SDC Journal Summer 2018 by SDC Journal

SUMMER 2018

CAMILLE A. BROWN ILLUMINATING THE INVISIBLE AURAL HISTORY DIRECTORS + SOUND DESIGNERS IN DIALOGUE

VIRTUAL REALITY THE CREATORâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S POINT OF VIEW ALSO RACHEL DICKSTEIN KHOLOUD SAWAF STEPHEN A. SCHRUM LEE WILKINS

OFFICERS

Pam MacKinnon PRESIDENT

John Rando EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

Michael John Garcés VICE PRESIDENT

Michael Wilson TREASURER

Evan Yionoulis SECRETARY

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Laura Penn COUNSEL

Ronald H. Shechtman HONORARY ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Karen Azenberg Pamela Berlin Julianne Boyd Marshall W. Mason Ted Pappas Susan H. Schulman

SDC EXECUTIVE BOARD

SDC JOURNAL

MEMBERS OF BOARD

MANAGING EDITOR

Christopher Ashley Melia Bensussen Walter Bobbie Anne Bogart Jo Bonney Mark Brokaw Joe Calarco Rachel Chavkin Desdemona Chiang Liz Diamond Marcia Milgrom Dodge Sheldon Epps Liza Gennaro Wendy C. Goldberg Joseph Haj Linda Hartzell Anne Kauffman Dan Knechtges Mark Lamos Kathleen Marshall Meredith McDonough Sharon Ott Lonny Price Ruben Santiago-Hudson Seret Scott Bartlett Sher Leigh Silverman Casey Stangl Eric Ting

Kate Chisholm FEATURES EDITOR

Elizabeth Bennett GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Elizabeth Nelson EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Jo Bonney Graciela Daniele Sheldon Epps Liza Gennaro Thomas Kail Robert O'Hara Ann M. Shanahan Leigh Silverman Evan Yionoulis

SDCJ-PRS PEER REVIEWERS

Donald Byrd Jonathan Cole Thomas Costello Kathryn Ervin Liza Gennaro Travis Malone Sam O'Connell Ruth Pe Palileo Scot Reese Stephen A. Schrum SUMMER 2018 CONTRIBUTORS

Heather Arnson DIRECTOR

Assaf Benchetrit UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

Megan E. Carter CREATIVE PRODUCER + DRAMATURG

SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION EDITORIAL BOARD

Kamilah Forbes

SDCJ-PRS CO-EDITORS

Jim Knable

David Callaghan Ann M. Shanahan SDCJ-PRS BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

Kathleen M. McGeever

DIRECTOR

PLAYWRIGHT

Irene Lewis DIRECTOR

Kholoud Sawaf

SDCJ-PRS ASSOCIATE BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

DIRECTOR

Emily A. Rollie

Stephen A. Schrum

SDCJ-PRS SENIOR ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Anne Bogart Anne Fliotsos Joan Herrington James Peck

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH GREENSBURG

Seret Scott DIRECTOR

Steve Scott DIRECTOR

Jeanne Tiehen WAYNE STATE COLLEGE

Lee Wilkins CHOREOGRAPHER

Evan Yionoulis DIRECTOR

SDC JOURNAL is published quarterly by Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, located at 321 W. 44th Street, Suite 804, New York, NY 10036. ISSN 2576-6899 © 2018 Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. All rights reserved. SDC JOURNAL is a registered trademark of SDC. SUBSCRIPTIONS + ADVERTISEMENTS Call 212.391.1070 or visit www.SDCweb.org. Annual SDC Membership dues include a $5 allocation for a 1-year subscription to SDC JOURNAL. Non-Members may purchase an annual subscription for $36 (domestic), $72 (foreign); single copies cost $10 each (domestic), $20 (foreign). Purchase online at www.SDCweb.org. Also available at the Drama Book Shop in New York, NY. POSTMASTER Send address changes to SDC JOURNAL, SDC, 321 W. 44th Street, Suite 804, New York, NY 10036. PRINTED BY Sterling Printing

SDC JOURNAL

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Tilly Grimes with Edward T. Morris at Goodspeed Musicals PHOTO Diane Sobolewski

SUMMER

32 Designers’ Tools

CONTENTS

SOME THINGS CHANGE + SOME STAY THE SAME

Volume 6 | No. 4

MODERATED BY HEATHER

FEATURES

ARNSON

41 PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

COVER

The Movement’s Voice

Illuminating the Invisible

BY ASSAF

AN INTERVIEW WITH CAMILLE A. BROWN

EDITED BY DAVID

BENCHETRIT CALLAGHAN + ANN M. SHANAHAN

BY KAMILAH FORBES

22 The Creator’s Point of View AN INTERVIEW WITH BAY RAITT BY EVAN

YIONOULIS

27 Aural History DIRECTORS + SOUND DESIGNERS IN DIALOGUE MODERATED AND EDITED BY JIM

KNABLE

Elisheb a Ittoo

SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL

0 Questions: 2 Rachel Dickstein on Design, Technology + Immersive Storytelling BY MEGAN

E. CARTER

Kristen Sieh in The World Is Round at BAM Fisher, directed by Rachel Dickstein PHOTO Todd France

5 FROM THE PRESIDENT

SDCJ-PRS BOOK REVIEW

Documenting Performance: The Context and Processes of Digital Curation and Archiving

National Association of Schools of Theatre (NAST) Annual Meeting

Edited by Toni Sant REVIEW BY JEANNE TIEHEN

BY PAM

MACKINNON

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR BY LAURA PENN

IN YOUR WORDS

What I Learned...

BY LEE

WILKINS CURATED BY SERET SCOTT

hy I Made That Choice W BY KHOLOUD SAWAF

Pre-Show/Post-Show

BY STEPHEN

A. SCHRUM

SDC FOUNDATION

The “Mr. Abbott” Award Gala

IN MEMORIAM

Remembering Paul Weidner

BY IRENE

LEWIS + SERET SCOTT

Remembering Donald McKayle

Remembering Rachel Rockwell

BY STEVE

THE SOCIETY PAGES

National Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival

Semi-Annual Membership Meeting

LORT Spring Conference

SDCF Artists Conversation

New Dramatists 69th Anniversary Spring Luncheon

DPE-AEMI Meeting

Directors Lab West

2018 Chita Rivera Awards

36th Annual Elliot Norton Awards

Past Presidents’ Lunch

Tony Toast Celebration

SDC LEGACY

SCOTT

Michael Bennett

SDC JOURNAL

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COVER

Whitney Browne

FROM THE PRESIDENT As I write, I am but a few weeks into my new job as Artistic Director at American Conservatory Theater. No more “designate” after the title. It is on me to see that the season that I planned over the last few months is now produced. I am particularly excited about the unique perspective and opportunity afforded me to host artists, including fellow SDC Members, and to make sure that they can work to the best of their imaginative capabilities. Even with all the theatres in the country, it’s a relative few of us who have this privilege. Not only thinking about work for the stage in terms of what I would like to direct and build through rehearsal and conversation, but also watching different directors this season work with their creative teams, and how that alchemy interacts with our audiences, will be a truly thrilling experience. This first season is something of a test balloon that will help inform how the organization moves forward. Each day here, I am reminded of why it is so essential that artists belong in the leadership roles at our theatres. These institutions are in the business of making art; who better than artists to lead them? Even those, like myself, who have never run an organization before can understand beyond the walls of casting rooms and rehearsal halls and stages. We constantly balance the needs of an entire production with the needs and talents of those who we have assembled to create it. We must think on our feet, be awake at every moment, while also considering the long-term effects of each decision, holding in mind at every turn the long-term goal—namely a successfully staged show—with the immediate and countless details that will create the groundwork for its success. Directors and choreographers are leaders with vision. I am happy to be a working director at A.C.T. and a guest artist at other theatres too, but also now with the great responsibility of an institution to shepherd, value, and grow. I take this new job very seriously. It is not lost on me that my new artistic home exists not far from the fabled Silicon Valley, where the technologies that have shaped the last four decades of American life were born. I am all too aware how the work done nearby has allowed technology to creep ever further into our lives and into our entertainment. The phones we carry have more computer power in them than the computers that landed men on the moon. But as awe-inspiring as those tech achievements may be, they were only possible because of teams of talented, creative, and imaginative people who joined together in a common pursuit. That is the same job with which we’re tasked with each and every production, and even if our work individually doesn’t have the same global reach of a new app, we unite people in common goals, whether we’re working out an intricate dance or illuminating a single moment of beauty for 99 or 1,040—the seating size of the A.C.T.’s Geary Theater—souls gathered together to share something real rather than virtual. This issue highlights some tools and the thinking behind technology’s use. But in our field, we must remember that the tools are secondary to story and equipment secondary to people. That’s why, even as I take on an enormous new challenge in my own career, I remain utterly committed to working on your behalf as President of SDC, because we make the product that speaks to me and to all of us most deeply: theatre. In Solidarity,

Pam MacKinnon Executive Board President

SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Remember bulletin boards? Not cork boards—the online kind. According to Techopedia, “A Bulletin Board System (BBS) refers to text-based online communities that users can log into over the internet using dedicated software.”

firsthand, I am not sure I would believe it. How it will happen will likely always be a mystery to me, but I’ll bet it will be sooner rather than later. With advances in technology, the work now does lift off the screen, I’ll admit. There are audiences for your work in digital form and we have the tools to both create and capture your vision.

The BBS originated in the ’70s; by 1994, there were 60,000 in existence, with about 17 million users typing away. This was before the World Wide Web was widely adopted, and so users were connected directly to one another, somehow, through cyberspace. It is estimated that there are 3.58 billion users on the web today.

In this issue, we attempt to share a mere fraction of what’s rolling around out there as technology advances and affects theatremakers. The tools sound designers have at their fingertips today have exponentially expanded these artists’ capacity to contribute to the very center of your process alongside your other design partners. Whether it be previz software’s ability to allow creative teams to “collaborate in a virtual world,” according to Lee Wilkins; Lap Chi Chu working with “intuitive” design tools; or what photogrammetry means for projection designing, new technology and tools for design and collaboration are changing the nature of your work.

It wasn’t long before programmers had developed the capacity to add graphics and allow us to exchange audio clips and files while we simultaneously chatted. I do not purport to have even the most rudimentary understanding of what happened next, but it was something about dynamic page implementation that led to the HTML web page, which led to the demand for faster modems, which led to an explosion of internet service providers. Many more forwardthinking people imagined a thousand other things, and here we are. My husband was a big BBS user. I was managing a LORT theatre at the time, clumsily figuring out where to plug in my first-generation desktop. Knowing my passion for storytelling, he thought I should produce a serial that people could watch on their computers. I remember being completely confused about what that would even look like. I like to believe my lack of imagination was stunted by my love of the live experience. I thought, if I wanted to make work on a screen, there was TV, wasn’t there? And why would I want to do TV? Of course, back then, it didn’t seem so interesting. Besides, no one was watching anything on their computers at the time. All I saw was text. But, mostly, I could not imagine doing anything that didn’t involve the moment when the lights went down and then came up in a space where people had gathered to watch a story unfold—together.

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Fast-forward to my work today, where I spend considerable time working through how the digital world is changing the ways in which directors’ and choreographers’ work is both made and exploited. It is a thrilling and perplexing moment. I can’t allow myself to dismiss any possibility because we are here to ensure you and your work are protected, however it is manifested. In this issue, when I read Bay Raitt talk about a time in the nottoo-distant future when we will be able to watch a live performance, in 3-D, on our coffee table, I think, why, of course! Although, if it weren’t for the fact that I have been in Bay’s studio and experienced some of his work

It’s good to hear that even as we lean heavily into technology, many artists will continue to seek a grounding in the present, the live. It is great to have production meetings via Skype, preliminary designs viewable in Dropbox, and notes by way of texting, but I know many directors and choreographers who are not ready to forgo the model on the table—to touch and move, much like Ann Hould-Ward’s pen and paintbrush—and the flow of energy. Clearly, we are amid a technological revolution in the theatre and in our culture. I am not certain where in the revolution we are—the beginning, middle, or the end, as the possibilities of what is still to come seem limitless—and yet the changes in the past decade are so profound. We are also likely in the early stages of another kind of revolution: of voices, culture, style. Ideas. Values. A way of working. Camille Brown, Rachel Dickstein, and Kholoud Sawaf are but three of many SDC Members taking us someplace new. Camille has clearly brought a kind of sensibility, style, and strength to our stages; Rachel offers insight into her ingenious blend of art, feminist politics, and technology; and Kholoud, a “rising” director, as she self-identifies, calls out to writers to do better in the stories they tell as she shares the power of “no.” We also share last spring’s celebration of Julie Taymor, when SDCF bestowed the coveted “Mr. Abbott” Award on her for lifetime achievement. Revolutions. Revolutionaries. High-tech or no tech. You call us together into the light— whether around a fire, an LED par can, or a laser hologram— to hear a story and know we are not alone in our laughter, our fears, and our desire to understand and, in turn, impact our world. In Solidarity,

Laura Penn Executive Director

IN YOUR WORDS What I Learned... Why I Made That Choice Pre-Show/Post-Show 20 Questions

CONTRIBUTE If you wish to contribute to IN YOUR WORDS, would like to respond to any of the articles, opinions, or views expressed in SDC Journal, or have an idea for an article, please email Letters@SDCweb.org. Include your full name, city + state. We regret that we are unable to respond to every letter.

Lee Wilkins working with previz software

WHAT I LEARNED…

BY LEE

I have always been very adept at and interested in technology and electronics, and how they can help my work and help a team work effectively together. For years, as a dance captain, I kept intense notes for myself and was always looking for ways to organize and digitize the information. Later, as I became a choreographer and a director, that training as a dance captain came in handy. I already use Stage Write to organize charts, Google Docs for cast/costume tracking, a white model to discuss set use and transitions, and iMovie to organize pre-production videos together to prepare for rehearsals. I had become incredibly familiar with all my normal tools. Recently, I added a new tool to my arsenal. I directed the NBC Universal Upfront at Radio City Music Hall and was working with a team of people who think and work on massive scales. Shows like the Oscars, the VMAs, and world tours for P!nk and Taylor Swift were all familiar and referenced in meetings. The upfront is a two-hour parade of every network under the NBCUniversal umbrella, each with its own interest in wowing the audience of advertising executives who are ready to purchase commercial time for the upcoming year. With the magnitude of this production came a new scale and a new set of tools.

WILKINS CURATED BY SERET SCOTT

One particular tool is frequently referenced as the “previz.” Step aside, white model! It is a tool called Cinema 4D and is frequently used for rock-and-roll shows, but it was new to me. Using a scan of Radio City with laser accuracy, my team created a digital set that can be viewed from any angle in the theatre and can digitally animate through every set move, all screen content, and each lighting cue in real time. Not only could I check sight lines, but also I could pre-program the entire show with incredible accuracy. It became very clear to me that the time we saved by animating or “previzing” the entire show saved us hours of tech time and thousands of dollars in union labor. Not only did the technology save time and money, but also it facilitated digital collaboration among the entire team. From my director-cut digital model to the set animator to the lighting designer to the screen content producer, the entire creative team was collaborating in a virtual world. We could take the team’s collaborative data gathered from the software and seamlessly export it into to the full-scale set and lighting in Radio City. No more guessing the accel or decel on the set piece or even its exact target on stage. I would often remember many early mornings working as the associate choreographer on the Broadway production of Cinderella, and hours of dry tech. With 40 automated pieces, it took a very long time to create one cue, while teams of highly paid people waited. Any moment spent in tech is money spent. It made me think that maybe there is a world in which the time spent in dry tech on a Broadway show could be greatly

reduced by having a “previz” virtual production ready to go. Theatre has always been beautifully steeped in tradition but is sometimes slow to catch the wave of new technology. The trap door, fly system, or moving lights are all standard issue and it is always comfortable to use what we already know works. For me, it is exciting to be on the front edge of technology and push the possibilities with new and exciting tools. We all do pre-production, so why not add a “previz” and use technology to take what is familiar to a new level of collaboration and efficiency? LEE WILKINS is a director, choreographer, and performer. Direction/choreography: NBC Universal 2018 Upfront (Radio City Music Hall), The Little Mermaid (Casa Mañana), First Date (Straz Center). Television choreography: The Late Show with Steven Colbert (CBS), The Hatfields and McCoys (NBC pilot), Alpha House (Amazon Studios). Broadway associate choreographer: Bright Star, It Shoulda Been You, First Date, Cinderella. Other associate credits: Grand Hotel (New York City Center Encores!), Evita (Asolo Rep), Carousel (English National Opera), Big River (New York City Center Encores!), Guys and Dolls (Old Globe and Asolo Rep), Paint Your Wagon (5th Avenue Theatre), Company (Avery Fisher Hall). Broadway performances: Elf (original cast); Spamalot; Wonderful Town; Kiss Me, Kate. National tour performances: Cats; How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying; Kiss Me, Kate; and Guys and Dolls.

SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL

Sometime as directors, we have to say no. As a Syrian Muslim woman director in the United States, I often get approached with projects that aim to speak to my identity and perspective. Though it is wonderful that there is a notion in the theatre scene in the United States to tell different stories and hear from different voices, cultural and religious accuracy are still not getting enough focus and support during the selection process.

WHY I MADE THAT CHOICE BY KHOLOUD

SAWAF

“

I invite artists to know they have the power to say no when they disagree with a piece and its core values.

” 8

SDC JOURNAL

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As the director I am, I have had to say no and turn down 6-8 projects in the last couple years that invited my involvement at different professional levels. Each time I was approached, I was excited for the potential opportunity, only to discover that the piece—usually written by a white, privileged American artist with good intentions but little firsthand experience—was incredibly offensive to my culture and/or religion. The plays trafficked in stereotypes of terrorists, downtrodden Muslim women, fundamentalist doctrine, or other clichés that are unrecognizable to me and my Muslim friends and colleagues. There seems to be a great desire to write plays about Islam as well as about Syria, and though that is a welcome gesture toward learning and exposure, I’m struggling as a Syrian and as a Muslim with works that lack true perspective. Many of those plays were very well intended with a good message, but due to the lack of authenticity in the voice, they made me feel othered and alienated as a Muslim and reduced to an issue as a Syrian. As a rising director, I want and need these opportunities, and I’m always appreciative to be asked to consider a project, but when I read a script that I feel I can’t stand behind in front of my cast, let alone in front of an audience, I always choose to say no. On some occasions, I have reached out to playwrights directly to share feedback but have rarely received a welcome response, which I find sad and disappointing. I invite playwrights to talk to people with firsthand perspective when making a play and potentially co-create it with them. I hope that

playwrights realize that such issues need more than a couple months of research, and hope that they also come to value accuracy as much as artistic advancement. That accuracy will only be achieved by true collaborations with people with perspective—not only with actors who have little control in the room, but also creators who have an equal voice. I also invite theatre leaders to seek input from those voices before programming a piece that might seem “diverse” or well-intentioned when they read it but might not be aware that the piece, in fact, might be doing more harm than good. Playwrights who couldn’t locate Syria on the map nine years ago and who now feel they should and can write a piece about the Syrian refugees and our struggle treat me as an issue instead of seeing me as a human being with a history and future, and needs and wants. The news has turned Syrians into a symbol of violence and Islam to ideas and stereotypes, and I choose to say no to that. I don’t belong to any of those ideas, and I know many of my fellow Syrians and fellow Muslims don’t either. Today, I invite artists to know they have the power to say no when they disagree with a piece and its core values. We have to stop being the means/ladder of someone else’s career advancement. I am sure that there are other pieces on the way, pieces that we can stand behind and defend and feel proud to be part of. KHOLOUD SAWAF is a native Syrian from Damascus and has worked in documentary filmmaking and theatre in Beirut, Syria, Dubai, and the US. She holds a B.A. in Mass Communication from the American University of Shajrah and an M.F.A. in Directing from the University of Arkansas. She is adapting and directing an original adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, R&J Damascus, in collaboration with TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, AR. The project was awarded a $250,000 grant from the Doris Duke Foundation’s Building Bridges Program. Directing credits include: Vietgone (TheatreSquared); Merci Maurer and Veils (ArkansasStaged); Summer 840 (Skyline Theatre, United Arab Emirates); Damascus: A Red Rose (AlQabbani Theatre, Syria). Assistant directing: Vietgone at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Manhattan Theatre Club with director May Adrales, Cymbeline (Shakespeare & Company) with director Tina Packer. Kholoud is a Drama League Directing Fellow, an Associate Member of SDC, and a member of Nihna Cultural Group in Damascus.

designers, and technicians—see collaboration, above. Also, my particular talent for multitasking in the rehearsal process feeds into my role as director.

PRE-SHOW / POST-SHOW WITH

STEPHEN A. SCHRUM UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT GREENSBURG What I love about the theatre is...the collaborative work with others. Even though I am an only child, I do enjoy teamwork, and I revel in the creation of something that is greater than our individual contributions because we work on it together. I became a director because...ever since I have been involved in the arts, it’s always been what I wanted to do. In high school, I directed short films; when I started doing theatre in college, I liked acting, but for me, the phrase “But I really want to direct” was absolutely true. I like being the person who brings together actors,

Some of my favorite productions I have directed have been...the Rodgers and Hammerstein revue Some Enchanted Evening; for this show, I had my actors find costumes and props that fit their songs so they would, for example, create the surrey with the fringe on top with objects “found” on a cluttered stage as they cleaned up throughout the performance. Noises Off, just because it was such good, rollicking, farcical fun (and the show that most people commented on positively for years to come). Man of La Mancha and The Tempest, both of which celebrate theatre as a creative art—Quixote through his dramatic storytelling and Prospero as the consummate director. The production I talk about the most, though, is Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis, which was a true collaboration; the show included graphic and video projections, Butoh-like moments, and hallucinatory soundscapes, and everyone involved in the show contributed ideas for staging, movement, character, and music, which were then incorporated. Before opening, I...remind my actors of two things: one, that each audience will be different and will respond to things differently, so the actors need to listen and be aware of audience response; and two, even though the audience may not react in the way we expect, my actors should never veer far off from how we have rehearsed the show. We’ve spent weeks getting to opening night, refining things, and now it’s time to bring that work to life with an audience. I believe a good director must be able to...keep plays alive by finding new ways to interpret them and to make them meaningful to those who have never seen them before while simultaneously remaining true to the text. The best moments in rehearsal are... when actors are communicating with one another and with their audience of one (me). Everything comes together in a single moment, and I think, “Yes, this is why I do theatre.” The student actors who work with me on more than one show always revel in my announcement of this occurrence, since they know it validates their work, and it provides positive feedback to them that they are at a solid stage of development in the rehearsal process.

