from the 2011 SETC convention in Atlanta I received an e mail congratulating me on receiving the Young Scholar's Award for my paper on feminist design. Even before I get to the convention where I will have 2 designs in the design competition (Oklahoma! and The Waiting Room) I have already won. My work and my deep thoughts about design and the design process have been validated. I am going to present, to goodness knows how many people, about my search for feminist design. I have been having trouble sitting still and concentrating this afternoon...

I think the most rewarding thing about the news is not the $225 cash prize, but that I am starting to feel the crossover of my academic pursuits and thoughts and my artistic endeavors. I am starting to feel like an artist-scholar. I can show how theatre design doesn't have to be brainless and about making a pretty picture, but about dramaturgical research and in-depth analysis of how our world operates. This is exciting, and I am, admittedly, geeking out. I love all of the academic work I've had my hands in over the years. I honestly miss it when I have been told to just produce sketches. In a perfect world I would be able to do lots of research and mull things over before designing the scenery or costumes for a play. Sadly, theatre doesn't afford that kind of luxury (and very few people would take it if they could, instead cramming more jobs together in order to pay the bills).

All of this is interesting as I start work on my next and final design at UNCG, costumes for Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending. I'm very excited about the project because the director wants to break away from the expectations of it being a realistic play, instead delving into the illusions and motifs and the undertones of the Orpheus myth (and racial and economic commentary being made). As the costume designer, I really feel like I'm going to be able to apply some of the feminist design questions. Things, finally, feel like they are coming together. It is a good way to wrap up my MFA. Everything seems to be culminating and I'm having to bring all of my education and skills to bear. Hopefully with very exciting results.

Family, Feminist Design, and Finishing School

2011-01-09T13:49:00.000-05:00

Whoa, it's Sunday. I'm updating! I must be procrastinating. No, I'm actually waiting for photos to upload to Facebook, which is the procrastination, I guess.

I got back from a whirlwind trip to California to see my family. My grandmother had took a turn for the worse in October and CT and I were finally able to get away this last week. Unfortunately, she passed away the day before we caught our flight. But it was good to visit with family and introduce their special kind of craziness to CT. I was reminded of my strong desire to move closer, even if it is just by a few states. This whole cross-country flying is not cool. The family that I am geographically closer to now I hardly see, so obviously moving West wouldn't put anyone out (and would get me out of the South!).

In the last 6 hours I have been working on a few things, including submitting my Feminist Design paper to yet another conference. It has now gone out to 3. I don't really care if it gets chosen (okay, I do, but I know that academic papers are not my forte) but it's nice to know that people are thinking about the problem of traditional design techniques, even if just for a second before they reject the paper.

Meanwhile, tomorrow is the first day of the last semester of my MFA. I am nervous and excited. I want this semester to go really well (the last one ended horribly). I don't want the doom and gloom of what happens next to hang over my head while I finish up two more designs, go to a conference (or two?), and take a very exciting academic class "Race, Gender, and Performance." I hope that as things rev up, it will be good. Spring semesters have always been better for me anyway (I think the conferences help to give me something to look forward to and take a break from the other stuff with).

Okay, back to the pictures from California. I am going to take more pictures this year and I started there. I'll leave you with one of my favorites:

2010

2011-01-01T09:02:00.001-05:00

Okay, so, last year I started this blog as a New Year's Resolution to write more. It worked for a while, but petered out with summer and this fall semester. It seems silly to reinstate that resolution officially (unofficially I have said it in my head) so I won't. Instead, I will write today, even though it is not Sunday!, and talk about a few things I realized this last week.

The end of last semester was rough. I had a really bad review with my faculty when I was expecting good things to come out of it. I have been thinking about it, mulling over some of the things they said, and one thing occurred to me about the accusation that I've got a bad case of senioritis. Last academic year I was on fire. My personal life fell apart but I used all of that to fuel my hard work and creativity for the year. I was on top of everything and went into the summer of work at UNCG not thinking much of the emotional and physical toll that I would have to pay for not really taking time to deal with what had happened with my ex and my family. This last semester I had a reprieve from lots of work because I only had two classes I had to take for the rest of my degree (my Master Production class and an Academic class). I chose to split those two up and take the Costume Seminar I was expected to take and do an Independent Study to keep me drawing. However, my energy and drive began to peter out. Some of it was senioritis, for sure, and I know that is what the faculty and staff at UNCG felt my lax work ethic stemmed from. But, in hindsight, I believe a part of it had to do with just not having the energy anymore. I used up so much on making last year awesome despite everything that I had no reserves to tap into when things got rough. I also know that working at UNCG this summer meant I had no recharge time (financially or emotionally) from an incredibly emotionally charged environment.

The sad truth is though I've come to realize that my senioritis doesn't just stem from being a a third year student who is ready to just be done, I'm not sure how much I'm going to improve over this last semester. This is not to say I'm not going to be on top of stuff, but like letting go of my extreme desire to be perfect and get a 4.0 when I got to Grinnell, it's nice to not feel like my nerves are on edge all the time because I must, need, have to get stuff done. No one else around me has ever really been as dedicated to turning stuff in on time and awesome. It's nice to allow myself to be human and make mistakes right now, because the sad truth is that if/when I get a job, I'm going to have to go back to being on edge because it will be a constant worry about whether or not I am going to keep said job.

But, for 2011, I am going to strive to strike a balance between work and personal time. I need to, for the sake of the two directors that I'm still designing for and the professor from whom I'm taking my last class, give it my all. Here's to hoping I can rekindle a bit of the former glory but not give myself ulcers at the same time.

Wrapping Up Work

2010-12-12T15:25:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I have 2 costume plates left to draw then I can paint them and be done with the surprise 13 plates I set out to work on last Monday and that are due tomorrow at 9am. And what am I doing? Yep, procrastinating!

I think that the end of the fall semester is the worst. Or at least right now it seems like the worst. Part of that has to do with wanting to do the whole holiday thing (and today Target was a lunatic asylum and I was just there to buy paper towels!) but also because we're working towards next semester shows as well. On top of this costume project I'm completing for Kushner's adaptation of The Illusion, I've also got to get Pericles designed and drafted before we leave for break. :( It has been rough.

But my work for The Illusion is exciting. See this fun plate below (my apologies for it's weird scan... the book is too big for the scanner bed):

The show provides for so much more than just a simple design because it has three plays within it. So each of the plays are in their own time period and color. And I've added elements of commedia in order to inform some of my choices. I've really enjoyed putting on my costumer hat again. Hopefully this will bode well for Orpheus Descending, the last show of UNCG's season for which I will be costume designer.

Meanwhile, I'm still on the hunt for a job. :( I was kind of seriously considering another masters program (a 2 year one in another field) but, really, that would have just been hiding out from real life again. I am ready to have a job and make more than $1000 a month (for 8 months). I am ready to be able to afford holiday gifts and all that. Yep, I'm ready to be an adult for real.

But I guess I should pass my costume seminar first...

Theatre Without Merit

2010-11-14T20:57:00.000-05:00

Okay, I may regret this blog post, but there really is no benefit in not giving honest feedback. I just saw UNCG's production of Alice an "urban, techno remix" of Lewis Carroll's classics Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. And, I'm sorry to anyone who I offend or disagrees with me, but it was horrible.

To begin with, the sound was too loud. My ears were hurting during the pre-show and at the top when Alice's mother is yelling at her. My 7-year-old cousin had his hands over his ears. He asked to sit in the lobby before the show because he didn't like the loud noise. Later in the show, microphone use was inconsistent and garbled. Much of the talking couldn't be heard over the soundtrack and I left with a headache.

But the worst part was that the Carroll's story was lost. It appeared that the goal was to re-imagine the characters in a hip-hop style while ignoring the fact that Alice has to have a journey to find herself as a young woman. All too often the stage was muddled with action and visual stimulation. I couldn't tell what was going on, where we were, nor did I care. At no time did I feel for poor Alice. All I could think was, when will this be done? And while my 7-year-old cousin had moments of excitement over some of the spectacle (unicyclers and jugglers) he generally looked at me with confusion. Perhaps because he isn't old enough to have any frame of reference for much of the updates (a LOL-Cat as the Cheshire Cat, for instance) but isn't our target audience younger people? Shouldn't they get what we're talking about?

I will give credit to the production team: the costumes were fascinating. The props and puppets intriguing. The set interesting. And the lighting mesmerizing. But I felt that too much of the show was about spectacle. Sure, kids these days are more interested in Wii and movies than they are in old-fashioned theatre and story-telling, but, really? Do we have to perpetuate that? Do we have to assume that all our young audiences want is glitz and glam without substance? And for the poor parents and adults in the audience, sure we got the references to the classic book, but I doubt many adults really felt like it was money well-spent for them to sit through. A show for children should inspire kids to want to play make-believe and dress up, not pander to their dulled imaginations and attention-spans. And it should be something that the adults will say more than "Well, the kids liked it" when asked about it later. Truly, this production was not worth my time. Nor am I really happy, as a theatre-maker, to have shown this to my cousin as an example of my chosen profession. And I know I'm about to make a lot of people irate, but I'm a little embarrassed by the whole mess. UNCG can and does do better work (especially in the TYP program). I hope that we learn from this and strive for better, more-substance-filled, theatre with merit.

Two Weeks of Thoughts

2010-11-08T07:30:00.000-05:00

My apologies for not having posted in the last two weeks. I've not had much to write about and my Sunday schedule has changed enough that I don't find myself sitting at the computer thinking, hey, write on your blog.

For now I have a few things of note, things that have been happening and the thoughts I've had:

1. I have started applying for jobs. I feel like a fraud, in part because the jobs I want I don't look qualified for on paper. These jobs are in the artistic department as Artistic Assistant or Artistic Associate. They are also jobs that want to be filled before I graduate in May. The other jobs I'm applying for are teaching jobs. That feels fraudulent too because I know that I'm applying more because I look somewhat qualified even if I feel like a professor of theatre design should not be directly out of graduate school. But I've got to pay the bills, right? Hopefully something good will come of all of this.

2. I am going to NYC in 2 weeks. I'm excited and nervous and financially strapped. I probably will only get to see 1 well-reviewed show (and perhaps one by Village Light Opera) because I'm just too poor. Oh well. Museums Museums Museums.

3. I have been stitching for Triad Stage's Christmas Carol. It makes me nostalgic for Portland. But I am enjoying these bursts of simulating real employment. And I like to help out a theatre that I care about and want to see succeed.

4. Speaking of Triad Stage, I saw Educating Rita last night. A wonderful play and I'm so glad I got to see it. I loved the set design and the premise, Pygmallion updated so you don't think that the Eliza Doolittle character (the aforementioned Rita) is really a sodding idiot for falling for her teacher. The whole play is a fascinating discussion about the power of choice and education, how people change and don't. I can't even begin but really, you must read or see the show (not at Triad as it just closed, but you get the idea). Powerful, powerful stuff.

Alright, told you it wouldn't be terribly exciting. I'm off to get ready for a mock interview for class. I'm sure it will be helpful, but I'm definitely not looking forward to it (I'm fairly unprepared). And to send off my application to the Goodman.

We're All Waiting

2010-10-18T10:44:00.000-04:00

Hey, you reading that Cosmo?

On Friday, UNCG opened Lisa Loomer's The Waiting Room. For this production I tried on an all-together different hat, that of Lighting Designer. It was a panicky situation because the learning curve was extremely steep, and despite the show being in our black box, it requires more than just a "lights up/lights down" approach. But now that the show is open (and I'll see it in performance this afternoon), I am very happy with it.

First, let's talk about the play. The Waiting Room is the story of three women: Wanda, Victoria, and Forgiveness From Heaven. Wanda is a modern day woman who has breast implants that may or may not have given her breast cancer. Victoria is (appropriately) a Victorian woman who faces hysterectomy and all of the physical troubles caused by wearing a tightly-laced corset since pre-pubescence. Forgiveness From Heaven is a Chinese woman whose feet were bound when she was a little girl. The play deals with issues of gender, beauty, body modification, health-issues, post-colonialism, and a host of other things.

I chose to do my lighting design in this season slot before the show was announced. But was very happy when the title was revealed because the play, as might be surmised by the cross-section of time periods represented by the women, would allow me the opportunity to explore artistic light sculpting in melding reality with surreality. But as I said before, the learning curve was steep. My only other lighting design experience had been in a community theatre with limited resources. Furthermore, I was more the master electrician than even the assistant lighting designer. Though I knew the theory of lighting design on paper, actually having what was on paper made manifest was a bit overwhelming.

Furthermore, my poor master electrician was in a motorcycle accident (he's okay!) in the midst of hang. Fortunately I had some amazing people step in to take his place, but their time commitment could not be as much as a true master electrician. But this also meant that I had more time sitting at the Ion Board learning how to program the lights, which included DMX scrollers, DMX Irises, I-cues, and LEDs. The tech process was slow and arduous, but eventually I got the hang of it and I'm pretty happy with the result.

Despite that, looking back on the process I truly understand an aspect of the gender divide in theatre having worked in the land of lighting for the first time. Despite the fact that the art of lighting design as we know it today was developed in large part by the mother of lighting design, Jean Rosenthal, the field is dominated by men. At UNCG, where we are an equal opportunity educational institution, Electrics (as we call the area dealing with sound and lights) is still the boys club. On more than one occasion I was the only woman in the theatre during the hang and focus of my lighting design. And because I was at a severe disadvantage in the field due to my lack of knowledge, the gender differences became obvious and frustrating.

The reason I mention this is because it is ironic that I faced the most glaring gender division while working on a play that many consider to be a vital part of the third wave feminist canon. My own determination to push through gender barriers was magnified by my need to bring a feminine voice to this production (directed and scenically designed by two men). Unfortunately, my desire to highlight certain parts of the story that I thought were important as a woman had to cow-tow to the desires of the director. (The student-faculty dynamic also playing a role.) So, instead of doing obvious shifts in the lights to underscore poignant moments and speeches, I focused on subtle shifts that focused the audience's attention where it was needed most, all under the radar of the director and other faculty in the room. And I went home the night of opening happy with what I'd done, and pretty damn impressed with how well I managed to master a new lighting board, DMX equipment, and create an aesthetically pleasing design. My own satisfaction reward enough. And then the director called (with a change he wanted for the end of Act I) and thanked me for the work I did, including the subtle shifts he'd not had time to take in until opening. At which point I realized that sometimes working under the radar is just as affective as working above it.

