Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2000 - 11

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Beeb Salzer

My life of crime, writing for Theatre Design and Techn%gp, started just about thirty years ago. Over the
years, my articles have had a slight pretension to scholarship, befitting the only serious journal in our field.
From 1977 to 1986, I wrote a column for every issue of Lighting Dimensions, a column that touched on
weighty as well as humorous aspects of theatre design. When the COIUl1Ul was dropped because the new owners of ill changed its focus from purely theatre lighting, many people (at least three) wrote to say that they
missed reading a personal \~ew of the foibles and contradictions of our work. They said that the silly and
strange things that happen are what make our work fun and save us from lunacy. And so, with the complicity of
the editor, bless his courage, this is the first of a series of short commentaties. I hope they will sometimes be
controversial so that readers will respond. I hope that they will be about what lies under the sUlface of our
concerns, in short, the subtext.

IJenver 2000
he 2000 SlIT Conference & Stage Expo in Denver was
great. I had fun because I had no serious agenda. I wasn't trying to sell an}thing, find a job, give a presentation that would
get me promoted, scope out graduate programs or, forgive this
shameful admission, expecting to learn much. My main Plll~
pose was to see who in my age group was still ambulatory and
to connect with old friends and former students.
The old friends were people I had worked with, worked
for, feuded with, bought things from, in short, those who over
the years make up one's professional history. Seeing them
again brings back memories. Now, distanced by time, the
memories are almost all pleasant. Many of them in hindsight
are even funny, although at the time, there must have been
some anguish and conflict. Youth is serious. With age comes a
sense of the ridiculous as one becomes ridiculous, at least to
young people.
But the young can be ridiculous as well. So many of them
cultivate scruffiness. I remember Oenslager and Mielziner in
their beautifully tailored three-piece suits. Now, when young
designers approach, I often reach in my pocket thinking the
next words I'll hear are, " Can you spare some change?"
I wonder what young people thought of the badges at the
conference. The old boy/old girl group were covered with
multicolored plumage dripping from the badges hanging
around their necks. The number of ribbons on a badge either
indicated the relative importance of an attendee or they were a
jungle signal identifying members of the sanle species to one
another. The greater the number of ribbons the greater the impossibility of reading what they said. Oh, I had a couple of ribbons myself, which meant that I was at least a corporal anlOng
generals. I wonder if others also found that the ribbons got in
the way in the men's room?
I have always had trouble with names and age has not
improved tllis fault. So seeing former students is often challenging, requiring sorting through the synapses to put nanle
and face together. Sometimes a name from fifteen years ago
comes more readily than one from last year. That grapefruit
inside the skull can play tricks. I am eternally gratehIl when
someone says," Do you remember me, I'm so and so." My response is, "Of course I remember you." And then I really do.
Every USIIT conference is an exercise in frustration.

Each time slot has so many different sessions, many of which
look intriguing, that choosing is difficult. Like pastry in a bakery, the ones that look the tastiest are often the most disappointing. Comparing notes between sessions, I always found
that the grass was greener at sessions I didn't attend. The conference could have been in Las Vegas for all the luck I had putting my bets on wrong numbers. But once in awhile, I would
hear of a session that I was glad to have missed. The reasons
were usually the sanle, that presenters were proud of innovations they employed but were unaware that others had been
doing the same things for years.
The sessions are valuable because it's lonely out there.
Teachers, especially, seldom have the chance to hear what
other teachers are doing. While my own university department
has three of us teaching scene design and we often teanl teach
and share ideas, most places have one designer in each area
or even one designer for all design and tech areas. My first
teaching jobs were like that. The sessions are an opportunity
to connect with colleagues whose quotidian lives are sinlilarly
spent in isolation.
That being said, the saddest part of the whole conference
was that with all the assembled technical know-how, so much
of the technology at presentations didn't work. The most noticeable difficulties were with computer projections. It seemed
to me that many presentations were like first se;..:ual expel;ences, amazement that it was happening at all clouded the fact
that it was being done badly. Even at hill-conference events,
lew Products Showcase and the Awards Banquet, the projections tripped and fell.
Everyone knows that the Awards Banquet is interminable.
The architecture awards are egregiously long and could be a
separate event. There is a self-congratulatory tone that is a
cross between a secret society and a fancy dress ball. Yet, even
though the Fellows of the Institute in their red ribbons and
gold medallions strut a bit, one realizes \\~th gratitude that
over the years, they have done the hea\~' lifting.
Ahighlight for me was the Fellows Address on Thursday
evening. Dick Devin spoke on 'The Place of the Artist in our
Society...What Good Are They Anyway." It was one of the few
times in many days when someone remembered that what we
do is not about how but about why. *:.
TZ>&T

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2000