Duchess of Malfi or Prospero’s “captain’s log” entries for our Tempest set in outer space; and the unusual, such as productions of The Bacchae and Prometheus Bound in the 3-D virtual world of Second Life®. Both of these utilized actors in various locations (across the US and Canada), bringing together people who would not otherwise have been able to perform together. Some of the plays or musicals I would like to do are...Sweeney Todd and Les Misérables, not only because I found the original productions of these two shows inspiring but also because they are excellent expressions of our theatrical art. (It is well known that I don’t like many musicals because I find their politics wanting. “Grease? It’s all about conformity!”) The one production I feel driven to do is the one suggested by my dissertation, which dealt with staging Goethe’s Faust. This would be an edited/shortened version, of course, but would allow me to explore one important theme for all creative artists and for theatre artists especially: to never cease striving and to continue moving ever upward. A most important lesson for young directors is...learning how to make choices that arise organically from the text work theatrically and dramatically on stage. One of the main things I try to impart to my directing students is the use of the term “valid choices” rather than “right choices.” “Right” tends to suggest that there is only one right and many wrong answers. “Valid” suggests that there may be a myriad of valid answers that can work in the context of a scene. When an actor or director opens up to more than one possible way of looking at a moment, he or she takes the first step to being a truly creative artist. STEPHEN SCHRUM is Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, and coordinator for the campus Arts Entrepreneurship Certificate program. With a Ph.D. in Dramatic Art from the University of California, Berkeley, Stephen also teaches playwriting, directing, advanced acting, independent film, and drama on film. His article “How to Win Intro to Theatre” was published in the July 2017 online edition of Theatre Topics. He has performed his full-length monologue, Immaculate Misconceptions, and directed the world premiere of his musical Dog Assassin. Listen to his podcast, Audio Chimera, and see his website, musofyr.com—pronounced “muse of fire”—for more info.

Some of the innovative ways I use technology in productions are...the usual, such as projections of surveillance video in The

SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL

Brad Culver + Jiehae Park in Haruki Murakami’s Sleep at BAM Next Wave Festival, directed by Rachel Dickstein PHOTO Max Gordon

Describe your relationship with design and technology in two words. In love. What do you consider your role as director/ choreographer to be? I think of myself as hosting one big conversation. I want to provoke a communal curiosity. I invite a talented bunch of artists to spend time dreaming together, wondering, “What if…?” I take those investigations and layer them into story compositions that explore possibilities visually, sonically, kinetically.

QUESTIONS RACHEL DICKSTEIN ON DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY + IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING Creative producer and dramaturg Megan E. Carter, former director of SDC Foundation, has worked with RACHEL DICKSTEIN and her company, Ripe Time, in multiple capacities. She recently talked with Rachel about how she approaches design and technology in her work.

With your company, Ripe Time, you adapt literary works for the stage. What themes and ideas are you drawn to? I’m a die-hard feminist, so women’s stories have always been my focus. I am especially drawn to writers who trace the lives of independentminded women, navigating thorny societal constructs. I want to tell stories about mavericks who try to change the world, even in small ways. And I partner with like-minded playwrights to spread the gospel.

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How do you download ideas to designers? I invite them into the workshop process. At that phase, things are pretty embryonic, so we look at research together, develop strands of ideas with the actors and the writer, and see where to take them.

Do you approach design elements one at a time, or do you like to bring all the ideas together at once? I tend to think associatively. I have an impulse, and it might be bound up in multiple design elements, or it’s not immediately clear whether it’s light or sound or projections. If I put the impulse out to my team, then the designers can offer multiple points of view. I also don’t insist a designer only speaks to her area—I want people to cross boundaries. For example, the

As a director/choreographer, what do you want technology to do? I stay away from the mechanics of how things get done and leave that up to the designers and technicians. That being said, I rely on technology SDC JOURNAL

At what point in your process do you start working with designers? Before I even know I’m definitely working on something. The conversation helps me understand my route in so I know it’s a piece I need to do.

How do you upload ideas from designers? Designers contribute invaluable ideas to the physical vocabulary of the piece as it’s being choreographed, and their impulses on physical space really galvanize my staging.

How do you define “technology” in theatre? The key to crafting beautiful images on stage.

to create deeply immersive worlds for my pieces. Design takes us into dreamscapes, interior worlds, which is where I’m most excited theatrically.

PHOTO

Todd France

wonderful Jiyoun Chang, who designed lights for Sleep, offered me just as many invaluable ideas on set and dramaturgy as she did on lighting. Her instincts about space and storytelling are so on target. I want to invite cross-disciplinary conversations.

acknowledged the reality of the house but also allowed Chekhov’s words to be surrounded by a landscape of memory and desire. I fell in love with that way of seeing Chekhov. In Septimus and Clarissa, the world you created was highly transformative— everything moved. How did you create that on a minimal budget? I don’t think about budget when I envision a world—I dream about what sights, sounds, shapes, and textures belong there. Certainly,

How does choreography relate to scenery? The movement of the set should be completely integral to the telling of the story. In the workshop process, designers, actors, and I can experiment with the idea immediately in space and imagine how the actors’ physical score can be wrapped Haruki Murakami’s Sleep at BAM up with the design Next Wave Festival, directed by element. Usually, it Rachel Dickstein PHOTO Max Gordon becomes clear if the idea has muscle, if the dialogue between the body and the object or architecture takes on something dynamic. I love building moving sets and objects into the physical score—it creates a total transformation of the world. Your first foray into working with video design was Fire Throws, an adaptation of Antigone, with Ripe Time in 2009. Why? I imagined Antigone playing out as a memory, as if we were inside her mind right before her death, in the cave in which Creon imprisons her. I wondered if the events of the original story could play out like memories un-scrolling in projected images on the walls of the cave. Designers Maya Ciarrocchi, Susan Zeeman Rogers, and I created layers of black scrim for projections, so the sense of envelopment came from projections on multiple vertical surfaces and the floor. The stage became a container within which light and projection animated Antigone’s thoughts. Your work always has a handmade feeling to it—you can almost see the brushstrokes of the artists involved. Is that an intentional aesthetic choice or a product of process? I respond to the text for each show and trust that intuition. Projection designer Hannah Wasileski and I collaborated on a production of Sarah Ruhl’s version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters that was quite tactile—it was a design based on memory and nostalgia, told through the visual palette of scrapbooks and turn-of-the-century cyanotypes. We loved the handmade, naïve assemblages of scrapbooks in evoking the intimacy of longing. The design was projected on an interior, so it

having a company has helped me think economically, but working without a massive budget allows me to distill ideas to their essence. And you don’t need a lot of money to create visual poetry on stage. In Septimus and Clarissa, Susan Zeeman Rogers and I both wanted the set to move, to let us slip fluidly between one part of London and another, or one state of mind to another. She kept talking about the staircase where Clarissa stands before entering her party. The staircase idea stuck, and we wanted a turntable but couldn’t afford that. We found that having actors move the staircase created that same magical shift in a more dynamic, ensemble-driven way. During war sequences, the unit served as a landscape of trench warfare, in which actors run, climb, and fall in athletic ways. Moving that huge piece around the stage became central to the visual storytelling—the staircase became a battlefield, a townhouse, a garret—a single object that had Clarissa’s world above and Septimus’ below. That metaphor was central to the piece—these two characters, who never meet, were linked inextricably, and the design gave us that.

The World Is Round is adapted from a children’s book by Gertrude Stein and features the imagined adventures of a little girl. What did you ask your designers to try to capture, and how did your vision manifest in the design? The World Is Round is a simple story of a girl on a quest. Confused by the world and her own sense of self, Stein’s young protagonist, Rose, sees a mountain and decides to climb it. The desire to climb, the challenge of the journey, the eerie loneliness atop the mountain once she arrives all relate to growing up, being ambitious, and surmounting obstacles. In theory, we needed a mountain. But set designer Mimi Lien’s first impulse when we read the script was to create a visual palindrome: a square, white, raked floor mirrored overhead by a white ceiling that opens like the cover of a book. A circle is cut out of the upper level, allowing ladders, aerial silks and hoops, and objects to drop through it. The space transforms architecturally in each configuration of the ceiling-and-floor relationship. A narrow room transforms into a broad open field and then into a vast open vista. At first, Mimi and I were sure the show didn’t need projections. The piece had a simplicity and naïveté in its aesthetic. We assumed projections would add a techno sheen that would feel too polished. But Hannah Wasileski offered up this beautiful hand-drawn style that encapsulated the childlike world of Rose and the singsong nature of Stein’s text. The rhythm of light and projection matched the movement inside Heather Christian’s soulful score—the imagery and color palette of the lights and video responded to the mood and tone of these shifts with playfulness and dynamism. And how did Rose climb the “mountain”? It’s a very nonliteral world. On my first read of the source text, I felt like the mountain didn’t need to be real—it was a metaphor for an impossible challenge, for ambition, for the effort women and girls make to survive. So Mimi Lien, Nicki Miller (aerial choreographer), and I gave Kristen Sieh (who played Rose) verticality with aerial ropes and custom-built rope ladders instead of a physical incline. The effort of the climb was very real, and the aerials gave us height and danger. To capture the final moment of Rose reaching the top of the mountain, we SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL

had her actually disappear through the circle in the “ceiling.” The whole ceiling then magically lowers to the ground, leaving Rose on a hoop 15 feet above the floor, suspended and alone. The transformation of the space is like Stein’s writing: shocking, simple, radical, and very nonliteral. In your recent production of Sleep at BAM, you dramatized a story by Haruki Murakami adapted by Naomi Iizuka that took place in the mind of a housewife. How did you invite the audience into her mind? What grounded my visual imagination was Naomi’s language and actor Jiehae Park’s masterful embrace of direct address, which anchored the audience in that interior space. Jiehae used Naomi’s words to welcome the audience into her experience like a trusted confidant, with enthusiasm, relish, and a bit of danger. The textual anchor freed us to create a sonically immersive and visually transformative environment. I wanted the audience to be welcomed into the ocean of her thoughts and then give them enough breath in their lungs to live underwater and explore.

Kristen Sieh in The World Is Round at BAM Fisher, directed by Rachel Dickstein PHOTO Todd France

Septimus and Clarissa at Baruch Performing Arts Center, directed by Rachel Dickstein PHOTO Richard Finkelstein

Describe a perfect moment of design synergy in one of your shows. The opening moments of Septimus and Clarissa. Our giant staircase is swirling through the space with Clarissa atop it, and I think, yes, we are in a tempest of someone’s mind. It’s beautiful and violent and has the velocity of the speeding thoughts of someone on the edge of madness. Ellen McLaughlin’s adaptation of the source text, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and our staging and design captured the sensory so exquisitely—it had to, because the source text is linguistically a master work at capturing sensation. I’ve always felt that alongside Woolf’s words, my work with design takes on new heights—the language and the environment become beautifully inseparable.

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What are some of the projects you are working on outside of Ripe Time? I’m working on two new operas and my first film right now, an adaptation I am writing of a Jhumpa Lahiri story set in Italy. I’m headed there this summer to finish writing it and develop it with students. Film is a whole new world for me, but it feels like a natural fit for how I create visually.

What is the next story you want to tell? A modern Odyssey, with a young woman revolutionary at the core. I’m working with playwright Dipika Guha on the story of a young woman lost on her journey home returning from a war. I imagine she’s kind of like Emma Gonzalez. She is a revolutionary. An idealist. She believes she can be president one day. And she wins a war. Her Troy is that she’s toppled a certain fascist dictator and brought equality and tolerance. It’s using the Odyssey to tell a story about idealism and feminism; about women achieving triumph and power, only to be trailed by erasure and judgment. #MeToo is inspiring and chilling—women can now speak about their trauma, but speaking about it doesn’t resolve the hurt and pain of that trauma. There is such hope in today’s embrace of women’s radicalism, but to me, it’s complicated in the same way that Odysseus’ “journey home” is complicated. Women carry wounds from the battles we have fought, and I want to make a modern myth to celebrate this profound resilience. If money were no obstacle, what is your dream project? To keep working with stories of women’s lives, told with a deep sense of visual adventure. And since we’re talking about technology, I’ve long wanted to create soundscapes where text and music and sound were delivered intimately to each audience member, like a Janet Cardiff installation. I would love to play with scale and motion using augmented or virtual reality on stage. Imagine the Odyssey through this lens. This kind of imaging could give this epic myth such visual complexity and wonder. I want to push the boundaries of how design on stage can suggest the limitlessness of dreams with no boundaries.

Illuminating the Invisible AN INTERVIEW WITH DANCER/CHOREOGRAPHER CAMILLE A. BROWN BY KAMILAH

FORBES

Dancer and choreographer CAMILLE A. BROWN is everywhere these days. On Broadway with Once on This Island. At the Kennedy Center with ink, a dance work in a trilogy about identity. On NBC’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert broadcast. And as she travels in and out of rehearsal halls and between cities, Brown and members of her eponymous dance company (Camille A. Brown & Dancers) lead community engagement activities bringing about social change at schools and community centers. No wonder the Ford Foundation awarded her its Art of Change Fellowship for 2017–18.

PHOTO

Whitney Browne

Brown spoke recently with her collaborator, colleague, and fellow SDC Member KAMILAH FORBES, Executive Producer at the Apollo Theater in New York City.

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KAMILAH | Camille, you are a celebrated choreographer, dancer, creative thinker, and dance ethnographer, and you’ve danced with a lot of different companies. Did you always want to be a dancer? How did you first come to dance? And then how did you first come to choreography? CAMILLE | I always wanted to be a dancer. I always wanted to move. When I was four years old, my mom saw my love of dance and put me in classes at the Bernice Johnson Cultural Arts Center in Queens. I could take up to three classes (tap, ballet, African), but my mom was worried I would be overwhelmed and signed me up for just two (tap and ballet). She saw how disappointed I was at the June concert when the other children were putting on their African costumes to perform. She signed me up for all three the next year.

see the Ailey dancers in action. I said, “Oh my goodness, I can travel the world, dance, and get paid for it? Wow!” The problem was that while I had teachers who believed in me and would help me achieve my goals, I also had teachers for whom I didn’t fit “the ideal” body type. I was being introduced to the business aspect of dance. There was a specific look, and I didn’t have it. Those classes were a struggle. I felt invisible and like a failure. Since I wasn’t getting corrections from specific teachers, I decided to take notes that they were giving to everyone else. I always felt that I had to fight and work extra hard. My weight was a big issue. I was told that I was too big and needed to lose weight. I was never surprised when my evaluations came back assigning me to go to the nutritionist. I thought I

So I told myself, “Let me focus on my composition and improv classes.” I didn’t understand the idea of creating dances, but I realized it was an opportunity for me to express my own voice. I was conditioned to be a dancer—not a choreographer. I found my voice and discovered that I didn’t have to wait for anyone to tell me when to dance. I could create the dance myself. KAMILAH | That was a real turning point. You were looking to make a space for yourself. There’s a lot of modern dance rooted in your work as a choreographer and as a dancer. Was theatre a part of your vision that you had for your career from the start? Was it always a part of your passion as you were building your journey in dance?

The Fortress of Solitude at Dallas Theater Center, choreographed by Camille A. Brown PHOTO Karen Almond

My mom loved musicals. She still loves them. She would show me all of her favorite dance scenes, and we would watch them over and over again. I also loved Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson videos. I learned the choreography to all the shows and dance videos and performed in the living room. I also made up dances to the opening credits of the cartoons I used to watch. As I got older, I continued taking dance classes but didn’t know that it was something I could do professionally. I was accepted into LaGuardia High School (the Fame school) and went to the Ailey School. Being an Ailey student, I could

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would be done with weight issues once I started college, but it followed me there as well. That’s how I got into choreography. For the first two years I was in college [at North Carolina School of the Arts], I didn’t dance in any of the shows. I wasn’t asked to even audition for any of them because I was told I wouldn’t fit the costumes. I was ready to transfer as soon as I got there, but my mom encouraged me not to give up. She said that I needed to focus on something other than the fact that I’d been rejected and suggested I put all my energy into something specific.

CAMILLE | The love of theatre never left me, and as I started choreographing, I injected it into my work. I was still very interested in dancing with a company, and in 2001—two months after I graduated from UNCSA—I became a member of Ronald K. Brown/Evidence. I felt at home. Ron’s work wasn’t about body type. The intent and authenticity of your movement was what mattered most. Being in his company proved that having “the ideal” body wasn’t the only way to have a successful career. I was with the company for five seasons, and during that time, I started creating my own

work. Around 2009, I decided to have a company full time! I never wanted one initially, but after a couple of years of creating commissions for other companies, I desired a more focused and intimate rehearsal process. Eventually, I thought, “Well, Camille, you love musicals and you always try to incorporate some aspect of theatre in your work. Maybe you want to think about the possibility of choreographing for theatre.” Theatre and concert dance are completely different worlds, so I didn’t know where to start. Georgiana Pickett, who was the Executive Director of 651 ARTS in Brooklyn at the time, suggested I start speaking it into existence. I decided to do just that. I started telling people I was interested in choreographing for theatre. In 2011, I got an email from Daniel Aukin about a project he was building with [composer] Michael Friedman and [playwright] Itamar Moses. It was called The Fortress of Solitude. I met with Daniel and thought this was an exciting first step into the world of theatre. I didn’t expect to be chosen, because I had no theatre experience. Surprisingly, they hired me! Someone opened the door! I have a special place in my heart for Daniel, Michael, and Itamar. They could have gotten someone who had theatre experience, and they chose someone who had none. Thankfully, my associate choreographer, Marcos Santana, had plenty of experience, so I learned the ropes while working on the show. In the course of being on the project for five years, I got more opportunities to work in theatre. The [2012] Broadway revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, Pins and Needles with the Foundry Theatre, and more. Every time I came back to Fortress, I felt wiser. Working in theatre challenged me in different ways, and the theatre work informed my concert dance work. I was strengthening my storytelling. It also taught me about leadership and what it really means to guide a process. Eventually, I decided to make a major shift. I pulled back from teaching and commissions for other companies to focus on my company work and theatre. It was a risk career-wise and financially, but I wanted to pour my heart into what I really cared about. I started working on Mr. TOL E. RAncE, a work about black stereotypes past and present. The piece also honored African

Camille A. Brown in Mr. TOL E. RAncE, choreographed by Camille A. Brown PHOTO Grant Halverson

Camille A. Brown in Evolution of a Secured Feminine, choreographed by Camille A. Brown PHOTO Christopher Duggan

American humor and the perseverance of the Black performer throughout the years. It was a turning point in my career because it was my first racially charged piece. It was also my first evening-length work. I decided to use social dance as the language to tell the story. I am completely in love with the form. Social dances tell you what time period you’re in and pack a whole lot of history. The way social dances have progressed through time has always fascinated me, and this was a chance to dive deep into the history of it all. My approach challenged the dancers as well. We had always done character work, but with everything I had learned from my theatre experiences, I found new ways to direct them. I started seeing my dancers as actors and not dancers because of what I was requiring them to do. This shift in the way we worked as a company was an emotional experience. We became a stronger company for it. KAMILAH | I’m wondering if that’s the case because, as you said, you borrowed from both forms. What are some of the most important elements of storytelling for you in theatre and in your concert dance work? CAMILLE | The most important thing is: what is the story about and how do we express that in the clearest way? What is the narrative and its arc? What is the journey? How do you challenge audiences? Challenge yourself? I’m always asking myself questions! I have a book for each piece that I create. I started [that practice] with Mr. TOL E. RAncE. If you open the book, you’ll see a series of questions, questions, questions…just asking myself about the work and rehearsal, what I learned, and how I want audiences to feel. I always try to start with a feeling. With TOL E. RAncE, I wanted people to be entertained and then make them extremely uncomfortable and question why they found “the entertainers” so funny. I wanted to pull the rug from underneath them. KAMILAH | I love that the book is full of questions. Where do you find most of your inspiration for your choreographic work? Is it always in this idea of a conversation with the audience?

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CAMILLE | During the process of creating my trilogy on identity, the ideas were definitely inspired by conversations with audiences. But I always allow inspiration to come from other places. Interactions on the subway, personal experiences, the politics of the day, reading a book, hearing a song...I leave myself open to the possibilities.

CAMILLE | My process is challenging. I want each of my pieces to have its own movement language. It should have its own sensibility. That takes time and patience. For my concert dance work, I give myself at least one to two years to create a piece. This desire to have an extensive process really came from theatre. I wanted to give myself the opportunities to fly and fall before showing the work in front of audiences. Or at least get it to a place where my team and I are happy with the work, regardless of what people think.

For me, choreographing is about collaboration. I am not inspired without the choices of the people in the room. It’s very much like social dance. There is a structure, but it’s also about the individual’s creative identity. That’s what makes the dance speak. There is a lot of investigation. I want to have a clear understanding of how the movement and stories shift. Each piece should be different from the last, and the only way to do this is to explore all possibilities. It takes time to develop a language. It can be frustrating at times, but in the end, it’s totally satisfying and worth it. I like challenging myself.

