Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 1976 - 23

had tossed out one girl that I though was superb in New
York. She was English, but they got another one with
a lovely figure. She looked handsome in her red dress
but screeched like an owl. The whole thing missed the
hand of the boss.
BRIGITTE SITTE: Well, this can really be conquered,
if you have good communications with the scene designer. So far wherever I have worked it has never happened
that there was a discrepancy between scene design and
costume, even if there were two different people executing it. You really have to watch out that you have good
overall communication with the other person who's
designing. It can work and I mostly find it stimulating.
MI LLiA DAVENPORT: Well, I had a good relation with
Orson Welles. When I was going to do "Shoemaker's
Holiday", I asked him what the set was going to be, and
he said, "a little nordic ghetto all made out of cigar
boxes." Now, I thought this was the most wonderful
thing I had ever heard in my life, and he said, "I guess
I'd make the costumes out of painted burlap. I don't
know what you are going to use." So, we had no problems. But when it came to "Five Kings", I had had a good
deal of experience with Orson and I said, "Well, the one
thing I want to know is what color the set is going to be?"
and they said, "walnut". I said, "May I have samples of
the walnut," and I was given three samples of walnut. I
stretched great lines across my room and hung the samples
of walnut and all the fabric samples I had picked up. I
kept eliminating and finally I found it was going to be a
pale silvery blueijreen-salmonly kind of show. Well,
fine. So we made the costumes, but the company went up
to Boston ahead of us with twelve parts not yet cast.
I went up with a core of slaves and tailors and there was
one place in Boston where you could buy cloth on a
Sunday. The best thing they had was dark blue policemen's uniform color, so I bought a great deal of that and
started to work on all those people whose shapes I did not
know. They were going to be judges and walkers-on and
very handsome these all-purpose gowns were. I then got
to the theatre and walked onto the stage and before me
was a silvery set! I said, "It's the prettiest thing I have
ever seen in my life, but I thought it was going to be
walnut." "What do you mean walnut, it was never going
to be any walnut." So I walked offstage followed by
all the hangers-on saying, "It was walnut until 4:30 this
morning."
Besides the walnut the other thing I wanted was for
Orson to okay every drawing, every bit of material, every
possible change. To make sure that he could not say he
had not seen it, I left off the hands and feet of my drawings. Orson is very compulsive, so while he is looking at
the drawings he put hands on, he put on feet and that
was better than any signature because they were his
drawings. So he damn well knew what color the show
was going to be and he had damn well bitched it all by
himself late one night. Oh, I could tell you many more
stories about that.
DON STOWELL: How do you go about it in Canada in
terms of total design?
FRANCOIS BARBEAU: Well, I just design costumes.
I have done about ten sets in my life. When I do films

USITT

I work as an artistic director and I supervise everything,
but usually in theatre I do just the costumes. The problem
is too is that besides teaching, I design maybe fifteen productions in a year. At that rate I just want to do the
costumes and there's no problem. In my view costumes
are more difficult because the actor talks and the set does
not talk. I do all the buying of my fabric and dying of my
fabric myself; that is the way I train my students.
MARTIN ZBORI L: At the Academy it is compulsory
that students design both scenery and costumes. For a
resident theatre you must design about seven plays a
year, including costume and stage design. But you can
choose to do just costume designs for about ten plays
or just stage designs for about five plays. It is compulsory
that the designer is able to do both. If you actually do
both you get twice as much money, however. But Miss
Davenport's story is very typical for making of theatre
even here in Czechoslavakia, because from time to time
we are surprised at what the stage designer or costume
designer is doing or what the stage director is doing. This
is the reason why we are required to study not only stage
designing but also stage directing. We have a course of
stage directing and we have to be able to do or prepare
the whole concept of the play including stage directing.
That's a quite good way to exclude this misunderstanding.
DR. STOWELL: These Czech students are in what we
would call a masters program, that is, an advanced design
program. Usually in the United States, particularly in
basic or bachelor's programs, we have to accept whoever
walks in the front door of the university and pays their
mo"ney, you see. "Here I am. Teach me," you know.
Some of them are there because mama and papa say,
"You go to the university," and don't have any interest
at all in what we are doing.
BRIGITTE SITTE: And some of them will just come and
say it is fun and have no real artistic desire or no real
conviction that they want to be a designer. They just feel
they are earning credit towards graduation. In a class of
fifteen maybe three are worth your time.
MART'I N ZBOR IL: We have to pass through an examination before attend ing the school. That way the standard of students is perhaps on the same level. We need not
pay any money for our studies, but we can be knocked
out from this school if we are bad students.
FRANCOIS BARBEAU: At the National Theatre School
of Canada, we give a test to the students before they
come to class. They pay their fees and they can get kicked out, too, if they are not following along or if they are
not giving a good rendering. It doesn't have anything to
do with enrollment. We give a critique to everybody at the
end of the term and that is it.
DR. STOWELL: This is much easier for us to do on the
Masters level, at the level of these Academy students.
People coming on the Masters level are examined, their
portfolio is examined very carefully. For example, I have
four Masters students, two advanced students and two
beginning students. There are maybe 8 or as many as 15 in
the scene design and theatre technology programs. It is a
much more limited thing than our undergraduate program
and it is very much a one-to-one basis. We spend a lot of
time with the students. They get critiques on a regular

THEATRE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

FALL,1976

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