SETC 2011 Atlanta

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. :)

It's a Busy Time

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

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.

We're All Waiting

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

An Oklahoma Good-bye

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.

Year 3... And Go!

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.