In 2007, I choreographed Evolution of a Secured Feminine, which is a solo. The piece was about a girl who grows up, falls in love, gets her heart broken, and then finds a way to reclaim who she And then, of course, here come all the questions! is. I wanted to use jazz singers: Ella Fitzgerald is my favorite, and she influences me as a dancer At first, I felt really bad about my process. All I because she’s so clear and precise. My objective At times, my process drives me crazy. I’ll have all had were questions. It felt very wrong because is to have the same clarity, range, and precision these ideas that don’t have anything to do with I hadn’t seen other choreographers work in she has in her voice in my body. I also chose each other and can’t make sense of them. I’ve that way. Then I was reading SDC Journal and Nancy Wilson and Betty Carter. I wanted to learned how to embody their navigate through sounds and this. It’s a very transform the Fana Fraser + Beatrice Capote in BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play, choreographed by Camille A. Brown strange and instrument of PHOTO Christopher Duggan awkward feeling their voices into a to not understand body language. how things are lining up, but City of Rain I’ve learned to (2010) is a work trust that the I created about ideas are coming a friend of mine as they should who had passed and, eventually, away. He had everything will a severe illness align. that caused him to be paralyzed My dancers, from the waist collaborators, and down. We went to I also have a lot college together, of conversations. and he was a Listening is very dancer. As his important to me. friend, I saw I want my team his struggles to feel that they firsthand. I are contributing wanted to create to the creation something that of the work in honored him. important ways. It’s coming from The first solo me, but it’s also in BLACK GIRL: coming from Linguistic Play them. It’s important to talk and make sure we’re read that I may be referencing the Socratic (2015) is a rendition of Radiohead’s “Everything all on the same page. Everyone performing has Questioning technique. It still may not be exactly in Its Right Place.” We were in tech rehearsal one to believe in every step. Otherwise, the story what I’m doing, but reading it did give me some day at American Dance Festival, and one of the won’t be strong or clear. form of ease. I’m not wrong! It’s just my process! crew members asked to play some music during the break. That song came on, and I said, “I want Because I collaborate with my dancers and give KAMILAH | You have this book with the to dance to that!” them a space to express their feelings, a lot questions. But when you [do] your pre-prep, of my pieces are based on their personalities. do you go in with the questions, build a dance Inspiration comes from everywhere! This was definitely true for the duets in BLACK vocabulary, and then put it on dancers and GIRL: Linguistic Play. I put Beatrice [Capote] and actors? Or do you get in the room with your KAMILAH | It’s as though your surroundings Fana [Fraser] together because they just clicked. dancers and actors and build a vocabulary? are what influence you. The questions are what They had a nice energy together. The way they influences you. So let me ask you this: when interacted was very sisterly. Their duet became CAMILLE | I build it on myself first but leave you’re choreographing or building a work— about sisters—one older, one younger—who space for the dancers and actors to have their whether it’s concert dance, whether it’s TOL were growing up at different frequencies and own interpretations of the movement. E. RAncE, or like the piece influenced by your how they navigated their relationship while friend…walk me through your process. growing up. Cab Catherine Foster and I have

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known each other since we were 15, so we have always shared that sisterhood and camaraderie thing. Our duet is about best friends who never leave each other’s side and connect through rhythm, social dance, and the beat of the street. For the last session of BLACK GIRL, Mora-Amina Parker—one of my dancers—suggested there be a matriarchal figure in the piece. She felt strongly about the story of black motherhood being told. I agreed. Based on her suggestion, the last section became about a mother caring for her child and preparing her for adulthood.

Hailey Kilgore in the 2017 Broadway revival of Once on This Island, directed by Michael Arden + choreographed by Camille A. Brown PHOTO Joan Marcus

KAMILAH | When you’re working with non-dancers, is your process just as rigorous?

KAMILAH | But again, you have that ability to take all these influences and make them specifically your own. This particular production was placed in Haiti, which gives you a strong landing point. But when it was originally written, it was nondescript on where the country was. There was “Let’s take a little bit of this influence, let’s take a little bit of that influence.” That’s kind of like Caribbean islands, right? It has a lot of different cultural influences to make its own. That feels like a lot of what you do as a choreographer: you get inspired and take a lot of different influences and make them your own into a very unique language.

CAMILLE | There isn’t as much time to work with actors the way I work with my dancers, but the process is the same. I am inspired by people’s choices, and actors embody a world of choices! Our time is tighter, but I still throw out questions and drive the importance of intent. The people in the room really guide where the work goes. KAMILAH | Got it. Well, then, moving on to your most recent work with one my favorite musicals, Once on This Island. Was Once on This Island a part of your life before this current production?

CAMILLE | Yes! It’s hard to describe my work because I am drawing from many different styles—modern, jazz, tap, hip hop, social dance, ballet... it’s all in there. I call my language “jambalaya.”

CAMILLE | I had never seen Once on This Island but was very intrigued by the story. I knew it was a very popular musical—which made me nervous! It’s hard to step in as a choreographer and create material for a show that’s been done thousands of times. I got a little bit in my head about it. I knew my role as a part of the creative team was extremely important. I wanted to honor the culture of Haiti and the Caribbean islands but also honor my choreographic voice. People ask me what the inspiration behind the movement for the show was. Culture always tells you where to go. The challenge was to create a language that combines culture, my voice, and the actor’s creative identity.

I connected with Maxine Montilus, an Afro-Haitian/Afro-Cuban consultant. We had four sessions together. I told her that these sessions were not so I could implant these specific steps into the show. It was about me knowing the origins of steps so they could help inform my choreographic choices. The other challenge for me was the production was staged in the round and I had never choreographed anything in the round before. I was creating my latest work, ink, at the same time, so I used that opportunity to practice what that felt like. There are a lot of circular movements in that work. It’s interesting how opportunities lend themselves to others. I’m grateful for it all.

Catherine Foster in ink at Peak Performances at Montclair State University, choreographed by Camille A. Brown PHOTO Marina Levitskaya

KAMILAH | I love how you talk a lot about your collaborators. Having been one of them, I feel as though you offer such generous recognition of collaborators in your room. It’s also very prominent on your website. So I’m wondering, what have been some of your favorite partnerships, and how did your process grow through those collaborations and/or partnerships? Did your process change?

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CAMILLE | Well, my favorite partnerships are with you, Talvin Wilks, and Daniel Banks. KAMILAH | Aww.

Maleek Washington + Vie Boheme in ink at Peak Performances at Montclair State University, choreographed by Camille A. Brown PHOTO Christopher Duggan

CAMILLE | I had never worked with dramaturgs before. I didn’t know that type of work existed. Someone who saw that my work was influenced by theatre suggested that I work with a dramaturg. That’s when I first connected with Talvin. He led me to you and Daniel! All of you are brilliant in very distinct ways, so having your critical eyes on my work is vital. Three different, incredibly informed perspectives. You challenge and guide me without telling me what to do. It’s made me a stronger thinker and choreographer, and has inspired me to become a director/ choreographer in theatre. Another collaboration that I enjoy is with my Associate Choreographer, Rickey Tripp. He has taught me so much about the business. I learn something new every time I work with him, and we’ve been on many journeys together. Rickey is my teammate. He supports my vision and is a really great friend. We have the best time together! The laughs are endless! He supports me in the same way you, Talvin, and Daniel do. KAMILAH | I love that that you said guiding but without telling you what to do. That’s great. I have a question about your company. I know you’ve work with Complexions and Ronald K. Brown and Urban Bush Women. Then you formed your own company. The way I look at it, you broke all those barriers that deemed you an outsider. It’s sort of the definition of your company. Can you talk a little bit about that? CAMILLE | It was important for me to create a space where I could write (dance) my own narrative and provide a space where others can do the same. I look for dancers who are interested in character development and taking chances. I’m always challenging myself and want to be in a room with like-minded people. It’s also important that they are good people who have a sense of humor. My company is a family. We are all friends who love and like each other. Transparency is important. I always strive to be the best leader and communicator I can be.

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KAMILAH | I hear you. But what’s beautiful is that’s a foundation that you create. That’s a powerful thing: by creating that space, you’re shifting a lot of paradigms because you’re ultimately shifting what we see on concert stages. Whether it’s intentional or not, I think it has a big impact, so thank you for that. CAMILLE | Thank you. KAMILAH | I have one more question. One of your TED Talks is about the visual history of social dance in 25 moves. Very infrequently in black culture do we acknowledge the major contribution that we have had on American culture. It’s about the culture, history, and legacy that’s in social dances. There’s so much we take for granted, so thank you for putting it front and center. Even the visual history that you presented in that TED Talk encapsulates the brilliance and innovation of black people, which I absolutely love. But I’ve often wondered what inspired you to do that. What inspired you to say, “Hey listen, this is necessary…I have to make this TED Talk happen.” CAMILLE | My desire to lift up social dance started when I was creating Mr. TOL E. RAncE. I used social dances as a way for audiences to know place and time; it took a lot of research to get there. I connected with [educator/ choreographer/ethnographer] Moncell Durden and asked him to consult with me on the history of social dances.

As with Once on This Island, I wanted to know the origins so I could riff on them. I started making connections and realized that I was not educated to understand or even to acknowledge that social dances were important to American culture. Growing up in Queens, I knew all the social dances. But once I delved deeper into concert dance, it became clear that this form was something that was outside of the studio. It was not considered a technique. Looking back at my training as a student, I realize there was a void. There were books about African American contributions to dance, but they were never suggested reading. Knowing the history of ballet, modern, and the teachings of George Balanchine and Martha Graham were at the heart of my Dance Perspectives classes. In the books I was given, the only black choreographer listed was Alvin Ailey—and that was a very short chapter. Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus were mentioned at times, but they were mere paragraphs. Now it makes me think about what “perspectives” I was being taught. I decided to change my teaching method after that. Now I teach social dances through time. Either I keep complaining or I do something about it. It’s necessary and something that black people— all people—need to understand. To honor the people who contributed to American culture who have been silenced. Illuminate the invisible. Alex Rosenthal, the Editorial Producer of TED-Ed, approached me after I performed during the TED Conference and asked if I was interested in doing a TED Talk surrounding the themes of my solo from BLACK GIRL. It is inspired by [the style of] Juba, an African American social dance that started on the plantation by enslaved Africans. Alex and Angela Chang, the director of the video, were game from the jump. We worked on the script for a year. Community is at the center of the talk. We show people of different age ranges joining together in communities to dance. The success of the talk is mind-blowing. TED had a huge audience, so I knew the numbers would be greater than anything I’ve ever experienced, but 15 million views?! And for it to be a video focused on African American social dance is just fantastic. I love that these voices—these black voices—that haven’t been acknowledged to the degree that they should have this huge platform. Now everybody knows it.

Michael Arden On Camille A. Brown & ONCE ON THIS ISLAND on Broadway Given that Camille’s coming from a concert dance world and a company world, and I’m coming from the theatre side of things, we did a lot of talking at first. Before we started rehearsals, she showed me pieces of choreography from around the world that she thought could influence the piece. It was important for us to be as authentic as possible with the movement as well as everything else in the show. We slowly began working through, and Camille would show me pieces she set out for dancers, and I loved everything she did. It became a question of how do we tell a story with movement? We really worked side by side in the rehearsal room. I’m sure I got in the way of her movement, and she got in mine, but eventually we really found a way to work through it together. It felt a little bit like a chess game. We approached it in very different ways. Camille likes to create movement on her own without me in the room trying to mess with it and taking stuff away. So it’s like playing chess with someone. But you both have to win. It ends up being a lovely tie game in which a beautiful picture is created. She deals a lot in polyrhythm and incredibly complex movement, which was somewhat out of the realm of what you would normally assume would come out of the score. I think Camille helped us all discover that there were more interesting rhythms within the piece, story-wise, too, for the actors as well as the dance. It became more interesting physically than I think it would’ve been without her. BELOW Once on This Island, 2017 Broadway revival, directed by Michael Arden + choreographed by Camille A. Brown PHOTO Joan Marcus

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Robert O’Hara On Camille A. Brown & BELLA: AN AMERICAN TALL TALE at Playwrights Horizons What was exciting about Camille was her ability to home in on the history involved in the piece. She has a lot of innate ability for social dance and knowledge of the history of dance, and it’s highly intelligent. I wanted there to be a relationship to the present and past. Because she also has her own dance company, when I was working with her, she was not so used to working with actors. That’s always a bit of a danger when you have a choreographer who is normally working with people who are first and foremost dancers. What I like to do with choreographers is to give them the room and allow them to have as much control over the space as possible. I don’t like to be in the room when they’re creating because I don’t want the artist looking at me for confirmation. Camille had an incredible control, not only in what she was doing but also in the room itself, with a lot of personality, which I thought was fantastic. What’s so exciting about her is that she requires of the people working with her that they not only learn the steps but, before they learn the steps, that they learn the history of the steps. That we’re just not putting moves on actors, but there’s a history to the design that she’s making. She was also very connected to what I was doing in the room. She would come often and watch how things were being set up. But what I found to be incredibly insightful was the demand that she made on the actors that they can do it, and if they can’t do it, she will change it, but they have to go full out to show her if they can do it. There were some times when she was about to change stuff, and the actors would beg her not. They were like, “We can get it. We can get it.” And she was like, “Well, you’re not showing me that you can get it. You have to show me that you can get it, or we can change it.” Bella: An American Tall Tale at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Robert O’Hara + choreographed by Camille A. Brown PHOTO Joan Marcus

BELOW

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Patricia McGregor On Camille A. Brown & STAGGER LEE at Dallas Theater Center Camille has all the elements of a collaborator that you would want. Very specifically, for Stagger Lee, because the play ranges over a century of American history through the black experience and, in many ways, the characters are archetypes of the Great Migration in many of these stories, Camille’s knowledge and commitment to the history of black social dance was important to have. In Stagger Lee, we start out in the 1890s in Lyon, Mississippi. At that point, we needed not only a knowledge of, “Okay, how would this translate dramatically?” but what black social dances were going on at that time and how did those reflect and represent the community? How was, for example, the ring shout used? In what way was that an opportunity to reflect resistance and resilience? To have somebody who is steeped in the history of those dances, and not just the technique but the why, the social implications of what that dance came out of, was vital. I think often we see a movement, and people might know the surface of it, but they don’t know the deeper history. Camille was able to take in my strong ideas from the beginning, I was able to take in her strong ideas when she came in, and then it was all about just negotiating time and space. It was all give-and-take. She just took ideas and heightened them with her particular lens and expertise. That was glorious. BELOW Stagger Lee at Dallas Theater Center, directed by Patricia McGregor + choreographed by Camille A. Brown PHOTO Karen Almond

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R E T N AN I

Bay Raitt PHOTO c/o Bay Raitt

EVAN | Let’s start at the beginning. Your family has been active in the performing arts for a long time. Can you talk about that and how it led to your work today? BAY | My background is a bit of a strange one. My grandfather, John Raitt, was a Broadway singer, so I grew up around theatre people. I was that kid who was always in the wings, watching the adults rehearse. I ended up having some hearing problems, so I didn’t pursue the musical side of things because I couldn’t quite hear as well as I needed to. I dove into the visual and the science side. I was something like Employee Number 30 at Weta Digital in New Zealand. Weta is the preeminent visual effects facility for film; even without seeing their films, you can see something from them every week on a website, TV ad, or

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ITH W IEW

IT A R BAY

OULI

ION AN Y V E Y B

For decades, the name Raitt has been synonymous with music makers and creators of illusion on stage. These days, Bay Raitt—digital animator, 3-D graphic novelist, and CEO of the Spiraloid Workshop Company—continues the family tradition through digital magic. Among Raitt’s first professional jobs were coloring the comics Spawn and Akira. He went on to create the digital facial system for Gollum in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Raitt spoke recently with SDC Executive Board Secretary and SDC Journal Editorial Committee Member Evan Yionoulis about breaking down the fourth wall through virtual reality and augmented reality, and how to incorporate new technology into theatremaking and life.

billboard. When American high school seniors were interviewed, more wanted to work at Weta Digital than be doctors or lawyers—combined. I helped build the company as it grew from 30 to thousands of people. The home of Weta Digital is one of the largest computer installations in the world. Think of machine rooms with 85,000 computers and armies of computer graphics geeks. I did everything on the tech side in terms of designing and building Gollum’s face for The Lord of the Rings. I studied human faces and got deep into how faces can work on a screen if you’re building them from scratch. I also worked at Weta Workshop as a concept artist and sculptor. The Workshop is a design facility that makes physical props and wardrobe, and where miniatures are sculpted.

Then I worked for about 10 years at Valve Software, a famous video game company here in the US. They are one of the largest PC gaming companies in the world. So, I do left-brain and right-brain stuff. I like to design the tools that make new things possible. EVAN | It’s not surprising to me that you spent so much time watching from the wings as a child: you’ve been applying all of the arts of the theatre, plus coding, to all of your technology works. BAY | All of the stuff that gets run backstage now is very similar to the computer graphics happening in video games and film. We live in a time where the worlds of film and television and gaming are colliding with the worlds of Broadway and theatre, and then expanding out into the real world. The borders of the box are

The Intel Studios volumetric video stage in Los Angeles PHOTO c/o Intel

Bay Raitt giving a keyote at the Unity Vision VR/AR Summit PHOTO c/o Bay Raitt

coming down. That’s very interesting for people like us who are thinking about how to build moments. EVAN | People say directing a VR [virtual reality] experience is much closer to what a theatre director does than to what a film director does. Do you agree? BAY | Absolutely. I’ve seen firsthand how a film director grapples with the fact that in VR, they can’t control where the audience is looking; there is no frame. In AR [augmented reality] and VR, you lose two very important colors from the palette. You lose the ability to remove time, because it all has to happen continuously, or else you really disorient your visitor; and you don’t have a frame. You don’t have a square that you can put around everything, because it’s happening all around them. You have a theatrein-the-round problem.

VIRTUAL REALITY (VR) is a computer-generated simulation of a threedimensional image or environment that can be explored and interacted with by a person in a seemingly real or physical way. Created with a mixture of interactive hardware and software, VR utilizes electronic devices such as goggles, helmets, gloves, and treadmills to create a sensory experience of a virtual, 360-degree environment. Users become immersed within the environment, can manipulate objects or perform a series of actions, and experience it as if they were really there. AUGMENTED REALITY (AR) is a technology that superimposes computergenerated elements on a user’s view of the real world. While VR completely replaces the user’s real-world environment, AR enhances it with computergenerated perceptual information. AR can add graphics, video, sound, touch feedback, smell, and more to the natural world in real time. The overlaid sensory information is seamlessly interwoven with the physical world and can be presented on a variety of displays, from screens, monitors, smartphones, and tablets to special glasses or contact lenses. In addition to gaming (such as the viral sensation Pokémon GO), AR has many other technological and educational applications, such as marking landing routes for flight navigation, displaying anatomical information during surgical procedures, or providing detailed location information for travelers or emergency rescue teams.

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TOP LEFT A user playtesting Bay Raitt’s 3-D graphic novel in VR TOP MIDDLE Bay

Raitt demonstrates virtual modeling using Oculus Medium software

TOP RIGHT A poster for Bay Raitt’s 3-D graphic novel, Nanite Fulcrum BELOW Bay Raitt, Dylan Fitterer + Justin Hamm working on the first 3-D graphic novel in VR PHOTOS

c/o Bay Raitt

EVAN | Can you tell in the 360-degree view where a person’s (or the player’s) head is looking? Do you have eye tracking?

They were able to use that reinforcement cycle to help a paraplegic child walk by rebuilding his neural pathways using VR; they could tell that his skin was still connecting, even though his spine wasn’t. I’m probably horribly mangling the medicine behind this.

BAY | Some devices have eye tracking and, depending on the device, you can know an awful lot about what’s happening with the person. You know where the head is looking; you know where the hands are. You know if the person is making noise or not. It can track facial expressions and even what’s happening under the skin in terms of brain scanning.

But similarly, they can take a whole classroom full of kids and make a VR experience that shows the world through the eyes of someone with autism so the kids can see what it’s like to be in another person’s shoes. EVAN | That’s fascinating.

EVAN | Can you detect breathing rhythms and someone’s emotional state? BAY | The current generation of VR headsets has very limited things they can do. But people have built some prototypes where they’ve taken high-end brain scanners and hooked them up. Because the VR device is actually touching the face, you can get a good amount of brain activity. What you do with it and how you interpret it is another thing. But even with just some rudimentary things, such as where they’re looking, how their hands are moving, and how they’re interacting, you can get a good idea of how engaged or activated the audience is. EVAN | What are some of the challenges of working in VR? BAY | Disorientation is a big deal. If you’re putting people into a world where the rules of reality are relaxed, you need to take them back to being a baby again and teach them how to walk. You have to guide them. There’s a sense of presence there that’s jarring.

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In terms of theatre, some people are experimenting with VR with live actors in the room. But, obviously, those things are difficult to scale.

Back when cinema was first being invented, theatre owners showed that famous train reel where it looked as though the train was coming straight out at you. People would run screaming from the theatre because they thought the train was about to hit. That works in VR. If I put a giant sphere over your head in VR, you’re going to feel a sense of dread that it might fall and crush you. You’re going to want to try to get out from underneath it. Right now, that piece is a gimmick that I think people are overusing. What’s going to be required is a new kind of talent where people are taking a much more theatrical bent of “How do I actually bring some truth and some engagement and not just go for the cheap trick?” On the positive side, you have paraplegics wearing VR headsets to escape the bed that they’re stuck in. Doctors are noticing that patients are having unconscious nerve impulses and twitches when they experience vertigo in VR.

