A little insight into the world of working theatre professionals in New York City. (NYTimes Article)
Posts Tagged ‘theatre’
What it takes
Sunday, August 26th, 2007Color Sense
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007I have been working on the lightplot for the revival of Cinderella with New York Theatre Ballet. Largely the plot is the same as last year. However there were some changes in the house plot at Florence Gould Hall and the repertory program that plays with Cinderella is different so the lightplot has changed some.
I think these are all very beneficial changes. Some things have been streamlined, some others expanded. For the most part it has been a matter of maximizing what is available in the palette. The company prefers a very colorful look. This is a fun aesthetic to work in, but the trick is to get the color sense without using so many colors that the light gets muddy. It is very easy with a lot of color to make costumes look old and dingy. The trick is to have a look that is clean and also shows off the dancers, costumes and scenery to the best advantage.
I love working in heavy color environments. Windows was quite the extreme as far as the use of color goes, but it helps make the point. Often, though, I find that direct saturated colors like that are not what is wanted in a colorful space. More the need of the piece is a sense of color. The feel of color is very different than the direct application of heavily saturated colors themselves.
The color sense of a piece is often a key factor in how a piece if perceived. Medea wanted a terse look. It needed a strong but minimal framework to place around the action of the play. The result was heavy use of shadow, black is a very important color in the lighting designers toolbox, and a very contained color palette. The Last Word . . . , a totally different kind of show, had en even tighter color palette. The color varied by less than 1000 degrees Kelvin, with no black.
New York Theatre Ballet can be a tricky aesthetic to nail down. My experience has been that it works best with a sense of color, but when saturated colors are used they are kept in the background. Saturated colors are very present, purples and blues and greens and reds, but the majority of the color work is “invisible.” That is, the colors are tints. A cool white or a warm white, slightly pink or a touch of amber or a pale blue, but no strong color.
It is the careful mixture of these tints, combined with the selective use of saturated colors, that gives the overall piece its color sense. Color can be a difficult thing to get a hold of. One of my reasons for going to NYU for graduate school is the legendary color lecture of John Gleason carried on by Curt Ostermann. And while this can provide all the rules, it then takes hundreds of experiments and breaking of the rules to really get a grasp on it.
Every play or dance or opera is a kind of experiment. Even revivals. They are never definitive, but always propositions. Will this piece resonate with an audience today? What must be done to make it speak in a language accessible today. In many ways dance is the strongest in this regard. There is an immediacy to dance that is a much less common thing in a play. In Opera it is the rare occurrence that it holds that fresh immediacy, but when it does, it is a sight to behold!
The color sense can be a powerful tool to help bring a piece into a framework accessible to the audience. It is a delicate balance to find what is both true to the work and at the same time pulls the audience into that work in a clear and direct manner. Lots of work, but a hell of a lot of fun too.
Listen to the Murmer of the crowd
Thursday, April 5th, 2007As the ancient Greeks were placing the last few stones on the magnificent theater at Epidaurus in the fourth century B.C., they couldn’t have known that they had unwittingly created a sophisticated acoustic filter. But when audiences in the back row were able to hear music and voices with amazing clarity (well before any theater had the luxury of a sound system), the Greeks must have known that they had done something very right because they made many attempts to duplicate Epidaurus’ design, but never with the same success.Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have pinpointed the elusive factor that makes the ancient amphitheater an acoustic marvel. It’s not the slope, or the wind — it’s the seats. The rows of limestone seats at Epidaurus form an efficient acoustics filter that hushes low-frequency background noises like the murmur of a crowd and reflects the high-frequency noises of the performers on stage off the seats and back toward the seated audience member, carrying an actor’s voice all the way to the back rows of the theater.
[Snip]
But as Declercq’s team experimented with ultrasonic waves and numerical simulations of the theater’s acoustics, they discovered that frequencies up to 500 Hz were held back while frequencies above 500 Hz were allowed to ring out. The corrugated surface of the seats was creating an effect similar to the ridged acoustics padding on walls or insulation in a parking garage.
So, how did the audience hear the lower frequencies of an actor’s voice if they were being suppressed with other background low frequencies? There’s a simple answer, said Declercq. The human brain is capable of reconstructing the missing frequencies through a phenomenon called virtual pitch. Virtual pitch helps us appreciate the incomplete sound coming from small loudspeakers (in a laptop or a telephone), even though the low (bass) frequencies aren’t generated by a small speaker.
The Greeks’ misunderstanding about the role the limestone seats played in Epidaurus’ acoustics likely kept them from being able to duplicate the effect. Later theaters included different bench and seat materials, including wood, which may have played a large role in the gradual abandonment of Epidaurus’ design over the years by the Greeks and Romans, Declercq said.
