Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1994 - 16

suppOrt the physical production at great cost to their comfOrt or
sense of worth. I have seen recent productions where actors were
forced to duck through door ways, work in spaces so small they
had to pass each other side ways, walk like mountain goats on
steep rakes, use steps that were more like ladders, or wear costumes that were more scenery than clothes. In the past, a certain
percentage of actors-show girls or the second man in a horse
costume-pur up with being objects rather than subjecrs. Today,
even lead actors become tools of the design. Noting this, the critic Mike Steele writes:

Actors use the whole playing area to great effect. True, those far
upstage look miles away and sound miles away. But they can be
heard whether they are speaking or singing. There are no rnics.
When I go to a musical here, I may as well be listening to a
recording. Sometimes, from what I understand, the actors may
even be lip syncing. Like me, none of my theatre colleagues
likes the sound produced by micing. Yet we no longer train
our students to project because we have accepted the practice
of sound reinforcement as inevitable. By making voices
mechanical, I fear we have lost one of the most important
qualities of live performance.

Traveling the country, I feel some sense of loss as in theatre
after theatre I encounter actors who don't have the feeling
for language they once did, who don't project with the ease
they once could, and who increasingly seem objects in some
elaborate visual design that has pushed the Word into an
increasingly subservient position. I
The plays I saw in Russia made me realize that their theatre is
following our lead. Actors told me that they had fewer opportunities to play the classics and their productions were beginning to
stress spectacle. And yet by a strange reversal, ir was European
design that influenced our own path toward the supremacy of
visual over verbal art. The contradictions of international influences are a bit like a dog chasing its own tail.
Watching the Russians work gave me insight into how our
theatre has been gradually changing, shifting its point of view little by little. It probably takes exposure to a completely different
system to see how far we have moved over the past several years.
In three issues of rhis journal in 1977 I wrote about the impending change from a theatre of words to a theatre of spectacle. 1
Those articles were controversial enough to be the basis for a
panel discussion at the national convention. And that was even
before Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Robert Wilson, or almost
any production today that gets great public attention. What I
had not foreseen was thar, while we have been losing the poetic
and intellectual use of words in our theatre, we have gained a
wonderful freedom in our visual expression and we have, as
well, given designers a more equal voice in the collaborative
process. The trade off has been more balanced than I had imagined. What bothers me, however, is that we have changed reflexively, not purposefuLly.
Look, for example, ar rhe ubiquitous use of rnics, a change
with few redeeming features. Russian actors still reach their audiences wirh the naked voice. The Gorki theatre is large with a
proscenium more than 40-feet wide and a depth of 75 feet.

Signs in Russian at the Gorki Theatre advertising the performances of the Blackfriers Theatre company.

5 P R I N G

1 9 9 4

T D& T

Before my first visit to Russia, I had heard reports of how the
Russians run a performance. The reports were true. Stage managers do not call cues in Russia. Instead, each crew member
takes cues from the show itself, just like an actor. Stage hands
and lighr board operators listen, watch the performance, and do
their jobs at the right moment.
The Russians are able to do this because the crews attend
many rehearsals so that by the time the show is ready to open,
they have learned rheir "parts." Moreover, the lighting designer
runs the light board. This system is possible because the actors,
staff, and crew are employed full time, year round. I had no trouble accepring the reasonableness of opera ring this way until I
considered that the theatre does 15 shows in repertory, a different show each night. The crew must keep cues for 15 shows
straight. When I asked to see the paper work used for light cues,
I was shown a sheet of paper with a few-very few-handwrirten figures and reminders. I asked what happens when the board
operator/designer is sick. The reply was, "I come to work no
matter how I feel." Bur what happens if you are hit by a bus?
"My assistant takes over... bur it's not so good."
Their system works. During my first visit, I saw five shows
and all were beaurifully lit and well execured-and this in spite
of equipment that was worn, broken, or non-existent. Many gel
colors were not available, all the lamps were incandescent, and
some lenses were cracked. The lights were a mix of all sorts,
none of which looked ar all familiar, plugged into a 200-circuit
four-scene pre-set control board with abour a third of the dimmers shot and several cross faders inoperable.
My job on that first trip was to figure our how to return with
a light plot that could be used to hang, focus, and cue a show in
a few short days. The Russians gave me a theatre ground plan
but had no section, repertory plot, or insrrument inventory.
Thus, my challenge was to design a show with more than 20
scenes, work with incomplete information, communicate with a
crew rhar did not understand my language (nor I theirs), and use
a production system completely different from the one I knew.
ly first method of communication, and ultimately most
effective, was a series of photos of my model under different
lights. I sent these ahead with my plans. Then I invented different
charts which listed, in either words or numbers, the amount,
direction, and color of light I wanted in each scene. Finally, I
made a kind of magic sheet for each scene.
When I returned to Russia armed with all my brilliant charts
and diagrams, the lighting crew was polite, even deferential, but I
could tell they thought I was insane. They looked at the paper
work, then pushed it aside. We talked and walked through the
lighting design, discussing focusing and gelling. ( I had brought a

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1994