BAY | I think there are some interesting options for intersection points between the live stage and the VR and AR space. Intel has just set up a large volumetric capture stage in Los Angeles. There’s one at Microsoft as well. Essentially, it’s like a giant 3-D scanner camera. It’s a stage that you can put objects or people on, have them do something, and you end up with an animated 3-D version of that thing, with all the lighting and texture and color information. So, if you were to take an actor, or ballerina, and have them dance on that stage, you would then have a thing that you could put into VR or AR. And when a person looks at it, it would just look like there was a little tiny person dancing in the palm of their hand. That is an interesting idea, right? Suddenly, you can not only put it in the palm of someone’s hand, but you could have it be at size next to them. You can mess with scale. You can mess with time. I’m sure you’ve had the experience where you’ve tried to capture a stage

performance with a video camera, and it just doesn’t hold up. EVAN | No, it often doesn’t. BAY | To put it kindly: I love live theatre and the live event and live performances. They’re always best experienced in person and always will be. But there are people who are stuck in a hospital or who are just too far away and can’t make it to a live performance. Or people who just want to have a different kind of experience. The idea of turning the lights off in your house and watching a play on your coffee table hasn’t existed before, but we’re just on the cusp of that being technically possible for the general public. It’s an exciting idea when you think about the popularity of the stage, and how it could break free from being just a Broadway Street experience to being a Main Street experience. EVAN | I want to see that volumetric capture stage! BAY | It’s interesting. It captures every angle from every point of view and every kind of light— all at the same time. Once you have the 3-D object, you can place it—or those characters or those actors—anywhere you like, relative to the audience. When the person puts on the headset or wears their AR device, the “virtual actors” can be performing all around them, directly to them. You could be looking at the performers, holding them in your hand. They could be the size of giants moving through the clouds around you. Once you have that kind of data captured, it represents a new kind of camera. This is a kind of photography that has no frame. Because it doesn’t have a frame, you can place it in space however you like. We know where the audience is looking, so we can have our characters make eye contact. Not only can we have the actor—we call them NPCs (non-player characters)—walk over and be in the player’s line of sight, but we can have the NPC’s eyes look directly into the player’s eyes. Or even have them

look at their mouth and lips the way a lover might. Those kinds of nuances are a strange color palette to be handed as a creator, right? Have you done VR? EVAN | A little bit. I’ve gone to the Future of StoryTelling symposium in New York for a couple of years. I’ve experienced “Tree,” in which, essentially, you are a tree growing from a seed in a rain forest. You put on a SubPac vest, which transmits sound vibrations to your body, and you rise higher and higher and higher. At the end, the forest starts to burn. They do some olfactory magic so that you smell the fire. It’s sort of terrifying. And I’ve gotten to try out others there as well. I understand that you’ve created the first 3-D graphic novel: Nanite Fulcrum. Tell me about that. BAY | Having worked on comics, movies, and games, I’m at that weird spot in my career where I thought, “Hey, what is the thing that I want to put my heartbeats to while I’m still on this planet?” I grew up being inspired by graphic novels. I love diving into my favorite art moments and favorite panels. So, I thought, “What if I could actually dive into those moments?” In a comic book, the audience controls time. It makes a good onramp into a much deeper experience. I try hard to be very aware of that audience minute, that entertainment minute. And how I can engage someone in that minute—in magical, creative, and inspiring ways—to embellish the moment. Because of my career path, I’ve been that weird guy who has learned how to do everything across all these different disciplines. I don’t want to sculpt as well as Michelangelo, act as well as Andy Serkis, or be a photographer the way Annie Leibovitz is. I just want to be just good enough so that I can make those moments. I feel that, because of VR devices, creators have a chance for the first time to make any kind

of experience they want, spanning any type of media. On a VR device, you can watch a play, go to a movie, play a game, or make things. The differences between a stage show, a movie, a play, a circus, or a ride are evaporating. It’s a surreal evolution of “Video Killed the Radio Star,” but with all the barriers between legacy entertainment experiences—radio and video—all melting together. And if it’s really a reality, anything you do can be done in that device. You can make experiences that are going to be experienced in the device. It’s a closed loop. But that also means that every consumer, every member of the audience, has been handed a Broadway stage, an acting troupe, and all the tools and all the means of production. Human beings essentially like to make, watch, and play. We like to watch a show or watch a story or watch a play. We like to draw with our crayons and paint and make art. Make stuff to share with each other and make stuff together when we have free time. If we can come up with a way of being useful so we can turn our work into play, then suddenly a lot gets done. If you’re an entertainer alive today, you owe it to yourself to step back and think about what are these lines that we’ve drawn between the different formats—between stage and screen, between the couch with a game pad and the movie theatre? Is it part of the entertainment experience? Or is that just an accident of production? EVAN | If somebody is just starting out, what kind of background do you think is useful for them? Is there training? You’ve managed to stay so agile in your work. BAY | I didn’t go to school. I am a self-taught guy. I would say find the thing that you love, that you really like doing, that you think is really cool. Then share with the world why you think it’s cool. SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL

And then listen when the world reacts. If the world goes, “Oh, that one thing you did? That is really cool,” then go, “Oooo, it is cool. How else can I make it cool, and how can I draw you in even more?” In the world that we live in, it’s easy to think that you’re just separated by the tool. It’s easy to fall into the mental trap of thinking if you only had that magic computer, or if you only had that really cool piece of software, or if you only went to that one school, your dreams can come true. A lot of times, people miss what’s right next to them, which is that the fastest computers that have ever been built are sitting in our pockets and on our couches and on our desks right now. The Pope himself could not ask for a faster computer than the one that every 12-year-old has. That’s just the reality of the world that we live in. We live in this time—for the time being—where if you want to know a thing, you can access pretty much any information that you want. If you’re good at finding it and if you have a

EVAN | For older people like us—like me—who have taken a deep dive in certain areas, how can we incorporate these new technologies into our work if we know we’re not going to be coders? BAY | That’s a great question. First off, it’s like photography. At first glance, it’s super complex. But as you get used to it, you find there’s a “point and shoot” angle, and you realize it’s not as complicated as it first appears. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants. Take these 3-D graphic novels I’m making. I’m an adult and pretty far along in my career. I can do every aspect of a given production: the visuals, the story, the performance, the animation, and the edit. So why not try and teach myself how to write the code and put it on a few platforms and put on my own show? That’s what I spent the last few years doing, and now it’s a bit like I’ve eaten a magic mushroom in a Mario game. Suddenly, I’m able—without anybody else, just with me and the computer—to make a thing that can reach tens of thousands, if not millions, of people. It’s surreal. Like building a theatre to sell

A lot of people have a stigma around programming. But, at its heart, programming is the phrase “if-then-else.” If this, then this, else that. It’s not magic; it’s actually a fairly simple, mechanical tool. One of my former coworkers liked to refer to learning to program as a literacy issue—like learning to read. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a brilliant programmer just because you can write or read code; it just means that you know a language. You don’t have to become a programmer now. You don’t have to go deep into those waters if you don’t want to. But I would urge anybody who’s interested in the creative—or problem— space of programming to not let it intimidate you. It’s actually not that big of a climb from where you already are. Our brains already work this way. EVAN | I suppose also that there is the possibility that programmers might want to collaborate with old-fashioned theatre artists… BAY | Yes, there is. I did a lot of theatre as a kid, and I have a real love of rehearsals. That

Global Game Jam, Los Angeles PHOTO Kevin Wong/CC BY-SA 4.0

good grasp of the forest and language, you can Google-search your way, Wikipedia-read your way, and comment-link your way into finding out just about anything. You need to know what not to ask; we’re in a world where there are deep rabbit holes in every direction, which is where having mentors and going to school helps. But this stuff doesn’t have to be done at school. A lot of the time, people get into creative arts because it’s a personal expression of their own growth. I used to get really angry as a little kid, and I would draw monsters and it calmed me down. And I ended up finding a career making Gollum and the Balrog and the Cave Troll.

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your own tickets. For me, it was like, “This isn’t as hard as I thought it was!” There’s an event called the Global Game Jam where people from all skill levels—from total beginners to hardcore game developers—get together on a weekend and make a game with strangers in three days. I did that a few years back at the behest of some friends. I had such a good time; it was incredible. I didn’t know much about it at the time and, obviously, I’ve got some background. I was struck by how many young people and old people were entering into this world of computer literacy. There were people there who had never programmed before a day in their lives, trying to help make a video game and talking through the process and teaching each other for fun.

world and that spirit are very welcomed in tech spaces. As the frame starts to disintegrate, there’s an open world of assumptions that are being rewritten. There’s a lot of creative space to explore here. I would urge anybody of any age, at any skill level, to get your hands on software programming and look at what it is, what it isn’t, and where it’s going. It’s an interesting area that’s unfolding in front of us, both creatively from an audience point of view and from a creator’s point of view.

AURAL HISTORY

DIRECTORS + SOUND DESIGNERS IN DIALOGUE MODERATED + EDITED BY JIM KNABLE

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PHOTOS

Joe Mazza/Brave Lux

ver the past two decades, sound design has been more fully recognized as essential to the overall design and shape of plays. The relationship between director and sound designer can be one of the closest collaborations found in the theatre, particularly with directors who think musically about plays. To explore the breadth and depth of these collaborations, playwright Jim Knable interviewed three pairs of directors and sound designers— emerging, established, and veteran—about their processes, their philosophies, and their prophecies for the future of sound design.

MIKHAIL FIKSEL + MARTI LYONS Mikhail (Misha) Fiksel is a designer, composer, musician, and DJ from Novosibirsk, Russia, currently based in Chicago and Brooklyn. Marti Lyons is a director from Chicago and works all over the country. Most recently, they collaborated on Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves at Studio Theatre in Washington, DC. JIM | What was the first project that you worked on together? MARTI | It was Romeo and Juliet, but we’ve known each other for nearly a decade. MISHA | We finally got a chance to work as director and designer with Romeo and Juliet at Chicago Shakes in 2017. MARTI | I was always really blown away by Misha’s sound. For me, it was maybe a little bit of a chase, of just knowing that it might take time until we found the right thing to work on together. But also, Misha’s a DJ, so we ran into each other at social things, where he was playing sets, and I was hearing his music that way, too. JIM | What about Misha’s sound really grabbed you? MARTI | There’s a fullness and an epic-ness to the sound, where I remember watching even Misha’s storefront shows and just feeling like suddenly this major presence had entered the room. With most shows, I would hear sound and it would feel like a gesture toward a thing, and Misha’s sound was the thing. You were too busy experiencing it to analyze it, and that really excited me.

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Also, Misha has such an incredible sense of humor, which you will hear in the sound design. His sound design can be really quirky and funny but adding to what’s on stage, not just by itself. But then there can be a real darkness. There’s a way that he can play counterpoint to some really difficult moments on stage that both expands those moments and supports them so fully. One of the things I’ve always loved is Misha’s sound design for violence on stage. Fight choreographers love working with him because of the way he can make that experience more full for the audience, by so interactively collaborating with what is happening moment to moment on stage. MISHA | That’s incredibly kind. It’s interesting to hear described the epicness and the grand gestures of it, because I’ve sort of had to learn not to shy away from making bolder choices. What’s super important to me is that nobody’s paying attention to the design while they’re watching the show. They could be feeling it or they could be informed by it, but at no point do you want the audience member to think, “Wow, that’s a really interesting sound design choice.” Because then they’re not watching the play. The one thing I always want to make sure of is that nothing ever sounds like a cue. It wants to be a natural happening, even as a giant event; you never want to be aware of somebody pushing play on a recording. It somehow wants to emerge out of the world and then recede back into it. MARTI | One of the reasons Misha is one of my favorite designers is that he has this incredible dramaturgical sensibility, but he’ll approach the conversation from sound. As Romeo was dying, we knew that our Juliet would be waking up, and Misha came up to me one day and said, “Hey, but what if, actually, she’s literally waking up as he’s dying, and her fingers start to move?” So we put that into the show, and every night, audiences would gasp and be tearing up because of the deep irony of her fingers moving as he just drank the poison. Because we had circled around each other for about seven years before we started working with each other, there’s a real trust and fluidity about the way we talk not just about what the sound design is but what is the moment, the directorial moment, or the vision that we’re trying to create together. MISHA | These are definitely rooms that I like being in, and people I want to stick around, in which the conversation can be multilayered and not restricted to our disciplines and jurisdictions. When I start taking notes on things that might not necessarily have anything to do with me, that’s when I know I’m paying attention to the play or that I’m getting engaged. I do find that this is the trend, especially in the storefront environment. Everybody’s in the same

room, everybody shares a tech table, we’re all there a ridiculous number of hours. What happens, I find, as you get in larger theatres, especially in the regional world, is there tends to be a pretty serious segmentation. Everybody’s sitting at different tech tables, on different headsets; they’re not even talking to each other. To work with people who foster conversations with other designers—asking questions, dramaturgical questions, or about directorial moments—I think strengthens the project, because there’s an investment in the final thing from everybody. JIM | What are your steps leading up to a production? MISHA | I get familiar with a script, but what’s interesting is that I often approach it from a sort of visceral, first-impression place, knowing that Marti, by this point, has read it maybe a dozen times and knows the beats in it. But for me, I like to start from: what does this world feel like? What is the flavor, what is the spirit of both the experience of the play, and of the world that they live in? And then it is a little bit of a music-sharing situation, where we, either at the same time or individually, will start to make a playlist. Not necessarily the music I want to hear in the show or even the type of music. I find that, especially with Marti’s playlists, it’s a lot more about the intention or the visceral components of the music. The first time we worked on Romeo and Juliet, Marti put together a playlist that was full of very contemporary sounds, and some obscure and fairly complicated sounds. Little of it was reflecting the palette conversations that we were having, but what was interesting was that it wasn’t intended to redirect; it was actually helping us understand: “We’re talking about this palette, but I want this palette to make us feel like this,” or “I want this palette to do what this song is doing, in its own palette.” MARTI | I don’t work with all designers off of playlists. I have some great sound designers who don’t have Spotify; it’s not their deal, and they’re brilliant designers. But there is something—and maybe this is unique to your process, Misha, or maybe it’s something we’ve developed together—but there is something about that journey from music to sound effects. There is something about the process that you and I have where we have to figure out the world first. JIM | What are your thoughts about the future of sound design? MISHA | Augmented reality is becoming an ongoing conversation; there’s a lot more sitespecific or immersive experiences. So we’re taking the theatrical experience outside of the more standard theatre seat. The Encounter could happen anywhere; it just happened to be in a

theatre, but it didn’t have to be, right? It was so much about a personal experience on the headphones. There’s a lot of interest in binaural audio and a much more nuanced experience of it. I’m also realizing that there’s a connection with scalability of theatrical experience. I, almost on a weekly basis, am having conversations about podcasts or recording plays, or film, that are somehow an extension of the theatrical experience. How does that translate, or do you proactively create content that can be experienced both live and in the privacy of your own home or your car? I suspect that we’ll be having a lot more conversations about how to create experiences that, in the moment, can break or challenge our perception of reality in a more direct way—not just conceptually, but actually. And then how do you take that experience and make it available to people outside of that moment, exactly? How do you put it in your pocket? How do you give an opportunity for someone not in the same space with you—but sharing at the same time—to experience that as well? That’s my thing that I’m excited about and what I’m seeing emerge.

JACKSON | When I first started directing in grad school, it was already changing there, even before it was changing outside in the real world. Luckily, I wasn’t ever really working at a time when the sound designer was treated more like a sound engineer position. Or, more likely, I wasn’t aware as much that it was happening. I worked initially with sound designers from school, and they were adamant about their place at the table, probably because they knew the history of the struggles of designers in their field. JOHN | Where that attitude has remained has been Broadway. That’s the Tony Award debacle. Tony management has considered sound design to be a technical category and not a design category. JIM | Let’s talk about this project that you’re jumping into: Bekah Brunstetter’s The Cake at the Alley Theatre.

JOHN GROMADA + JACKSON GAY Sound designer John Gromada works regularly on Broadway and regionally. Nominated for a Tony Award for his design work on A Trip to Bountiful in 2013, he started the 2014 petition to put sound design back in the Tony Awards after the category was eliminated that year. Jackson Gay is a prolific director whose Off-Broadway work with new plays by playwrights such as Lucy Thurber and Rolin Jones has yielded many celebrated productions. JIM | When in your process as the director do you start thinking about sound? And when you do you bring a sound designer into a given show? JACKSON | From the very beginning, along with all of the other designers. Ten or 15 years ago, it was a new thing, that the sound designers were treated the same way as everybody else in terms of being a part of the collaboration from the word go. JOHN | I’m still surprised that we are mostly invited to be part of the process from the beginning now.

JOHN | I think Jackson and I both had a clear idea about how to proceed after we heard the play, which is often the case. Before that, it’s like scoring a movie before you know what the movie is. Often, you get so many clues in the first rehearsal, actually hearing the play, understanding it better, understanding the rhythms of it and how it works. JACKSON | This is our first collaboration. What’s exciting is knowing that our collaboration is making something that’s alive, that’s changing within the realm of what’s right for our world. It’s changing in the room. It’s great having somebody who gets that and wants to be a part of something that moves—someone who wants to be a part of a dramaturgical exploration and understanding of the play.

at no point do you want the audience member to think, ‘Wow, that’s a really interesting sound design choice.’ Because then they’re not watching the play. MISHA FIKSEL

JOHN | That’s another difference between now and 15 years ago. We are part of the understanding of the play. Before, you used to go away and get this whole list of cues and come back to rehearsal, but now it’s really about understanding what the story is together and how to tell it. Now that we’re in rehearsal, I can see the director’s ideas and she can come back to me. It’s much more collaborative than it used to be. JACKSON | It’s funny—you rarely hear anymore a sound designer at the beginning of tech saying, “Here’s my list of cues.” Of course you

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have a list of cues, but it’s different; it’s not something where you just say, “Here are the cues and let me give them to the stage manager.” The sound designer is now doing what everybody else is doing in the room: responding to the work in the moment and adding to the thing, the storytelling, that everybody in the room is heading toward. JOHN | And I’m finding more and more that fluid collaboration continues all the way up until opening. It’s so much more exciting now than it was because you have the tools to respond to things and build a design collaboration with the other designers and director in tech.

JACKSON | Yeah, if you change one thing on stage, just a different color to something that somebody’s doing, the sound also sometimes needs to change. It’s not just something that’s slapped on it to make a nice transition.

With this production, The Cake, there are a lot of unknowns about exactly how the transitions SDC JOURNAL

JIM | How do you find that shared vocabulary and language? JOHN | Jackson and I haven’t worked together before, so we are trying to feel each other out and what our common point of reference is. With a director that you work with a lot, you can refer to your own body of work together. You begin to develop an idea about what the other person is thinking and how we can then shape each other’s thinking.

Whenever there is silence in a play, I mean for there to be silence. That silence is a very pointed thing.

JOHN | I actually find that it’s better for me to keep flexible. I’ll arrive at a tech with a general notion and have things worked out as much as I can in advance so I’m ready to be able to change them. If I have a basic vocabulary going into tech, it’s much more collaborative to complete the design on the spot, responding to what all the other designers are doing and finally getting a chance to see how the acting and how the moments have gelled, and see how the scenery moves.

are going to work. We’re trying to figure out a language so I can come into tech with all these different elements that I then can arrange when we’re there.

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ELISHEBA ITTOOP

JACKSON | When you have these brand-new collaborations, the first part of it is just talking to each other to figure out how this person thinks. It’s speed dating at first. Luckily, with this collaboration, I was immediately put at ease. John asked smart questions about the play, and his ideas were exciting and surprising. I was so happy that John is somebody who wants to be a part of the process and wants to be in the room and wants to really dive into the play in a dramaturgical way.

JIM | Are either of you interested in the sound design that is pushing technology even further? JOHN | I don’t really know where we’re going next in technology. I’m one who doesn’t want to force sound on a production. I don’t think every production needs a really elaborate sound design. If the story definitely demands it, that’s great. My first rule of thumb would be to ask, is this really necessary? My preference is to try to tell a story as simply as possible. JACKSON | I agree and would apply that to any element of a production. If it’s not necessary, you don’t need it. Directing can often be a process of stripping away things that you’ve played around with, to leave the story with only what is necessary to tell that story. That might be a very present soundscape throughout or a sound design you’re not even aware is there. JOHN | Stripping away, for me, is part of sound. I used to do these elaborate, in-your-face productions. Now people usually hire me for my discretion as much as anything. I feel like I’m a better designer than when I was younger and making really loud noises. JACKSON | I think it’s a sign of confidence. It takes a lot of confidence not to throw everything at something. There’s a strength in that that I really appreciate. JOHN | Often, what I’m asked to do is just show up to productions and I’m the person that is charged with connecting themes and coming up with a frame. I’m thinking, maybe even before other designers are, about the overall arc of the production. I’m trying to be less shy about doing that. I think sound designers can be relied on if you’re looking at the overall picture and movement of a play. Directors should mine them for information.

JIM | You mentioned technology having changed to make this kind of collaboration possible.

JOHN | Because of technology, I’m able to have an idea I can immediately upload, send to Jackson or the stage manager, and get feedback that day. It used to be I would have to work until 5:30 p.m., print a CD, run to FedEx to overnight it to a director somewhere, then get up early in the morning, get to work again, and wait to get notes in a day or two. Now I can get immediate feedback. Once we’re in tech, I have a mini studio. I have so much more flexibility to make changes. I have access to the internet so I can grab music, I can grab sound effects. I can’t tell you how different it is from when I started out.

ELISHEBA ITTOOP + CARL COFIELD Elisheba Ittoop is a sound designer, composer, and producer of podcasts who brings her original compositions into her sound design. Carl Cofield, her frequent collaborator, is an award-winning director and actor who is getting to do more and more work that resonates with his goals for theatre and society at large. JIM | You’ve had four collaborations together so far, starting with The Mountaintop at Cleveland Play House. How did you find each other?

CARL | Cleveland Play House put us in touch, and we had an initial conversation and just hit it off. I think we had a similar sort of vocabulary to pull from and the conversation didn’t seem forced at all. It was very fluid. ELISHEBA | We tend to have conversations that just organically happen. JIM | When you say “similar sort of vocabulary,” what do you mean? CARL | For me, it’s basically a lexicon of ideas. For instance, when we were doing Henry IV, Part II, I was like, “This is a bluesy world,” and Elisheba was like, “When you say blues, is it Billie Holiday or is it Amy Winehouse?” I said, “Yes! That’s it! That’s exactly what I’m trying to encapsulate.” ELISHEBA | I took improv a lot when I was in middle school, high school, and a little bit in college as well. And in improv, they teach you the idea of “Yes, and...” Carl says, “Yes, and...” CARL | When you collaborate like that, enthusiasm and that kind of curiosity go hand in hand. There is the enthusiasm, but there is also a rigor to the curiosity. For example, if we’re saying it’s going to be Amy Winehouse, are we saying it’s early, or are we saying it’s in her darker period? There’s a really strenuous rigor to Elisheba’s aesthetic, how she approaches sounds to worlds, which is so satisfying. JIM | Is music often your starting place for talking about a show? ELISHEBA | Even before music. Before I even get talking specifically about sound or music in the world, I just want to sit with the team and vibe with everyone for a little bit. I want to hear Carl talk about this play world. Where he’s coming from. I wait a minute before I get too quickly over into “I think musically it sounds like this.” Carl, I keep remembering with Mountaintop we all had such a nice introduction to each other because the show was in January, but before that—I think in August—Cleveland Play House flew us all out for the craziest commuter day. The design team got to just sit in a room and dream for a while. I find, as a designer, that’s not happening as much right now in American theatre. The design meetings are going away. Or you need to figure out how to do that on your own. And production meetings are happening instead. CARL | I think it pays dividends when everybody can get in the room and risk and listen to one another and bounce ideas, because who knows? I tend to hear things musically, and I think it’s like a jazz quartet or quintet when people get in there. We know the structure, but then there’s plenty of room to improvise. To me, that is the best sort of collaboration, where everybody’s meeting on the same footing.

