Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1999 - 36

(above) An early experiment, several years ago, with
the first Painter program. (artist: Beeb Salzer)
(left) An experiment to compare computer costume
rendering techniques. The sketch above left was done
first using Painter; it took about fifteen minutes. The
same figure was constructed using Poser; then
exported to Painter where the clothes were applied; it
took about forty-five minutes. (artist: Beeb Salzer)

rarely made models except for rough ones to check sightlines
or study difficult shapes. Lighting templates had not become
ubiquitous; we cut our own out of flimsy plastic. I still have my
antique yellowed quarter- and half-inch templates.
In those days, professional theatre was not scattered
throughout the country. Productions started in lew York, so
most of us gravitated to the city. It was the time of piano box
resistant dimmer boards run by five or sLx electricians exiled
to a basement, where ghost lamps burned to equalize the wattage capacity of each dimmer. Peggy Clark used about two hundred instruments and twelve strip lights to light a major
musical, lVolldelful Town. 2 In this less complicated and more
leisurely time, there was no need to re-invent a way of teaching
design. When I started teaching, the only adjustments I had to
make involved teaching undergraduates rather than graduate
students.
The arrow of time in design is not strictly one directional.
Ironic swings of the pendulum occur. Big musicals today have
many times the instruments Peggy Clark used, primarily because computers can keep track of them. But interestingly,
computers are also responsible for the advent of moving and
color-changing lights so the numbers of instruments are starting to drop. Maybe soon there \vill be even fewer than two
hundred on a musical. Curiously, altllOugh we predicted that
computers would eliminate jobs, manpower has not been reduced. As productions become more complex, \vith computers running lifts, turntables, winches and wagons, \vith mics
SPRING

I 9 9 9

TZ>&T

and sound systems to control, and \vith massive scene shifts,
each show employs at least as many, and maybe more, stage
hands, electricians, wardrobe and prop people. 3
We also do a convoluted dance in education. When universities had computer-controlled dimmers before professional theatres, we debated whether or not to resuscitate piano
boxes so that students could gain experience with the equipment they would use after graduation. Today, while universities
are at the forefront of computer design, most campuses can
not afford the range of the equipment that computers control
in professional productions. Educational institutions have always claimed that the productions they mount are laboratories
for classroom work, the equivalent of science labs. But technologically, our budgets put stlldents in "science labs" \vith
only salt, pepper, sugar and a Bunsen burner for experiments.
As a teacher, I view budget constraints as a minor consideration compared to the aesthetic paradigm shifts created by
computer design. Tossed about in a roiling sea of rapid
change, we have little idea of the end result. However, we do
know that major changes come \\~th trade-offs. The shift from
sketches to models is an exanlple. Looking back, it seems only
natural that, as productions moved out and around the
proscenium, becoming more three-dimensional, the means of
demonstrating a design idea also becanle three-dimensional.
The trade-off came, first of all, because building a model took
more time than painting a sketch, thus redUcing the number of
different design assignments each term. Consequently, stu-

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1999