Original poster artwork by Craig Shannon

The Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything

2010-10-10T09:38:00.001-04:00

I considered not posting something today, but today is not about hiding. Today is a celebration. Today is 10/10/10 or 101010. Today Grinnellians around the world are raising a (shot) glass to the ultimate 10/10 (first paycheck day). Today binary geeks are creaming their pants. Today Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy nerds are giggling about what the binary geeks figured out (101010=42). Today I am not getting married.

One year ago today my life was headed down a path with another person that I thought was The One. Together, in our ultimate geeky-nerdiness, had picked this day to pledge our commitment to each other after what would have been 6 years together. Today was going to be a big hoopy-di-do wedding with me in a white dress and our families looking on as I walked down some aisle on the Butte Creek Country Club in Chico, California.

But then a few days after 10/10/09, that path ended abruptly and I began to climb a very craggy, treacherous mountain by myself. Knowing that I was still going to get to today, I began imagining what and where it would be instead.

The good news is that I'm in Georgia with my best friend. The best friend who has seen me through the most shitty times of my life and will, one day, also see me through the happiest day of my life. Today is also still about Grinnell debauchery. The date is still a binary number. And that binary number still translates to 42. And though I'm not giving out towels as gifts to very confused family members in California, I still know the answer to life, the universe and everything.

Yes, the answer is 42, but it is also that life is a journey, an adventure (as cheesy as it sounds), and thinking that you know how it is going to turn out is not only stupid, but very arrogant. Living in the moment, embracing whatever hand you are dealt, and knowing yourself is all that matters. Hand in hand with this, too, is knowing when to stop trying to predict the future. For me it is turning off the fatalistic part of me that grew ten times the day I was forced to climb that mountain alone. Instead, I am working to remember that people are people. They make stupid human mistakes and hurt other humans. But not all the time. Sure, as has happened in the past with relationships that have fallen through, I am more guarded and scared. But I am also stronger. I know myself more. And that means that I can let that self go because it is wiser and more resilient than before.

So though I'm not getting married today to a man that turned out to be someone else, I am also not bitter or sad about what was or could have been. I am excited about what comes next. I am happy to have been given another chance to find a partner who will walk beside me down a path we both choose. But really, I am glad that I overcame the mountain and am back on solid ground (though pretty sure that I'm ready for the next obstacle in my way).

An Oklahoma Good-bye

2010-10-03T23:21:00.000-04:00

Alright, last time I'll talk about Oklahoma!, promise.

Tonight we struck the set. The turn around for the show, because it was in our big roadhouse, was so short it was like giving birth directly over the grave (isn't that some famous saying by one of those crazy theatre people, like Artaud?). Either way, the show felt like a success in many, many ways and I am happy with it over all.

I went to see the show twice (on opening on Wednesday and then again on Friday night). I saw it from the balcony on Friday and was struck with how much more rich some of the moments felt by my closer proximity to the actors and the new view I had because I'd been sitting mid-orchestra all through tech.

I think that the director, my good friend Bryan, did a fantastic job directing the show and making it relevant for today. He lead the actors in some very exciting directions, finding the poignant and hilarious moments that needed to be highlighted. As usual, the lighting design was beautiful (even if we had a few snafus), and the costume design was also very pretty. I felt honored to be a part of the design team for the show and have the talented actors populate the world that I had created.

Now I move on to my lighting design for The Waiting Room by Lisa Loomer. So far I feel a bit like I'm stumbling through the dark (pun intended) because I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to lighting design. I am hoping that I get the same joy out of having a design like this realized, but light is so ephemeral, it's difficult to tell.

For now, I'm going to sleep.

Ooooooooook-lahoma!

2010-09-26T20:54:00.001-04:00

It's tech weekend (well, right now it is first dress) of the long awaited thesis Oklahoma!. It's been an interesting couple of days; I believe I've forgotten what the real sky looks like.

The most interesting thing about a show like this is the number of elements that have to come together in order to make it work. Obviously there are the scenic elements, but not until the lights were added yesterday and today did my design truly begin to take shape. And tonight we have the costumes; it's nice to see Laurie in a dress and apron rather than sport pants and shirt.

Over the next two days the last touches are going to come together (hopefully). And then we get to add the best part of the process: the audience. I'm looking forward to opening for so many reasons.

Now back to paying attention. We're at the dream ballet now:

Feminist Design & Design Realized

2010-09-19T19:34:00.000-04:00

This is going to be quick since I am running behind today already and, well, there isn't much to say right this second because there is going to be a lot to say in about a week.

First thing, I am still reading Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Habit and I had a realization today about how useful this book is employing feminist design techniques and, thus, how much I wish I'd had this book when I wrote my paper last year. (And I'm attempting to get this paper presented at conferences... but have no time to update it with this new bit. Sadness.) Anyway, there was a passage today that specifically struct me as pertinent to my feminist design ponderings. In the chapter about spine, Tharp says the following:

"There's an obvious reason why, as a choreographer, I am constantly groping for a spine. Dance is preverbal; it doesn't have the writer's advantage of using language to establish meaning and intent. The vocabulary of dance is movement, not words. So I need something more in the form of an idea, an image, a memory, a metaphor to make my intentions comprehensible to the audience. I have to articulate this to myself because I won't be using words to articulate it in public."

In my notebook I wrote: Yes! This is why it is important to analyze your visual language as a female/feminist designer: you do not have words--it's all nonverbal! One must know your visual cues and those of the audience. Otherwise communication fails and either nothing is understood or the wrong thing is understood.

To elaborate, in Ringer's four questions about feminist design she calls on us to ask these questions: "How does visual language contribute to these explicit and implicit messages? How do I as a woman and designer relate to the visual language and the world around me? How do I visually process information?" In being aware of how I process visual language, I can better make decisions about how to communicate my ideas to the audience because I am cognizant of how visual language is created in myself and thus the population as a whole. And to be aware of how nonverbal the art of theatrical design is, is necessary in order to not just assume what I put on stage is going to make sense to the audience.

Take Oklahoma! for instance (which is the design realized part). I was giving a mini-talk about it to my stagecrafts class last week. I began by talking about my inspiration and process of turning that inspiration into a design. And then today, I got to see the theatrical realization of that design (in part) before the cast's first rehearsal in Aycock. The translation of my idea into reality has a bit of disconnect because the cast (as they are the only ones that have seen it yet) don't know the awe-inspiring, personal connection I have with the landscape of Northern California that I was inspired by. HOWEVER! My ability to interpret that into a majestic backdrop of sky and clouds atop a sumptuous yellow "waves of grain" gave them pause. They were swept up. I had achieved the awe-inspiring by creating the magic, even if the personal was left to be my own secret in my concept.

Now, think, if I had been more versed in how I viewed/interpreted/created the visual cues and how important my role as the nonverbal story-teller, how different (or better?) would my design be?

With this rolling around in my head I am ready to work on Pericles because nothing is getting by me now.

Generosity

2010-09-12T08:05:00.000-04:00

Another installation of my thoughts on Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Habit. I've designated a journal I had laying about to write thoughts and notes in as I read the rest of the book, each page full of things that could jump-start a conversation or a blog post. However, at the end of her chapter entitled "Accidents Will Happen" she discusses the importance of generosity.

In the chapter itself she discusses the idea that luck is not so magical and fleeting as many would have you believe, but instead is a skill born of preparation and dedication to your project, and the willingness to and ability to notice when to take an opportunity when it presents itself.

"You have to allow for the suddenly altered landscape, the change in plan, the accidental spark--and you have to see it as stroke of luck rather than a disturbance of your perfect scheme" (120).

I could speak specifically about her call for planning and preparation that does not hem in the creative process, but instead let me go back to the activity that follows this chapter about being generous because it speaks to more than this creative habit she writes on.

"Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you're generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky." (136)

Tharp's discussion of luck really being the skill to recognize opportunity is great. But this call to, essentially, create good karma in order to generate luck as well is the most fascinating. The highly collaborative nature of theatre is like a microcosm of the world at large. No one exists in a vacuum and people's happiness and goodwill is dependent on the happiness and goodwill that is given them from those around them. In theatre, the free exchange of ideas is an act of generosity. No one artist claims importance in the process by insisting that they are the mastermind of the artistic product of the team. There is no expectation that if the lighting designer makes a suggestion that turns into the solution that gels the entire design together that the rest of the team owes it to them. And so collaboration becomes an exercise in being completely selfless and generous with your fellow artists.

Tharp goes on to say that generosity is also linked to good teaching:

"... you invest everything you have in your [students]. You have to be so devoted to them and to the finished creation that your [students] become your heroes. It takes courage to be generous like that, to believe that the better the [students] look... the better the scene will play and the more satisfying the work itself will be. Without generosity, you'll always hold something back. The finished work shows it, and your audience knows it." (136-7)

This struck a chord when I first read it and I wrote quickly and furiously in my little notebook about how important this is to educational theatre. (By the way, I replaced "dancers" with "students" in the above quote, just to make it more relevant to my point, rather than Tharp's life as a choreographer.) I believe that the most successful productions at the educational level benefit from teachers and mentors that wholly adopt this idea of generosity as the guide the students towards success. There is no room in educational theatre for a teacher to grandstand, even if they are the designer or director or actor. Even in those instances, being generous with your process and knowledge pays forward to your students' own endeavors and will mean that the world will hand you the opportunity to be the recipient of someone else's generosity.

On an even more simple level, I think about my first day teaching Intro to Stagecrafts this semester. As I stood before the class, basically regurgitating the exact same spiel about the syllabus and handouts as the faculty and staff lecturers had just the section before, a lifelong dream became reality. That's right, ever since Kindergarten I wanted to be a teacher. I saw value and importance in the act of filling young minds with information about the world. Even though college students can be jaded punks at times, this semester has been one affirming day after another that teaching is a part of my future. And though I had always thought it was a bit cheesy, I told them, as I explained how the class would work and where they could get their notes and when I would be available to answer questions if they got lost, I said in earnest, "We want you to succeed. So don't be afraid to ask for help." Truly, though I'm only responsible for laying the foundation of knowledge about lighting instruments and actual measurements of lumber, it's also about inculcating in them a sense of empowerment and responsibility to their art form if they so choose to follow theatre as their path. Sure, it will mean more time answering silly questions or more time preparing extra lectures (about design!), but the gift of knowledge is my act of generosity. I've had some wonderful teachers and I hope to continue to have the opportunity to work with amazing mentors. I hope that this generosity will bring me that luck.

From Oklahoma! to Charlotte

2010-09-05T18:36:00.000-04:00

Dear Readers (aka CT and Jenna), I had a great idea for a post. For about an hour and then it dropped from my mind. There are other things that I could write on but I fear they are too controversial and would be better left off of this public forum. So instead I offer you two things of note in my creative/theatrical life right now:

1. Oklahoma! is well underway, though painting is taking me much too much time. There has been a bit of an extreme learning curve trying to figure out how to paint new drops. I am working on drop #3 and it is taking a LONG time because not only is it new, it has to be painted relatively lightly so that it has a bit of transparency to it as it stands in for the cyc. The picture to the left, there, is the mid-stage drop, which was drop #1.

The other interesting bit pertaining to Oklahoma! (which opens in 3.5 weeks... have I mentioned that?) is that I am making a concerted effort to talk about it. I made sure I did a presentation to the cast, I am planning on bringing my model in for the stagecrafts class, and I have volunteered to be on the Q&A panel at the Super Saturday performance for local high schools on Oct 2. The reason is more than wanting to be self-centered about my work, but I feel like talking about a design is helpful for the next generation of designers as well as me. If I can explain my concept to people who are just starting to understand what a design concept is, then I feel I'll be able to articulate well to a director and the rest of the design team. Furthermore, there is so much more to a design than just what you see on stage, and I know that I want to pick the brain of designers after I see a particularly stunning production. Thus, I am offering my time to help my design live on as more than just a stage picture. I don't know if it will really be valuable, but, as Oklahoma! is my thesis, I figure this kind of work can't hurt.

2. I am also beginning to plan for the theatre conferences next year. I vowed after the last two years to not get caught off-guard by them, both in time-management and financial responsibility. I have decided that I will not attend KC/ACTF next year, in part because I feel I've out-grown it and also because it is all the way in Florida, which is a bit of a trek. Instead I am focusing my efforts on SETC, which was a great conference last year in Kentucky, and I have high hopes for the 2011 convention in Atlanta. I am also hoping to make it to USITT this year because it is in Charlotte, which is so close that it would seem a waste not to make an effort to take part in this professional theatre conference and expo. I'm honestly really excited about conferences this year and feel they are very important as part of professional development and learning. I am also working on polishing my feminist design paper from last semester in order to submit to the SETC emerging scholars panel and also the MATC emerging scholars work. Fingers crossed that perhaps I'm on my way to carving out an academic niche for myself. (And that I don't go bankrupt in the process).

That's about it on this front. I'm thinking I might post my work from my independent study this semester soon, so look for more artistic updates. But for now, I'm going to go wash Ultramarine Blue paint out from under my nails for the third time today. And perhaps my brilliant idea about a good blog post will come back to me. (And this time I'll write it down so I don't lose it. :P)

Creative Spark

2010-08-29T12:31:00.000-04:00

Last night I was privy to a very interesting debate about the notion of recognizing the creative spark within oneself. One Mr. Hall adamantly asserted that the creative people in the world, without exception, recognize their creative spark. They may not know what form their creativity will take or how to enact it, but, from a young age, the innate creativity begins to take shape and manifest in whatever means are at a child's fingertips.

Over 12 hours later, my take on this assertion no longer resembles disagreement, but this idea did get me thinking about my own life and the life I hope to create for my family someday.

A bit of background: both of my biological parents are artists in their own right. My mother a fine artist, though never professionally or academically trained, has created quite a few beautiful paintings and drawings in her lifetime. My father is a graphic artist and quite the cartoonist. And my step-mother is a graphic designer whose aesthetic and color choices always feel, well, right. Furthermore, my parents (father and step-mother) kept the house filled with music and literature. They were by no means connoisseur nor did they populate my childhood with only the classics, but I was constantly surrounded by some form of creativity or another. I was also put in movement/theatre classes, was given the opportunity to play the violin, and had drawing utensils at my fingertips. In every way my creativity was nurtured and encouraged and I was aware of my interest in exploring the world through a creative lens.

