Not to get political...

(WARNING: I'm about to rant about politics. I don't do it very often, as I like to keep my opinions to myself, but I had to vent. If you want, you can skip the rant that follows and go straight to the theatre stuff, I won't mind)

...but I can't help looking at what is happening in the gulf with the BP Oil Disaster (let's call it what it is, because I think "spill" is too nice a word for it) and it just angers me to no end. I'm sure you've all seen the pictures of the oil covered pelicans and other equally distressing pictures from the clean up efforts. I've been following with not too much interest until this morning when my brother Sean told me he'd heard that a BP exec said "I want my life back" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTdKa9eWNFw). He wants his life back? He made over $4 million last year in total compensation (http://www.themorningsun.com/articles/2010/06/08/opinion/srv0000008481929.txt) at one of the biggest, most profitable companies in the world, and he's feeling inconvenienced by the fact that we want answers about what is being done to clean up the mess and how BP is going to compensate the people whose whole livelihoods have been taken away by this disaster? Some of the people affected by this probably don't make even 1/100th of what he makes and he's complaining? I'm astounded by this...

And one more thing I wanted to share regarding the upcoming midterm elections: I found the following op-ed piece in the New York Times and I have already tweeted it and posted a link on my Facebook, but I wanted to share it here as well. Yes, it's true, I have left-leaning tendencies, but like many people, I can see value in what both sides are supposed to stand for. I make no secret that I voted for Gore, Kerry and Obama, and I will say that I'm a little scared about November. Read this piece and ask yourself, do you really want big corporations like BP and all those big banks that caused the financial disaster of 2008 to win in November so they can go unregulated and run amok like before? Do we really want to tell all those people in gulf coast, "oh well, better luck next time"? 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/opinion/24krugman.html

NOW BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED THEATRE BLOG....

I know I haven't posted in a while, but it happens when you get busy. However, I have a couple of things on my theatre radar at the moment. The first of which is the Tony Awards, which air this Sunday, June 13 at 8 pm on CBS. I hadn't had much interest until a few years ago, when I got my first chance to see a Broadway show. Since then, I try to watch to see what's going on on Broadway and I've had the good fortune of seeing several Tony Award winning productions in the past few years on various trips to the Big Apple. However this year I have no idea what's good and what's not because I haven't had the chance to see anything, but part of me is rooting for American Idiot (I grew up with Green Day). If  I get my homework done like a good boy, I plan to watch, and perhaps even blog about it if I get the chance. Go to www.tonyawards.com for more info.

Speaking of awards, but with a more local twist, Encore Michigan, the best site for local theatre info, has announced its annual Wilde Awards, which will be handed out on September 1 at the Gem in downtown Detroit. Alas, I have no nominations, but considering I all but took the year off to pursue my Masters, it's not surprising! But seriously, there are some fantastic people up for awards this year and my home away from home theatre, The Jewish Ensemble Theatre received a few nominations, including best comedy for The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, best actress in a comedy for Kate Willinger for the same show, best actress in a drama for Sarab Kamoo in The Blank Page (a show I did Sound Design for), plus 6 more nominations (see http://www.encoremichigan.com/article.html?article=3099 for a complete list). So congrats to the theatre that gave me my professional start! I look forward to seeing who wins what.

And speaking of the JET, I also thought I would post their season here as well:

The G-d of Isaac by James Sherman, Oct 6-31

Sonia Flew by Melinda Lopez, co-produced with Performance Network in Ann Arbor, directed by David Wolber, Dec 8 - Jan 2

Modern Orthodox by Daniel Goldfarb, Jan 19 - Feb 13

 New Jerusalem The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam by David Ives, Mar 16 - Apr 10

The Model Apartment by Donald Margulies, May 11 - Jun 5

Not sure yet what I'll be working on due to the expanded season at the school, but I hope to work on all of them. I will keep you posted as I look to climb back into the local theatre scene after taking the past year off. 

