Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1978 - 20

old shirt cardboards and yellow sheets of paper. I couldn't
care less what it looks like, because if you present something
too beautiful, you look at it and you say, 'Gee, it's a little bit too
tall,' but you don't have the courage to grab the scissors and
chop it." She and Wilson then went over the model in minute
detail, bUilding and rebuilding each piece, trying different
shapes and sizes until they had exactly what they wanted.
Problems were solved in the simplest possible way, because
they knew they would be touring and that many of the
theatres would be ill equipped for so big and complicated a
show. Whenever possible. they designed pieces that the actors themselves could move, if necessary. "Slowly but surely.
choreographed into the whole business, were workers
changing the sets," she remembers. "At first I was highly
offended: 'God, these guys with the plaid shirts, I can't deal
with them.' But after a while they became an integral part of
the whole deal and you really didn't mind them."
Only after all the design problems had been solved to
Wilson's satisfaction did she build a finished model of the
entire show. "The model looks a lot like the show," says
Kathleen Norris, "and that model was built in late 1975, so the
fact that it looks a lot like the show is very telling about how
many changes were made."
In January, 1976, Wilson, Norris and Giannini met in Milan
to present their plans to the Broggi Brothers, the firm they
had chosen to build the sets. Wilson described the entire
show to them on the model, and Giannini presented the
drawings and blueprints. The Broggi Brothers made their
estimate on that basis. They promised to begin building in
March or April, and to deliver the sets to AVignon by the end
of June.
After the meeting, Giannini made a quick tour of the
theatres in which Einstein was scheduled to play. U nfortunately, her tour was too quick. "They would have no idea that I
was coming, even though they had been told about it," she
recalls, "I would wander in, and they would be striking a show,
and they would say, 'Come back at 8:00 a.m.' So I would
come back at 8:00 a.m. while they were putting in another
show, count lights and look at the floor. check if there was any
fly space, see how high the pit was-as quickly as possible.
while they were begging me to get out of there. I got some
floor plans out of people. got some light plots out of people."
This was the only advance work that was ever done for the
tour.

Avignon
The company assembled in Avignon at the beginning of
July. The plan was to do a month of rehearsals with the sets
before opening. but the sets had not arrived. Beverly Emmons, the lighting designer. was among the first to get to
Avignon. "I'd seen the models and the drawings. and we had
some information about what the theatres were like. Except
once I got there I realized the information we'd been given
was totally wrong. So I started by measuring the theatre
again. laying out where all the pipes were. and doing a drawing of where everything was." In the absence of Wilson and
Giannini, she started figuring out where all of the drops would
have to hang, and then started focusing the lights-even
though there was nothing to focus them on.
Designing the lights was a relatively simple matter since
they were all one color, a very pale blue that looked white.
Wilson almost never uses colored lights. "The color he wants
to see is the color a painter might apply, that is, the color of
surfaces," says Emmons. "He already painted the drops. He
18

doesn't want me to change them-he painted them the color
he wanted." U ngelled light, however, especially when it is
turned down low, is too warm. "This piece was not a warm
piece," she notes, "this piece was a cold piece, in terms of
light. It was white, cold white, all the way through." To get that
effect. she used very pale blues (567 and 569 at the Met)
except for a little strip light color to bring out the colors on the
drops.
Besides the general stage lighting, however, most of the set
pieces had to have lights on them. "There's nothing that's
technologically hard," she says. "He's using old-fashioned
techniques-you hang a drop. you fix some lightbulbs in it
where you want the stars to light up, and you run a piece of
zipcord to it and plug it in someplace." But there was nothing
she could do until she actually saw the pieces and could
decide what kinds of bulbs they needed-the sets still had not
arrived. "We had lovely lunches and dinners in Avignon, and
wondered where the set was-we began to understand what
Einstein says about time, because France and Italy do not
operate on the same time." This was quite literally true since
France changes its time two hours when it goes on Daylight
Savings. making it an hour different from the rest of Europe.
Furthermore, they could not get a telephone connection with
Milan to find out what was delaying the set. She was only able
to be in Avignon for the first ten days of July and was not due
back until the final week of rehearsals. When she left at the
end of ten days, the set still had not arrived.
Unfortunately, the Italians were having problems. The main
reason for the delay was financial. At that time, the lira was
destabilizing rapidly and Italy had put into effect regulations
which stipulated that the lira could not be taken out of the
country. The Biennale in Venice had promised to finance a
large portion of the show, but it was against the law for them
to sign a contract in dollars, so they had to pay in lire that
could not be taken out of the country. Consequently, the
company made an arrangement with the Biennale to pay the
money directly to Broggi Brothers, who would use it to begin
building the scenery. When the Biennale failed to make the
payments by the time the shop was scheduled to begin building, the Broggi's got behind. "He was very loathe to commit
himself to $60,000 worth of scenery with not a lira on hand,
and I don't really blame him," recalls Kathleen Norris. "Broggi
had said, 'This is going to take X number of days to build, and
I can not do it in a second less.' He was very straightforward
about that from the beginning." When the money finally came
through, Broggi worked around the clock to catch up, but the
set was still late. Then there were freight problems. The set
had been built in Italy and paid for in Italian money, but it was
for an American production that was opening in France. The
customs situation was confused, and just finding a trucker
who was able to deal with those intricacies was a problem.
When the set finally arrived in Avignon-the very day after
Beverly Emmons had left-the company discovered more
problems with it than anyone could have anticipated. "Italian
shops are not quite as used to working from plans as American shops." says Christina Giannini, "In fact. they don't quite
believe them. You really must be there when things are being
built. to constantly interpret what's on that paper, and make
them get out that scale ruler and really check it, because they
don't want to work that way." Unfortunately. in an attempt to
save money. the company had decided against sending a
technician to work with the Italian shop. Wilson himself
worked closely with the shop, often, for instance, actually
mixing the paints himself. As a result, the painting was exactly
what he wanted. But he is not a technician. "What we ended

Theatre Design & Technology

USITT /Spring. 1978

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