However, when I began to talk about becoming a theatre artist as my career, I was encouraged to find a more lucrative tact. I did not go away to college intending to become a theatre major but instead the always employable certified teacher. When I realized, during my first semester at Grinnell in my Introduction to Stagecraft course, that my passion for theatre was more than just a high school hobby, I dreaded telling my parents. And even after I did, I still deflected comments that as a female engineer there would be a lot more financial opportunities than going into fickle show business.

This is not to say that my parents do not support my decision to be a theatre designer. But I have always felt conflicted about my creativity. Though my father and step-mother have turned their artistic sensibilities into their careers, their complaints about being burned out and constantly vulnerable to subjective criticism (and their encouragement for me to go and make good money) has made me unsure of how, if at all, to nurture my creative spark. It has called into question if this desire to create is more than just an indulgence or hobby.

As I've gotten older I have come to realize that, indulgence or otherwise, it is an important element of my soul. And therein lies the essence of what it is to recognize your creative spark, as Mr. Hall spoke of last night. Sure, you can sense that you like to draw or write or tell stories or whatever, and you can feel this way from a very young age when expression is about everything from color to sound to movement and everything in between. But to come to realize how your creativity is linked to your essence, how much of your motivation and drive in life is, indeed, sparked by creating, that is something that comes later and under very difference circumstances than just being exposed to art and the like. And for some, it doesn't happen until they're 70 and the urge to paint becomes a desire that cannot be ignored. Or it comes when you're 21, walking in a desolate snow-scape and you have the urge to run your hands along a tree branch in order to telegraph to the world how beautiful you find your surroundings.

Year 3... And Go!

2010-08-23T12:36:00.000-04:00

Okay, dear readers, I have been incredibly lax in updating this blog for a variety of reasons, too numerous to get into and all sounding like a poor excuse for being lazy. But I've got about 20 minutes before I need to start work in the scene shop today and so I'm here, with not much of a plan but the need to keep the promise to myself to write every week.

As the title suggests, year three of my graduate school career is underway. This is the last year in my MFA and I'm incredibly excited. It has been a bit of a stressful few days, getting the six first year MFA designers situated (and hearing about the crazy class schedule debacle) but the dust is starting to settle and I think it's going to be a great year.

Oklahoma! is off to a fast-paced start (we hit tech in 4.5 weeks!) and The Waiting Room is getting going as well. But not just the shows, I have, miraculously, only ended up with one structured class and an independent study of my own devising. It's like a year made-to-order. And you know what that means...

In 9 months, the real world awaits. Yesterday, at a gathering of returning and new graduate students, the question of what comes next, of course, came up. I feel like I answer this question at least once a day. But the bottom line is that the answer remains the same (and, predictably, vague): I'm going where the job is. The idea of going to New York never appealed to me and there are only to cities I would move to just to move and figure something out (Chicago and Seattle), but in this economy and with my temperament, I'm not one to just hope that I land on my feet by heading to some burgeoning theatre community. So right now, I don't have an answer, but I am looking forward to the adventure that not knowing provides. And, really, I don't expect I'll have much an answer until sometime next spring. Life has a funny way of working out but it often takes a while before things become clear. So until then, I'm going to go paint some more clouds and start working on No Exit, just because.

A Dedication

2010-08-08T09:18:00.000-04:00

Once, when I was about 7 years old, I attended a Special Olympics event in Chico, CA. I was there because of my sister Kristin, a sister not many of you have ever heard me talk about. Kristin, 5 years my junior, was born with Down's Syndrome. And like all people who have an extra 21st chromosome, she is a happy, fun little girl. The sad fact is that I haven't seen Kristin in over 15 years as she lives with her father somewhere in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Yet, every time I pass a person with Down's, my heart breaks a little for this sister who I hardly know.

At the pool here in Carrboro, watching the athletes register for their events for a Special Olympics day that my other sister, Morrow, is volunteering for, I was overwhelmed. I had intended to help the volunteer staff at the event in any way that I could, but was unneeded, and rather than sit in the muggy heat for 3 hours with a sense of dread and unease, I opted to come home instead. And now I sit here and I feel at a loss to the purpose of what I do.

When I was younger I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to change the lives of students. I envisioned myself standing before a classroom while rapt students looked up at me, absorbing information and asking questions of their world. While I realize that was a wholly unrealistic ideal of teaching, the fact of the matter was that I imagined I would be serving my community directly through teaching.

Instead, I fill my time by trying to create spectacle and entertainment for a small sliver of a community. Today I must resume work on Oklahoma!, a show that I would argue is pure drivel because it shows us nothing new in our world today. It does not make you think, it does not challenge your opinions, it just entertains and amuses you. And it was picked for the UNCG season specifically because it would be a money-maker, drawing in the "blue-hairs" and families that long for the Golden Age of Broadway to return. (Granted, I feel that the director for this piece is trying [and succeeding] in making this production relevant and challenging. But the bottom line is that Rogers and Hammerstein themselves admitted that they conceived the musical to hearken back to a brighter, happier time as America was facing the brutal reality of WWII.)

It is disheartening that in almost a decade spent in this profession of theatre that I find myself struggling to find meaning and purpose in an art form that has been the cradle of dissent and change in past times. One of my most important heroes is Hallie Flanagan who helped create the short-lived Federal Theatre Project. Her belief that theatre (and art) could be driven by the masses as well as be thought-provoking and dangerous ("Theatre, when it is good, is always dangerous," she said), is one of the things that has driven me further in my endeavor to work in this field. But the sad fact is that not many people are doing dangerous stuff anymore. True, there are companies that are working outside of the capitalistic, commercial frame-work, but they truly are the "not-for-profit" sector. Furthermore, they are often preaching to the choir because like-minded individuals are generally the people who make up their audiences.

So, what does this all mean? What, if anything, can I change in order to feel like I'm doing more than catering to the jaded and numb audiences? I'm not sure. Many people talk about the death of theatre in terms of the decline of audience numbers and the rise in the mean age of said declining(/dying) audience members. I feel like the death of theatre is in it becoming deadly. If, in an educational theatre, where the students are allowed to try something without the threat of eminent doom if they fail, the season selection committee can't push the envelope a little with their big-budget musical, what hope is there for theatre that can't afford to fail? I don't have the answer, but I do hope that as a theatre artist that I don't forget that I want to do what Hallie says: create the type of good theatre that is dangerous. Meanwhile, as I work on shows that feel useless and un-challenging like Oklahoma! I will dedicate my work to Kristin, whose simple, innocent outlook on life is enough for me to know there is a time and place for entertainment for entertainment's sake. I will design in the vein of the Golden Age of Broadway, pull out the stops in spectacle, and create an iconic surrey-with-the-fringe-on-top because I know that if Kristin where in the audience her joy and excitement would be all that matters in the world.

Quietness Without Loneliness

2010-07-24T22:52:00.000-04:00

I realize it is not quite Sunday, dear readers, but I was reading Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Habit before nodding off to sleep here in Georgia and was struck with inspiration for this week's post. I suspect that this book will be a source of many posts over the next few months as it was recommended by and now required reading for one of my professors.

The premise of the book is a discussion of how to make creativity habitual, something that does not leap out at us blindly, but a product of our imaginations that we can conjure as we need to. Tharp discusses the necessity of schedules and rituals, and, in the most recent page, the importance of solitude and lack of distractions.

For the last few months I have, miraculously, had the graduate office space to myself. My apologies to the recent graduates and incoming students, but this solitude has been a blessing. I joked, at first, about the emptiness of it and how lonely it felt, but the honest truth is that I work best when I am alone.

This has often been the case.

I did not do well in group projects in school, often ending up doing it all on my own. The year that I shared a room with my younger sister in high school was, perhaps, the single worst year of school I ever experienced. And, up until this beautiful, lonely summer, I work in my apartment bedroom more than my office despite not being equipped, really, with any supplies or proper space because of the simple fact that I can close the door and shut out the world.

Now, Tharp argues against distractions of all kinds (from watching movies during the lifespan of a project to ignoring numbers to not playing music in the background). These things make sense. But she also discusses the importance of solitude, and the state of mind that is a "quietness without loneliness." She says it is a form of meditation, but instead of clearing the mind, you let it wander. You embrace the mind's randomness and pay attention to the patterns that emerge while it is allowed to flit about unfettered.

Because I do prefer to have some background music and I don't intentionally avoid movies or TV during a project (though it seems to happen for time reasons alone), this idea of letting the mind wander captured my attention. But even more so, because of the place I am at personally and a philosophical conversation I am currently embroiled in, I feel that "quietness without loneliness" is applicable to life at the general level.

In the statement alone, I feel there is a call to accepting the quiet moments, the lulls of life, without seeing them as dull and lonely. In a society obsessed with relationships, practically screaming for a constant search for your "one and only soul mate," we often forget the importance of the time we have just for ourselves. This time that allows us to realize who we are as a single person, what our hopes, dreams, likes and dislikes are without the complications of another person whom we are trying to please.

I feel that for theatre artists, especially, the moments unfettered by relationships/family can provide us with the perfect time to not only explore dreams and opportunities we could not otherwise, but also to see how our creativity arises from within ourselves alone.

I suppose that this post is directly related to last week's, and I appreciate how life seems to present answers in due course when I am at my most confused and befuddled. After last week I did send an e mail to Anita regarding work with her next year. I have also begun making plans to visit potential theatre communities that I am not yet familiar with in order to decide upon places I could move to and start working. Nevertheless, it is in Tharp's words that I see the necessity of this time in my life as a honing of my creativity and thus myself. I feel that this moment in my life is what is needed and was meant to happen in order to allow all of my thoughts and ideas and feelings to be heard. And to understand and feel and know that quietness of all kinds is not a lonely venture.

The Summer Doldrums

2010-07-18T10:45:00.001-04:00

I have been racking my brain, trying to think of something profound and meaningful to write on. Much of what I have been contemplating I have covered before. For instance, yet another person--a man--commented that it was unfortunate that my initials make it so that I'm "Mr. Toomey." This, after looking through my portfolio, which presumably I had control over whether or not to be "MR Toomey" or "Margaret R Toomey" or whatever, and yet seemed to think that I was blind to this choice. So very infuriating, on so very many levels given my relationship to this gentleman. (I speak more on this topic in my first post.)

Also, I have been feeling the anxiety over what happens next after I graduate in May. Though the big day is still 10 months away, I can't help but feel distraught at the crossroads I am facing. Do I follow my heart and make a move to a community that I want to live in for a while, even if there isn't the perfect job lined up there? Or do I make a wise career move and ingratiate myself to someone who will take me on as an apprentice and continue to live a gypsy's life? The second option is specifically wrapped up in a pipe dream I have to shadow the wonderful Anita Stewart at Portland Stage. There is a grant I could apply for to fund my work with her, but I can't even bring myself to ask if this is something she would be interested in, let alone applying because I can't stand having yet another expiration date on a part of my life.

This choice between career and, well, not-career was easy once-upon-a-time when "not-career" was synonymous with "family." Without getting into the details of the last 10 months of my life (though most of you probably know about it anyway), it was much easier to decide that career came second when I thought I was making a decision against it for the ideal of family. Now that I am unencumbered by that in my immediate future, I feel stupid for not taking the risk of moving around as much as I need to to make the connections I need in order to fulfill my dreams in theatre. In some ways, having a partner to make decisions about where life will take you is the most difficult thing you could ever face, but on the other hand it would make things easier... I could just blame him for ruining my dreams. Ha ha.

What all of this--my moniker, my future, etc--boils down to is that I have hit one of the valleys in the emotional roller coaster that is a career in theatre. I need a project to be passionate about, that excites me, that makes me see why I would bleed myself dry, make ridiculous geographic decisions, and shun personal happiness for this crazy art form. These kinds of moods come around for me like clock-work, especially in the summer when the seasons have ended and everyone else is, rightfully so, taking a break before getting pumped up about the upcoming season. In a few weeks people will begin to trickle back onto the UNCG campus, Oklahoma will start getting built, and, perhaps, I will be sucked back into the joy (rather than the anxiety) of putting together another show. Perhaps, too, I will send Anita an e mail and just see if there really is anything worth worrying about in potentially moving back to Maine next year.

Theatrical Photography

2010-07-11T16:05:00.000-04:00

When I seriously began working on my theatrical career at Grinnell, I also discovered a secret love of capturing theatre on stage with my camera. I was also working as a staff photographer for the campus newspaper, The Scarlet & Black, and volunteered to sit through dress rehearsals and shoot the pictures because I already knew the directors, actors, and stage managers that I would need to ask permission of.

Sitting in the darkened theatre while the final pieces are coming together is a magical time. My theatrical brain was often enthralled and had to be turned off so that I would focus through the lens at the action on stage. Ultimately, I enjoyed that with little effort or input by myself, the visual impact of my subject was heightened and dramatic. By definition, a theatrical moment has dramatic lighting and tension that can be perfect to capture in a photograph, like the one below:

Unfortunately, being in the right part of the house and approximate distance from the stage are also important to capturing the right moments, which is why most theatre companies choose to hold separate photo calls so that the photographer(s) can be anywhere they want without interfering with the action of a rehearsal or performance. I, however, prefer to get my pictures during dress and previews because a staged moment does not have the same vitality as capturing the actors mid-gesture with the click of the shutter.

Furthermore, taking pictures during a dress can also provide information that can lead to important decisions during a photo call. The picture at the top of this post, from Jim Wren & Joe Sturgeon's memorable The Revenger's Tragedy at UNCG in the Fall of 2008, was shot during final dress and became the number one sought after pose for photo call for lighting and costumes. It was a stunning scene visually, but without having captured it with my camera, it didn't necessarily read as a defining still-image of the show.

One of the main reasons that I have taken pictures in the theatre is for my personal portfolio as a designer. I find that my photographic training has served me well in that I am also looking for composition of the image that will represent the show for years to come. Granted, I sometimes forget to snap a wide-angle shot to encompass the entire scenic view, but the close-ups are the ones that really get people interested enough to stop and look over my work. Don't tell me that you aren't intrigued by this picture, even if you can't really see what part I played in this staged moment:

To see more of my theatrical photography, please visit the Theatrics Gallery on my website mrtoomey.com.

Lady... Sing Me... Over Home

2010-07-04T17:06:00.000-04:00

Photograph by VanderVeen Photographers, courtesy Triad Stage

I have just returned from watching the closing performance of Triad Stage's Providence Gap. Another beautiful, heart-wrenching performance, which I won't wax poetic about, at least not too specifically.

