Parabasis

Paneled on July 8th!

Hey everyone,

Want to hear me mouth off in person instead of reading my poorly-proof-read thoughts on theatre, politics and sundry other topics?  Of course you do! Which is why the good people at CUNY have invited me to speak on a panel. Not only that, the other panelists are The Playgoer, TONY's amazing Helen Shaw and  Erik Pipenburg. 

Who is Erik Pipenburg? He's the Senior Producer for Theatre for the M*-F*ing New York Times Online, that's who!  We'll be talking about how the internet is changing coverage of theatre and the online-only content of the Times itself.  All of this follows what I'm sure will be a fascinating discussion with Pipenburg about the Times' online theatre content.

Here's the website with all the info!

And here's the blurb w/ logistical info!

Join us for an evening discovering the vast landscape of The New York Times’s online theatre section. Erik Piepenburg, Senior Producer for Theatre, will present excerpts from the Times’s online theatre coverage, including the site’s signature audio slide shows, photo essays and other interactive features. Piepenburg will give an inside view into how the pages are created and how The New York Times integrates journalism, digital storytelling, blogging and coverage of the world of theatre in New York and beyond. Followed by a discussion with New York artists, bloggers, and producers Garrett Eisler, (The Playgoer), Helen Shaw, (Time Out), and Isaac Butler(Parabasis).

Wednesday, July 8th @ 6:30PM.

Martin E. Segal Theatre, Graduate Center, CUNY 
365 Fifth Ave at 34th St. 
Free! First come, first served.

Hope you can make it... and if you do and we haven't met before, please introduce yourself afterwards if you feel so inclined. I greatly enjoy meeting and talking with readers!

A Designer Prepares-- Part 3 of 4

Good news, Lucas Krech has decided to add a bonus 4th part to his A Designer Prepares series.  Here's part 3:

A Designer Prepares - Back in the studio

Once all the concept meetings are over and done with and the scenic and costume designs complete, it is time for me to begin thinking about actual lighting instruments and gel colors. Until now all my thinking has been conceptual, but this is the point in the process where I take the concept and turn it into a reality. That harsh noon sun becomes a bank of PARCans, the moon a 2K Fresnel.

This is also the phase of the process where I begin to analyze the set (or location if a site-specific piece). The director and I may have discussed a low setting sun in a particular scene. Now, with the set drawings in front of me, I can figure out where that light can be placed. The ideas developed in our production meetings combined with my own notes begin to be translated into a lighting system for the play.

The analysis of the space is critical. Be it a built set or a found space, every one is different and each demands its own lighting approach. During the concept meetings it is very important that the scenic designer and I work in close collaboration to facilitate the design ideas. It is unfortunate for everyone when ideas discussed for weeks or months turn out to be unrealizable because the set was not designed to accommodate them. In the same way, my work must accommodate the needs of the scenery and costumes, and render the colors and forms true to my collaborator's vision.

This is perhaps the most personal part of the process for me. Up to now everything has been based around reactions to external stimuli. I have been reacting to the text, to the set, to my collaborators. Now I am at the point where I choose how I want to engage with them. Do I accentuate the angles of the space or compress them? Do I push the colors further or hold them back? Obviously these are not either/or questions but rather a matter of degree.

My first step is to analyze the set as a formal volumetric object. I try as best as possible to leave aside my notions of the play and simply look at the set as an empty space into which light can move. I will abstract the set to its basic forms and look at it thusly. Some are quite simple, a rectangle perhaps or a circle, while others are very dynamic and complex. As I begin to break the set down into simple geometric shapes, patterns emerge that show me how light can move. This analysis provides a sense of where lighting can and should be symmetrical and where that symmetry should break. While most of my final compositions tend to be asymmetrical, it can be incredibly useful for the lighting systems to be as symmetrical as possible. One achieves asymmetry then by simply turning off half the system.

Every space allows light to move in a particular way. Long spaces are more conducive to sidelight while walled-in spaces more easily allow backlight. Every play will use a variety of lighting angles, colors and textures. Many of these choices are guided by the set. This is why a close collaboration is so important. If a low angled sidelight is wanted, there had better not be a wall in the way. So too can ceilings, often beautiful, be problematic when not part of an overall conceptual approach to the text. It is critical that all members of the creative team be on the same page with regards to the visual needs of the play.