I'll be posting again soon with info on the summer production of Seussical the Musical that I'm involved with (Lighting, Sound, and Co-Scenic) and with what's happening with the school's productions of The Diary of Anne Frank, West Side Story, and Honk! 

See you all soon!

Jim

How do you market Theatrical Design?

An easy question right? In the past, I’ve relied on word of mouth, reputation, and the occasional friend saying, “Hey, you need a designer? I know a guy…”. So as I look to launch my firm, Midwest Theatrical Design, I thought it might be time to evaluate how I market myself.

It’s not as easy as one would think. Should I revisit my decade old portfolio, dump money into it to revamp it, print new pictures, get new blue-line prints of my drafting and hit the pavement? Or can I take advantage of the social marketing to get my work and myself out there for all to see and evaluate with an eye towards future employment opportunities? It seems as if the latter is the more practical choice, especially with Facebook, Twitter and now this blog at my disposal.

I found inspiration in my marketing approach from the company I’ve looked at as a model for my business, Wingspace Theatrical Design (http://www.wingspace.com/index.php).  I feel that they’ve got the right idea going on their website. Wingspace, according to its website, is “a Brooklyn-based collective dedicated to pushing the boundaries of contemporary theatrical design” (for more detail, read here http://www.wingspace.com/mission.php). I ultimately have a similar vision for Midwest Theatrical Design that it will be more that just me plugging away in my home office on the few projects I work on each year. I envision a design studio where some fellow designers and me can work and collaborate on projects. I see us pooling our resources to obtain the right tools for our jobs, from computers to software to drafting tables. But how do we get there from here, with here being my cluttered desk in my bedroom?  Make no mistake, I can put together a great group of fellow designers, but if we don’t market our abilities the right way, we are sunk.

So in looking at Wingspace’s site, I see a lot of what I think my company can and should do. For example, you can’t sell yourself as a theatrical designer if you can’t show your previous work to those who are unfamiliar with it. So for Wingspace, their projects are front and center on their page, with several pictures introducing projects and links to take you to more information on those projects. The other prominent feature I see is information about the theatrical designers that make up Wingspace, including a box for a featured collaborator. Both the main picture and featured collaborator change each time you go to the home page. There is also a calendar highlighting events that the various designers are a part of and a blog that where they have posted articles, pictures and links.  All in all, I like the look of their site and the content they provide and I think they are making the best use of the web to market themselves.

Another designer’s website that I liked, but not as much, was the site for Kevin Lee Allen Design (http://klad.com/index.html). My initial impression was that it was literally a digital portfolio, which is exactly what I want to avoid in my site. It wasn’t until I delved a little deeper and followed the links that I found his blog site (http://klad.com/blog). I like the blog and I wish he would incorporate it more into his main site the way Wingspace does and the way that I plan to do.

So what’s my plan? Well, for the time being, it’s looking like this blog and perhaps a Facebook page for Midwest Theatrical Design are the right choice for now. I can’t really afford to put up and host my own site, so this will have to do for now. I want it to be more than just a digital portfolio. My site should not only highlight what I can do as a designer, but it should give insight into my personality and how I work, not just what my end product is. By putting that out there, it’s almost like giving my potential clients the introductory interview without the meeting or phone call. In addition, I plan to include as many links as I can to all the arts happenings in the area, from theatre to opera to what’s going on at the Detroit Institute for the Arts to help bolster the arts community here in Detroit, because as it grows, so does potential business!

As always, I welcome any comments you may have. Thanks for reading!

Jennifer Tipton's speech at USITT

I just thought that I'd share a link I found of Ms. Tipton's speech at USITT. She was amazing, in a technical theatre nerd kind of way. If you have an hour or so to kill give it a whirl...

http://topaz.streamguys.tv/~usitt-od/jwplayer/tipton.html

I'm off to NYC this weekend to see some shows, specifically "West Side Story," our musical for next year. Reviews to come in a later entry...