The final moment of the play, which is, rightfully so, a teary-eyed moment as Chance is reunited with his love, was exceptionally poignant this afternoon as the actors prepared to bid farewell to the show. As Laurelyn Dossett, the talented musician who wrote and performed the music of the original piece played her way across stage in the final moments, her voice cracked and the staggering emotions that bringing to life a piece of this nature and sharing it with an audience was written across her face. As the cast took their bow, tears streamed down many of their faces as the audience stood in ovation.

The magic of theatre is not reserved for the tricks that we pull out of our sleeves and from our fly lofts to create a new world for the audience. But it also includes the transportation of the artists who have invested their souls into a piece. Not every production on stage moves the audience, and even less move the artists. But there are these rare shows that break your heart as the final curtain call is taken, like saying good-bye to a friend who you doubt you will ever see again. As sad as those moments are, these are the productions we are looking for.

I remember a production of Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel which I helped with at Portland Stage Co. in Maine. I was on the run crew and so only saw the show from the wings. But I believed so much in the story being told and enjoyed the artists who had come together to tell it, that I feel, to this day, it is one of the most important performances I have bared witness to. And everynight, there was a scene that made me cry and all I heard were the actor's voices carrying over the flats to where I sat, waiting for the next scene change.

The magic of productions such as Intimate Apparel and Providence Gap is rare, but for me is like finding home again. I have been a wanderer for much of my young life, yet the theatre has consistently made me feel rooted. Unfortunately, not every theater company or production has the right chemistry, and in those cases I have moved on, searching for the magic I found in high school, at Grinnell, and in Portland. As an audience member, Triad has enveloped me in the heartbreak of home, especially with Providence Gap, but I know that I am still looking for my artistic home. And while I hope that I find it, I must heed the mountain woman's words to not "look too hard" as it isn't a place that can be found by lookin'.

Oklahoma! ... continued

2010-06-27T08:05:00.000-04:00

Well, Thursday was the big design presentation, so the model got done. I knew going into it that things were going to change, so not so much with the final. I've already had a meeting with the director about new ideas that he's excited about, so I'm working towards some overhauls for the model for this Wednesday. But in the meantime I thought I'd share pictures of where I landed, with commentary of course.

This is the show drop (position is changing) and it will not just be white (ha ha).

Laurie's House. Not much has or will change with what you're seeing here.

Judd's Cabin. There are some adjustments being made to this, in part because I don't really have all of the info about Aycock, but it's not going to change much from this.

The grove in the ballet. Nothing changing at the top with the romantic scene while all is well and good.

The Dance Hall/Nightmare. We spent a lot of time talking about this moment in the meeting. On my end, I think I've come up with a way to shift even further out of "Oklahoma" with some Mackintosh School of Art Nouveau motifs and changing the location of those light fixtures. Expect to see more about this later.

Skidmore Ranch. This is the part that is changing most drastically. And this part of the model sucks. But whatever. Ultimately, the platform is going away and we'll be creating a ring for dancing with hay bales and what not (lights are staying the same). I didn't consider this idea before because of In-One scene issues, but we resolved that during the meeting and now Act II is SOOOOOOO much better.

Skidmore Ranch backporch. Also changing, now that there is no platform and the in-one scene has changed. And Prior (who is my little dude there) is falling over. :P

Laurie's House. Then back to Laurie's house. Some cool choreography/staging ideas have come from the director on this, but mums the word in case magic cannot happen.

So yes, changes are in the air (which means another update about this is likely next weekend). Have I mentioned that this is my thesis work? So documenting it via my blog helps keep things fresh for when I have to write my paper or whatever.

Oklahoma!

2010-06-21T17:17:00.000-04:00

So, my exciting blog post? A photo essay of my work on Oklahoma. I was hoping I'd have gotten further with the white model today, but sometimes my perfectionism gets in the way. For now I'll just share the drawings that go with what's done in the white model... which leaves out a few key scenes, but I promise to update you as I get further in the process.

Step 1. A Model Box of the Space. In this case, the roadhouse on campus Aycock Auditorium. I've included the wing space, or rather lack there of, so that's why it is so long. There are only two pockets of floor space SL and SR that we can use, much of what you're seeing is housing an orchestra shell and an "office." Bollucks.

Step 2: Laury's House. As you can see from the original drawing, the house has switched sides of the stage, because of that blasted lack of wing space. There is some interesting ideas up my sleeve about how the show will begin with "Oh What A Beautiful Morning" but I'm not telling yet....

Step 3. The Dream Ballet (yes, I know I'm missing Judd's cabin, but bear with me). This hard-framed flat of trees will go into silhouette in the wedding portion of the dance and then silhouetted gas lanterns will fly in above the silhouetted dance hall girls when Judd's fantasy takes over. A little difficult to show that second part in the white model, hence my inclusion of my hastily drawn elevation.

Step 4. The Dance at the Skidmore Rance at the top of Act II. I've not gotten it done, but you can see that I'm working on creating a platform with posts that have lights strung between them. The second picture is the close up of the beads and thread I'm using for the 1/4" scale. It's stuff like this that makes modeling fun.

So obviously there is still work to be done (floor treatment, the house for the back porch scene at the Skidmore Ranch, Judd's Cabin). But I think I've made progress. I am feeling infinitely better about this design than I was about a week ago, and I think the director is feeling good, too. We have a final design presentation on Thursday, which means I'll be presenting my work to my faculty (most of whom have at least seen the drawings), the director's faculty (he's an MFA Directing student and this is his thesis), and some of the staff (Technical Director, Lighting/Sound Supervisor, Costume Shop Supervisors/Cutter-Drapers). So expect more updates soon!

Being in the Audience

2010-06-13T10:31:00.000-04:00

On Friday, June 11th, 2010, I sat in the audience at Triad Stage as theatre history was written. Preston Lane's new Appalachian Saga Providence Gap premiered and brought the teary-eyed audience to their feet. It was a truly breath-taking experience and I meant every ounce of my standing ovation (I could write more on superfluous standing O's, but not here). The music by Laurelyn Dossett, the designs by Alexander Dodge, Kelsey Hunt, and John Wolf, and of course the performances by so many talented individuals made for a wonderful night in the theatre.

I believe that my awe of the show was due, in (very small) part, to my lack of involvement. Sure, I had heard bits of gossip from various people involved, as I am part of the company of Theatre 232, the partnership between UNCG and Triad during the summer. But I didn't help stitch, build, hang, paint, or herd any part of the show. Thus, when I sat in the front row (hooray!) I was wholly transported by the story and the magic and did not worry if the lines were going to be right or the set would function correctly, or any number of horrors that go through my mind when I watch a show I have poured some ounce of myself into.

I miss being transported like that.

A friend of mine started a project this year to see one play a week. She is an up-and-coming director, heading up Chicago's new Prologue Theatre so her options are many. In a smaller theatre community like Greensboro, the disconnect from productions is more difficult. True, I haven't actually ever worked on a show at Triad, but being surrounded by people who are, means that often times I hear too much of the drama and gossip and I am disheartened to make the effort to sit in the audience knowing all that I know. (That, and being in graduate school doesn't afford me the luxury of time or money to patron the arts the way I want.)

This is a part of the reason that moving to a larger city with a greater professional theatre community appeals to me. I look forward to being able to walk into a theatre and know no one. When I went to see Faust at The San Francisco Opera last weekend, I loved that I had no clue what to expect when the curtain rose. I had no connections to the production, the building, or the people in the audience (save my date) and I appreciated that anonymity so that I could truly enjoy the show for what it was (or, in the case of Faust, being marginally disappointed and slightly bored by the end, but hey, such is life).

I have, for the last ten years, been searching for (and occasionally finding) the white-hot passion I once felt for theatre that drove me to throw caution to the wind and choose this as a profession. When I get to see great theatre that I haven't touched, the elusive passion re-emerges and I all I can think is, I want to do that. And after watching Providence Gap, my head is swirling with ideas about my upcoming year at UNCG and where I am going afterwards. I hope that I am able to hold on to this earnest feeling of hope and love for theatre. I also hope that, if you can, you go see Providence Gap, or another show that you have been thinking about. It just might surprise you.

The Trouble with Summer

2010-05-30T08:44:00.000-04:00

Ack! I missed posting last week. My apologies. It might have something to do with the fact that though I am out of school, my life is a whirlwind of too much to do.

This summer I am in the process of realizing 3.5 designs and working on another. I was hired to design costumes and scenery for two upcoming shows in the Cabaret space at Triad Stage in conjunction with UNCG's Theatre 232. The two pieces, The Actor's Nightmare and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All to You are performing back to back, which is why the design is 3.5 rather than 4. The set is essentially the same for both, with a few details changed. But the costumes, boy-howdy (as my mother likes to say). They are proving difficult and a pain.

But really, what overwhelms me is having to wear two different hats at the same time. I don't know how those European designers do it. Well, I have my theories (assistants!) but even still, my brain seems so jumbled with all of my lists of things to do. And then, as I said, I'm in design meetings for a completely different production, Oklahoma!, which will open UNCG's 2010-11 season. The professors here have said on a number of occasions how overlapping designs is not out of the ordinary, but I wonder about this process.

I'd also like to state for the record that summer work is bullocks. I do not understand why the theatre shuts down for the summer, and we all scramble for summer-stock jobs where we get paid infinitely too little for a jam-packed, insanity-inducing process that spans 2 months. Was this kind of season created to follow the agrarian calendar (like schools) or to give us time off because we're ever so burnt out (sarcasm)? I commend theatres like Triad Stage, mentioned above, that still close down in the summer, but not for as long. Currently they are wrapping up their season with a new work by artistic director Preston Lane called Providence Gap. It wraps up July 4th weekend and then rehearsals, etc restart in August for The Glass Menagerie. Somehow that makes a little more sense to me than taking May to August off. But to each theatre their own.

Nevertheless, my summer job is plugging away and Oklahoma! is shaping up nicely (perhaps scans of my designs will hop up here as soon as they are [mostly] finalized). Personally, though I like time off in the summer, I'd rather a little more stability in the job market and a little less stress about getting to my September pay check.

Boy Toys and Girl Toys

2010-05-16T21:29:00.000-04:00

This week's blog post is inspired by today's webcomic from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:

Funny and oh-so true.

This got me thinking about the gender divide in theatre and how this could easily be a comic that questions why there are not more female scenic designers. Though changing, young girls are more likely to be exposed to toys that promote girly things, like mothering or fashion-sense. Meanwhile, boys get toys that nurture imagination and, well, engineering.

Personally, I had Barbies and Legos at my fingertips as a young girl. But where I think it makes a world of difference is that I was also exposed to boy things. None of my parents (I have three-- mom, dad, step-mom) ever told me that there were certain things that I could not do because I was girl (like help with building stuff or run around outside making mud pies). Recently I had a discussion with a male friend of mine about playing dress up. He assumed that I had been the typical tom-boy with no interest in girly things like playing princess and wearing pretty clothes. That is incorrect. I loved to play dress up and there are many pictures of me sitting with my flannel nightgown swirled out around me combing the hair of my Barbies and My Little Ponies. Nevertheless, I also knew that on a daily basis I'd much prefer to wear pants so that I could run and jump and climb. I'd say that I viewed the world as an equal-opportunity place.

And then I really started to delve into theatre (and hit puberty) and it became obvious that if I wanted to be the girl who didn't work on costumes I needed to either stick to the painting and props, or I needed to be more butch. I did both, but really embraced my inner tom-boy and set aside all notions of girliness in favor of being "one of the guys." This has continued to this day, bleeding into my friendships and relationships. I have not been considered someone who wears a dress willingly by anybody for the last five years. And I do believe this has a lot to do with my desire to be accepted by the guys in the shop as their equal. Removing the gender markers that clothing provides, I strive to prove my worth as a scenic designer by denying my gender.

Not anymore.

This year I vowed to care more about my appearance and buy clothing because I liked it, which often means because I think it is pretty. This means I now own dresses and skirts and high heels. And the first day that I wore a dress to class this semester, even my professor (who is male) commented on it. And while I can't really wear these clothes in the shop anyway (not just because of safety, I mean, I don't want to have an entire wardrobe of paint clothes), I feel like I have been able to embrace a part of me that has lain dormant because I felt that my gender was a problem. I am going to be the tom-boy and also enjoy wearing frilly dresses. There is a time and place for both and they are not mutually exclusive.

So, I say, give your daughters Legos and Barbies. And your sons too. Allow them to help Dad fix the sink and Mom bake pies. Demonstrate that it is about what you enjoy doing, not what you're supposed to do because of your chromosomes. The world should be equal for all. Sure, it isn't and children will pick up on it, but who knows what kind of ideas might come if they can not only pick out Barbie's prom dress but also design the venue as well.

Fin: 2 Years Down, 1 to Go

2010-05-12T12:24:00.000-04:00

So, I am finally done with year two of my three year MFA as of about 10:30 am this morning, which is why I didn't post last Sunday, as usual. The end of the year has given me a number of things to muse over, but one specifically is the review and portfolio process.

Here at UNCG, the graduate designers attend a 30 minute review at the end of each semester. Until this last one, we generally just brought show and sketchbooks to demonstrate the completed work in and outside the classroom. Due to my own interests in catching up on my physical portfolio and the two graduating designers having (mostly) completed their portfolios for work, this year we just brought portfolios. I must say that I prefer the portfolio review rather than show books, etc.

While the portfolio review forces me to keep my work current in the book (rather than waiting 3 years to update it) and keeps me from having to lug around stacks of 3-inch binders, it is more helpful to look at the distilled work overall. I also feel that the professors can better respond to the work in a final portfolio presentation and see how we, as young designers, are going to present ourselves to the world at large in job applications. At my undergrad we did a portfolio review that was set up a lot like the tables at U/RTAs (or so I've been told) so that, though we included things like show books and full-size drafting, it was set up in a way to depict the life of our work. I believe portfolios are a better indication of the growth of a student/designer and force us to really choose wisely what we include in the portfolio.

I also feel that the portfolio allows for more discussion to occur about the things that happen outside of the design classroom. Though it did not happen in my review specifically, I felt that knowing that only my portfolio-quality work would be on the table, the opportunity to ask about the other work I had completed this semester would present itself. Unfortunately, reviews are not really conducive to bringing in a binder full of writings and plays from an academic class, but being succinct with the visual representation of ones design work allows time for conversations about the non-visual work. (Again, that didn't really happen in my review, but such is the nature of conversation.)