With my analysis complete I begin building the systems. Going back to my notes, I turn that sidelight into the afternoon sun or that diagonal backlight into the late night moon. I build my systems without specific concern for color or texture. I will note "warm" or "cool" or "leafy" but leave the specifics for once all the lights are placed.

Throughout this phase I keep two thoughts in mind. First, everything I do must facilitate the overall concept and second, the concept may change.

That first thought is rather straight forward. I translate the ideas into a lighting system. I find some way to express visually each idea we have discussed. Sometimes every idea will have their own light or system of lights and other times there are several ideas that can be combined into one system.

That second thought is a bit more nebulous. While we all like to think that we will come up with a perfectly workable concept in meetings and rehearsal, the truth is sometimes we put everything on stage and it just doesn't work. It thus becomes necessary to devise a lighting system that has the capacity to become something wholly other than originally designed to be. This has led to a development in American and English lighting design to use a large number of small spotlights working in concert to cover the stage from a particular direction. If the whole stage wants to be filled with that idea of a harsh noon sun you turn them all on. But you may find that the follow-spot idea for the soliloquies does not work in tech and what you want is a backlight special. Then you simply turn on one light from the noon sun idea and you have special lighting for that one moment.

Once my lights are all placed, and control channels/circuiting assigned I move on to color and texture. The palette of colors and patterns is critical for showing off the set and costumes and performers in their best light. The wrong color choice can turn a brilliantly colored set grey, or cause an amazingly dynamic costume to appear lifeless. So too can the effect of color on skin tones make someone appear with a healthy glow or sick and wasted. All these effects may be the right choice in the moment, but they must be chosen and the desired effect created at the proper time.

The color and texture palette in many ways sets the tone for the piece. It also serves as a kind of visual glue with regards to how the scenery and costumes interact. Be the design multi-colored or a tightly controlled range, the lighting is integral to unifying the visual experience for the audience.

Choosing the wrong color could make a secondary character more prominent than the lead, or give presence to the scenery over the performers. It is a delicate balancing act that necessitates a close visual reading of the design renderings. Just as the written text had to be read and analyzed so too does the emerging visual text need to be read and analyzed. The difference between a yellow-green or a blue-green can mean the success or failure of the whole lighting scheme. The right color can make a dress shine like the sun with very little light, while the wrong color can result in you pouring thousands of watts of light onto it with little to no impact.

Not only must the lighting work in relation to the scenery and costumes, it must also maintain integrity relative to itself. The final construction of the lighting plot is a delicate balancing act. For the lighting designer, it is the most private aspect of the whole play making process and yet it is the part that soon will become the most public.

Interesting Interview with David Adjmi

Can be found at Tablet, a new website about modern Jewish identity.

RIP Pina Bausch

Sad news. Read about it here.

Today's Must Read

August Schulenberg's On Quality, Value and Criticism, which can be found here. It's long, and difficult to exerpt, so let's just say it's an attempt to begin a conversation about artistic quality amidst all the talk in the theatrosphere about models, getting the younguns in etc. The basic premise, and I agree with it, ist hat we don't spend a lot of time talking about artistic quality because it's... well... tough to talk about something so subjective. So Gus tries to get the ball rolling.

There's a lot in there, and I hope he writes more on each point, I just want to quickly address for myself something he says when talking about critiqueing each other's work:

But how do we imagine ourselves within another company when it is so difficult to critique work within our own? Flux has annual and post-play post-mortems, but they focus entirely on the process of producing, not on the quality of artistic decisions. And this is, of course, because feelings get hurt. And yet we must improve the quality of work, and we can do that best by talking about it.

So how do you talk about it within your company? Do you use the Liz Lerman Critical Reponse Process? Do you just say the ugly truth and wound each other terribly and then recover over beers to do the whole thing over again, like Valhalla? How do you do it?

I can't speak from the perspective of being within a company, because I'm not, but I'll just say that in discussions with theatre artists of my generation I hear-- and share-- a great deal of discomfort if not outright disillusionment with the Liz Lerman Critical Response Process. If anything, many I talk to think it's basically used these days as a way to avoid having authentic conversations about work. And many playwrights I know are made incredibly uneasy by it, because they basically feel like people responding to their work are, essentially, hiding what they really feel about it in an effort to make the process work.