Another article...

http://www.freep.com/article/20100328/ENT05/3280313/Who-will-save-the-arts-in-Detroit

Follow up on my rant on the arts in Detroit

 Just a couple of articles about plans to revitalize Detroit, and one that shows that the National Endowment for the Arts is taking an interest in our arts scene…

http://www.freep.com/article/20100404/NEWS01/4040517/Big-plans-for-the-future-Detroit

http://www.freep.com/article/20100404/OPINION01/4040423/1318/

http://www.freep.com/article/20100323/ENT05/100323060/NEA-head-has-whirlwind-tour-of-city-arts-scene

Musings on the muse...

It’s amazing to me sometimes that I can find the inspiration for a design, either scenery, lighting or sound, from a place that you’d never expect, or from a moment you’d never expect. Oh, sure, I’ve had the normal moments of design inspiration from a conversation with the director or other designers. For example, the design for our school’s production of Sweeney Todd came from a conversation with my director, who said that his vision for the show was that it took place in the day room of an insane asylum, and then he proceeded to talk about how he used to do volunteer work at a prison and described the day room and it’s high, huge windows. I took that and ran with it, designing a set that used windows as it’s main architectural feature, and adding the liberal use of gobos (metal patterns that you put in lights to project said pattern on the scenery, for those unfamiliar with that term) that created the look of light coming in though the windows.

Note: See photo rotator at the top of this page for pictures of the set and lights from Sweeney Todd and Les Miserables.

Anyway, back to my point. That design came from a typical source. I don’t mean typical in a negative sense here, especially since that’s how collaboration should work amongst theatre artists. I just mean that it’s not unusual to be inspired by the vision of a director to create your design. Another, slightly less typical, but still standard source is other shows. I recall being in London in the summer of 2008 and seeing Wicked and The Lord of the Rings and being struck by the way the scenery for both shows broke the plane of the proscenium arch and worked it’s way into the house to create an environment throughout the theatre, not just onstage. That was the inspiration behind the scenery for our school’s production of Les Miserables. I brought the set out beyond the proscenium, and tried to create that environment. The inspiration for the lighting for that show came from a session at the Broadway Lighting Master Classes that I attended, when one of the designers presenting said three words that slightly altered my approach to lighting: “Light the space.” So I did.

So as I sat yesterday morning listening to award-winning lighting designer Jennifer Tipton speak at the conference, I found myself staring at the truss that was over the stage and pondering it. Not to say that Ms. Tipton was uninteresting. Far from it. She was awesome and even gave us a lighting lesson to boot, while providing one of the best and most inspirational quotes of the conference: “Lighting in music for the eyes.” But while watching her do her demonstration and soaking up as much knowledge as I could, I was still drawn to the lighting truss. An idea began to form for West Side Story, which we are producing next year. A vision began to congeal. Now I’ve never seen the show, never read it, but I know the gist of the story and the setting, and I feel like the idea that is forming could work. I guess we’ll see when I see the Broadway revival this coming weekend. This idea will probably go through several incarnations before it makes its way onstage, and it may not end up looking like the first rough sketch that I have in my notebook right now, but that’s inevitably what happens, and not really the point of this particular entry. The point is, as I was pondering these thoughts that morning, I heard Ms. Tipton say that one of the most important lessons she learned from her mentors was to “Keep your eyes open.” I couldn’t agree more. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll never know what you may see that will inspire a future design, and as I hope I’ve shown, inspiration can come from anywhere.

Greetings from Kansas City!

Random, I know, but here I am at the annual United States Institute for Theatre Technology Conference, in Kansas City, and today I have a lot to talk about from my first day at the conference.