And now that the portfolio is updated about 90% from where it was 3 years ago when I started thinking about graduate school, and my exams are all done, I am excited in looking forward to my final year. Many people wonder about why an MFA takes three years, but as it is a terminal degree and studio-based discipline, such is life. But I also feel that, if structured smartly, the third year provides for the culmination of all of the in-class work. I am only taking 1 class each semester and the rest of my credit hours are for the designs I am completing for the department. I am excited to be able to truly focus my brain power on doing what I want to do with my life. And if I ended my academic career here at the 2 year mark (because, let's be honest, I could have crammed more credits into the last 2 years) I wouldn't have the amount of designs to show, but also I wouldn't feel like the time had truly come to an end. Academically, I feel solid, so a Masters of Arts (MA) would be fine, but to truly feel like a Master of Fine Arts, now the finer-detail work will begin.

Design Portfolio Madness

2010-05-02T08:26:00.000-04:00

It is that time of year again in which I struggle to motivate myself to put together my physical portfolio. For those of you who haven't gone clicking excitedly, I have an online portfolio of both my theatre and photography work. It is so nice in this day and age of digital output, to just throw it up online and send off a link. However, physical portfolios do come in handy, as I have seen recently as a colleague prepares to go to a job interview at a school in New York.

However, I am left to wonder a few things about portfolios in general at this juncture.

1. How different is the digital portfolio to a physical book?

I have heard on more than one occasion that they differ quite a lot, and I understand that because the constraints on one are not the same with the other. However, other than size, scanning, and printing issues, why would you include completely different things in one or the other? My current physical portfolio has less stuff than the one online, but all of my shows have pages, I just don't keep them in the portfolio depending on what I am presenting.

2. How big of a portfolio book should I use?

In undergrad, my mentor insisted that I get a portfolio big enough to hold my drafting. So I now have an 18x24 portfolio that is a bit of a monster to lug around but gives me lots of space to lay out sketches, pictures, etc. But last year I purchased an 11x17 book in order to accommodate what the professors here at UNCG have me produce. The problem is that I can't fit enough information on just two pages of an 11x17 and some of my shows span 3 or 4 sets of pages. I know that there are in between sizes I could get, but I don't really need any more portfolio books. Really. I have decided for my review this year to repopulate my big book with pages since I have been ignoring it and I do prefer how much space I have comparatively.

3. How do I organize the book?

I see this question the most often from young designers who are working on books and the variations are endless. I have always been a fan of chronological organization of shows/projects because I feel that (1) it shows your development and (2) it matches your resume (in a sense since I advocate for starting with your earliest work). However, if you have different kinds of design work in one book like costumes and scenery or scenery and lighting, it's sometimes best to break them apart and group them together. (And don't even get me started on how to include extra work, like scene painting samples and sketches). The part of my brain that is OCD really would just like to stick with chronological ordering so that I know it makes sense, but the suggestion to lead with your best foot is always a good idea. Again, this is why electronic portfolios are nice because the information can be organized, but the order in which it is viewed always differs so reorganization for different applications does not get in your way.

These questions are just your basic meaning-of-life questions, and completely ignore the biggest pain experienced when preparing a physical portfolio: the leaching of your money for printing all of the stuff that has to be done. Yuck! Nevertheless, in the interim of generations and digital media availability, the physical portfolio is a beast to be tamed. Excuse me while I go get my whips and chain.

An Ode to Opera

2010-04-25T19:21:00.000-04:00

Alright, for those of you who do not know this (i.e. you've not spoken to me in any meaningful way in the last 4 months or so), I officially own up to my appreciation-bordering-on-obsession of opera. My exposure to opera began in high school at the Seattle Opera with the school outreach program. As a budding theatre nerd, I was enraptured by the spectacle of it all and I've always had a special place in my heart for classical music. Sure, it can get a bit boring and having to read super-titles gets old (and can honestly hurt the neck and/or eyes), but, to me, opera was the perfect bread of theatricality, magic, and drama.

Then, for about five years, my exposure to opera lay dormant as I lived amongst the cornfields in Iowa and the cold tundra of Maine. But when I moved to Dallas and a theatre job turned out to be anything but fun, I found myself working at The Dallas Opera in the box office. And one of the perks of working at TDO was getting to see the final dress rehearsal of the operas. I was transported back to the days in high school when I felt enveloped by the production and transported away to Rome or Paris or Algiers. The orchestration swept over me and the arias carried away my heart. Even trying to explain how enamored I am of the opera here seems to be inadequate. Just trust me, to me, opera is breathtaking in every way: visually, aurally, emotionally.

I was sad at the close of the 2007-08 season when I had to leave TDO because I had grown to appreciate the work I was doing and the people there are, by far, those most fantastic group of artists and art-lovers you will ever meet. I was also sad because the new Winspear Opera House was opening and I would have loved to have been a part of the inaugural season. But life takes us where it will, and so I left for graduate school in Greensboro, NC.

At which point I began to sense the hold that opera had on me. It manifested itself when I created a design of La Boheme for a class project which drew upon my experience sitting in the audience in Seattle and Dallas (and subsequently won me the first place in the scenic design competition at KC/ACTF). But there was still a feeling of nagging loss until, in March 2009, I was able to see the final show at the Music Hall at Fair Park of The Italian Girl in Algiers and was blown away by the complexity and beauty of it all once more.

Now, as TDO counts down to the the world premier of a new opera based on Melville's Moby Dick, I am sad that I won't get to be a part of that magic. Fortunately, I have made plans to see Faust at The San Francisco Opera in June and have been keeping my eyes out for an opera company tackling Wagner's Ring Cycle (which has been on my list of "must sees" since high school). As any of my friends can tell you, opera has become my newest artistic obsession and I want to fill my life with live performances (sorry, CDs and live broadcasts are just not the same) until I die. I can't wait to be like the little old ladies I worked with at The Dallas Opera who could tell stories about all of the different versions of La Boheme they had seen (as well as fret continuously about where their season seats would be). Perhaps, if I get to really design a few operas in my lifetime, that would be pretty cool too.

Becoming a Feminist Designer: Troubling the Traditions of Design

2010-04-23T22:51:00.000-04:00

Unconscious process is dangerous… because it denies the political content inherent in artistic process by treating it as neutral. The denial of political content in process acts to covertly censor and marginalize some forms of individual artistic expression.
Raynette Halvorsen Smith 108

For the last ten years I have been on a journey to become a theatre designer. My formal education in design began, as it has for many of my mentors and contemporaries, as a grounded exploration of the ideals and process that were laid out by the great forefathers of design: Edward Gordon Craig, Adolph Appia, and Robert Edmund Jones. However, despite moderate success in the field, I never felt wholly comfortable and capable as a young designer, nor capable of expressing certain design ideas and concepts in creative collaboration. It was not until I studied feminist theory and performance that I became aware of how disconnected I had felt from theatre and dramatic literature up to that point. I began to sense that my struggles with design went beyond the known gender-bias I experienced as a woman in the scene shop, but were connected to a sense of my design sensibilities and process being a round peg trying to operate in the square hole set forth by years of design process laid out by Craig, Jones, and Appia. In recent years, the process and pedagogy of design has been under consideration by many designer-educators across the country and many have chosen to explore design possibilities through a feminist framework. Though the idea of feminist design in theatre is young, it is an apt way to explain the approach of women designers, like myself, who have not only struggled to make a place for themselves in this male-dominated industry, but also challenged the masculine, “unconscious process” that we have been taught to adopt.

Raynette Halvorsen Smith’s article “Deconstructing the Design Process” details in length the problems with the current methods of teaching design, least of which is the notion of the “unconscious process” that “covertly censor[s] and marginalize[s] some forms of individual artistic expression” (108). She asserts that the “design process has become frozen, steeped in tradition—tradition so pervasive that we have become blind to it” (107). This is similar to many feminist art scholars that counter claims that “overtly political representations have no place in art” with the argument that “‘conventional’ art is equally political, the politics having been cast in that ‘neutral’ or masculinist mode that appears invisible” (Hein 449). The nurturing and development of a feminist mode of design will counteract the “unconscious process” with a visual language created from self-awareness in the design process, as well as give vocabulary to and create space for young, female designers’ voices to be heard in the male-dominated industry.

The first step taught in the traditional design process is to read the script and take notes. Arguably, the play-script is the logical place to begin a design because within the words of the play lie the story, emotions, and people that will populate the world of said design. An often used book for design history and process is The Stage is Set by Lee Simonson, in which he states, “In the modern theatre, as in every other, the beginning is in the word” (464). This tradition of privileging the script poses problems beyond design practice, explaining why feminist performance art and many feminist theatrical traditions that favored the visual over the textual arose outside of the walls of the conventional theatre (Smith 110). Similarly, the visual avant-garde has often existed, or at least began, outside of the commercial, mainstream theatres because in other, smaller theatres and performance venues the designer is able, even invited, to break from an extreme servitude to the script and create something that mines the wealth of subtext between the lines.

Nevertheless, the script is still the first port of entry into creating a theatrical design, but at this first step—reading the script and taking notes—feminist theory can and should be applied. Designer Delores Ringer sets forth a series of questions in her article “Re-visioning Scenography” that not only begin to analyze the script in a feminist mode but also illuminate the ways in which artistic aesthetic plays a role in 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)

One might argue that the first question is one that all designers are already asking, feminist or otherwise. Likely, they do at least note the explicit messages because those are what are most obvious on the page and would be the most universally perceived by the actors, director, and audience members. However, the implicit messages and how they can and should be visually depicted are what create a feminist approach to design.

Ringer used her design for a production of Marsha Norman’s Getting Out to explore ways in which feminism can be visualized on stage. She states that “feminist scenographers can use the trivial and ordinary details of women’s lives as the material with which to make monuments” (302), pointing to her design of painted landscapes on the aprons of the characters to depict how their environment has imprinted them. This kind of approach is an example of how, as a feminist designer, the designer’s duty of visualizing the context in which the story takes place becomes about recognizing the differences in the visualization of the woman’s world verses that of the man’s (Ringer 312). In a traditional design approach, the landscape of the environment might have been made visible in paintings or photographs on the walls, but by painting it across an article of clothing deeply associated with women and their role in life, it creates a more socially charged message about the life of the characters in the play and relates to the feminist performance techniques of using the body as script and canvas.

Furthermore, the designer’s awareness of how to use visual language to illuminate or deconstruct gender and power in the performance of the written word goes beyond the actor and action, but also the space encompassing them. In a discussion about women’s theatrical space, Hanna Scolnicov asserts that “woman is so closely associated with space that almost any articulation of space on stage [. . .] is directly expressive of her position, her lifestyle, her personality” (xiii). Thus, the visual cues provided in scenic design become important in constructing power dynamics in a theatrical piece. Again, in discussing her design for Getting Out, Ringer explains that the decision to arrange the scenery in a “nonlogical fashion” was directly related to making manifest the nonlogical aspects of the past that Arlene, the main character, was facing (302). This departure from Realism is a common approach to feminist art and design , and is important in creating a visual language that does not ignore the explicit and implicit messages of gender power that Ringer asks about in her questions above. It also plays a part in how women designers can grapple with Ringer’s third question: “How do I as a woman and designer relate to the visual language and the world around me? How do I visually process information?” (299) In traditional theatre practices, the pursuit of a unified misé en scene that recedes from the audience’s consciousness is paramount, and is bounded by Realism, because Realism provides the stylistic consistency that is needed to create a design that will recede behind the action of the production. However, the conscious feminist designer’s understanding of her own role as a visual artist allows her to break free of the strictures of Realism to consider hers and others’ interpretations of the visual cues being presented.

By calling attention to the position and interpretation of the designer’s artistic eye, feminist design ideology departs completely from traditional design practices—becoming conscious rather than unconscious—and comes into direct conflict with the great forefathers of design. In The Dramatic Imagination, Jones demands, “Get the personal you out of your work. Who cares about you?” (41) This call for a complete divorce of the artist from their art is impossible, and in any other art form would be considered ridiculous and ignorant. Smith compares the pursuit of the unified artistic vision to that of military discipline, in which any “show of individuality is considered a breakdown in discipline. [. . . And in theatre] where any detection of separate individual artistic expression in the production […] is considered a threat to the ‘willful suspension of disbelief,’ a distraction that weakens the impact of the performance” (113). However, the feminist designer’s choice to depart from Realism creates space for new meanings to be created based on the designer’s own process and aesthetic values, not those provided by history or the playwright or even the director. Furthermore, some scholars define feminist art as approaching “reality from a feminist perspective” (French 69) and feminist performance art as having a quality of “undecidability [. . . . In which] ‘meanings are explosive, ricocheting and fragmenting throughout its audience. The work becomes a situation full of suggestive potentialities, rather than a self-contained whole, determined and final’” (Smith 111). A departure from Realism is needed in order to create this “undecidability” and begins with the designer’s awareness of how she processes visual information. By choosing what images to draw inspiration from and how to mold and edit them into scenic and costume designs, the feminist designer is the first lens through which meaning is created. Awareness of her own role in the creation of meaning for a given production means that the feminist designer will be aware of the audience’s role in the creation of meaning and breaks away from the teachings of traditional design practice which shows “indifference to the philosophical and political meanings embedded in the way that designers work” (Smith 109).

Once the designer has become conscious of the lens through which she views the world and how it effects her work, she can then approach Ringer’s fourth and final question, “How have my relationships with other artists in the theatre and the creative and working process I use been constructed?” Knowing the answers to this question make manifest the ways in which gender-bias in design and the theatre community affect artistic synthesis and output. As discussed before, the necessity of a unified design concept is considered vital in the traditional theatre process and this comes from the hierarchical structure that places the director at the head of the process: the director who is usually male . Thus, the relationships and hierarchy in the creative team become a part of the patriarchal control over design process and product. However, a shift away from a top-down creative process has begun to emerge in theatre. In an informal survey of artistic directors, producers, and stage directors, designer Robert N. Schmidt asked what makes designers more hirable than others:

[. . .] It is no longer sufficient for designers to be able to develop their work in a chameleon-like way from a director’s fully formed ‘concept.’ It is now essential that designers [. . .] function as co-equal artists-helping to initiate rather than merely elaborate upon the director’s theatrical aesthetic style [. . .].” (163)

The philosophy behind scenography, a field that combines at least scenic and costume design and is most common in European theatres, most directly speaks to the necessity of creative partnership rather than a hierarchical structure. In her book What is Scenography? Pamela Howard explains that “to go further scenographically is to work seriously to observe the director’s methods [. . .] the implications of the text, and to use this knowledge to unlock the visual power of the play” (xxiv). The adoption of this philosophy, used scenographically or on an individual design basis, breaks down the militaristic and thus patriarchal hierarchy claimed by Smith previously. This approach allows for a female designer to become equal to her (often male) counterpart, the director.