JIM | How has technology played a role in your collaboration so far? ELISHEBA | A lot of young sound designers come to a project and find themselves speaking in the language of sound design that is more gear-oriented. And not that they’re wrong in doing that; it comes out of a kind of nervous place. Out of a place of “I’m gonna show to you how smart I am.” They don’t need that. I’ve learned that my director already has so much on their mind, I don’t need to come to call and say, “Oh yeah, we’ll crank that up seven decibels and I think I’ll notch out 450 hertz to really make that voice pop in that moment.” The call might be, “You know, his voice isn’t really popping in this moment.” And I’ll say, “You know what? That’s a really good point. Let me work on that right now.” Technology is something that I very much have to use to pull off what I do, but I try to not get into the nuts-and-bolts conversation with Carl and other directors. CARL | I so appreciate that: to allow my collaborators full trust. I depend on them to be “I got you here. I know exactly what you’re thinking.” You might not be using the technical jargon for it, but “I got you.” JIM | Are you finding there are more and more tools available? ELISHEBA | There are always little toys, gear I can play with. But at the end of the day, a signal goes in, a signal comes out. In between, I can affect it in certain ways. Now, how the hell I do the affecting of things is definitely changing. There’s a lot of gear, but with something like Henry IV, Part II, just give me a decent microphone that our singer can sing into, a little bit of reverb, and make it sound very sexy. That’s kind of what I need in QLab. I don’t mean to oversimplify it. If you give me all the toys in the world, I will make use of them. But I don’t want it to be “We held for sound for three hours so Elisheba could fix that mic.” JIM | What about organic sound? ELISHEBA | I’ve done some sound designs that are Foley-based. I find that when I’ve worked on projects that use Foley work, or things in that “thunder sheet” realm, then there needs to be a highlight on how this is happening. There needs to be a moment where the sound designer, engineer, or the actor doing it needs to be highlighted. It’s its own form of sound design. It’s very labor-intensive. JIM | In general, what are your philosophical aesthetics for sound design? CARL | It’s a case-by-case basis for me. I’m hugely in favor of asking how sonically this world is going be supported. But sometimes, quite frankly, sound is my way into the world. Henry IV,

Part II felt like the aftermath of a night of—if Part I was a night drinking in the club, Part II was the hangover. And that was my thing: what does a hangover sound like? ELISHEBA | I joke with people that “My job is to aid and abet the story.” At times, a sound event needs to be enormous, and you need to be incredibly aware of it. But a lot of other times, sound can be psycho-acoustic; it can be an emotional highlighter for a moment on stage. JIM | What does “psycho-acoustic” mean? ELISHEBA | It’s something we said in grad school, I think. Another word could be “subliminal.” I love doing stuff where you don’t even know it’s there, but you’ve put it into the room and it’s vibrating the room a little bit. I just did a show where we were moving some cues around, and the stage manager said, “Oh, should I move the sound cue there?” And my director said, “Wait, what sound cue?” And I said, “I have a very low cello playing in that moment. It’s one note, it’s a low, sustained note. I’ve put it mostly through the subwoofer and I’m just vibrating the room at that moment.” It’s a cold moment; it takes place in the Holocaust and things are going from bad to worse. And I didn’t want to make things over-sentimental, so I just quietly vibrated the room with a cello. So that’s what I mean by psycho-acoustic. You’re barely even aware that it’s there. But you would feel it not being there. Whenever there is silence in a play, I mean for there to be silence. That silence is a very pointed thing. JIM | Is there a show, whether it really exists yet or not, that you both would love to work on together? CARL | I would definitely love to work on a folkloric tale of brown and black people with full-out musical elements, with Elisheba at the helm, designing this beautiful, complicated, emotionally charged, full-blown world. That would be a dream project. ELISHEBA | More and more—and I feel very lucky, fortunate, grateful to the universe—as I climb this ladder of design in American theatre, I’m getting to help tell stories of marginalized people. People who were historically not allowed to speak. They didn’t get to write the history book for the longest of times. They’re not at the forefront just yet, but their stories are getting told more and more. Working with Carl has been amazing because I feel like he’s getting to help tell those stories a lot, too. I think with Carl I’d want to do something where it’s just brown and black people getting to really tell their stories. And there’s a lot of subwoofer, there’s a lot of reverb, and it’s these voices at the forefront.

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Designer

Some Things Change &

hat’s inside a designer’s toolbox? What tools, practices, or ideas have always been there, what are the latest additions—and what do designers wish they could have that hasn’t been invented yet? Clint Ramos’ scenic design rendering for Mankind at Playwrights Horizons, written + directed by Robert O’Hara; Rui Rita’s lighting design for Sense and Sensibility at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, directed by Hana S. Sharif PHOTO Jenny Graham; tech rehearsal for SpongeBob SquarePants on Broadway, directed by Tina Landau, choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, scenic and costume design by David Zinn + projection design by Peter Nigrini PHOTO Marc Franklin; a Clint Ramos costume rendering for the Broadway revival of Once on This Island, directed by Michael Arden + choreographed by Camille A. Brown; Arnulfo Maldonado’s scenic design model for Indecent at the Guthrie Theater, directed by Wendy C. Goldberg PHOTO Arnulfo Maldonado; CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT

These are some of the questions the SDC Journal Editorial staff discussed as we envisioned the suite of articles focused on technology in this issue. We decided to take the questions right to the source: designers themselves. On behalf of SDC Journal, director Heather Arnson reached out to an array of lighting, set, costume, props, and projection designers (sound is covered in the previous article on page 27) and asked them to speak about how their practices have changed (or not) through technological advances. Their responses have been edited and are shared here.

Lap Chi Chu LIGHTING DESIGNER

Jane Cox LIGHTING DESIGNER

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PHOTO PHOTOBLUE BLUEPhotography Photography

i featur

Laura J. Eckelman

Ann Hould-Ward

LIGHTING DESIGNER

COSTUME DESIGNER

Tilly Grimes

Arnulfo Maldonado

COSTUME DESIGNER

SCENIC & COSTUME DESIGNER

rsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Tools

SCENIC & COSTUME DESIGNER

Paul Tazewell COSTUME DESIGNER

PHOTO

PROPERTIES DESIGNER

Clint Ramos

Yvonne Albinowski

Noah Mease

PHOTO

Cheryl Dorschner

& Some Stay the Same

Peter Nigrini PROJECTION DESIGNER

Rui Rita LIGHTING & PRODUCTION DESIGNER

David Zinn SCENIC DESIGNER

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Amélie on Broadway, directed by Pam MacKinnon + choreographed by Sam Pinkleton; scenic design + costumes by David Zinn, lighting design by Jane Cox, projection design by Peter Nigrini PHOTO Joan Marcus

What’s the most useful new design tool that you’ve incorporated into your practice in the last five years? What does it do that couldn’t be done before? Give an example of a show/scene that was artistically enhanced by using this tech. ARNULFO MALDONADO | The laser cutter: a machine that allows one to make precise, ss A progre detailed laser cuts onto paper, rnulfo hoto of A scenic p illustration board, etc., based do’s Maldona el od on a piece of drafting. It has cut m n desig nt at the down on the time needed to put for Indece ater, he together a three-dimensional Guthrie T Wendy by physical model. I’m one directed erg C. Goldb lfo step ahead in terms of u rn A TO PHO drafting scenery. I can then do Maldona take whatever information I’ve gleaned from the model to go back and edit/refine the drafting. Since I tend to LAP CHI CHU | Pixel mapping: “sketch” in model form, it controlling lights with graphics and video allows me the time to instead of numbers. Traditionally, we program go through several drafts of a model before lights with numbers. Now it’s possible to use landing on the right fit. graphic images to control lights. It’s no longer this light at that level; it’s “What image could An example of this would be my design for go through this?” A static image is a point of Indecent at the Guthrie Theater earlier this year. origin now. What is the version of this that Director Wendy C. Goldberg and I set Indecent incorporates time more? This is what pixel in an abandoned, war-torn theatre and went mapping can do. through several drafts of the room to land on the right shape and architectural details. The laser cutter made it exponentially easier to do this in such detail. I could then translate some of these drawings into real-life pieces.

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For example, take a moonlit night: how does that intimate or change over time? I can think about how to use this movement now because of these tools. There is more of a trajectory.

Sense and Sensibility at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, by Rui Rita PHOTO Jenny Graham

The design is more intuitive, or can be. A tool like this helps because maybe there’s a way of thinking that communicates better with people who are not lighting designers. Previously, the designers would have to translate the artistic language to a technical one. With this tool, it’s still very technical, but there’s a bigger vocabulary to be shared. Still, not a lot of designers use it, but I think that they will. Every year, it gets more common. JANE COX | Really usable color-changing LED lights with shutters—Lustr 2s, to be specific, made by ETC. The ability to create an evershifting, vibrant range of colors at the drop of the hat from one light. The colors are especially good in certain ranges of blues and greens. David Zinn’s fabulous set for the musical Amélie wouldn’t have looked the way it did without the kind of vibrancy of teal, turquoise, and royal blues that LEDs can offer. PAUL TAZEWELL | As work has increased, I have needed to rely on a sketch artist that draws the sketches digitally to my specifications. It makes adjustments to color much easier—as well as saving me time at my drawing table. NOAH MEASE | I’ve only been doing props for six years, so the internet has always made it seem like every object imaginable is out there somewhere. It’s hard to imagine how I’d do my

directed by Hana S. Sharif, lighting design

job without eBay and Craigslist and Amazon Prime. ANN HOULD-WARD | Our most useful item has to be the ability to capture images off the internet (rather than going to the New York Public Library picture collection and Xeroxing) for research and being able to put those images together in research boards from various apps. It allows a much more rapid pulling together of the research. And they look great graphically and can be sent immediately to a director anywhere. PETER NIGRINI | Over the last five years, mapping projection content to scenery has become very much how things are done in projection design. To that end, photogrammetry is the most exciting new tool recently added to my arsenal. In our case, it uses a collection of photographs of a set or a theatre to build a complete three-dimensional model. In the later stages of loading a set into a theatre, we shoot between 20 and 50 photographs of the set from a variety of angles. These are turned into an incredibly accurate (and colored) 3-D model for use as a reference when building and programming projection content. This is especially useful when dealing with organic or otherwise irregular designs. My first use of photogrammetry was on the musical Amélie. David Zinn’s set was full of found furniture placed at irregular angles and involved numerous other small details. Producing accurate drawings of the set was nearly impossible, so working from a model of the finished product allowed for a level of integration between the projection and scenic design that would otherwise have not been

Monica Bill Barnes + Anna Bass performing with Monica Bill Barnes Dance Company, lighting design by Jane Cox PHOTO Christopher Duggan

possible. I’m passionate about this sort of tight integration between scenery, lighting, and projection, so this process has become essential. RUI RITA | LED technology. Even though it’s not “new-new,” it is the single most significant change that has come to lighting. Sense and Sensibility at Oregon Shakespeare Festival has a rep plot—the same system of lights for every single play. With its brand-new system this year—which is almost solely LED-driven—it definitely changed the opportunities you could have as a designer. TILLY GRIMES | The tools that the internet offers are unendingly helpful to the research process and for sharing content. And now, with the new iPad Pro/Apple stylus, sharing and refining drawings helps expedite the process. You can react to new work as it’s being developed— whether you are in the same city or not. These tools are really freeing and helpful in refining the design conversation as the play evolves. They also make traveling much lighter! Instead of a laptop, sketchbook, pencils, and watercolors, I have a tablet and stylus. The process of making changes or trying different colors/fabric/ideas also becomes much faster and, in turn, allows more time for generating what the design will be. I wouldn’t say they inspire my process, but they are helpful for efficiency. As a costume designer, so much of my process is working in a very tactile way with actors’ bodies, fabric, and how they fit. I love how much the human hand and conversation is at the center of the work, which is fundamental and not replaceable by technology alone.

LAURA J. ECKELMAN | My general approach to new technology is to first assess whether a new tool will be meaningfully, transformatively helpful to my particular work and practice. If the answer is yes, then I take the time to learn how it works. As a person who juggles many different roles and works mostly on small shows, it’s important for me to conserve my time and other resources. So if it seems as though a new tool won’t have a big enough impact on my design practice or pedagogy to be worth the start-up time, I let it go—no matter how cool or exciting it may be. In other words, I try to be selective about which new technologies I adopt, taking into account the time it takes to learn a new tool. Was there a particular design or incident where a new tool changed how you could envision a show? How did you collaborate with the director/choreographer to integrate the technology? JANE | For over 20 years, I’ve worked with an amazing dance company called the Monica Bill Barnes Dance Company. We’ve performed in the Sydney Opera House and in middle school gymnasiums; we’ve always struggled to get our aesthetic into as small a piece of luggage as possible. The motto of the company is “Bringing dance where it doesn’t belong,” which has posed a few challenges for the designers. A few years ago, we discovered a little black box—five-inch-by-fiveinch square—that gives a bright, broad wash of light that can be warm (almost like a candle) and cold, like the blue-white of an arc source follow spot. It’s called a Miro cube, made by Rosco. The beauty of it is that you can put it in a suitcase; you can run it through a fancy light board or SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL

Dear Evan Hansen at Second Stage Theatre, directed by Michael Greif, projection design by Peter Nigrini PHOTO Matthew Murphy

Cristin Milioti with Artie, the robot designed by Noah Mease, in After the Blast at LCT3, directed by Lila Neugebauer PHOTO Jeremy Daniel

you can plug it into the wall in your bedroom. The dance company bought three of these Miro cubes, and we can perform in places where dance lighting doesn’t exist (we’ve recently used them to light a rehearsal studio) as well as integrate them usefully into a light plot at a large theatre as footlights. NOAH | For He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box [the Adrienne Kennedy play produced at Theatre for a New Audience], we wanted to create a lifesize human figure to sit on stage and “play” the father of one of the characters. There was early talk about doing some 3-D mapping of the actor playing the son’s face and digitally aging him, but in the end we found the best way to give this figure an uncanny spark of humanity was to just hire a really great sculptor and let that human touch show in the design.

Mlima’s Tale at The Public Theater, directed by Jo Bonney, lighting design by Lap Chi Chu PHOTO Joan Marcus

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In Zoe Kazan’s play After the Blast, one of the characters is a robot. The whole play is set in the future, when humanity has moved underground, so every design decision became a conversation with Zoe and [director] Lila Neugebauer and designers across all departments about what each thing might be in the future. Artie, the robot, he was a big team effort. We used a lot of remote control car components and a reprogrammed game controller, which is how his movement was controlled from backstage while an actor nearby provided his voice. We rehearsed with Artie in the room, in various states of completion, all the while troubleshooting this complex prop. We tried to make him cute enough that you forgive any trouble he causes. On early previews, when we

Ann H

ould-W ard

Tilly Grimes in tech, altering a costume on Halle Burns PHOTO Adam Fenster

weren’t sure if Artie would behave, Lila would warn the audience that we might hold the show for an “automated object”—partially to avoid spoilers but also, I think, out of respect to the actors, acknowledging that they’re the ones sharing a stage with what’s ultimately just a thing, no matter how much humanity we try to put into it. ANN | The ability to transfer images and make research boards to be sent along with costume sketches has been amazingly helpful in sharing images with places like the technical departments I have worked with in Russia and in China. I was able to signify exactly where I wanted digitally designed fabric to be placed on the costume designs I was doing for The Bronze Horseman ballet at the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. They went forward with the work with a minimum number of trips because we could specify so clearly how the design would work. PETER | In Dear Evan Hansen, it was essential to find humanity in the world of social media. One key part was to include the live performer in the projected representation of social media. This was certainly not the first time that I—or many others—have used performers’ images in a projection design, but the scale of use and the scale of the design overall necessitated an incredible amount of technology to allow for the cast and understudy changes to be integrated smoothly into the production. Originally built

for me for the musical Fela! as a feature in the “disguise” playback software, it easily substitutes content based on the given cast performing that evening’s show. It is greatly beneficial and freeing to the director and me to imagine the show as we wish without a concern for casting changes in the future. RUI | The Wiz at Ford’s Theatre in DC. With a musical of that size, the budget disappears very quickly. One of the ways we gave this a pop of color, variety, and style was by building LED tape into Jason Sherwood’s detailed and fantastic set. Doing this has definitely revolutionized where we are as an industry. Now you can have 10 light boxes with infinite colors. It also gives you a tremendous amount of visual pop: a place to go to change your look visually without having to rent more color scrollers or color changers. Are there any “old school” design tools that you just can’t give up, no matter what? ANN | I will never give up a pencil and a paintbrush, as these allow the direct flow of energy from my arm onto the paper, and I believe that comes across... PETER | I am still wedded to physical scenic models. Throughout a design process for any production, I produce numerous storyboards— often running into the hundreds. Despite the prevalence of digital tools to create storyboards, I find that, as opposed to computer-generated renderings, a physical scenic model is an invaluable part of my process. Something about

seeing the hand of the model builder, the texture of the Bristol board, and the imperfections in the cuts and seams helps contextualize the storyboards and bring out the humanity of what will become the finished product. ARNULFO | I find myself still drawn to the physical scenic model as a means of fully exploring the spatial relationship of everything on stage. Computer renderings, no matter how well they are 3-D-rendered, never give me the full scope of objects and people in space. Digital never gets much in accurate detail. Sticking with a model is ultimately the closest to what the real thing will be. I also work as much detail into my scenic models as a means of illustrating color/ paint treatment for the scenic charge/artist painting the sets. CLINT RAMOS | The only thing I could not imagine giving up—at least for scenery—is the idea of building a 3-D model. Costumes don’t deploy the tech; you can’t intuit how fabric feels through technology. I have replaced everything else already—at least in the studio process. I draw on an iPad with a program. At first, I would draw with pencil, then paint over it with wash or watercolor. Tech crept in slowly. I would make copies and paint on that. Then—close to 20 years ago—Photoshop was a revolutionary tool. I could scan the drawing, then paint it in layers on the software. I held off on illustrating on the computer because we didn’t have the technology to feel the pressure of the pencil on the paper until the iPad Pro came out. SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL

be printed in 3-D. You are designing from air. I didn’t consider myself much of a “technologically forward” designer. I draft by hand. It’s a learning curve; you just prioritize the things you want to employ. Tech is so intuitive; we learn new apps and new games every day. I needed to change the mindset that it was too complicated. PAUL | I will never give up my pencils, paper, and watercolor palette.

One of Clint Ramos’ costume renderings for the Broadway revival of Once on This Island, directed by Michael Arden + choreographed by Camille A. Brown

LAURA | For me, nothing replaces the play text. I am one of the only designers I know who works from a full paper script—not just a cue list—right up until opening. I have to see each lighting gesture on the page in the context of its surrounding dialogue, stage directions, etc. The more I move away from the script, the more disconnected I (and the lighting) feel from the broader narrative. I am also big on gel swatch books. There’s no replacement for that little one-inch-by-two-inch piece of plastic. Apps and catalogs are great, but the

Carrie the Musical at Studio Theatre; lighting design by Laura J. Eckelman PHOTO Igor Dmitry

communicate with the audience with a steady hand, keeping the intensities balanced. It’s a tremendous skill. For me as a designer, what I absolutely love— what excites me—is to tell a story. Story comes from the actor: in the intimacy of the theatre, it is coming from the actor’s voice. I love directing the audience to look over here, not look over there. It is more important storytelling that the person is having an emotional moment in the corner. Let’s highlight that. It is about the dramaturgy and storytelling. TILLY | Although I do love how advanced digital drawing is now with the iPad Pro Apple stylus (and love that it minimizes paper waste), it still can’t top drawing in person when the moment needs—putting ideas with paper and pen in a good ol’ face-to-face design meeting is irreplaceable. Libraries. The process of a good research wormhole through books is such a cherished adventure. I find that a Google keyword search can give you a lot of options, but they are all curated for you, in a way. A library can lead you through to books, sources, and research that feels more open. I love a Google adventure, but the pilgrimage to a library feels more artistically fulfilling. JANE | The domestic tungsten lightbulb is still the smoothest, most diffuse way to get a soft glow of light that can slide from bright to murky to indiscernible light to blackness totally smoothly and gently. How has digital technology changed your practice? Has technology given you freedom, or has it been a burden? JANE | The advent of decent color-changing LED technology is a huge gift to me. Not only can you explore vast ranges of color options, but also you can explore it in tiny spaces without burning your fingers! I have an uncomplicated and loving relationship to lighting technology as long as no one expects me to remember all the numbers or figure out the networking. Light boards have also become significantly more expressive since I started working, and that has been a huge gift as well. Now, only physics stands in my way.

The pencil really replicates the tactile sensation that I had on paper. Now I draw and paint on a tablet. Paper has been eliminated, except for presentations, when I print it out. Exacto blades have been replaced with a laser cutter. The miniscule furniture pieces no longer have to be built by cutting and pasting; they can

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colors never quite look the same. I need to hold the color in my hand and look through it. Digital gobo libraries, on the other hand, are extremely useful. RUI | There is no substitute for a really good follow spot person. It is the part that is still the most human-driven. There is nothing that gives you the sensitivity that a human being gives, who cares about the show, that allows us to

ARNULFO | It has enhanced my practice. The laser cutter has added even more precise detail to the overall design and better communicates to the director (and shops) what my intention is. Having an iPad with my model shots loaded, which I can then draw on top of during a design meeting with a director and/or shop, is a great communicative tool as well. PETER | Technology is at the center of every part of my work as a projection designer. In particular, the introduction of digital content production

Hamilton, directed by Thomas Kail + choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler, costume design by Paul Tazewell PHOTO Joan Marcus

and projection technologies changed what is possible. Previously, projection design’s contribution to the theatre was perhaps most analogous to illustration and graphic design: no longer bounded by what physical scenery could render, a theatrical environment could instead employ a new and changeable visual language. However, as digital tools have made a closer collaboration with live performers possible, the most innovative work in the discipline has become about storytelling and is, as a result, closer to the core of the dramatic enterprise. In this way, it is now more analogous to the language of cinema than that of illustration. PAUL | I think it has been mixed. I would say a smartphone, texting, and email has made communication much more immediate, but written words are often misunderstood if not communicated carefully. It also makes one a bit too accessible, 24/7. CLINT | It has certainly made it better. I can provide directors with more scenarios because I can work in sections without losing everything that I have worked on. I can literally change the color of the wall or of a dress right there and then. One of the things I love to do is present the cast with an array of the costumes early on and compose the scenes, what they look like in their

clothing. I can also change the color of their skin. Show a director what a color-conscious cast can look like in their clothing. It certainly has helped me work faster and better, and has also helped me with the socio-political motives. Before 15–20 years ago, a director would say, “We lost this particular actor” right before first rehearsal, having already put up the sketches on the wall. Now I can update the actor visual to reflect who the incoming actor looks like. DAVID ZINN | Digital technology—which, for me, means Photoshop and Photoshop-like programs—has definitely made things go faster for me and my associates/assistants in the studio. It has for sure made things less of a pain: I don’t have to travel out of town with my markers and pencils, which was not fun. Technology also allows us to produce something that’s more “accurate” to what I imagine the final product to be. For instance, we can 3-D print things, or I can “light” model photos with more of an intention toward its final look. As a designer, I don’t really like to make things up. I get nervous when things feel “set designy” or “costume designy.” Working with technology keeps my “hand” out of it during the conception process. I can manipulate real images to suit my point of view but stay honest in terms of textures and objects. I’m not someone who loves a supersynthetic-feeling presentation (or product), so I try to keep things analog-feeling and tactile

when I can. We work in dimensional, tactile space, and I try not to let the process of making that event just be on a screen. It’s easy to fall in love with a sexy, shiny image. If the electricity went out, I could still do my job. Which somehow still feels important. I guess that’s the benchmark for me. When we can’t do it without being plugged in to anything, I’ll know that our robot overlords have taken the beautiful gift of making a story together in a dark room away from us. LAURA | Technology has always been part of my practice, in part because I’m a lighting designer and in part because of my age. I’m 34, so I’ve been working on digital consoles since high school, and in Vectorworks since college. In terms of innovations, I have three: Dropbox Pro has been a game changer because it allows me to access documents from current and past projects, no matter where I am in the world. That, in turn, has enabled me to carry less and smaller gear, and to worry less about having every document and version that I might need. The ETC iRFR app for iPhone has also been a huge boon, largely because it saves time and labor. Being able to control the lighting console from my iPhone or iPad really streamlines the process of completing a work note, especially a small one. Having the console in my pocket means not having to send someone up to SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL

the booth, which means the crew and I can accomplish more with fewer people. But the biggest change in my creative practice has come from the huge improvement in the quality of camera phones. Having an iPhone that captures good images in low light has enabled and encouraged me to take more photos, which in turn has made me more attentive and responsive to my daily visual environment. As a result, I have cultivated an individual artistic practice that parallels my design work: I take pictures of light—both the everyday and the unexpected. This photography practice has perhaps made me a better designer, but, more importantly, it has changed how I feel about myself as an artist. NOAH | I’m excited about what’s going to be possible with 3-D printing when we can print stuff larger than just model furniture. Because a lot of amazing prop-making technologies already exist in Hollywood, it informs what people are asking for. Whatever it is, we all know it’s probably possible, so it becomes a conversation about how best to spend our resources. I haven’t been doing this for all that long, but I’ve already noticed a huge change in what kind of media and information are available through the internet. The design of The Great Comet, which I did props for three times between 2014 and 2017, calls for hundreds of framed paintings surrounding the audience, creating picture-stories of war and peace and Russian history. For the first production, the best source for paintings was scanning art books, but by the time we reached Broadway, the internet was full of high-res copyright-free images of 18th-century Russian art, well organized and easy to download. More and more, it’s easy to have the answer to any question as soon as you can ask it. You can access all of the decorative arts of a time period on your phone. You can look up any little thing that pops into your head. Good answers lead to more questions. I can learn so much so quickly about the world of the play I’m designing.

