Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2012 - 17

...the

who I am and what the work is all about.
But I'll tell you this. By working in
Mayan
film, I discovered the aesthetic qualities
of light. That when you light a production,
Zero.
light should be fluid, it isn't just to illuminate the action, it is also to participate
A full
in the action. So, as a lighting designer,
the light should be an active participant.
emptiness
It should move, and it should sculpt part
of that almost feminine quality, the circle
and an
around the square, that gives theatre its 3D
vivacity and vibration. At the same time, by
empty
working on film, I discovered the power
of sound effects. By editing and doing the
fullness.
soundtrack in post-production on a movie,
I discovered that the most subtle kinds of
That is
little effects can happen if you work the
sound systems. So I brought that back into
what the
the theatre and said OK, with this kind of
technology then, we can begin to make this
theatre is
happen on the stage. Now we sculpt our
for me.
sound for our productions, and we sculpt
the light. At the same time I have taken the
spirit of the flame and the campfire into
the movies. I think that we need to have that constant continuum. So you
see, it's a crossfeed. A full emptiness and empty fullness: the Mayan Zero.
A full emptiness and an empty fullness. That is
what the theatre is for me. It is a complete plenum.
It is a complete world unto itself, and I am totally
conscious of the fact that you don't do that just with
actors. You need designers, you need people who
can build, people who can mold wood and metal
and cloth and colors and understand the function of
colors and what it is to all be part of a collective.
I have come down to a very basic belief. Theatre is a creator of community. Community is a creator of theatre. I don't mean community theatre,
I'm talking about all theatre. You need to create a
community in order to create a theatrical piece. And
there's something beautiful in that. There's something essential in that about our human natures.
There's something essential about that which has to
do with our lives. You know our lives are constantly
a negotiation between the past and future. In my
case, I have had to go back ten thousand years to
the Maya to discover why we're gangbangers and
why we're undocumented immigrants these days
and why we're being criminalized and put in prisons. There's a lot of human wealth being wasted
along the way. That's not to say I don't appreciate
the wealth that is already there. I embrace Europe,
I embrace Asia, I embrace Africa. This is all my
legacy, this is all my inheritance as a human being,
and I have those resonances in my work as well. But

I don't think that we completely or truly appreciate what America is. So as a
Chicano playwright, I bring that. It's like coming to a potluck, and I bring my
thing. I'm saying here's a little iguana meat for you guys. Try this, you know,
you might like it. But the fact is, we're all at the same buffet, we're all at the
same banquet, we are all bringing all of this richness and all our humanity. But ultimately, in a given moment, it suddenly becomes nothing, it's an
emptiness. Because it is an empty fullness and a full emptiness. A square that
marks our rationality circumscribed by a circle that marks our total intuitive
sense about life. Our intuition circumscribing our rationality. That's another
description of the theatre for me. Ultimately the square circumscribed by a
circle is Hunab Ku. It is the name of the creator of the universe in the Mayan
pantheon, the giver of measure and movement.
And who are you as technicians, as technological people in the theatre? You are givers of the measure and the movement. That is how you
develop your expertise, by knowing how much measure to put out there
and where the movement goes. You give the underpinnings, you are the
foundation of the theatre, you are the roots of the art. And so I celebrate
you, my brothers and sisters, my Institute of Teledramatic Technology.
You don't call yourselves teledramatics, I do, because that's where we're
going. I expect to see a lot of plays on 3D film in short order because
I think that's where we're going. You've seen the Pina Bausch movie,
Pina, you've seen what it can do for dance? We're going to see what
3D film can do for theatre in the very short, near future. In any case, to
whom does the future belong? A quién le pertenece el futuro, as we say
in Spanish. To whom does the future belong? The future belong to those
that can imagine it. Thank you. v

summer 2012

theatre design

& technology

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