Furthermore, if a scenographic approach is used, the feminist designer is able to not only escape the traditional patriarchal hierarchy of the director, but also have the opportunity to “regard the entire visual field of the theatre as a ‘landscape’” (Ringer 305), which promotes a wider canvas on which to interpret Scolnicov’s earlier assertion about the intertwined association of woman and space in which “any articulation of space on stage [. . .] is directly expressive of her position, her lifestyle, her personality” (xiii). Moreover, scenography is often described as working from the character outward in order to make “the space speak” (Howard 14). A feminist designer who works in this manner visually places woman and her struggles and growth at the center of the action rather than as “supporting objects surrounding and supporting the male hero” (Ringer 300). This can lead to design decisions like Ringer’s choice to organize the scenery of Getting Out in a non-logical way discussed earlier, or, as in the case of one of my recent designs, the decision to eliminate unnecessary walls in Act III and IV in Chekov’s The Seagull in order to highlight the feeling of entrapment felt by the characters, most of all Nina. Scolnicov argues that “the articulation of [The Seagull’s] theatrical space is [. . .] determined by female motivation” despite the women not being central characters of the play (111). In discussion with the director, the play was identified as “Kostia’s play” and yet I felt that because his troubles were directly linked to his relationship with his mother and Nina, those two women play a more central role in creating the shape of Kostia’s world. However, this notion worked on my process in a wholly subconscious way, making discussion with the director and creative team difficult when trying to articulate the motivation behind my simple design concept. Had I been armed with Ringer’s questions, I may have been able to consciously construct a design as well as articulate my choices. Nevertheless, having explored design through a feminist lens, and appreciating the importance of my own voice and the questions I can ask of the visual language that I am drawn to, the design process feels more open to possibility and success.

Smith asserts that “the pressure of hurdling through the design process to opening night narrows the scope of what can be created” (108), which I would argue is at the heart of why design students struggle and why the field of design has not yet evolved past the theories and ideas set forth nearly a century ago by Jones, Craig, Appia, and Simonson. However, there is hope in the mere fact that veteran designers like Smith and Ringer are also questioning the traditional process of design and putting forth new ways of thinking for themselves and their students. Questions like those posed by Ringer transcend feminist design and lay the groundwork for a new mode of approaching design as a whole. No longer should the designer be presumed invisible in their work, nor just a servant to the script or director. As more women enter the field of design, they too can find themselves in the collaborative art form both as individual artists and partners in the process. By taking Pamela Howard’s assertion that “a theatre designer has to have an insatiable curiosity to find out about things […] to look beyond the surface and discover the truth” (299) to heart, a young female designer can begin to develop her own design process without fear of failure or gender, and with the tools to communicate her new ideas.

Diamond, Elin. Unmasking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theater. New York, Taylor and Francis: 1997. Print.

Dolan, Jill. The Feminist Spectator as Critic. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press: 1988. Print.

French, Marilyn. “Is There a Feminist Aesthetic?” Aesthetics in Feminest Perspecive. Ed. Hilde Hein and Carol Korsmeyer. Bloomington, Indiana UP: 1993. 68-76. Print.

Hein, Hilde. “The Role of Feminist Aesthetics in Feminist Theory.” Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. Ed. Peggy Zeglin Brand and Carolyn Korsmeyer. University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State UP: 1995. 446-463. Print.

Howard, Pamela. “What is Scenography?” Theatre Design and Technology. Summer 2001: 13-16. Print.

---. What is Scenography? 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.
Isackes, Richard M. "On the Pedagogy of Theatre Stage Design: A Critique of Practice." Theatre Topics. 18.1 (2008): 41-53. Print.

Jones, Robert Edmond. The Dramatic Imagination. New York: Theatre Art Books, 1969. Print.

New York State Council on the Arts. Report on the Status of Women: A Limited Engagement? By Susan Jonas and Suzanne Bennett. New York: Albany, 2002. Web. 17 April 2010.

Pajaczkowska, Claire. “Issues in Feminist Visual Culture.” Feminist Visual Culture. Ed. Fiona Carson and Claire Pajaczkowska. New York, Routledge: 2001. 1-21. 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.

Schmidt, Robert N. “Training Scenic Designers for a Changing Aesthetic.” Perspectives on Teaching Theatre. Ed. Raynette Halvorsen Smith, Bruce A. McConachie, and Rhonda Blair. New York, Peter Lang: 2001. 160-165. Print.

Scolnicov, Hanna. Woman’s Theatrical Space. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994. Print.

Simonson, Lee. The Stage is Set. New York, Theatre Arts Books: 1963. Print.

Smith, Raynette Halvorsen. “Deconstructing the Design Process: Teaching Scene Design Process Through Feminist Performance Art.” Perspectives on Teaching Theatre. Ed. Raynette Halvorsen Smith, Bruce A. McConachie, and Rhonda Blair. New York, Peter Lang: 2001. 107-116. Print.

The Search for Feminist Design (Part III)

2010-04-18T21:34:00.000-04:00

Part three of the paper, which has really changed in the last week. I will probably post the revised paper at some point, but not as a normal blog update (which I will resume next weekend, promise!).

Once the designer has become conscious of the lens through which she views the world, she can then approach Ringer’s fourth and final question, “How have my relationships with other artists in the theatre and the creative and working process I use been constructed?” Knowing the answers to this question is as important as awareness of personal creative process because they makes manifest the ways in which gender-bias in design and the theatre community affect artistic synthesis and output. As discussed before, the necessity of a unified design concept is considered paramount in the traditional theatre process and this comes from the hierarchical structure that places the director at the head of the process: the director who is usually male. Thus, the relationships and hierarchy in the creative team become a part of the patriarchal control over design process and product. Ringer declares that “the feminist designer should consider herself a creator in her own right, equal to the director; her visual statement is no less important than those made by directors and actors” (306).

This close partnership between director and designer is not only being called for by feminist designers, but also by contemporary directors and producers. In an informal survey of artistic directors, producers, and stage directors, designer Robert N. Schmidt asked what makes designers more hirable than others:

[. . .] It is no longer sufficient for designers to be able to develop their work in a chameleon-like way from a director’s fully formed ‘concept.’ It is now essential that designers [. . .] function as co-equal artists-helping to initiate rather than merely elaborate upon the director’s theatrical aesthetic style[. . .].” (163)

The philosophy behind scenography, a field that combines at least scenic and costume design and is most common in European theatres, most directly speaks to the necessity of creative partnership rather than a hierarchical structure. In her book What is Scenography? Pamela Howard explains that “to go further scenographically is to work seriously to observe the director’s methods [. . .] the implications of the text, and to use this knowledge to unlock the visual power of the play” (xxiv).

By adopting a scenographic approach, the feminist designer not only escapes the traditional patriarchal hierarchy of the director, but also has the opportunity to “regard the entire visual field of the theatre as a ‘landscape’” (Ringer 305), which promotes a wider canvas on which to interpret Scolnicov’s earlier assertion about the intertwined association of woman and space in which “any articulation of space on stage [. . .] is directly expressive of her position, her lifestyle, her personality” (xiii). Furthermore, scenography is often described as working from the character outward in order to make “the space speak” (Howard 14). A feminist designer who works in this manner visually places woman and her struggles and growth at the center of the action rather than as “supporting objects surrounding and supporting the male hero” (Ringer 300). This can lead to design decisions like Ringer’s choice to organize the kitchen in a non-logical way discussed earlier, or the decision to eliminate unnecessary walls in my recent design of Act III and IV in Chekov’s The Seagull in order to highlight the feeling of entrapment felt by the characters, most of all Nina.

Scolnicov argues that “the articulation of [The Seagull’s] theatrical space is [...] determined by female motivation” despite woman not being the central character (111). Until studying feminist theory and design in depth, I was unable to articulate that this idea had subconsciously worked upon my process, which in turn made discussions with the director and creative team difficult when trying to articulate my simple design concept. Smith asserts that “the pressure of hurdling through the design process to opening night narrows the scope of what can be created” (108), which I would argue is at the heart of why the field of design has not yet evolved past the theories and ideas set forth nearly a century ago by Jones, Craig, Appia, and Simonson. However, there is hope in the scholarship of designers like Delores Ringer who set forth her four important questions to ask when embarking on a new design project. Arguably, Ringer’s questions are not applicable to just feminist designers, but instead lay the groundwork for a new mode of approaching design as a whole. No longer should the designer be presumed invisible in their work, nor just a servant to the script or director. As my contemporaries begin to take up the mantle given to us, we can take Pamela Howard’s assertion to heart: “A theatre designer has to have an insatiable curiosity to find out about things, to know where they come from, and why. To look beyond the surface and discover the truth.” (299)

French, Marilyn. “Is There a Feminist Aesthetic?” Aesthetics in Feminest Perspecive. Ed. Hilde Hein and carol Korsmeyer. Bloomington, Indiana UP: 1993. 68-76. Print.

Hein, Hilde. “The Role of Feminist Aesthetics in Feminist Theory.” Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. Ed. Peggy Zeglin Brand and Caroylyn Korsmeyer. University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State UP: 1995. 446-463. Print.

Howard, Pamela. “What is Scenography?” Theatre Design and Technology. Summer 2001: 13-16. Print.

---. What is Scenography? 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.

Jones, Robert Edmond. The Dramatic Imagination. New York: Theatre Art Books, 1969. Print.

Pajaczkowska, Claire. “Issues in Feminist Visual Culture.” Feminist Visual Culture. Ed. Fiona Carson and Claire Pajaczkowska. New York, Routledge: 2001. 1-21. 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.

Schmidt, Robert N. “Training Scenic Designers for a Changing Aesthetic.” Perspectives on Teaching Theatre. Ed. Raynette Halvorsen Smith, Bruce A. McConachie, and Rhonda Blair. New York, Peter Lang: 2001. 160-165. Print.

Scolnicov, Hanna. Woman’s Theatrical Space. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994. Print.
Simonson, Lee. The Stage is Set. New York, Theatre Arts Books: 1963. Print.

Smith, Raynette Halvorsen. “Deconstructing the Design Process: Teachign Scene Design Process Through Feminist Performance Art.” Perspectives on Teaching Theatre. Ed. Raynette Halvorsen Smith, Bruce A. McConachie, and Rhonda Blair. New York, Peter Lang: 2001. 107-116. Print.

The Search for Feminist Design (Part II)

2010-04-11T10:48:00.000-04:00

This is the second part of the feminist design paper. There are still about 3 more pages to go. It hasn't been done-over with a re-write since receiving comments back from the professor, but I figured that it would be better to stick with this draft since there will be some major restructuring in the final draft. As always, love your comments, feedback, or questions.

Ringer uses her design for a production of Marsha Norman’s Getting Out to explore ways in which feminism can be visualized on stage. She states that “feminist scenographers can use the trivial and ordinary details of women’s lives as the material with which to make monuments” (302), pointing to her design of painted landscapes on the aprons of the characters to depict how their environment has imprinted them. This kind of approach is an example of how, as a feminist designer, the designer’s duty of visualizing the context in which the story takes place becomes about recognizing the differences in the visualization of the woman’s world verses that of the man’s (Ringer 312). In a traditional design approach, the landscape of the environment might have been made visible in paintings or photographs on the walls, but by painting it across an article of clothing deeply associated with women and their role in life, it creates a more socially charged message about the life of the characters in the play and relates to the feminist performance techniques of using the body as script and canvas.

Furthermore, the designer’s awareness of how to use visual language to illuminate or deconstruct gender and power in the performance of written word goes beyond the actor and action, but also the space encompassing them. In a discussion about women’s theatrical space, Hanna Scolnicov asserts that “woman is so closely associated with space that almost any articulation of space on stage [. . .] is directly expressive of her position, her lifestyle, her personality” (xiii). Thus, the visual cues provided in scenic design become important in constructing power dynamics in a theatrical piece. Again, in discussing her design for Getting Out, Ringer explains that the decision to arrange the scenery in a “nonlogical fashion” was directly related to making manifest the nonlogical aspects of the past that Arlene, the main character, was facing (302). This departure from Realism is a common approach to feminist art and design, and is important in creating a visual language that does not ignore the explicit and implicit messages of gender power that Ringer asks about in her questions above. It is also a way in which women designers can grapple with Ringer’s third question: “How do I as a woman and designer relate to the visual language and the world around me? How do I visually process information?” (299)

Calling attention to the position and interpretation of the designer’s artistic eye is the point at which feminist design departs completely from traditional design practices—becoming conscious rather than unconscious—and comes into direct conflict with the great forefathers of design. In The Dramatic Imagination, Jones demands, “Get the personal you out of your work. Who cares about you?” (41). This call for a complete divorce of the artist from their art is impossible, and in any other art form would be considered ridiculous and ignorant. However, traditional theatrical design practices require a seamless misé en scene that disappears from the consciousness of the spectator. Smith likens the emphasis put upon fusing many artistic visions under one, unifying concept to that of military discipline, in which any “show of individuality is considered a breakdown in discipline. [. . . And in theatre] where any detection of separate individual artistic expression in the production […] is considered a threat to the ‘willful suspension of disbelief,’ a distraction that weakens the impact of the performance” (113).

The creation of a unified design that recedes from the audience’s conscious is bounded by Realism, because at the heart of Realism is the stylistic consistency that is needed to create a design that will recede behind the action of the production. However, some scholars define feminist art as approaching “reality from a feminist perspective” (French 69) and feminist performance art as having a quality of “undecidability [. . . . In which] ‘meanings are explosive, ricocheting and fragmenting throughout its audience. The work becomes a situation full of suggestive potentialities, rather than a self-contained whole, determined and final’” (Smith 111). The departure from Realism needed in order to create this “undecidability” begins with the designer’s awareness of how she processes visual information. The feminist designer is the first lens through which meaning is created, by choosing what images to draw inspiration from and how to mold and edit them into scenic and costume designs. Awareness of her role in the creation of meaning for a given production means that the feminist designer will be aware of the audience’s consumption of that meaning and breaks away from the teachings of traditional design practice which shows “indifference to the philosophical and political meanings embedded in the way that designers work” (Smith 109).