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TILLY | The ability to make changes quickly and refine ideas without losing previous layers of work—to change a fabric, a color in seconds— really streamlines the process and allows me to work through multiple ideas with ease. And the power of sharing and working together with someone on a document remotely really does help. What tool do you wish you could have but don’t? LAURA | I wish that I could always have a wireless headset and an iPad channel display. I work almost exclusively in thrust configurations, and I hate being tied to my tech table. I need to be able to move around the space and see the actors from multiple sides. More importantly, though, I want to be mobile so I can sit with the director and other designers, thereby engaging more fully with the rest of the team. When my channel display and headset are only available at my tech table, I’m stuck there, which makes it harder for me to collaborate. PETER | Silent projectors. While my work is, by necessity, technological, I constantly concern myself with all the noise this technology generates in the theatre. I long for the day when we can produce something visually modern without disrupting the intimacy of a silent theatre. TILLY | Oh, I’ve dreamt of a costume Xerox/ printer in a pinch before! In reality, though, I’d worry that a piece of tech like that would mean losing so much of the collaborative process with drapers and costume shops. If you could create a tool for yourself, what would it be? LAURA | I dream of a computer monitor that doesn’t produce light—like the old, original Amazon Kindles. I’d love for more of my workflow to be digital (cueing script, work notes, etc.), but I hate having a bunch of light-emitting screens at my tech table. PETER | For years, I have been tempted to build a tool for designers and directors to collaborate

on detailed, time-based projects. The tool would start as a script and allow for the addition of annotations from designers and choreographers and changes from the writers. It would evolve with the addition of music, rehearsal recordings, and, eventually, full rehearsals of the production. The goal would be to build a central place for the entire production team to gather and disseminate a vast amount of time-based information related to the production. CLINT | One of the things that would really benefit us would be a VR software (maybe there is one already) that could visualize with the director what will happen at tech. Something that would record a run-through in real time in the rehearsal room and superimpose that recording onto a model of a design and its transitions. It would offer perhaps a more succinct period of technical rehearsals. Maybe that’s dumb, but we are still trapped in this mindset of doing things in a way that is belabored. Theatre practitioners are less amenable to technology advances. There are vestiges of theatremaking that remain stagnant, and you feel how ancient it is. There’s great video conferencing technology, and production meetings can be done remotely for the sake of efficiency, for example. NOAH | Unless the show is set in the future, I spend a lot more time thinking about what technology is new in the world of the play. I have so much fun taking apart old things and seeing how the people who made them put them together. JANE | The ability to create indirect/shadow-less light on stage. LEDs have solved the problem of lots of light coming from a small space, which still seems miraculous to me; no one has figured out how to have light that comes from somewhere not have any kind of directionality. I’d love to make scenes look softly illuminated without always having to add directionality and shadow. At the moment, we can only truly do that on computers. PAUL | If I could invent a time capsule, I would so that I could have complete control of my schedule and deadlines. I would also love to be able to see some clothing from many eras with my own eyes. TILLY | Time! Technology makes us move with great efficiency, and with such efficiency being normal for the rhythm of work, you don’t always get to luxuriate in the process. DAVID | More time. And patience. Tech rehearsal for SpongeBob SquarePants on Broadway, directed by Tina Landau + choreographed by Christopher Gattelli; scenic + costume design by David Zinn, projection design by Peter Nigrini PHOTO Marc Franklin

ABOVE LEFT

SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION The avant-garde theatre of the 1960s era saw a shift away from conventional approaches to playwriting and characterization toward emphases on movement, live sound, and ensemble acting as new ways to create performances, often involving improvisation and even audience participation. In the 1970s and 1980s, many artists turned to formal experimentation, incorporating technology, film, recorded sound, and other elements in tandem with text, movement, and choreography. In “The Movement’s Voice,” Assaf Benchetrit explores past advancements in the field as well as more current practices and innovations in dance using computer science and technology, as well as improvisation, in his work as a choreographer. In this essay, he shares his discoveries, positing that his system offers new possibilities of creating dance and engaging dancers in rehearsals, with intriguing implications for traditional dance as well as theatrical forms that utilize dance, movement, music, and technology. INTRODUCED + EDITED BY DAVID

CALLAGHAN + ANN M. SHANAHAN

The Movement’s Voice BY

ASSAF BENCHETRIT, UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

INTRODUCTION It has been said that music is the language of the soul, allowing for communication without words. In my years working as a professional dancer and choreographer, I have found this to be true. I have also found that dance—the relationship it offers between movement and sound—brings further layers of depth and complexity to that communication. My research in recent years explores the nature of the relationship between dance and music, incorporating computer science technology. I have developed a system called The Movement’s Voice, a computer program that translates dancers’ movements into music and sound in real time. Through use of this system, I have discovered a complex relationship between a dancer’s movement and music. The Movement’s Voice presents an innovative way to approach choreography, which I hope will be of interest to and put to use by other artists, in the field. The connection between dance and music has fascinated me ever since I began to dance twenty years ago. My interest in researching this relationship grew during a rehearsal of George Balanchine’s Apollo. While dancing Apollo’s variation after the muses’ introductions, I was trying to follow Stravinsky’s contrasting string orchestra composition while facing challenging choreography. My teacher, Nadezhda Timofeeya, then emphasized how important the music was for Balanchine by quoting his famous saying, “Dance is music made visible” (Joseph 310). A few years later, my interest in this idea grew when I rehearsed the solo of “Time to Talk” from José Limón’s masterpiece There Is a Time. The restaging choreographer, Maxine Steinman, told me that music was an essential aspect for Limón, who believed the dancer’s body is a musical orchestra. Each part is a completely different instrument, but all together they form a harmonious image. Limón referred to this idea as “voices of the body” (Dunbar 38–9). During my studies in math and computer science at the university, I became increasingly intrigued by the possibility of combining innovations of science and technology with the art of dance. This research has allowed me to explore personal interests as well the work of dance pioneers who have explored the connection between music and dance through theory and practice. Inspired by these artists and theorists, I explore the dance-music connection through The Movement’s Voice. This program investigates the question: “What does movement sound like?” And, furthermore, how can movement create music, instead of following it? The system I developed translates a dancer’s movement using a mathematical algorithm for scaling octaves into different patterns of sound and music. Over time, I expanded the program to include

additional functions in relation to color and light as they respond to movement. Consequently, this system allows dancers and choreographers to explore how sound, music, light, and color can be triggered and/or suggested by the physical execution of movements. My research led me to a number of discoveries, which I share in this essay.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS In combining body movement with sound, light, and color, my work on The Movement’s Voice is situated in a centuries-long discourse in Western thought on art synthesis. Contemporary movements in arts synthesis derive from European Modernism of the 1850s–1930s, which strove to combine a variety of art forms and media into a comprehensive whole representing a crucial artistic and/or social point. In the 1980s, new endeavors to theorize arts synthesis utilized research on nonverbal communication, such as Rudolf von Laban’s system of body movement expression, and Deryck Cooke’s analysis of the expressive elements of music, based on the idea that performance of any kind “draws its character from body movement patterns” (Chapple and Davis 53–4). According to Chapple and Davis’s theoretical model, the instrument of the dancer’s body combines sets of cultural forms and physiological mechanics in performance. Dance and music interrelate through a rhythmic relationship between musical “tensions,” generated by oscillations of sound waves, and “muscle tension fluctuations,” produced by activated body parts. Correspondingly, musical pitch has its “equivalent” in “spatial variation” of body movement. Finally, the performers’ interaction and movement are connected to all these systems as part of the larger model and process of art synthesis (61–79). Recent studies in art synthesis, and specifically the relationships between sound, color (or visual form), and movement, emphasize the concept of synesthesia (union of sensations), meaning a crosssensory experience in the arts. Synesthesia refers to an affective state in which an individual receives a physical stimulus in one sense modality—for example, the sound modality—and experiences a sensation in another—such as the color modality. That is, they perceive colored sound. Synesthesia can be understood as our conscious mind’s correlation between the different sensory modalities we use in interpreting the world. Synesthesia-producing stimuli or inducers are various and may include graphemes, phonemes, general sounds, music tonality, musical notes, time units, personalities, colors, textures, and moving or stationary shapes (Robertson and Sagiv viii, 4–5, 15; Cytowic and Eagleman 16–8).

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Synesthesia was previously treated as an abnormality and explained in terms of philosophy, poetic metaphor, or even divine intervention; now developmental synesthesia is recognized by cognitive science as a phenomenon experienced regularly by healthy individuals under normal conditions. Even non-synesthetes, who usually do not experience synesthetic effects, may have cross-sensory associations or use synesthetic metaphors (Robertson and Sagiv 14). Theories of developmental synesthesia suggest that “we may all have been synesthetes in the first few months of life. It remains to be seen whether most of us truly grow out of this mode of operation or whether it is still there, under the surface” through life (Robertson and Sagiv 6). Research suggests that the concept of synesthesia is instrumental in understanding the neural basis of metaphors, possession of exceptional talents and skills, and even the exploration of the nature of biological systems (Robertson and Sagiv viii). Since the early 2000s, scientists have joined artists in the discourse on the application of synesthesia to art synthesis. The possibility of an organic union between music and dance can be found in the psychological effect of gravitational synesthesia formed through the viewer’s kinesthesia (kinesthesis), or the viewer’s perception of motion. The correlations between different sensory modalities register the state of the internal organs of the body and the position of the body in space, resulting in muscular sensations and the perception of gravity. The viewer’s perception of ballet is influenced by both “spaceassociative” and “kinesthetic-associative” elements of synesthesia. Gravitational synesthesia also manifests itself in music. Musical sounds have “energy” and form a “sounding body” that moves in “audible space.” We can perceive sounds as “heavy” or “light” (Galeyev 130–4). In this concept, gravitational synesthesia determines the perception of ballet as correlations between “heavy” and “light” psychological sensations of body motion and music sounds. In analyzing multimedia dance, Marc Boucher distinguishes the dancer’s synesthetic dynamic sensation or kinetic synesthesia— kinesthesis experienced by the dancer—from the viewer’s perception of motion—gravitational synesthesia or kinesthesis experienced by the viewer. The motionless viewer experiences kinesthesis through “sympathetic communication,” that is, through psychological perception of body motion (“psycho-kinesthetic influence” of the dancer’s motion on the viewer), whereas kinetic synesthesia of the dancer derives from “dynamic tensions” between the dancing body and ground, and from the interaction between the dancer and the motion of the projected images in multimedia dance (“Kinetic Synaesthesia”). In his coverage of Merce Cunningham’s performance of Biped (1999), in which the dancers are immersed in large-scale projected moving light images created by software, Boucher argues that the piece produces the effect of kinetic synesthesia for the dancers because they and the projected moving images are interacting through “kinesthetic impressions.” This fuses the dancers’ experience of their own movement with their experience of images of the movements. Simultaneously, Boucher argues kinesthesis was also experienced by the viewers who perceived movements of both the dancers and the projected light images. Yet, in Biped and in similar uses of technology in dance, the correlations between different sensory modalities such as sound and vision in the dancer’s consciousness were not complete because the two different sources of movement—the body and the projector or software for the projected images—were not actually interrelated. The dancers were not able to change the projected images but had to respond to the images’ dynamics. In New Philosophy for New Media (2004), Mark Hansen covers philosophical fundamentals for interactive art synthesis on the basis of the convergence of arts and digital technology. Hansen

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uses Henri Bergson’s theory of perception to reveal the process of human “embodiment” of dehumanized and decontextualized digital information (3). According to Bergson’s account, in perceiving the world, a human body selects from its surroundings those images that are relevant to its own capacities (Bergson 1–3). We can perceive the image of a material object only by isolating certain of the object’s aspects, leaving other aspects aside. For example, we see the specific shape and color of a flower because our sensory system perceives this object in that shape and that color, isolating them from other aspects of the flower and continuous matter surrounding. In conducting such isolation, the human body becomes a source of creative action. The body’s sensorimotor capacities are the trigger of “affectivity”: “the capacity of the body to experience itself as ‘more than itself,’ and thus to deploy its sensorimotor power to create the unpredictable, the experimental, the new” (Bergson qtd. in Hansen 7). The body, which Bergson refers to as “center of indetermination,” selects certain images from the world while subtracting others and thus altering the environmental image we eventually perceive as reality. Images are isolated if they are relevant to the body’s interests. He calls these image isolations “perceptions” (qtd. in Hansen 9). The digital image composed of discrete units cannot be an objective view of continuous “reality.” Through the interface image, the user intervenes in the creation of the virtual “reality” as the “real.” The user actively interacts with the digital image that itself becomes a “process” connected with the body’s activity. The body filters digital information and thus creates images. The body “enframes” or “embodies” originally formless digital information. As users or viewers, we perceive only those pixels that give us enough information and that are relevant to our capacity of perception, shaping virtual images from the formless pixel information and making the virtual world a part of our reality (Hansen 14–8). During the late 1990s and the 2000s, interactive dance software became central to multimedia dance, representing “the dream of a multimedia Gesamtkunstwerk” (Dixon 184). In Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation, Steve Dixon describes in detail several multimedia dance performances that concentrate on the interaction between dance software and the live dancers in real time. The performers wear sensory devices that are linked to a computer by wire or wireless systems. The computer registers the performers’ movements and vocalizations and translates the data into digital signals to manipulate lighting, video, and audio material responding to their actions. The performers and the technological systems interact in improvisatory mode, developing dialogue between each other (184–205). In 2010, the Kinect™, a Microsoft wireless motion-sensing device, opened new possibilities in achieving interactive art synthesis. The Kinect enables the user to interact with a computer through a natural interface, using gestures, body motions, and voice. The Kinect sensor contains: an RGB camera that captures color images, delivering the three basic color components (red, green, and blue) on three different wires; an infrared emitter and depth sensor to capture image depth; and a multi-array microphone for capturing sound, making it possible to record audio as well as find the location of the sound source and direction of the audio wave. Initial experiments have demonstrated the Kinect’s vast scope, which includes augmenting audio-visual live performances (Todoroff et al 29–35); automatic evaluation of the real-time dance performance (Alexiadis and Daras 659–62); translation of dance moves into graphics projected onto a screen (Jung and van Waveren 13–16); an interface allowing users to play musical notes through hand movements (Bakker 1–10); studying multimodal dance choreographies in an online virtual ballet studio (Essid 157–70); a choreographic design visualizing many dancers’ motions and their formation in a virtual space (Yuva

and Tomoko 1–9); interaction of the dancers’ movement with the visualizations (Glover) and an interactive video and sound art system that enables the user to pick up video clips with gestures (Mizuno 149–56). My new system, The Movement’s Voice project, proposed to use, for the first time, the Kinect to foster interaction between the body movement, sound, light, and color.

THE MOVEMENT’S VOICE: SYSTEM EFFECTS The Sound System The range of human motions can be expressed within by the Cartesian three-dimensional coordinate axes (X, Y, Z). By operating the system, the sound/music can be generated by the movements of the following body parts in the three-dimensional space: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Head Neck Left hand Right hand Left elbow Right elbow Left shoulder Right shoulder Torso Left hip Right hip Left knee Right knee Left foot Right foot

For example, the sound/music can be created by the movement of the right arm on the horizontal line (X-axis), or with the left arm on the vertical line (Y-axis), or by any other combination of body parts’ movements chosen by the user. By choosing a specific body part and its movement in space, we can link it to sounds/music from the following families of musical instruments: brass, keyboard, percussion, strings, and woodwind. It is possible to compose combinations of musical notes, customized or random, by moving any body part in the three-dimensional space, using any combination of body parts from the list above. A specific body motion that produces a specific chord can be predetermined by the individual making the initial system settings. The settings can also be changed during real-time dance by anyone not actively dancing. The system allows for the creation of the following chords and scales: • Major Chord – root, major third, and perfect fifth • Minor Chord – root, a minor third, and perfect fifth • Octave Scale – difference between two pitches, known as an “interval” • Pentatonic Scale – scale containing five notes per octave • Chromatic Scale – scale consisting of twelve pitches • Diatonic Scale – scale consisting of eight notes, seven pitches, and a repetition of octave The Color and Lighting System The color and lighting system stores different color patterns triggered for display by a tracker, which is placed in any joint or body part. This tracker is translated into a small white dot that appears on the color pattern displayed on the computer screen. We can select any joint or body part from the above list to house the tracker. The system translates the position of the body tracker (in X and Y values) into a pixel matrix that produces a corresponding pixel image under those X and Y values. That pixel information is transformed into a solid-color video stream, which is read by changing the color of the

light according to a color pattern programmed in the system for every position given by our tracker. The chart below (Fig. 1) illustrates an example of how the color and lighting system operates. The stored image is the wheel of color (here, converted to grayscale); the right hand is represented by the small white dot, which serves as the trigger (X = 395, Y = 506), and the small box below shows how they are actually (in color) being displayed on the video stream. FIGURE 1

THE MOVEMENT’S VOICE: APPLICATIONS IN PRACTICE Dance Improvisation A relatively new technique in contemporary dance, dance improvisation is rooted in the principles of jazz music. Based on a free creative choice taken at the very instant of movement, improvisation became important in the American dance community during the 1960s with the development of postmodern dance in the work of such artists as Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, and Anna Halprin, to name a few. There are many approaches to improvisation, but most techniques emphasize the connection between action in the body and impulse of the mind; being open to the present moment; and comfort in one’s body, with fullness of energy and connection to one’s surroundings (Blom and Chaplin 3–16). Choreography The creation of movement is approached by each choreographer in their own way, guided by personal artistic style. It is a common process to choose sound or music first, and then build choreography to conform to that music. This is sometimes done in reverse: where movements are chosen first and then music is built to accommodate them. There are also examples of choreographers combining the processes, generating movement and music together. Dancers create music through the voice and/or percussion of their bodies, such as Ethiopian armpit music, the Spanish Flamenco, and the more recent British “Stomp” ensemble. In the 20th century, technologies opened new ways for dancers to create their own music of the body—for example, Mercedes Cunningham’s Variations V (1956), which used poles within sound radiuses that responded to dancers’ movements in space (Vaughan 79–98). By using The Movement’s Voice system, however, it is possible to approach movement and choreography in a new way. The dancer’s movements provide the basis for the sound, music, color, and lighting—literally creating an experience that will be synesthetically seen and heard. Also, because the aural and visual elements are created through the movement, the choreographic process takes on multiple new dimensions, in a complex combination of kinetic, aural, and visual components. Here, for the dancers, kinesthesis occurs in fusion of two forms: they experience kinesthetic synesthesia through their physical motion while gravitational synesthesia is experienced through sensory reception of the changing colors, lights, music, and sounds. SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

Both forms are induced by the dancer’s movements that, in turn, transform under the influence of the changing aural and visual surroundings. The dancer/choreographer moves and feels how the movements are translated into sounds, music, color, and lighting, and this affects the following choices of movement. Experiment in Two Phases I experimented with this system on three professional dancers from different training backgrounds ranging from classical ballet to modern dance. The first part of the experiment explored whether or not the system affects the dancer when performing a piece they prepared in advance. I set up a generic single sound for the sound/music system and the following generic color pattern, which allowed the dancer to use the whole space while performing their choreography (Fig. 2).

FIGURE 2

for the color and lighting system, I assigned the color pattern below (Fig. 3). After examining her performance, I realized that all of Taylor’s movement decisions led her to stay in the center and create an improvisation on the X-axis. In other words, the single sound on the X-axis and the color pattern dictated her creation in key ways. Based on this, I recognized a possible link between specific sounds and color patterns and the kinds of movement the dancer makes responding to the system. These responses are, of course, individualized, as determined by the dancers’ backgrounds, capacities, and styles, but there were common patterns that I wanted to explore further. Thus, with the next dancer, Liliya, for the sound/music system I used the same sound used in Taylor’s experiment—one electronic sound generated by moving the right hand on the X-axis (from side to side) —with one small change: I added the ability to generate the sound on the Y-axis (up and down). For the color and lighting system, I chose the color pattern indicated in the figure on the next page (Fig. 4). After studying Liliya’s performance, I saw again that the single sound on the X and Y axes and the color pattern were integral components in her creation: all of her movement decisions in the phrase led her to stay on the left-center side of the stage and create an improvisation on the X and Y axes.

