Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2019 - 12

at USITT is led by the vice president of
international activities, working with the
International Activities Committee and
supported by lead curators for each of
the present sections of the PQ. At the
time, Marketa Fantova served as VP of
international activities and artistic director of the PQ project. When she was
selected as the new artistic director of
the PQ, and 2015's lead curator Kevin
Rigdon moved into her role, I jumped at
the opportunity to serve as the 2019 lead
curator. I was excited to fill a dream I had
held as long as I had considered myself a
professional designer. I was also excited
to take on the challenge of exhibiting the
United States.
The U.S.'s large population is spread
out across vast distances, and our theatre communities are found in a wide variety of cities, towns, and even dedicated
enclaves that may only exist to come together to create performance. We work
across different stages of career, life
experiences, abilities, resources, aesthetics, audiences, and any number of
additional differences. In his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval
Harari posits the idea that civilization is

a product of our collective imagination.
There is no natural law that requires
civilization to exist. It exists because we
agree it does. Theatre is the modelling
exercise that allows us to collectively reimagine civilization. So when we have a
country as large and diverse as the U.S.,
itself originating as an exercise in imagining, and knowing it will never be a utopia, we have theatre and performance
that reflects as much. It is challenging
to encapsulate all of these contrasts and
ideas into a 16-by-16-foot square, and yet
this is the task of the PQ exhibit.
The exhibition constantly asks hardto-answer questions. Who is this exhibition for? Is it for the members of USITT,
as the organization that supports it? Is
it meant to be comprehensive to reflect
some collective American identity? Can
it encapsulate the current political moment when it is created? How does one
balance the necessity of an inclusive and
broad scope across the American theatrical landscape with the desire to provide
depth? Some countries are smaller in
population than many cities in the U.S.,
and that scale means that the nation
may support fewer schools of design and

FABRICS

producing theatres. How can we provide
the same depth of understanding of the
utility of theatre, and the design for these
performances, when we are confined to
the same footprint in the Industrial Palace? Future curators will continue to
grapple with these questions for the foreseeable future.
Even with the innate challenge of
exhibiting U.S. theatrical design work,
we are further challenged by the current political climate and the social complexities that inspire much of the art we
make. But, the history of the PQ is one of
soft diplomacy, and the challenge of expressing our diversity is also an opportunity to provide a counter-argument to our
prevailing narrative on the world stage.
To paraphrase the U.S. exhibit's curatorial statement, the team envisioned
the exhibit as one that recognizes the
U.S. as a nation primarily of immigrants.
While the majority of individuals living
in the U.S. today have immigrant roots,
there are also those who can trace their
ancestry back to one of the more than
500 Native American tribes. This rich
cultural diversity and wisdom contributes to the creativity, ingenuity, and

PROJECTION
SUPPORTING THE

ENTERTAINMENT

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FOR OVER 70 YEARS

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THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

FALL 2019

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Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2019

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