(To be continued...)

French, Marilyn. “Is There a Feminist Aesthetic?” Aesthetics in Feminest Perspecive. Ed. Hilde Hein and carol Korsmeyer. Bloomington, Indiana UP: 1993. 68-76. Print.

Hein, Hilde. “The Role of Feminist Aesthetics in Feminist Theory.” Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. Ed. Peggy Zeglin Brand and Caroylyn Korsmeyer. University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State UP: 1995. 446-463. Print.

Jones, Robert Edmond. The Dramatic Imagination. New York: Theatre Art Books, 1969. 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.

Scolnicov, Hanna. Woman’s Theatrical Space. New York: Cambridge UP, 1994. Print.

Simonson, Lee. The Stage is Set. New York, Theatre Arts Books: 1963. Print.

Smith, Raynette Halvorsen. “Deconstructing the Design Process: Teachign Scene Design Process Through Feminist Performance Art.” Perspectives on Teaching Theatre. Ed. Raynet Halvorsen Smith, Bruce A. McConachie, and Rhonda Blair. New York, Peter Lang: 2001. 107-116. Print

The Search for Feminist Design (Part I)

2010-04-04T08:16:00.000-04:00

First, a disclaimer... this is a portion of the paper that I am working on for my Feminist Theatre class. It is rough, but I think it will still get some of my ideas across. The entire paper is just over 8 pages long, double-spaced, which is one of the reasons this is not the entire paper (that, and I don't want to spoil it in case someone stumbles across it from class). I'd love your thoughts and ideas, but I'm also appreciative of you taking the time to read it as this issue is very important to me as a young, female designer.

Unconscious process is dangerous… because it denies the political content inherent in artistic process by treating it as neutral. The denial of political content in process acts to covertly censor and marginalize some forms of individual artistic expression.
Smith 108

For the last ten years I have been on a journey to become a theatrical designer. My formal education in design began, as it has for many of my mentors and contemporaries, as a grounded exploration of the ideals and process that were laid out by the great forefathers of theatrical design: Edward Gordon Craig, Adolph Appia, and Robert Edmund Jones. However, despite moderate success in the field, I never felt wholly comfortable and capable as a young designer nor capable of expressing certain design ideas and concepts in creative collaboration. It was not until I studied feminist theory and performance that I became aware of how disconnected I had felt from theatre and dramatic literature up to that point. I began to sense that my struggles with theatrical design went beyond the known gender-bias I experienced as a woman in the scene shop, but were connected to a sense of my design sensibilities and process being a round peg trying to operate in the square hole set forth by years of design process laid out by Craig, Jones, and Appia. Though the notion of feminist design in theatre is young and debatable, it is an apt way to explain the approach of women designers, like myself, who have not only struggled to make a place for themselves in this male-dominated industry, but also challenged the “unconscious process” that we have been taught to adopt.

Raynet Halvorsen Smith’s article “Deconstructing the Design Process” details in length the problems with the current methods of teaching design, least of which is the notion of the “unconscious process” that “covertly censor[s] and marginalize[s] some forms of individual artistic expression” (108). She asserts that the “design process has become frozen, steeped in tradition—tradition so pervasive that we have become blind to it” (107). This is similar to many feminist art scholars that counter claims that “overtly political representations have no place in art” with the argument that “‘conventional’ art is equally political, the politics having been cast in that ‘neutral’ or masculinist mode that appears invisible” (Hein 449). The nurturing and development of a feminist mode of design will not only counteract the “unconscious process” with a visual language created from self-awareness in the design process, but also give vocabulary to and create space for young, female designers’ voices to be heard in the male-dominated industry.

The first step taught in the traditional design process is to read the script and take notes. Arguably, the playscript is the logical place to begin a design because within the words of the play lie the story, emotions, and people that will populate the world of said design. An often used book for design history and process is The Stage is Set by Lee Simonson, in which he states, “In the modern theatre, as in every other, the beginning is in the word” (464). This tradition of privileging the script poses problems beyond design practice, explaining why feminist performance art and many feminist theatrical traditions that favored the visual over the textual arose outside of the walls of the theatre (Smith 110). Similarly, the visual avant-garde has often existed, or at least began, outside of the commercial, mainstream theatres because in other, smaller theatres and performance venues the designer might be able, even invited, to break from an extreme servitude to the script and create something that mines the wealth of subtext between the lines.

Nevertheless, the script is still the first port of entry into creating a theatrical design, but at this first step—reading the script and taking notes—feminist theory can and should be applied. Designer Delores Ringer sets forth a series of questions in her article “Re-visioning Scenography” that not only analyze the script in a feminist mode but also illuminate the ways in which artistic aesthetic plays a role in 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)

Hein, Hilde. “The Role of Feminist Aesthetics in Feminist Theory.” Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. Ed. Peggy Zeglin Brand and Caroylyn Korsmeyer. University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State UP: 1995. 446-463. 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.

Simonson, Lee. The Stage is Set. New York, Theatre Arts Books: 1963. Print.

Smith, Raynette Halvorsen. “Deconstructing the Design Process: Teachign Scene Design Process Through Feminist Performance Art.” Perspectives on Teaching Theatre. Ed. Raynet Halvorsen Smith, Bruce A. McConachie, and Rhonda Blair. New York, Peter Lang: 2001. 107-116. Print

The Fundamentals of Drawing

2010-03-28T12:42:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time, in a classroom nestled amongst the cornfields of Iowa, a young woman learned about the fundamentals of scene design by putting pencil to paper. As this young woman continued her education in the art of design, she was directed to put her mad photoshopping skillz to use in her representations of her imaginative designs. But this young woman was sad. She didn't want to spend hours on the computer wrestling with the right brush size or calibrating the screen to the printer output. She felt angry and betrayed to be told that the wave of the future was in computer generated artistic output. So she decided to stop being a scene designer and work an office job inputting numbers, since she'd have to stare at a computer screen for hours on end either way.

Okay, stupid story above aside, this is a dilemma that I face. I liken it to the philosophy about photography skills I learned in high school:

You have to learn the basics of dark room developing and manual camera adjustments before you can successfully navigate the digital tools that are becoming available in the photographic industry. Of course, one might argue that my teacher was just trying to explain away demands of the high school students to learn with the most cutting edge equipment, but I do believe that this philosophy is true because, having grown up with Photoshop on our home computers because my parents are graphic designers, it was not until I was in the dark room that I started to understand what burning and dodging was and how it could be applied digitally.

As I come into contact with undergraduates here at my illustrious institution who are being called upon to use Photoshop and turn to me with simple questions, it becomes difficult for me to teach them the program without trying to draw their attention to the real-life processes to which the Photoshop tools correspond. How can they understand that there are about fifteen ways that you can change highlight and shadow in Photoshop, if they do not understand how, in real-life, you might try to adjust those things in a photo dark room, with a pen, pencil, paper, collage, etc? If you can't walk, how do you propose you can run (or, more accurate an analogy, use a treadmill)?

It frustrates me to no end the emphasis that is being placed on digital output in theatrical design without spending time to make sure that the manual output is up to industry standards. Take drafting, for instance: many undergraduates do not know how to produced easily readable, accurate hand-drafting, so how can we expect them to create a good drafting packet in AutoCAD? Sure, they can tell you where all of the drawing buttons are and probably give you accurate information, but because they don't really understand what the purpose of line-weight is, or how best to visually indicate the sectioning of architectural and scenic elements, their computer output is going to be sloppy and difficult to process.

I think that knowing the fundamentals of the craft--being able to draw figures, accurate (or at least believable) perspective designs, evoking mood with chiaroscuro--is the only way that generating digital output moves beyond just basically relaying information and becomes an art itself. I don't know how many times I look at digital renderings and think they look flat and two-dimensional, like old-school digital animation. And digital animators start with the basics, gauranteed! Why, then, are we not spending more time teaching young designers how to get their great, imaginative images on paper rather than fussing with computer programs? The great thing about my generation and those after me is that our learning curve with computers is off the charts. Many of the people coming behind me were practically born with a mouse in their hand. We should shift our focus away from the how-to's of digital imaging software (Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc) and make sure that the how-to's of manual artistic expression are strong. Then tell the students the same thing can be done on the computer and sit back. Trust me, they'll figure it faster than you can say "create a new layer."

What You Can't Have if You Are a Woman in Theatre

2010-03-18T21:22:00.000-04:00

I have house-fever. Not baby-fever, but house-fever. I dream of owning a house, what it will look like, how the sun will pour through the windows, and how I will have friends over and they will admire the art on my walls as I feed them fresh baked-goods.

These daydreams play a role in answering the question, "What happens after graduate school?" which I have been getting far too much lately. I have a few ideas for specific projects up my sleeve, but what I really want to do is find a place that I want to live for at least five years, and become a part of the community. And maybe buy a house (though, in my dreams, house can be synonymous with apartment, so home-ownership isn't necessary, just a great place to call my own). This magical place I want to live will likely have a large theatre community because it will likely be a large city, but to be honest, my desire to settle somewhere for a long period of time isn't about theatre.

And there is the problem.

To be sure, the idea of a house and community lay the groundwork for starting a family someday, and I've been grappling with how I will balance creating a home and family with the crazy hours and travel schedule set forth by my chosen profession. And then I read about female scene designers and how many of them hardly have functioning marriages, let alone children. Articles that talk about these fantastic women usually touch on their choice to move away from the traditional female role of mother, deciding that motherhood is not their primary role or altogether unnecessary.

I wonder about this choice before me because I've worked with many amazing women who seem to have found a way to balance their lives. Both have had incredibly supportive partners, but I also feel like it goes back to the old statement "where there is a will, there is a way." Nevertheless, their conviction to have it all has been questioned. People wonder if the children are getting enough time with mommy or whether it's okay to miss important moments in your child's life because of the strict schedule theatre keeps.

The choice laid before women in theatre I feel is unfair, and not just because family and theatre should not be mutually exclusive. Instead, I think this notion that women are going to or should put family first keeps women from powerful creative positions. Or, people wonder at the unnaturalness of a woman with no desire to have a family and put her career first. I don't think mothers or fathers want to be absent from their child's life, but it is somehow okay for a father to work and travel too much. Similarly, society hardly bats an eye at a successful, child-less man.

To bring it back to my house-fever, is it so wrong of me to want to anchor my work in a community rather than idealize a nomadic existence, hopping from theatre to theatre following some sort of success trajectory? Some of my mentors and peers think I will be selling myself short (unless, of course, that community is New York...). I suppose my priorities are different, because I have always valued a strong arts presence in communities and have appreciated theatres that nurtured local artists rather than always flying in outsiders. I also hope that having roots in a community will keep me grounded if I travel, and I think the same goes for having a family waiting at home. Sure, compromises will have to be made because the schedule of a daredevil child is not going to mesh well with that of first dress. Life never really seems to want to work within the confines of a production calendar anyway, but just because I have an X-chromosome does not mean I can't have a successful, fruitful career as a designer and consider or even start a family. And if I have to face that choice, then my male counterparts do too.

Flowery Thank Yous

2010-03-07T18:18:00.000-05:00

Today's post is brought to you by a recent art project that I did as a thank you for some friends. Watercolor flowers adorned the mix-CD covers; it seems that Georgia O'Keefe continues to inspire me.

Expect some more ruminations on theatrical design to return next week as I dive deeper into my research and commentary on feminist design in the next couple of days.

Is There Such a Thing as Feminist Design?

2010-02-28T07:53:00.000-05:00

Okay, the honest truth is that my weekend has been so full of preparing for SETC next week that taking a second to write this entry seems like a bad idea. But I do have something that has been jumping around my brain for a while because I'm writing a research paper about it. Is there such a thing as "feminist design?"

There is an article by a woman named Delores Ringer that discusses this very question. She posits that there is a way to approach design in a feminist mode: that by making obvious ways in which the patriarchy is represented in the play and breaking those down/highlighting them in design choices, a designer can further a feminist interpretation of the piece. She lists the following questions as a way to approach the script:

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 relationships with other artists in the theatre and the creative and working process I use been constructed? (299)

Let us set aside questions three and four as a part of the discussion of being a female designer overall. They are important, but I believe that the first two questions hold in them the seed from which the notion of feminist design may spring.

1. In the production I am currently working, what are the explicit and implicit messages about power in gender relations?

I would argue that a good designer, male or female, should be asking this question regardless of their social agendas. Granted, the question may not be framed in terms of gender-- for sure when we were approaching The Seagull we did not discuss the power dynamics specifically in terms of gender and thus delve into the nature of Arkadena's character, but power dynamics were discussed and were brought to play in our design choices (especially in costuming). As I write this, having read a short essay on the female roles in The Seagull, I wonder how things might have changed if we had more directly troubled the roles of Arkadena, Nina, Masha, and Paulina.

2. How does visual language contribute to these explicit and implicit messages?

This question is more difficult, I believe. (And perhaps is why questions three and four are an important part of her list). It is difficult because not everyone interprets visual language the same, depending on where they are coming from in their lives. For instance, Ringer discusses how one might use landscape paintings on the women's aprons in Marsha Norman's Getting Out to invoke the geographic past represented in their lives. I puzzled over this idea for some time as I read it, and have often questioned these types of approaches to displaying the underlying meaning/subtext/what-have-you in a play. It reminds me of Brecht's gestus and how things like that are likely lost on an audience without a program note or talk back after the show.

When we started to work on the designs for The Seagull I had originally proposed representing the lake in a reflective floor for the set. It appealed to me as a purely aesthetic idea, and I felt that it helped underline the personal choices that were being made within the script: that people were hiding their true selves; that they were adrift in the world; that the lake holds power (which is referred to in the play). The director rejected this idea because he didn't see the point if it needed a program note to explain. And while I thought that was a ridiculous reason to cast aside my idea, over the last few months I have come to realize that perhaps it is true that the more subtle visual cues may be a lost cause. How could anyone know that was why I had wanted a reflective floor, apart from it adding visual dimension (especially in the sparse set that was decided upon)? There is no way to know.

But by the same token, is it not important to challenge the audience to find meaning in the visual landscape before them? They might not understand the reflective floor in the way I intend, but it is likely they would have found some reason for it. A number of people asked me where the lake was in my set anyway; I'm sure it would have caught on. And no one was even remotely aware that the diagonal painting on stage that represented the floor boards were specifically done upstage left to downstage right to highlight Konstantin's work at his desk in Act IV. Did we need a program note for that?