After each dancer performed their piece, I observed several unexpected developments. A commonality existed among all of them: at some point in the dance, they gradually stopped dancing their own prepared choreography and instead began to improvise. It was almost as if the system “forced” all of them to do so, as a response to its output. After that, I realized that by implementing an interactive platform in the process of dance, the system becomes an integral, inevitable part of creating the choreography. When using this system, the act of choreography becomes an act of improvisatory performance. The dancers spontaneously but consciously changed their movements in response to the audio-visual environment. After this first phase, I was interested to explore further the influences the system had on dancers, and the reverse. I asked the dancers to improvise with the system and assigned them each a different color pattern and sound. With the first dancer, Taylor, I allowed only one simple electronic sound that would be generated by moving her right hand on the X-axis (from side to side) for the sound/music system. As

FIGURE 3

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With the third dancer, Mark, I changed direction and opened the entire space. For the sound/music, I chose four violas with a soft sound: two for the arms on the Y-axis (up and down) and two for the legs on the X-axis (side to side). For the color/lighting system, I assigned the color pattern also shown on the next page (Fig. 5). After observing Mark’s work, I noticed how my choices caused Mark to select long and wide movements and how the kind of sound I chose caused Mark to move softly and slowly. In all three cases, I witnessed how the system was an influential component in the process of improvisation. I also saw how strongly the use of different patterns of sound and color affected the dancers’ movement decisions.

THE MOVEMENT’S VOICE: LECTURE DEMONSTRATION I eventually had the opportunity to present The Movement’s Voice system in a lecture demonstration delivered as part of a thesis requirement for my MFA in Dance from Hollins/ADF/Frankfurt in 2014. To illustrate how sound, volume, and rhythm can be generated by a dancer’s movement, my specific examples showed how selecting the right arm and moving it on the horizontal line (X-axis) would play the

FIGURE 4

FIGURE 5

sound of a snare from the percussion family, and how, for example, selecting the left arm and moving it on the vertical line (Y-axis), could play the sound of a trumpet from the brass family.

To exemplify how this system allows one to create unlimited chords and scales, I provided the following examples: moving the right arm from right to left (on the X-axis), while I played a C major chord, consisting of notes C, E, and G, with the sound of the flute from the woodwind family.

When moving the left arm from up to down (on the Y-axis), a C minor chord played, which consists of the notes C (root), E (minor third), and G (perfect fifth), and with the sound of the grand piano. By moving the right leg from back to front (on the Z-axis), it played a perfect octave in C major with the sound of the French horn from the brass family. By moving the left leg from front to back (on the Z-axis), it played a perfect octave in C major in reverse order with the sound of a bassoon from the woodwinds family.

These are only a few examples of chords and octaves that The Movement’s Voice is capable of creating. Next, we demonstrated how one could also assign several instruments to one body part by using the right arm to play a full string quartet. The right arm played the ensemble violin on the X-axis, the solo viola on the Y-axis, and the solo cello on the Z-axis. To exemplify how the system can create music with each body part representing a different instrument, I referred back to the Baroque period by playing Bach’s “BWV 975/Concerto for Harpsichord in G Minor” with the following selection:

When the right and the left arms rise up above 90 degrees, the program played the voices of the choir and the organ, respectively. When the right and left arms decreased below 90 degrees, they played the harpsichord. When the right and left arms are moving on the X-axis, it created an audio effect that manipulated the whole concerto.

Finally, to illustrate the system’s full potential, we showed how it is possible to create any combination of random sounds by selecting a sound and manipulating its channels, which created not a song but a sequence of sound effects.

CONCLUSION In summary, my experiments with The Movement’s Voice system demonstrated that the dancers developed an improvisatory dialogue with the system, leading to unexpected creations. Exploring the realtime interaction between movement and the creation of music has led me to many important conclusions. The dancer receives an “inspiration” for creative movement from the system, which in turn generates new emotions to inspire further improvisation. The dancers experience an interactive connection between their body’s motions and the dynamic changes in sound, music, color, and light; they also experience the synesthetic effect of cross-sense impressions, so that each body motion identifies itself with its sound, music, color, and light. As a result, the body attains a sounding and colorful “voice.” The unexpected shift that occurs from set choreography to improvisation suggests that the dancer is liberated from prepared choreographic schemes, producing “spontaneous” movements whose source is not an idea or theme, but interaction between the dancing body and technology. In interacting with the program, the dancers receive and give feedback in a way that is clearer and more authentic SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

than what usually occurs in traditional dance performance. The Movement’s Voice fosters an organic process by the dancer, allowing for a rich, complex experience for both performer and audience. The next step in the development of the system involves a further focus on the potential influence of its interactive effect on a number of dancers working together, as well as its considerable possibilities for application in live performance of various disciplines. Each dancer would become the “inducer,” not only of the many sensory elements, but of all other performers as they are affected by each other and the input of the program. Such complex interactions between the dancers and the system may ultimately lead to deeper relationships between the dancers, who together can participate in the creation of a total artwork based on the fusion of motion, sound, music, color, and light, resulting from the integrated creative work of humans and technology. WORKS CITED

Alexiadis, Dimitrios, and Petros Daras. “Evaluating a Dancer’s Performance Using Kinect-based Skeleton Tracking.” MM ‘11 Proceedings of the 19th ACMI International Conference on Multimedia, 2011, pp. 659-662. Bakker, Diederik. “The effect of visualization in New Interfaces for Musical Expression using Kinect.” MSc thesis, University of Amsterdam, 23 July 2012, citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/ summary?doi=10.1.1.473.7234. Accessed 2013.

Mizuno, Shinji. “GAYAIT: an Interactive Video and Sound Art System Handling a Large Number of Video Clips and Its Applications.” ArtScience, vol. 11, no. 4, 2012, pp. 149–56. Robertson, Lynn C., and Noam Sagiv. Synesthesia: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience. Oxford UP, 2005. Todoroff, Todor, et al. “Orchestra: Wireless Sensor System for Augmented Performances & Fusion with Kinect.” QPSR of the Numediart Research Program, vol. 4, no. 2, June 2011, pp. 29–35. Vaughan, David, editor. Merce Cunningham: Creative Elements. Routledge, 1997. Yuva, Yoshida, and Yonezawa Tomoko. “Choreographic Design Visualization of Enormous Dancers for Authoring and Browsing Dance Motion and Formation.” 5th International Association of Societies of Design Research, Tokyo, 26–30 Aug. designcu.jp/ iasdr2013/papers/2111-1b.pdf. Web. 2013. ASSAF BENCHETRIT is an assistant professor of theatre and dance at the University of New Hampshire. He holds a joint BS in computer science and BFA in dance degrees, and an MFA degree in dance. He was a faculty member at Yale University, Columbia University, Rutgers University, Montclair State University, and Raritan Valley Community College.

Blom, Lynne A., and L. Tarin Chaplin. The Moment of Movement: Dance Improvisation. U of Pittsburgh P, 1988. Boucher, Marc. “Kinetic Synaesthesia: Experiencing Dance in Multimedia Scenographies.” Contemporary Aesthetics, vol. 2, 2004. Chapple, Eliot D., and Martha Davis. “Expressive Movement and Performance: Toward a Unifying Theory.” TDR, vol. 32, no. 4, Winter 1988, pp. 53–79. “Color Picker.” https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/34047/ colorpicker. 27 May 2010. Web. 5 May 2014. Cooke, Deryck. The Language of Music. Gloucestershire, Clarendon Press, 1990. Cytowic, Richard E., and David M. Eagleman. Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia. MIT P, 2009. Dixon, Steve. Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation. MIT P, 2007. Dunbar, June. José Limón: An Artist Re-viewed. Routledge, 2002. Edwards, Julia B. “Recording Kinect-Based Choreography.” Abstract, Smith College, 2013, cs.smith.edu/classwiki/images/8/87/ AbstractForKinectPoster_JuliaEdwards2013.pdf. Web. 2013. Essid, Slim, et al. “A Multi-Modal Dance Corpus for Research into Interaction between Humans in Virtual Environments.” Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces, vol. 7, Aug. 2012, pp. 157–70. Galeyev, Bulat M. “Evolution of Gravitational Synesthesia in Music: To Color and Light!” Leonardo, vol. 36, no. 2, 2003, pp. 129–34. Glover, Benjamin. “Real Time Interactive Technology in Dance Using Kinect.” benglover.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/InteractiveTechnology-in-Dance-Project-Report-by-Ben-Glover.pdf. Web. 2013. Hansen, Mark B.N. New Philosophy for New Media. MIT P, 2004. Joseph, Charles M. Stravinsky & Balanchine: A Journey of Invention. Yale UP, 2002, p. 310. Jung, Doris, and Blair van Waveren. “Interaction for Translating Dance into Graphics.” OZCHI 2012 Integration, Interaction, Innovation, Immersion, Inclusion, 2012, pp. 13-16. Laban, Rudolf. Principles of Dance and Movement Notation. MacDonald & Evans, 1956.

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SDCJ-PRS BOOK REVIEW Documenting Performance: The Context and Processes of Digital Curation and Archiving Edited By Toni Sant LONDON: BLOOMSBURY METHUEN DRAMA, 2017; PP. XXIII + 362, 5 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAPERBACK $29.95.

Toni Sant’s edited collection, Documenting Performance: The Context and Processes of Digital Curation and Archiving, explores many forms of recording performance and argues that advanced technologies and reexamined approaches toward documentation offer opportunities to provide comprehensive access to once-ephemeral performances. Comprising nineteen chapters written by performance scholars, library science specialists, and digital archivists, the text offers assessment of documentation practices in theatre. Documenting Performance posits that increased interdisciplinary methods of archiving and documenting live performance are needed, ultimately advocating that scholars and artists recognize the richness of archival documents and reconsider the long-standing view that documentation is secondary to live performance. Sant divides the book into four parts: Context for Documenting Performance; Ways of Documenting Performance; From Documents to Documenting; and Documenting Bodies in Motion. In the introductory chapter that precedes these four sections, Sant clarifies that “documentation” is not synonymous with the term “documents,” because the former “refers to the process of storing documents and preserving them in a systematic way for long-term access through an archive” while the latter refers to the objects created from a performance (1). While this definition seems straightforward, questions arise, including those surrounding storage and preservation of documents; and the consequences of ever-evolving technology

on the longevity of an archive. Instead of simply retreading the arguments made by prominent scholars of performance, the authors in Documenting Performance have found ways to advance the discussion of theories about liveness, mediatization, ephemerality, archiving, and embodiment. With each chapter, it becomes apparent that digital curation and archival practice should not be viewed as antithetical to, or impinging on, live performance’s unique qualities, but instead offer dimension to our understanding about performance. For those who are considering new ways to document and archive performances, Documenting Performance is an excellent resource. Part One includes chapters about memory, the management of documentation as data, and legal issues surrounding documentation. Daniela Salazar’s chapter, “Performance Arts and Their Memories,” examines the ways museums present performing arts, revealing how memory studies can illuminate significant differences between live performance and how past performances are remembered when their related documents are displayed in exhibits. Alberto Pendón Martínez and Gema Bueno de la Fuente’s chapter, “Description Models for Documenting Performance” provides an in-depth look at how performing arts collections are used, organized, and described in exhibition and holding institutions. While the chapter is a dense read due to its jargon, the two library and information science professionals provide the reader a clear picture of the complexities of common archival approaches across multiple international digital networks. Similarly, lawyer Jeanine Rizzo, in her chapter, “Intellectual Property Matters for Documenting Performance,” concisely explains property and copyright laws, focusing on what protections are offered to the person documenting a performance. Despite its diversity of topics, Part One’s overall purpose is to familiarize the reader with the complexities of documentation that can be overlooked. Parts Two and Three include clear examples of how performance scholars and artists engage with documentation using technology. In “Translating Performance: Desire, Intention and Interpretation in Photographic Documents,” authors Helen Newall, Amy Skinner, and Allan Taylor present a well-measured examination of how a photograph intervenes with a performance, asking what new meanings arise from “translating” a photograph and how that experience differs from that of a person watching the live performance. Joanna Bucknall and Kirsty Sedgman’s chapter, “Documenting Audience Experience: Social Media as Lively Stratification,” and Vanessa Bartlett’s “Web Archiving and Participation: The Future History of Performance?” explore the potential of social media and the internet to generate information about performance, including the documentation audiences create through participation on Facebook or Twitter. Arguing that “production has been privileged over reception,” Bucknall and Sedgman cogently explain that audience members’ use of social media to assess performances both during and after a production generates new, democratic opportunities for documentation, thus countering the traditional belief that performances should be remembered only through the words of critics, artists, and producers (117). Bartlett extends this line of thinking in her analysis of how web pages contribute to documentation, making the program and formal publicity no longer the only records deemed worthy of archiving.

One of the strongest chapters in the book, “Paradocumentation and NT Live’s ‘CumberHamlet,’” is found in Part Three. The authors, Daisy Abbott and Claire Read, construct a captivating investigation of the National Theatre’s production of Hamlet. The authors interrogate the boundaries of liveness, mediatization, and technology due to the simultaneous livestreaming of the performance that occurred in a nearby theatre, and the subsequent repetition of the performance re-aired at cinemas worldwide. The variety of documentation demonstrates the ways a production exists before, during, and after its live performance. Abbott and Read’s use of paradocumentation— “a notion of unity between performances and their documents, borne in part from technology”—aptly describes the ways in which technology creates noteworthy documents that offer fuller pictures of a performance than one might imagine, as evident in the many performative reiterations of the Cumberbatch/Hamlet production (165). Part Three also incorporates chapters that provide broad, global context to digital documentation and archiving. This includes Miguel Escobar Varela’s chapter, “From Copper-Plate Inscriptions to Interactive Websites,” which details the developments of archiving wayang—the thousand-year-old puppet theatre of Indonesia—and insightfully argues that across time “documentation takes place at the confluence of epistemological biases, technology, and access to economic means” (213). These chapters remind the reader that one of the advantages of digital archiving is that they are not restricted by site-specific access; yet it also reminds one that the ability to use technological documentation is still connected to economics and the privilege of access. Part Four will particularly interest dancers, choreographers, movement specialists, and directors as it closely analyzes how we document bodies in motion. In her chapter, “Dance Archival Futures,” Laura Griffiths considers how new technological documentation is rooted in the body. Griffiths analyzes online archives that document the creation of dance, providing insight into how dancers learn their performances and how digital annotations provide clearer evidence of embodied processes. Sarah Whatley’s “Documenting Dance” surveys how the body in dance has always resisted, yet simultaneously complied with, documentation, given that many notation systems can make the fluid and ephemeral elements of dance read as stagnant or repeatable. She contemplates how that relationship continues to evolve with the implementation of more technology that allows us to chronicle the process rather than just the performance. Due to the ever-changing nature of technological advancements, the future of performance documentation remains uncharted. Still, the book offers several case studies of performance documentation, and articulates the procedures of documenting performance through memory, oral traditions, promotional materials, photography, audio and video recordings, social media, developing digital databases, and online archives. One wishes Sant had left us with a final word that would provide a concise takeaway, but the subject of documenting performance is far from reaching a conclusion itself. Documenting Performance asks what documentation we consider worthy of curating and archiving, and prompts rethinking of how performance documentation might be utilized.

JEANNE TIEHEN

WAYNE STATE COLLEGE

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Published quarterly by Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), the Peer-Reviewed Section of SDC Journal serves directors and choreographers working in the profession and in institutions of higher learning. SDC’s mission is to give voice to an empowered collective of directors and choreographers working in all jurisdictions and venues across the country, encourage advocacy, and highlight artistic achievement. SDC Journal seeks essays with accessible language that focus on practice and practical application and that exemplify the sorts of fruitful intersections that can occur between the academic/scholarly and the profession/craft. For more information, visit: http://sdcweb.org/sdc-journal/sdc-journal-peer-review/ SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL PEER-REVIEWED SECTION

Julie Taymor, Donald Holder + Bartlett Sher

Michael Wilson + Rachel Chavkin

THE “MR. ABBOTT” AWARD GALA A CELEBRATION OF JULIE TAYMOR’S ARTISTRY

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James Lapine presents to Julie Taymor Walter McBride except as noted

PHOTOS by

Nelle Nugent, Julie Taymor + Thomas Schumacher

“No matter what happens along the way, it is the process, it is the procedure, it is the journey. I’ve learned this so totally. That is the all. We think it is so much about the end product, but it really isn’t.”

Julie Taymor + Tyne Rafaeli

of Julie, I thought of how people keep saying that ‘politics is theatre.’ No. Theatre is much better.” Speaking as part of the evening’s tribute, composer Elliot Goldenthal said of Taymor, “I marvel at her collaboration. With me, it’s give-

SDC Member Julie Taymor spoke those words to a capacity crowd at New York’s Bohemian National Hall on April 2 as she accepted SDC Foundation’s “Mr. Abbott” Award Julie Taymor for her life of achievement in the theatre. In the audience were her peers, colleagues, and collaborators—actors, designers, producers, fellow directors, and choreographers—all present to celebrate the visionary Taymor for her work in opera, in film, and especially in the theatre. Chaired by Nelle Nugent, Thomas Schumacher, Rachel Chavkin, and Michael Wilson, The “Mr. Abbott” raised over $240,000 for programming, including SDCF’s flagship Observership program. Dame Helen Mirren and David Henry Hwang served as honorary cochairs for the event. New York City Borough President Gale Brewer gave brief remarks about Julie Taymor’s influence on the arts, as well as the cultural and economic health of the city. “Theatre has the power to show us what another person’s life is like,” said Brewer. “It can open a window into a world vastly different from our own, and in turn give us compassion and empathy for those whom we do not know. And goodness knows, in today’s world, we sure need that.” Brewer added, “As I was watching and listening to this amazing audience and the amazing work

and-take, and difficult and rewarding, and all that stuff. But watching her with actors, watching her creating theatre from scratch with other artists and designers and playwrights, it’s just an infectious sense of ecstasy that goes on with Julie. There’s a certain look that she has on her face. When you see these ideas flashing in her eyes and her hands, it radiates to you a certain confidence that the idea would be shared on stage with everyone. And the text and the

visuals and the ineffable would be conjoined in a way that I never saw before.” Harry Lennix, who appeared in Taymor’s Titus Andronicus on stage as well as in her film version, Titus, affirmed the director’s depth of thought and spirit. “To me,” Lennix said, “Julie is a philosopher. She is to some extent a theologian. Her voice, her work, her images speak of God. I don’t know what her particular religious beliefs are. But if you look at her work, all of it is informed with the divine spirit that is lifeaffirming, and that is beautiful. She is my greatest inspiration as a director and as a thinker. If there were any justice in this world and this cultural moment, Julie Taymor would have her own category at the Tony Awards and the Academy Awards. As it is, she is beyond category.” The program was co-directed by Bartlett Sher and Tyne Rafaeli. Taymor’s artistic life crossed paths with both Sher and Rafaeli at Theatre for a New Audience, where Sher also emerged as a director and Rafaeli worked with Julie through an SDC Foundation program. The evening included tribute film segments directed by Greg Emetaz, as well as a “Mr. Abbott” history film by Jonathan Cerullo and Katherine Freer. There were performances by Sofia Rei, performing a song from Taymor’s film Frida, and from members of the cast of Disney’s The Lion King.

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Chairman of the Shubert Organization Philip J. Smith

Julie Taymor + Elliot Goldenthal PHOTO Jason Smith

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Kenny Leon + Joy Abbott

Among the many guests were prominent members of Julie’s alma mater, Oberlin College and Conservatory. In attendance were college President Carmen Twillie Ambar, college Chairman Chris Canavan, theatre professors and SDC Members Justin Emeka and Christopher Mirto, and several conservatory alumni.

utmost care. This included working with light, for which I learned she has an intuitive and profound understanding. As her complete vision for the play was slowly revealed, only then did I become fully aware of the depth of her imagination, her intelligence, her bravery, and her passion for the work. Encountering the unexpected, seeing images of profound beauty

the career of his one-time office boy, and later his producer, Harold Prince. Rafaeli spoke of her time with Taymor, under the auspices of an SDCF Gielgud Fellowship in 2013, on Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Theatre for a New Audience.

Julie Taymor + Carmen Twillie Ambar

Pam MacKinnon

Max Casella + Julie Taymor

Harry Lennix

“My job was to watch,” explained Rafaeli. “In that watching, I met a process so thorough, a point of view so profound and agile, an aesthetic breathtakingly complete in its skill and its heart and its visual scope. Perhaps more importantly, I saw a mentor. As a young woman, I saw someone working with singularity and warrior strength. That provided for me a model. A model of intelligence and integrity, showing me as a young director what is possible in this wonderful work that we do. She was peerless, and I was genuinely forever changed.” Presenting the award to Taymor was 2016 “Mr. Abbott” Award winner, director James Lapine, who said, “Julie, I’ve known you a long time. You are fearless. You take huge risks and consistently manage to achieve what lesser artists might consider impossible. I don’t think you think anything is impossible. And somehow, for all your accomplishments, you have managed to retain the soul of a rebel, continually challenging yourself and thus challenging the colleagues who are lucky enough to work with you.

Taymor’s remarks included an affirmation of the role of theatre, as she declared, “Theatre is not there just to show you what you can already see straight in front of you. It’s to give you a new perspective.” The creation of that perspective was described by lighting designer Donald Holder, a frequent creative partner of Taymor. “In the theatre the first time with her,” recalled Holder, “I watched in awe as she meticulously crafted each image in every moment with the

come to life in surprising ways, has been the hallmark of every project I’ve had the privilege of working on with Julie.” The “Mr. Abbott” Award, bestowed through SDCF by a committee of directors and choreographers to one of their peers, is named in honor of renowned director George Abbott and is presented to a director or choreographer in recognition of lifetime achievement. It also reflects Mr. Abbott’s commitment to mentoring the next generations of artists over the long span of his career, perhaps best exemplified by

“You have a boundless vision,” Lapine continued. “That’s hard. You’re always challenging and original in everything that you do, and your body of work makes those of us in this business very proud, because you exemplify the pinnacle of our profession.” “When people talk about directors or leaders or artists who are fearless,” Taymor observed as she capped the evening with her remarks, “it comes with a lot of pain. But that is the kind of pain that is okay if you’re with an extraordinary company of people.” SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL FOUNDATION SECTION

Choreographer Daniel Ezralow spoke to Taymor’s role as a leader. “We’re all students and teachers in the most improbable ways,” said Ezralow. “Children just new to this planet and masters who have traversed the earth are both at times our inspiration. I am honored to have Julie in my life as a collaborator and master teacher through many creative endeavors. “I’m going to paraphrase something that inspires me and for me embodies the spirit of Julie. It’s from Wassily Kandinsky’s book Concerning Spirituality and Art. The life of the spirit may be fairly represented in a diagram as a large triangle divided horizontally in unequal parts with the narrowest segment uppermost. The lower the segment, the greater it is in breadth, depth, and area. The whole triangle is moving slowly and almost invisibly forwards and upwards. Where

the apex was today, the second segment is tomorrow. What today can be understood only by the apex, and the rest of the triangle is an incomprehensible gibberish, forms tomorrow the true thought and feeling of the second segment. “At the apex of the top segment stands often one man. In this case, one woman. And only one. Her joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to her in sympathy do not always understand her vision. So in this lifetime stood Beethoven, solitary and misunderstood. How many years will it be before a greater segment of the triangle reaches the spot where Beethoven once stood alone? “In every segment of the triangle, there are artists. Each one of them who can see beyond the limits of his or her segment is a prophet to those about him or her, and helps the advance of the obstinate whole. Every segment of the

triangle hungers consciously, or, much more often, unconsciously, for their corresponding spiritual food. This food is offered by the artists, and for this food, the segment immediately below will tomorrow be stretching out eager hands. Despite all this confusion and this chaos, the spiritual triangle slowly but surely with irresistible strength moves onwards and upwards because of the one woman at the top. Thank you, Julie, for leading the way.” As she embraced the award, a bust of the legendary Mr. Abbott, Taymor said of the evening, “This has been so much more than I could have imagined, an unbelievable night, because of the humanness of the people in this room. I just want to thank you all for being here. I’m blown away by it.”