Juvenile Censorship
Saturday, March 24th, 2007Student productions at Wilton High School range from splashy musicals like last year’s “West Side Story,” performed in the state-of-the-art, $10 million auditorium, to weightier works like Arthur Miller’s “Crucible,” on stage last fall in the school’s smaller theater.For the spring semester, students in the advanced theater class took on a bigger challenge: creating an original play about the war in Iraq. They compiled reflections of soldiers and others involved, including a heartbreaking letter from a 2005 Wilton High graduate killed in Iraq last September at age 19, and quickly found their largely sheltered lives somewhat transformed.
“In Wilton, most kids only care about Britney Spears shaving her head or Tyra Banks gaining weight,” said Devon Fontaine, 16, a cast member. “What we wanted was to show kids what was going on overseas.”
But even as 15 student actors were polishing the script and perfecting their accents for a planned April performance, the school principal last week canceled the play, titled “Voices in Conflict,” citing questions of political balance and context.
[SNIP]
“The sad thing was this thing was a missed opportunity for growth from a school that I really have tremendous regard for,” said Emmalisa Lesica, whose son was in the play. Given the age of the performers and their peers who might have seen the show, she noted, “if we ended up in a further state of war, wouldn’t they be the next ones drafted or who choose to go to war? Why wouldn’t you let them know what this is about?”
The latest draft of the script opens with the words of Pvt. Nicholas Madaras, the Wilton graduate who died last September and whose memory the town plans to soon honor by naming a soccer field for him. In a letter he wrote to the local paper last May, Private Madaras said Baqubah, north of Baghdad, sometimes “feels like you are on another planet,” and speaks wistfully about the life he left behind in Wilton.
“I never thought I’d ever say this, but I miss being in high school,” he wrote. “High school is really the foundation for the rest of your life, whether teenagers want to believe it or not.”
Why I don’t like television – Short Form, Long Form and the Middle Path
Saturday, February 17th, 2007I am an outcast of my generation because I do not watch television. There is the immediate dislike of advertising breaking into story and providing an unpleasant interruption. But there is something in the medium itself that I dislike. Something in the mechanics of storytelling, the mode of discourse employed by television that I find unsatisfying.
Television can be broken down into roughly two categories of storytelling. The Short Form and the Long Form. The Short Form is the sitcom. It can range anywhere from a half an hour to an hour and the rules are quite simple. Status quo upon first scene. Some quirky bit of action interrupts the status quo. Total resolution causing a return of the status quo in the last five minutes. Repeat as needed throughout the season. The Long Form is the soap opera. Never resolve a situation fully, never provide an ending.
The Short Form of television is every nighttime sitcom, police drama, etc. It is easy to watch and predictable. You get just enough thrill to make it worth spending the time staring at a little blinking box with the satisfaction of knowing you will return to the status quo within the hour. There is no risk, but also very little payoff. There is no evolution. Rather there is a continually revolving hamster wheel that gives off the illusion of transformation. Some shows like The Simpsons play into this and comment on the absurdity of Television’s Short Form. This affords them a little more latitude in terms of what becomes possible within the medium itself.
The Long Form is the Soap Opera. Here we have pure growth. Everything is change. The trick with this is that there is never any true resolution. Every episode is a cliff hanger. It always ends somewhat unfinished, leaving the viewer wanting more. But not more as in different, simply more of the same. It can, and does, go on for years without ever truly resolving anything.
There are of course hybrids. Six Feet Under is a perfect example. It is Long Form Television with sitcom stability. It provides a degree of resolution in each episode and is, to an extent self-contained. It is also a specific story arc that begins in one place and ends somewhere else, over the course of five years. In a way it is of a wholly separate genre. It employs the medium of television to extend the storytelling possibilities of mediums like Theatre, Dance, Opera and Film.
These mediums employ a balance between suspense and resolution, between revolution and conclusion that allows them to provide a wholly satisfying experience in and of itself while still providing for an extended experience beyond container of the theater. These mediums are not just about change and growth, they are about evolution. Even when we return to some sense of status quo, as in MacBeth for example, it is a status quo that is changed. Order and law may have been restored, but at a great cost, and after learning powerful and important lessons. The players are all different and the question is opened up as we leave the theater, “What will happen next?”
The balance between change and restoration of the status quo is critical to give a truly dramatic power to a piece of entertainment. Be it Theatre, Film or Television, for it have real power it must both allow for change and provide a means of landing us in some conclusive place. Even if that final place is inconclusive or uncertain, it needs must find a place of final rest. The twenty year Long Form can only tempt us, it can never truly give us the power of the Film or the Opera experience.
New Ancient Theatre
Friday, February 16th, 2007Sections of an ancient Greek theater were discovered on Thursday during construction work in an Athens suburb, archaeologists said.Until now, only two such buildings were known in the ancient city where western theater originated more than 2,500 years ago.
Fifteen rows of concentric stone seats have been located so far in the northwestern suburb of Menidi, according to Vivi Vassilopoulou, Greece’s general director of antiquities.
“Another section appears to lie under a nearby road,” she told The Associated Press.
“(The remains) were discovered during excavation work, supervised by archaeologists, for a new building,” Vassilopoulou said. “But it is still very early to offer any conclusions.”