When I receive notes from people as a director, I expect them to be both direct and considerate. Both of those are important. We have this weird association in our society between honesty and assholitry. A good example of this would be Ethan Hawke's character in Reality Bites. We all know the type-- "hey, man, I'm just being honest" when in fact the value of honesty is used to basically be inconsiderate and cruel. Fuck that, I have no patience for that shit, you can tell the truth and not be a dick about it.

You have to ask yourself when offering an opinion on something-- why am I saying this? What goal do I have with this note? If your goal is to actually affect the thing you're talking about for the better, than you must on some level also be concerned with being heard.  If you aren't heard, by which I do not mean the sound waves pass out of your mouth, vibrate the air and are received into the ear where they're translated into signals in the brain but rather someone actually takes what you say and considers it honestly and discusses it with you, than what you said doesn't matter. A lot of people say shit to just say shit. It's a pervasive problem.

If you want to be heard, you have to give feedback in a way that allows it to be heard. And that way is going to change in a way that's contextually dependent on who you're talking to, where, around who else etc. Which is why I think the Liz Lerman Process feels a bit off to me... my conversations with Dan Trujillo, a writer I've worked with many times, co-produced work with, acted with, directed his material, acted in his material etc. are going to be very different with my conversations with Gus about his work, given that he and I have (sort-of) worked together once, and both like each other but aren't close friends.

And there's another problem, which might be subject to another post, which has to do with the lack of honesty in our responses to each other, the common problems of thinned-skinnedness and taking things personally etc. This is why, as I think I said in an earlier post a year or so ago, i don't tend to offer my opinion on people's work (to them anyway) unless they ask me, and then I try to respond honestly. If they dont' indicate they want my opinion, that's okay, there's usually others who do and I can talk about it with them.

Stunning

Stunning might not be the best play I've seen this year, but it's certainly the most exciting. Even the parts of it that are problematic are problematic in fascinating and exciting ways. And the first act is just fucking flawless. Stunning, even. And Cristin Miloti is amazing.  Go see it. It just extended until the 11th.

On The Dearth Of Female Critics...

Tom Laughlin, in the comments to an earlier post, writes:

Amidst all this talk about discrimination and sexism in American theatre on so many levels, I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts about the relative lack of female theatre critics and bloggers. I went through your blogroll this morning, and my unscientific poll revealed that 29 of the bloggers listed are male, 12 female (one blog is a male/female partnership, but even though the male seems to write more I gave it to the female). And apparently all the blogger/critics who write or have written for the NYC press are male (Cote, Jacobs, RWK, Teachout, Isherwood, etc.). Since the internet is open to all, why is this particular phenomenon happening? I'd be interested in your take on this matter. TIA. -twl

(First off, forgive my acronym ignorance, but does TIA mean thanks in advance? thai initiative accumulate? torridness is awesome?.. it took me the better part of amonth to figure out what RTWT means, it's just something I'm bad at)

Anyway, it's a good question. I should just say my own blog roll is a really bad determinant here, as I would gladly and freely admit I have a terrible blogroll. I hate updating it. I basically only add new blogs to it when people e-mail me to ask if I'd add them to the blogroll. Every four months or so I think Today is the day I redo my blogroll! And then I never do it.  So if you're a blogger wondering why you're not on my blogroll, I apologize in advance. E-mail me if you want to be on it at parabasisnyc[at]gmail[dot]com if it really irks ya and i'll put you on it.

i don't know, in other words, if there's a dearth of female theatre blog writers. most of the ones i read are, now that i come to think about it, by men.  i don't know if that means that most of the ones being written are by men, but it's also worth differentiating between blogging and being a paid critic. For the part, anyone can start a blog without anyone else's permission or hiring them to do it.  If there are fewer female (or Black or Asian or anything else) bloggers on a particular subject, it reflects something different than if there are fewer female critics at daily newspapers. 

As to the other point... there are very few female first string critics in this country, and the point's been raised a few places (most recently on a dramaturgy listserv discussion of the gender bias study).  In New York, there's Elisabeth Vincentelli and Linda Winer (for the Post and Newsday respectively) that I can think of off the top of my head. Some places-- like Backstage-- I'm really unclear who the first stringer is. 