David Henry Hwang, John Leguizamo + Nelle Nugent

David Roberts

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Ted Chapin, Victoria Traube, Joy Abbott, Jerry Mirrow + Laura Penn

Donald Holder

She went on to say, “I really thank all the producers and artists who work with me, and the people who made this beautiful evening. This is one of the greatest honors I’ve ever had, because it comes from my community.” Past recipients of the “Mr. Abbott” Award include Michael Bennett, Arvin Brown, Graciela Daniele, Gordon Davidson, Agnes de Mille, Bob Fosse, Garson Kanin, James Lapine, Kenny Leon, Kathleen and Rob Marshall, Lynne Meadow, Jerry Mitchell, Mike Nichols, Trevor Nunn, Jack O’Brien, Harold Prince, Lloyd Richards, Donald Saddler, Gene Saks, Susan Stroman, Daniel Sullivan, Tommy Tune, George C. Wolfe, and Jerry Zaks. SDC Foundation will celebrate Mr. Abbott, the 60th anniversary of SDC, and its artists at a special gala to be held in April 2019. Daniel Ezralow

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THE “MR. ABBOTT” AWARD LEADERSHIP CIRCLE SDCF established the “Mr. Abbott” Leadership Circle as part of last year’s 2017 celebration. The 2018 Leadership Circle consists of SDC Members who generously contributed $500 or more to the event. CHRISTOPHER ASHLEY WALTER BOBBIE

2018 “MR. ABBOTT” AWARD DONOR LIST $25,000 +

Greg Nobile

Disney Theatrical Productions

Ostar Productions

The Shubert Organization

Heather Randall John Rando

$10,000 – $24,999 Chris Canavan

Daryl Roth

Oberlin College and Conservatory

Susan Schulman

Thomas Schumacher

Aetna

Evan Yionoulis

The Broadway League Thomas L. Cassada

$500 – $999

I.A.T.S.E - Matthew D. Loeb, International President

The Actors Fund

Pryor Cashman, LLP

JOE CALARCO

University of Rochester

LIZ DIAMOND

Roundabout Theatre Company Spielman, Koenigsberg, and Parker, LLP

DOUG HUGHES

Christopher Ashley ATPAM, Local 18032 Victoria Bailey, TDF Joseph Benincasa Martin Borell Mark Brokaw Marc Bruni Joe Calarco Liz Diamond Sheldon Epps

Temple University - Dean and Vice Provost for the Arts, Robert T. Stroker, PhD

Michael-John Garcés

Time Warner Foundation

Di Glazer

Liza Gennaro Jeffrey Horowitz

ANNE KAUFFMAN

$2,500 – $4,999

Anne Kauffman

DAN KNECHTGES

Mrs. George Abbott

Dan Knechtges

MARK LAMOS

Ambassador Theatre Group

Mark Lamos

Myrna & Freddie Gershon

James Lapine

Linda Hartzell

Jeff Lee

JAMES LAPINE KENNY LEON

Christina Ripple David Roberts

Jolyon Stern and Nelle Nugent

LINDA HARTZELL

Michael McAleer Ethan McSweeny

Norma and Joseph Rosenberg

MARC BRUNI

LIZA GENNARO

Carol Kaplan Chesley Maddox-Dorsey

Barry and Fran Weissler

Jujamcyn Theaters

MICHAEL JOHN GARCES

Michael Kahn

$5,000 – $9,999

MARK BROKAW

SHELDON EPPS

Spivak Lipton LLP/Hope Pordy

David Henry Hwang

Paul Tazewell

Jerry Mitchell

RACHEL CHAVKIN

Susan Rose

Hartford Stage/ Christina Ripple

Ruben Santiago-Hudson Bartlett Sher Leigh Silverman Martha L. Smith Casey Stangl Theater Communications Group Up to $249 Matthew Barkan Melia Bensussen Anne Bogart Reeve Carney LaKeisha Caton Jonathan Cerullo Desdemona Chiang Valentina Fratti Jeremy Gerard Alex Goldberg Steven Gross Bonita J. Hamilton Caesar Scott Irgang Caroline Jackson Smith

Hudson Scenic Studio

Reynaldi Lolong

PAM MACKINNON

Doug Hughes

Marcia Milgrom Dodge

Eric Katzman and Melissa Elstein

JERRY MITCHELL

John Gore Organization

Terence Mills

Isabel Keating

JACK O’BRIEN

Neil Mazzella

Jack O’Brien

John Kiffel

Stacey Mindich Productions LLC

Sharon Ott

Ezra Knight

SHARON OTT

The Nederlander Organization

JOHN RANDO SERET SCOTT

Steve Traxler

SUSAN SCHULMAN

Michael Wilson

SCOTT SCHWARTZ

$1,000 – $2,499

SUSAN STROMAN

Walter Bobbie

ERIC TING

Rachel Chavkin

MICHAEL WILSON

Gould, Kobrick & Schlapp, P.C.

EVAN YIONOULIS

Philip R. Hoffman Don Holder Hudson Scenic Studio Alan Lafer Kenny Leon

54 SDC JOURNAL FOUNDATION SECTION 54 SDC JOURNAL | SUMMER 2018

Lincoln Center Theater | SUMMER 2018

Pam MacKinnon

Laura Pennand Marty Pavloff

Lorin Latarro

Public Theater

Carla Matero

Scott Schwartz

Rebecca Matte

Seret Scott

Jonathan McCrory

Segal Marco Advisors

Meredith McDonough

Spivak Lipton LLP

Molly Meloy

Charlotte St. Martin

Robert Moss

Susan Stroman

Mark Olsen

Telsey + Company

Sam Pinkleton

Eric Ting

Hope Pordy

Victoria Traube

Lonny Price Ruthlyn Salomons

$250 – $499

Arif Silverman

Jo Bonney

John Stefaniuk

Tracy Brigden

Joyce Storey

Marey Griffith Joseph Haj

REMEMBERING PAUL WEIDNER BY IRENE

When Hartford Stage built its new space, we called it the Mink House. The old, smaller theatre that was kept open for a while was dubbed the Rat Palace. I ran the Rat for a short time. My gift for opening night at the Rat from Mink House honchos Paul Weidner and Managing Director Bill Stewart deserves a shout-out: a box of Midol (for cramps during that time of the month) with a note that read, “Under very difficult circumstances, you have accomplished something quite extraordinary.” Paul came a long way from those early days. After 14 years of running Hartford Stage, he accomplished quite a bit more. He served in the Peace Corps; he freelanced across the country and as far off as Estonia; he helped start a health clinic in Haiti; he was Zelda Fichandler’s right hand in running the NYU Graduate Acting Program for 11 years; he taught reading to those with poor English skills; he published a novel; and he devised a highly creative way to introduce visual art to kids at the Brooklyn Museum. Quite a list for a theatre rat. Paul was private and extremely humble. When he became quite sick, he made it clear that he wanted no “tribute, memorial, or any of that crap.” So a large group of his friends gathered May 19 at NYU and raised quite a few glasses in his honor. Some told stories. One of the most surprising came from Paul’s money manager. (“What money?” I thought.) Paul had told him

LEWIS

FOREVER GRATEFUL that he didn’t need most of his money and wanted it distributed to particular charities; he was also open to suggestions about others. So he gave it away and lived on his pension and Social Security and, when he died, willed the remainder to these same charities. Few ever knew anything about it. I had assumed his monk-like existence meant he had nothing in the way of a nest egg.

Short and scrappy, Paul seemed afraid of nothing, including physical confrontation, which, to look at him, was the last thing you could imagine happening. His sense of humor was wicked and irreverent. I arrived at Hartford Stage on the eve of my 30th birthday, which I dreaded. On the big day, I was in the office when I heard what sounded like a dirge heading my way. When I looked down the hall, there was a slowly advancing cortege, led by Himself, in a fulllength black-lace mantilla, carrying a birthday cake trimmed in black. I loved it. Paul always did exactly what he wanted to do in this life and had no regrets about dying. What a great time he had.

Paul Weidner, my friend, was a man of integrity and great artistry. As a mentor, Paul guided my early acting years with his advice, direction, and, most importantly, creative support. In 1972, not many regional theatres were producing plays for, and about, black people. Paul took a chance on a new playwright, Ray Aranha, a new play, My Sister, My Sister, and a young actress, Seret Scott. The play moved from regional to Off-Broadway to Broadway and changed my life. I am forever grateful, dear Paul. I miss you. —Seret Scott

PAUL WEIDNER was Artistic Director of Hartford Stage Company from 1968 to 1980, having originally joined the theatre’s resident acting company shortly after its founding in 1964. During his tenure, he became known for fostering the development of new American plays, as well as for an ongoing relationship with Edward Albee, including the premiere of the one-acts Listening and Counting the Ways, with Angela Lansbury in the cast. He led Hartford Stage’s move from its original 225-seat basement home to its current 489-seat theatre, opened in 1977. Following his time in Hartford, Weidner joined the Peace Corps for two years. Upon returning to the US, he taught and directed at New York University. His NYC directing credits included three productions for the Roundabout Theatre Company—Hamlet, with Stephen Lang; Pygmalion, with Anthony Heald and Madeleine Potter; and Come Back, Little Sheba, with Shirley Knight and Philip Bosco; his Hartford Stage production of Ray Aranha’s My Sister, My Sister had transferred to Broadway in 1974. Weidner served on the SDC Executive Board over the course of nearly two decades. He passed away on March 13, 2018.

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REMEMBERING DONALD McKAYLE Donald McKayle, a groundbreaking figure in both theatrical and modern dance, as well as an accomplished stage director, passed away on April 6 at the age of 87. McKayle began his dance career as a teenager, performing for choreographers Martha Graham and José Limon. At age 21, he formed his own dance company, Donald McKayle and Dancers, which operated from 1951 to 1969. It counted among its members such future leaders in the field as Alvin Ailey, Elliot Feld, and Arthur Mitchell. His socially conscious works included Games, a playground set work that culminated in a police beating; Her Name Was Harriet, about Harriet Tubman; and Rainbow Round My Shoulder, which depicted members of a Southern work gang. He made his Broadway debut as a dancer in 1950 in Bless You All, served as associate choreographer to Bob Fosse on Redhead, and choreographed both the dances and boxing sequences in Golden Boy. He was the first African American to both direct and choreograph a Broadway show with

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the musical Raisin in 1973, echoing director Lloyd Richards’ achievement as the first black man to direct on Broadway with the original production of A Raisin in the Sun 14 years earlier. McKayle went on to direct and choreograph Dr. Jazz in 1975 and to conceive and choreograph Sophisticated Ladies. He also choreographed the film version of The Great White Hope, the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer, and the TV special Free to Be…You and Me. McKayle taught at The Juilliard School, where he also received an honorary doctorate in fine arts; Bennington College; Bard College; Jacob’s Pillow; and the University of California at Irvine.

REMEMBERING RACHEL ROCKWELL BY STEVE

Although the passing of any talented artist is cause for mourning, the recent death of director Rachel Rockwell (at only age 49) seemed especially cruel. In a field of increasingly narrow specialization, Rachel could do it all: beginning her career as a much-lauded dancer

in Chicago’s thriving musical theatre community, she expanded her considerable skills to include choreography, then choreography and direction of musicals and plays—all with consummate skill, trademark grace, unerring intelligence, and an infectious passion for whatever story in which she became immersed. In a span of less than 15 years, her work as a director evolved from that of a talented neophyte to an acknowledged master of her art. Her work on the great and recent classics of the musical stage was the stuff of local legend; without outlandish conceptual choices or radical dramaturgical alterations, she delved deeply into a play’s roots to find the truths at its heart

SCOTT

while bringing the same sense of truth, purpose, and sometimes irrationality that propelled every character in the piece. Perhaps because she was also one of the most spectacularly caring mothers on the planet (her son, Jake, was an unending source of pride to her), she was particularly great in working with young performers. In her version of The Sound of Music, for example, the von Trapp children were refreshingly, well, childlike—and spirited and sometimes nasty and rambunctious and very, very astute. Far from the antiseptic cherubs that serve as cute adornments to the play’s main action, Rachel’s charges were fascinating, frustrating people themselves, forming the propulsive moral center of the play and foreshadowing her revelatory work with the young actors in her most celebrated recent hit, Ride the Cyclone. I worked with Rachel only once: on her Goodman Theatre production of Brigadoon in 2014. Brigadoon is, of course, a play that nearly everyone of a certain age had seen or been in, and, as such, carries with it an aura that’s a touch moldy. Rachel gleefully blew that away. Her exhaustive research into the period unearthed historical information that lifted a whimsical fable about love and fate into a heroic struggle of a people to preserve their individuality and heritage in the face of overwhelming opposition from an enemy force. In other hands, this discovery might have turned a beloved musical into a pseudoBrechtian treatise; instead, Rachel used it more subtly to create a world of substance, passion, and heroism that brought out the unexpected muscularity of an oft-underestimated musical gem. The patriotism of the clans was no mere excuse for pageantry but an essential fight for human existence—and the grace of the romantic subplots were imbued with an urgency and desperation that made them both moving and contemporary.

Rachel took her work very seriously, but not herself. She was no pushover, mind you; she knew what she needed to do her work, and she expressed those needs firmly and eloquently. But she trusted that her team (producers included) were collaborators, not adversaries, and her ability to corral the needs and hopes of each contributor into a seamless and dedicated whole would be a great object lesson for any diplomat. But beyond all of that, Rachel was a magnificent human. Her kindness to the legions of actors with whom she worked was inspiring, even in the closely knit world of Chicago theatre; nearly everyone I know who worked with her adored her (and I mean that: adored), not just for her talent but also for her ready smile, her infectious laugh and raucous good humor, and her genuine love for the folks with whom she made glorious plays. Rachel’s death was tragic. It came at a time when she was at her creative peak, when producers in other cities were finally discovering her unique talents, when her reputation as a master interpreter of yesterday’s gems was further burnished by her success with new works such as Ride the Cyclone—all indelible celebrations of human hope.

RACHEL ROCKWELL, who passed away on May 28, 2018, at the age of 49, was a much in-demand director and choreographer based in Chicago, where she had long-standing relationships with a number of theatres, including Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the Drury Lane, and the Marriott Lincolnshire. Having begun her career as a dancer, she transitioned to choreography and directing; the many Chicago productions she staged included Ragtime (for which she received the Jefferson Award as Best Director), Sweeney Todd, Mamma Mia!, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Shakespeare in Love, October Sky, and Brigadoon, the last having been her Goodman Theatre debut. Her production of the musical Ride the Cyclone played multiple engagements in the US, including an Off-Broadway run at MCC Theater.

SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL

THE SOCIETY PAGES SDC MEMBERS @ WORK + PLAY

Alexander Gelman, Brian Kite, Sharon Ott, Kathleen McGeever, Michael Wainstein, David Leong, Eric van Baars + Paul Steger

Executive Director Laura Penn represented SDC at the 2018 National Association of Schools of Theatre (NAST) Annual Meeting, held in Portland, OR, from March 28 to 31. Founded in 1965, NAST establishes national standards for undergraduate and graduate degrees and other credentials for theatre and theatre-related disciplines, and provides assistance to institutions and individuals engaged in artistic, scholarly, educational, and other theatre-related endeavors. Executive Board Member Melia Bensussen and Director of Communications and Education Howard Sherman attended the 49th annual National Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts from April 9 to 14. Each year, KCACTF welcomes 125 outstanding theatre students from colleges and universities across the country and provides them with readings, scholarship auditions, master classes, site visits, and networking opportunities to support their theatre aspirations. The festival culminates in an awards ceremony to recognize excellence in theatre, and Bensussen presented the SDC Directing Awards to Katie Ciszek and Allison Price.

Melia Bensussen + Olga Sanchez

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Melia Bensussen, Allison Price + Katie Ciszek

Michael Wilson

Barbara Davis

Laura Penn + Pam MacKinnon

On April 23, SDC held its Semi-Annual Membership Meeting at Theaterlab in New York. Meeting topics included organizing initiatives, contract affairs updates, the Unionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s financial report, an SDC Foundation update, and a solicitation for Member participation on the 2018 Nominating Committee for the fall Executive Board election. Additionally, Barbara Davis, Chief Operating Officer of The Actors Fund, provided an update on services and opportunities available to directors and choreographers. Members who could not attend in person had the option to join via livestream. Executive Director Laura Penn and Member Lisa Portes attended the 2018 League of Resident Theatres (LORT) Spring Conference in La Jolla, CA, from May 2 to 4. The conference focused on diversity and inclusion in regards to hiring within LORT theatres and provided an opportunity for attendees to give update reports and discuss best practices.

Rick Dildine, Paige Price, Kevin Moriarty, Laura Kepley, Blake Robison, Meredith McDonough, Jasson Minadakis, B.J. Jones, Abigail Adams + Laura Penn

SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL

Denzel Washington + Stephen McKinley Henderson at the New Dramatists luncheon

On May 7, more than 30 directors and choreographers joined Director and Co-Chair of the Los Angeles Steering Committee Art Manke in Los Angeles as he moderated SDC Foundation’s “An Artists Conversation” with director Leigh Silverman, choreographer Sam Pinkleton, playwright David Henry Hwang, and composer Jeanine Tesori, the creative team behind Soft Power. TOP LEFT

David Henry Hwang, Leigh Silverman + Sam Pinkleton

Executive Director Laura Penn attended the New Dramatists 69th Anniversary Spring Luncheon on May 15. This year’s event honored Denzel Washington and his many contributions to the arts. Director of Communications and Education Howard Sherman met with Rep. Chellie Pingree, the newly appointed Democratic Co-Chair of the Congressional Arts Caucus, along with other members of the Department for Professional Employees (DPE)’s Arts, Entertainment, and Media Industries Committee (AEMI) in Washington, DC, on May 18. Howard Sherman of SDC, Brandon Lorenz of AEA, Paul Almeida of DPE, Rep. Chellie Pingree, Sarah Howes of SAG-AFTRA, Alfonso Pollard of AFM + Michael Wasser of DPE

BOTTOM

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From May 19-26, a group of emerging and mid-career theatre directors and choreographers gathered at the Pasadena Playhouse in California for the 17th Annual Directors Lab West, an eight-day intensive that brings directors and choreographers together to learn from master artists. LEFT The Directors Lab West Steering Committee: Cheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Rae Adams, Janet Miller, Ernest Figueroa + Diana Wyenn PHOTO Martin Jago

Harold Prince + Patricia Birch

The 2018 Chita Rivera Awards, held on May 20 at the NYU Skirball Center, celebrated choreography on both Broadway and Off-Broadway. Outstanding Choreography in a Broadway Show went to Sergio Trujillo for Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, and Outstanding Choreography in an Off-Broadway Show went to Zach Morris and Jennine Willet for Ghost Light. In addition, director and producer Harold Prince was presented with the inaugural SDC Director Award for Exemplary Collaboration with Choreographers.

Sergio Trujillo

At the 36th Annual Elliot Norton Awards, the Boston Theater Critics Association recognized more than two dozen outstanding actors, directors, designers, and ensembles at its annual ceremony on May 21. Recipients included Sergio Trujillo, winner of Outstanding Director at a Large Theater for Arrabal at the American Repertory Theater.

SUMMER 2018 | SDC JOURNAL

ABOVE

Karen Azenberg, Susan Schulman, Ted Pappas, Julianne Boyd, Pamela Berlin + Marshall W. Mason

Executive Director Laura Penn hosted SDC’s past Executive Board Presidents—Karen Azenberg, Pamela Berlin, Julianne Boyd, Marshall W. Mason, Ted Pappas, and Susan H. Schulman—at the Union’s annual Past Presidents’ Lunch, held on June 4. On June 8, SDC staff and Executive Board Members Pam MacKinnon, Bartlett Sher, and Michael Wilson kicked off Tony Awards weekend with the Union’s annual Tony Toast celebration, which recognized Members nominated for their outstanding work for the 2017–2018 theatre season.

Michael Arden + Bartlett Sher

Andy Mientus + Kenneth Ferrone

Yasmine Lee, Stephen Hoggett + Benjamin Endsley Klein

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“

With every new show I try and do more and more things that I’ve never done before and which seem to be more impossible. I need that as a goal.

”

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SDC LEGACY MICHAEL BENNETT 1943–1987 Michael Bennett is perhaps best known as the conceiver, director, and co-choreographer of the groundbreaking musical A Chorus Line, for which he received Tony Awards for direction and choreography, as well as the Pulitzer Prize. He began his Broadway career as a member of the ensemble of Subways Are for Sleeping in 1961 and also appeared in Here’s Love and Bajour. He made his Broadway choreography debut with A Joyful Noise in 1966, followed by Henry Sweet Henry; Promises, Promises; Coco; and Company, going on to choreograph and co-direct (with Harold Prince) the original production of Follies. As a director-choreographer, his Broadway credits included Seesaw (for which he also wrote the book), Ballroom, and Dreamgirls, and he directed the plays Twigs and God’s Favorite. In addition to his awards for A Chorus Line, he received a directing Tony for Follies and choreography Tonys for Follies, Seesaw, Ballroom, and Dreamgirls.

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