I’ll start with the question I got asked earlier: Why do you come to this conference? Well, the answer is a little complex, but I’ll try to explain. There are other conferences that might offer more in the way of shiny new toys and technology to drool over (yes, LDI, I’m talking about you), but in reality, what can I actually buy for the school? Nothing that expensive, that’s for sure, and if you are sitting there surrounded by $10,000 (each) lights run by a $100,000 lighting console while listening to sound pumped through a $100,000 sound board, and $60,000 speakers, you tend to forget that you can’t afford that stuff because you are lost in the “cool” factor. This conference offers some of the wow factor, but more of the “I think I could actually get that purchase order approved” factor that you look for when you are working for a small private school on a “paper thin” budget (our Headmaster’s words). So you look for the extra value in a conference, and in this one, the sessions are geared more towards what I want. Not only to I get information on topics I’m interested in, but also I have found the sessions run by the Education Commission to be just what I need. I’m even trying to get more involved in the Ed Commission, but we’ll see where that leads later in the week. So, reason #1 is that I do learn something every year, and you can’t always say that about other conferences. #2, I get to see old friends from college, and even one of my former students at the high school who has gotten into stage management. It’s fun to catch up with everyone. And #3, this conference is the pause that refreshes every year. By this point in the school year, I’m pretty much toasted after 2 shows and all the other stuff that happens in the theatre, and I find that this little getaway does wonders for my psyche. I usually find something that reignites my passion for what I do, be it a session, or some new technology that I want to start using or when I found the Ed Commission and found my way to get involved in USITT. Not that I totally lose my spark, but by the time the second show is over each year, that flame is running low on fuel, and I just need that boost to get going again. So that’s why I come every year.

As for the first day, we listened to Sally Struthers speak this morning as the keynote. She was funny, but even she wasn’t sure why she was invited to speak. But she brought up a good point about collaboration, in that we all work together to create the magic of what you see onstage, and each person, technician or actor is important to the production. That can get lost in the shuffle sometimes. But in the meeting after her speech, I found the one thing that has stuck with me all day, and I’ll get to that in a second. Anyway, after the meeting it was off to the Expo for a few, then lunch, and then the Ed Commission meeting, where I threw in my card as a volunteer on a couple of things including perhaps being a liaison between USITT and the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA) a group geared towards theatre educators in middle and high schools. They are the parent organization for the International Thespian Society (ITS), which is an honors society for high school theatre students. I run the ITS Troupe at my school and I’m a member of EdTA because of that I think I might get tapped for that job. I also volunteered to be a panelist on a session for next year, which would be a neat trick to pull off, since I think my schedule may not permit me to be there next year. We’ll see. Then it was off to an Introduction to Automation, and of course now I’m brimming with ideas of how to move scenery with winches and such. Again, we’ll see, since that can get pricy, but it’s intriguing nonetheless. After that, dinner, and now back at the hotel.

So that one thing that stuck with me from this morning is the fact that in Kansas City, the performing arts make more money than the professional sports teams do. I find that astonishing. I, like many of you I’m sure, would not have thought of KC as a hotbed for the arts, but yet here we are walking the streets of downtown seeing several theatres and watching the construction of the $400 million Kauffman Center a few blocks over from the convention center (http://www.kauffmancenter.org/). They are even offering us tours of the unfinished building as part of the conference! I am awestruck by the way other Midwest industrial-type cities have embraced the arts and really helped them flourish. In 2006 we were in Louisville, last year Cincinnati and now KC, and all of them have helped revitalize their downtowns with the arts, and I commend them for it.

However, this only made me think about how Detroit is suffering and specifically how the arts are suffering. We have no major company to call our own, like the Kansas City Reparatory Theatre. Where is our dance company? Why are our theatres shoehorned into small converted stores, or out in the suburbs? Why all of this when so many buildings are sitting vacant downtown? I see empty theatres that could be used, or torn down and rebuilt. Why do we go to the Fox, Masonic and Fisher to spend what little disposable income we have on touring shows? Can’t we do our own shows? Not if we don’t have a commitment of support from the city and suburbs, and I find it a sad fact that we don’t. I see a city struggling to redefine itself in the wake of the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression and while everywhere else in the country is rebounding, we are not, because we have nothing to hang our hats on anymore. Yes the state has made an attempt at luring the film industry here, but they are just California companies renting space here. Why can’t we look at Louisville, Cincy and KC and find a way to remake Detroit starting with the arts?

Thoughts?