The structure has not yet been dated, and further details are expected to emerge following a full excavation.
Menidi is thought to be built over the ancient village of Acharnae, the largest of a string of rural settlements outside ancient Athens. Ancient writers mention a theater at Acharnae, but no traces of it had been found until now.
The village was linked with Dionysos, the ancient god of theater and wine, as the Athenians believed that ivy — his sacred plant — first grew there.
Three is a magic number
Saturday, December 16th, 2006Nutcracker, Becoming Adele, and Waiting for Godot all perform today. Three shows in Manhattan. That kind of trips me out.
Next year is beginning to shape up nicely. It has been so chaotic with dates moving and rights and funding disappearing then reappearing that I am only now getting a handle on what things look like. At the end of January I will begin working on a commercial Off-Broadway play Last Word written by Oren Safdie and directed by Alex Lippard. Alex and I met at the theatre a few days ago along with the producer, GM and set designer to do a bit of a site survey. As that gears up to go into previews I will remounting Mother GOOSE!.
February has the official opening of Last Word. Then a small play called Operation Ajax produced by The Butane Group. This is a great piece of political theater addressing the issues surrounding the CIA’s overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in favor of the Shah, all of course leading to the Iranian revolution and an Islamic Fundamentalist state.
This will be followed by Artfuckers at Theatre for a New City, directed, but not written, by Eduardo Machado. The play was written by Michael Domitrovich. It centers around the New York art and fashion scene. The play, given the characters, could easily fall into the “poor little rich kid” trap, but rather brilliantly does not. It looks to be a lot of fun. It is rather complex design-wise for all involved and should prove an interesting challenge. The costume designer is my friend Oana Botez-Ban who I have worked with a number of times before. I always have fun working on shows with her. Her costumes are so fun to light!
March looks to be dance month as I have three different dance shows penciled in for the month. There are still a number of things up in the air so of course some of this is subject to change, but it looks to be a nice winter by all counts.
It’s not literal Mister Sleepy
Monday, October 16th, 2006I suggest there are two kinds of theater.
One kind ‘talks about’ things and suggests at least a possible ‘resolution’ to the issues raised.
The second kind EMBODIES in its style and structure the often agitated ebb and flow that consciousness experiences in its collisions with life– understanding that nothing is ever ‘resolved’, but rather that all things change into other things before there is any possible ‘resolution’.
So this second—which is my theater, of course—is about “nothing” that can be discussed, but deeply about the
moment to moment experience of the flux of the real—i.e. impulse giving way to new impulse giving way to new impulse.
-Richard Foreman
My first experience with Richard Foreman’s work was shortly after I had moved to New York, it was Maria Del Bosco. The experience was like nothing I had ever seen before. Here, among many other things, was a totally non-literal theatrical event that still managed to follow the dramatic arc of the three act well made play. I was, to say the least, amazed.
What I love about Foreman’s work is how ephemeral it is. Even within the event itself. It is a constantly changing and shifting thing that becomes its own opposite and then disappears for a while only to reappear again as something else. His work fails the audience when that audience attempts to fix the work in place. When one looks out for a singular or literal meaning the work dissolves like the morning light on fragile mist. The work is gone and what is left looks to be nothing more than a sham.
Yet the work is no sham. It is a powerful and living thing. But to be understood it must be addressed as the living thing that it is. The theatre is “about ‘nothing’ that can be discussed.” I do not like talking about his plays after seeing them. I will communicate emotions and impressions, but for me they do not live in the place of intellectualization. And further, when I try and intellectualize them, as I did with Zomboid the piece begins to break apart inside my mind.
An openness is needed to engage his works. They do not seduce you with the easy and simple tropes of much theatre. They are not ‘pretty’ things, though they are beautiful. That distinction is important when engaging with his work. They are not ‘nice’ but they do have immense compassion and understanding of and for the human condition. In short, they are not easy.
I saw The Gods Are Pounding My Head! with my good friend Oana who did the costumes. The two of us sat in the back of his small theatre laughing uproariously at the absurdity of the situation. I think it might have been one of the funniest plays I had seen in quite some time. Yet once I was out of the “moment to moment experience of the flux of the real” I am not so sure I could explain what it was that was so amusing.
His plays are like a powerful dream. They can be such deep and intense experiences as they are happening and yet they burn away like the morning mist upon the hard light of reason. In fact, applying classical reason to his works inherently fails to understand it and causes his otherwise beautiful creations to have little to no value for the spectator. The fault is not his. If it does not make sense to you, your unconscious mind may be dead.
Theatre Blog Worth Watching
Tuesday, October 10th, 2006Link
I think that is really the goal of every new production: to create a work that rattles both the work itself and the worldview of those experiencing it contemporaneously.
If you don’t think that’s possible, the next performance I saw was proof positive that even a work with many faults can appear like a masterwork in a production that is burning to say something about our reality today.