I don't know that there is a right way or wrong way to approach design in terms of the above discussion of subtle visual choices. I also am not sure how much I agree that there is a strictly feminist design approach (though, after writing this, I feel more inclined to agree than not). Design work, as with most artistic endeavors, is so much about translating the concrete into the subjective, and I believe that there is a lot of room for interpretation both in terms of the final product and how one gets there. (Though The Seagull wasn't approached in a feminist design mode, I think one could interpret it as such in some ways-- does that make it any less of a feminist design?)

--

Ringer, Delores. "Re-Visioning Scenography: A Feminist's Approach to Design for Theatre." Kare Laughlin and Chatherine Sculer, ed. Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics. London: Associate UP, 1995. Print.

How To Succeed in Show Business... if You're a Girl

2010-02-21T08:22:00.000-05:00

The Seagull opened on Friday and in celebration and thanks I brought cupcakes in for my carpenters that afternoon. I had been promising them these baked goodies for about two weeks when I had decided I wanted an excuse to bake again. I used them as leverage when they were not doing things right, but always in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. But as we neared opening and their desire to have cupcakes was synonymous for the show to be over and done with, I felt that the exchanges about the baked goods started to construct a mother-children relationship between myself and the carpenters. It felt troubling, but I still brought them in and shared with not just the carpenters but the lighting designer and her MEs, the stage manager, and the costume designer and her shop leaders.

Then, last night, I was reading Tish Dace's article "Designing Women," which discusses the role of women designers on Broadway and the uphill battle they have faced to become part of the men's club that controls the designer role sheets in NYC. Dace profiles Jean Rosenthal, the mother of lighting design, and explores how Rosenthal adopted a "quiet, non-confrontational , and meticulously polite demeanor" to earn the respect of the men that worked for her in order to survive in a "profession hostile to her sex."

Jean's quality of tranquil impersonality was not real. It was self-protective. She had a hard time in the theatre. There was a constant and long-term and even violent opposition to her from the electricians because she was a woman [...] and show business is death on women, especially in the technical end. She had to weather it, so she cultivated a great invulnerability, along with her courtesy, to deal with this. (135)

Dace discusses Rosenthal's personality traits in depth because it played a large role as to how she became as successful as she was in a male-dominated business with this new form of design. She quotes Rosenthal (and a number of designers in the article) as admitting that part of their battle was knowledge; a female designer has to know everything forwards and backwards, or their precarious status will topple with ridicule, distrust, and disrespect.

Of course this got me thinking about the process for Seagull and how my experience echoed Rosenthal's tacts, even though I was working in the supposed bastion of equality that is educational theatre.

I have always felt that as a female designer, "knowing your shit," as they say, is a huge component to surviving the process. That is the primary reason that I chose to attend graduate school rather than just trying to hop from assistant job to assistant job, hoping to weasel my way into an actual design position. They cannot argue with another three years of schooling putting more tools into my toolbox. But on the flip side, especially on the scenic end, knowing the design mechanics backwards and forwards as well as carpentry skills, is not always how you want to portray yourself. Sometimes, the damsel in distress is the preferred method, which gets you into trouble in more ways than one.

One of the things I struggle with on a regular basis is remembering (yes, remembering) that I am a very capable, knowledgeable carpenter. I have been wielding tools since I was in grade school, and my ability to construct and assemble various items both in and out of the theatre is, in my opinion, as good as any man because of my years of experience. But at some point in my undergraduate work, at the great institution of equality that Grinnell is, I started to act like I was as incapable as many of my peers who hadn't spent years working in their high school scene shop. My mentor, the design professor who designed both lighting and scenery for the school, a talented, opinionated woman, asked me to her office one day after watching me work in the shop with the fifth year intern (who was male) and told me to stop acting like I didn't know what I was doing. I was shocked. I hadn't realized that I had reverted, and after our talk I became painfully aware that I seemed to have this mental block for owning my aptitude and skills. To this day, even during small home projects, I am sometimes pleasantly surprised to be capable of simple tasks.

I think this adoption of a damsel in distress notion goes hand in hand with the need, as noted in Rosenthal's story, for the female designer to be a polite, reserved member of the artistic team. Despite the passionate volatility that is often associated with artists and designers, we female designers must remain courteous and calm. I know this for a fact because we had a number of discussions about "how nice and kind" I was to the carpenters on Seagull. And how much they appreciated that I didn't yell and curse whenever I was unhappy (and, trust me, there were plenty of times that I was fairly unhappy). Instead, I would parody other angry designers that had worked on shows at UNCG, never once really getting angry. (The closest I came was when I saw another foot print on the black-painted ground row only a few hours after we had painted them to cover other foot prints. I cursed and threw my damp rag on the ground, but I was only heard by the person standing next to me, not the entire theatre.)

Then, sitting in tech, my adviser leaned to me and gave me the same note he intoned during the Angels in America process last semester: You're in charge. You can be angry when things look horrible. I struggled with it during the previous process in part because I knew that I could get angry until I was blue in the face and the first-year run crew was never going to have the crisp, urgent movements of a professional run crew, but also because I didn't want to come across as "the angry, demanding designer." This time I still shied away from being terribly vocal about the things I didn't like, but I did feel capable of discussing the issues with the other designers, both of whom were women. I did also find a mode to deliver my thoughts to the stage manager and run crew that I felt didn't come across as a tyrant but also expressed my demands as important because my design was important.

I worry about the passive role that is set before me, both by my own doing and the gender dynamics that exist in this male-dominated field. I have watched women designers (and directors) in regional theatre settings and feel comfortable with asserting they have adopted this "quiet, non-confrontational , and meticulously polite demeanor" in order to garner the respect of the men under them. When I analyze my adoption of this tact, coupled with how I rewarded my carpenters (all male, save one) with cupcakes, I feel the natural role I am filling is that of "Mom." And while I am generally a very maternal person in all of my interpersonal interactions, I don't think this is a good role to hold as a professional scenic designer.

Is there a balance? Can I be less polite and calm and still get people to do the work for me? Is it more than a tact to survive and more a personality trait? What came first, the chicken or the egg?

I suspect I will be pondering these questions and my demeanor as designer for many years to come. But for now, I suppose as long as I also get rewarded with a cupcake and my set is by far the best I've done in my career, I can't complain too much.

----

Dace, Trish. "Designing Women." Women in American Musical Theatre: Essays on Composers, Lyrcists, Librettists, Arrangers, Choreographers, Designers, Directors, Producers and Performing Artists. Bud Coleman & Judith A Sebesta, Ed. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2008. 130-154. Print.

Tech-tacular Design

2010-02-14T22:46:00.000-05:00

So, not that anyone regularly follows this blog, but I'm about to hit tech for The Seagull here at UNCG and so I'm a bit hard-pressed to squeeze anything but stress out of my pitiful brain. I really should be going to bed now, but I resolved to write once a week in this thing -- maybe while I'm sitting in the darkened theatre, the muse will strike me.

In the meantime, a few thoughts on the tech process in general:

It's stressful! Duh. But not just because the clock is finally ticking down, but because it is a veritable political battlefield of how best to communicate with your fellow theatre-makers while everyone's tempers are short. It is especially difficult, I've found, as a student designer trying to navigate the many mentors/faculty in the room above and beyond any faculty working on the production. (Fortunately, Seagull is all student-designed, but it is faculty-directed.) It's just hard to know when and how to stand your ground without sounding disrespectful. And then you add into the mix being a woman... well, yes, you can imagine. More on that (or something better) next weekend, once the show is open and I have more room in my poor head for things that are not about tracing wallpaper from a projection or recovering chairs.

Tempestuous Validation

2010-02-07T08:13:00.000-05:00

Just returned from this year's Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival (KC/ACTF) in Region IV (that's the Southeast). Compared to last year where UNC-Greensboro was the host school, I felt pretty detached from the whole thing. It also seemed to be very diminished in size as the economy problems have started to trickle down into school budgets (I know UNCG felt it).

I took my design for Shakespeare's The Tempest which I completed in my Scenography Seminar last spring semester. Basically, a Scenography Seminar means that we completed designs for all three areas: scenic, costume, and lighting. We spent four months with the play, built half inch models, and designed 30 costumes. And then it sat in the office until told that the school was footing the bill for us to go to KC/ACTF this year.

Dusting off the model (and I mean that literally), I was struck by the work that I had put into it and the joy I had found creating all of the little details of my dilapidated warehouse space. I felt very good about bringing it to competition in the regional paper project division (the competition I took home first place for La Boheme in last year). Even when the poor thing was practically destroyed in transit, I was hopeful. (I was able to rebuild it just fine).

Then on Friday night, the awards were announced, and I was left sitting in the audience while my three colleagues (the only other UNCG students attending the festival) were called onstage to be recognized for their work. I was dumb-founded, flabbergasted, and hurt. In part because I had felt so good about my work and the judge's response to it and in part because the work that was awarded first place was presented haphazardly and looked like he'd pulled it all out of his backpack before tacking it to the wall. To be honest, I drove everyone back to the hotel and then sat in the car and cried. And called my aunt.

I felt humiliated but also incredibly stupid for letting something like this tear down all of the confidence that I had about myself. I knew going into this competition that I had set the bar high last year by winning so out-of-the-blue-like. And yet I felt robbed by not even getting an Honorable Mention. After sleep, some inner soul-searching, and seeing the designs as we took our own work down to travel home, I've come to the conclusion that in the end the best designs were awarded prizes, despite their presentation quality. The designs fit the play very well (or so the judges had said) and were well-thought out and at least mostly executed well as far as the modeling technique is concerned. So what if the students hadn't been coached on how to create meticulously laid out presentation boards of research and process? Ultimately, their artistic thoughts were clear and deserved recognition.

But what to do with my own feelings of inadequacy? How, after seven months of being very proud of my work and ideas can something as innocuous as this award tear down my confidence in just a short five minute time span? Why is it that I need validation for work that has come out of my ten years of scenic design, and many hours individually scoring brickwork with an X-acto blade and reading glasses?

I think it's a cultural thing, as we are taught from a young age the importance of winning and hearing that we are the best. I also think, artistically, there are so many times that it's a shot in the dark to put something out there that will be judged so subjectively. I spent over 15 minutes talking to one gentleman during the design Meet & Greet in which he poked all kinds of holes into my modern interpretation of the piece (which was encouraged by our professor, not something I came up with solely on my own!). This guy seemed generally offended that I had deigned to take Shakespeare's play off of a literal island and place it somewhere that perhaps undercut the lines regarding the necessity of a boat to arrive there. And on the one hand it was frustrating to have him admonish me for claiming perhaps it was a metaphoric boat, but I was thankful to see that I could hold my ground even after six or so months of complete removal from the project.

This kind of thing always makes me wonder if this is truly the field that I want to wade into for sure. My skin is not thick regarding my work. In fact, I find it very difficult to separate myself from criticism of my artistic work. Why, oh why, do I want to spend years trying to squeeze every ounce of creative juice from my brain only to risk complete destruction of my psyche if the director, actors, audience, or critics tear it apart? I'm not sure if I know the answer to that. But I can say that as the years have passed I've become better at bouncing back. I've found joy in what I do that cannot be touched by outside comment. And I know that is all the validation that I can count on, even if it isn't all I will ever need.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose...

2010-01-30T07:56:00.001-05:00

For many years now I have signed my work "MR Toomey" rather than using my first name. The reasoning behind it has changed in nuance over the years -- it started because I was tickled by the fact that my initials titled me MR. T -- but it remained constant in the fact that I rather enjoyed an air of mystery about who I was, primarily my gender. As a young girl I read the Anne of Green Gable books by L.M. Montgomery and was fascinated that, until I went looking, I had assumed that the author of this wonderful series was male. I thought, "How clever, to disguise your gender by only using your initials." There are a number of ways that I can parse this young thought of mine in terms of gender theory, but for now I use it merely a point of reference as to when I somehow decided that being a female author, artist, etc. somehow demanded a different approach than if I were male.

Last week I read a quote by Rachel Rosenthal in Sue-Ellen Case's Feminism and Theatre* in which she discussed why this this might be the case. Rosenthal, speaking about her piece entitled The Arousing (Shock, Thunder) said, the piece "dealt with the fact that I had been male-identified for so long... the reason for that is because for so long, the idea of artist was that an artist was male; and I was an artist, therefore I must be male." (60) I wrote in the margins of my book, "Is this why I want to be MR Toomey?"

The short answer is "yes."

The long, more nuanced answer that I have been mulling over in my mind is "maybe?".

I do believe that the desire to hide my gender falls into this realm of being cognizant--though very unaware of the political ramifications--that by being gender neutral with just my initials, I would get more recognition of the work that exists out there without me beside it because I would, by default, be assumed male. It is a bonus that my initials make for a more direct declaration of my gender being male by abbreviating "mister." But it is this last point that makes it a bit of a maybe. For many years now, since writing "MR Toomey" (deliberately not using punctuation) on personal items like CDs, signing my photography and creating a corresponding website as "MR Toomey," and turning in drafting to theatres I've worked at as "MR Toomey" I have, without fail, been asked by someone seeing these signatures, "Who's Mr. Toomey?" Ha ha, I laugh, but it's getting old. In part because everyone believes they are being clever and somehow even I missed this blatant title-shift in my initials. But also because it is not written as Mr. Toomey, so why is that when you see an M and an R together that we are immediately conjuring up that mode of address? Or, for that matter, why I cannot embrace the quirks of my initials and perhaps I've done it on purpose (I've been told a number of times by male counterparts that perhaps I should at least consider using punctuation).

This debate over my professional name and thus identity is ongoing. I recently changed my website, which is still mrtoomey.com, to read on the title page "Margaret R. Toomey" for better search results on the internet. However, I still sign all of my photographs and art with my "MR Toomey" signature (in part because, shorter than my full signature, it looks neater and takes up less room but also because I have a legacy of being MR Toomey, Photographer). In an upcoming conference, my display boards use my full name because I didn't want to face snide remarks while presenting my work professionally for the first time (especially since those remarks are generally made when I am revealed to be a girl).

That which I continue to ponder is whether my initial impulse to male-identify, as Rosenthal says, because I saw artists as only male remains and problematizes my choice of nom de guerre, or is the nature of embracing an initial-based name that turns gender on its head once more overcome those problems and cast me as Artist (sans specific gender) in a new light.

Discuss.

*Case, Sue-Ellen. Feminism and Theatre. Reissued ed. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. Print. On Amazon >>