Many places have female second (or even third) stringers or regular freelances. Clearly, this is an issue. And, like the race of critics issue, it probably has some impact on the shape of the theatre scene. But I think, just like how beauty magazines both promote unreasonable beauty expectations of women and take advantage of those already existing expectations to make money, it's a pretty circular issue.

I agree, fwiw (what does that mean? five wookies inside Waziristan??) that this is a problematic state of affairs. i don't know what to do about it necessarily.

Theatre as Case Study?

If you're someone who is interested in workplace discrimination, equal employment opportunity, bias and affirmative action issues (as I happen to be right now) theatre makes for an interesting counter-factual case study. Why? Because there aren't class-action lawsuits against theaters fort discrimination.

I'm not suggesting there should be, but it's interesting to think about it in this context. In many other industries, there have been big ole class action lawsuits, it's one of the main ways that employment discrimination laws get enforced. But not theatre.  To more Conservative thinkers, claims employment discrimination is overblown and we are an overly litigious society.  The idea put forth is that what discrimination does exist is the cause of a few bad actors and the more mundane stuff can be solved by giving "everyone a fair shot" (by which they mean eliminating affirmative action), punishing the few people who are truly bad and have negative intent and working the other stuff out on a more peer-to-peer level.

Well, here we have the American Theatre (not the magazine, obviously, the theatre system) which is not only staffed by well-meaning liberals (the exact kind of people who should be trusted to voluntarily enforce equal opportunity rules) but doesn't have to deal with those pernitious, poisonous lawsuits, why not study it to see how that whole diversity and equality thing is working out?

I would guess that the end result would be a rather good example of how intentions don't really matter when it comes to discrimination. Or, to put it another way, that even though our theaters are largely staffed with well meaning liberals, there's still entrenched, institutionalized discrimination, discrimination of effect rather than cause.  I might be wrong about that, that's just my guess of what such a study would show, but I have a feeling ultimately the evidence would point to the fact that we need more than good intentions to create equality and diversity.

NYTimes on Female Directors

In the midst of the American Theatre's Institutionalized Sexism discussion, here comes the Times with a piece about how it's been a (relatively) good year for female directors.  Check it here.

I Want To Make Something Really Clear

As a follow up on everything we've talking about here...

I don't hate institutions. i don't want them to go away. I don't want to blow them up. I want them to do their jobs better and in ways that are healthier for theatre in America.  I also want to be taken seriously by them, both as an artist and as a thinker.  I am not on any level a revolutionary, I'm a reformer. And, ultimately, I'm a pragmatist.  I do think that having big, even pie-in-the-sky ideas is a good thing, but I am ultimately concerned with how can we most effectively make things better in this country for theatre, and some of those changes have to come outside of theatre entirely (This would be the arts advocacy part of what I do), changes from funders or civic leaders etc. And some of those changes have to come from within theatre.

I was thinking some more about David Dower's post that I link to below... And where I said that institutions, should they choose to act for the good could have larger impacts and where I felt the burden was on them. I want to give one example:

One major problem facing theatre right now is the lack of opportunities for actors of color.  It's one that I feel very personally, and one I am committed to working to solve.  I don't think I've directed a play (other than The Last Five Years, but I was a replacement director on that) since 2003 that didn't have at least one actor of color in it.  Great, so there's a personal thing I can do to help make this slightly better.  Personal Virtue, as its called, is important. It's important to have Cap And Trade and for people to use less energy. It's important to have better regulations w/r/t agriculture and for people to eat less meat, and eat organic food.  (For more on this, read Michael Pollan'sa paean to personal virtue here).

But at the same time, it's worth noting that while it's important on some level that I work to cast actors of color, it's also very important that larger theaters that can give actors more money, more exposure and different opportunities work to cast more actors of color. So while I myself am making my personal casting decisions, I'm also looking around at the all-white casts (and all-white seasons) of theaters and complaining about it because I think it's scandalous (or should be).  Doing both of these things is important.  One is an example of looking up from my desk and trying to do what I can to affect change in theatre using the means I have control over.  The other is most definitely not. But they're both valuable.