Standby

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance? This is the heart of Standby: an approach to design in which dreams, philosophies, and otherworldly visions live alongside costume fittings, focus calls, and preshow check routines. None of these is sufficient on its own. But in the confluence of wild fancy, meticulous artistry, and rigorous conceptual logic, we may discover an approach to design that pushes us to reconsider a too-often restricted view of what designers can accomplish in the theatre.
Many of the ideas in this book are new or newly framed. Others are ancient. I have given some old ideas new names, new contexts, and new conceptual models in an effort to express them with greater clarity and detail. My approach builds on the writings of those who have gone before, notably the turn-of-the-century pioneers Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig, the early-twentieth-century Broadway designer Robert Edmond Jones, and the contemporary scenographer Pamela Howard. I also draw on the work of many talented and visionary designers who have never written about their ideas, leaving only their designs to speak on their behalf. But design on its own is not enough; design, like theatre as a whole, creates and responds to the living discourse of human society. It is for this reason that Standby invokes the words of playwrights, actors, and directors, as well as concepts from the fields of poetry, literary criticism, music, mathematics, logic, fine art, history, and science. These fields have sometimes proven articulate when the native language of design is lost for words. My work differs from that of earlier design theorists in that it is current, taking into account the unique moment in theatre history in which we are privileged to live; it is holistic, embracing all design disciplines, including those that are new to the canon, as well as the full diversity of contemporary theatrical practices; and it is rooted in my own experience of making theatre. It is an approach for our time, for our theatre, and I present it here in the hope that it proves useful to others.
My aims are simple. First, I wish to raise the possibility that theatrical design is an intellectual discipline worthy of serious inquiry. In spite of increasing attention from universities, theatrical designers continue to operate more like members of a preindustrial craft guild than like a contemporary network of practitioners. Theatrical design may be one of the last great craft traditions whose accumulated body of knowledge is basically oral. Wisdom is passed from masters to apprentices and rarely disseminated in print. The scraps of understanding that do make it into written form so often fail to get at the heart of the craft: texts on the subject are either entirely technical in nature or else so inordinately academic and theoretical as to be foreign to the experiences of actual designers. A middle ground is sorely needed.
Second, I wish to provide working designers with a practical framework for conceptualizing what they do. To this end, I have laid out an open-ended philosophy of theatrical design, informed by the history of the craft as well as my own experiences as a designer and a teacher of design. I give names to concepts that have historically been only intuited so that designers can articulate, justify, and analyze the choices they make in relation to a shared understanding of how design works. Finding the words with which to explain the emotional, intuitive process that results in a lighting shift, a paint color, or a fabric texture is far from easy. But unless we can do so, we have no credibility. Designers — new designers, especially —need a theory or two because theory is the glass through which we can best see what we have done and what we have failed to do.
Third, I wish to help designers discover a renewed sense of purpose and a deeper appreciation for the theatre and the craft of design. The theatre is a place of wonder, and design can flourish only when that wonder is kept alive. The same, of course, can be said of acting, playwriting, directing, and theatregoing. Wonder is the antidote to mundanity, and mundanity is the enemy of art. So long as we remember that the theatre is a special place, we will be all right. It is the excitement, the awe, the sense of adventure that are most important to our work — and most under threat when the deadline approaches and the backdrop is not yet painted. But in the end, we can do without the backdrop. We cannot do without the wonder.
  Standby is a book about theatrical design. It is not a book about stagecraft, technical theatre, stage management, or any of the other trades and endeavors that support the work of the designer. Ironically, it is for this reason that I hope carpenters, electricians, painters, and stagehands will come along for the ride. If your job entails executing the dictates of designers, you may gain a new appreciation for the reasoning behind those dictates. If your expertise lies in working with cloth or lumber, I hope to remind you that you are also working with anticipation, surprise, discovery, belief, conflict, vindication, loss, and all the other immaterial essentials of which theatre is made.
Standby is concerned with all of the disciplines of theatrical design — scenic design, lighting design, sound design, costume design, projection design, and any others that may show up from time to time — as well as all of the applications of theatrical design, including drama, musical theatre, experimental theatre, opera, dance, puppetry, live cinema, storytelling, performance art, concerts, immersive installations, and other forms of performance. The design process for each form possesses its own rules, conventions, nomenclature, goals, and problems. Designing the set for a classical opera and designing the set for an immersive movement piece are two very different tasks, but they are both theatrical design, and I attempt to do justice to both of them in this book. Creators working in any of these forms can learn much from their counterparts in adjacent fields, and it is my hope that the frameworks and approaches described herein will be of some use regardless of what branch of the performing arts you may call home.
Much of the text is written from the perspective of a designer — in many cases, from the perspective of the production table, center section, halfway back — to help readers identify with the role of a designer working on a production. This is not to suggest that the text is meant for designers alone. On the contrary, our clubhouse door, like the doors of all the truly great theatres, is open to all. Similarly, I assume throughout a basic familiarity with theatre in general and at least a minimal knowledge of stagecraft and design, but a lack of such knowledge should not deter anyone from venturing into the following pages. Experience is less important than motivation.
If you are a veteran of the theatre, you are welcome here. This book is for you. If you are a student of design, this book is for you too. If you are a patron of the arts or a curious onlooker, come right in. If you are a carpenter, electrician, scenic painter, or costume artisan, by all means join me. And if you have never slung a wrench or wielded a paintbrush, you too will be at home here. If you are a playwright, director, producer, stage manager, or dramaturg, it is my hope that much in here will be relevant to your work. Actors, too — pull up a chair. Because we all deal with the raw materials of theatre —text, movement, space, and time — we are all, in some sense, designers. We also bring to our work considerably different training, perspectives, and priorities; and though you may be here today to learn about design, any good designer will be eager, in different circumstances, to learn from you.
Design can seem sometimes to be a rather rarefied profession, a pastime for those who have the luxury of dealing in fiction rather than reality. Art itself may be dismissed as a distraction when there are more pressing matters to contend with. In a world that is so treacherous for so many, we could easily conclude that there is no time for art at all. I have found myself searching for justification for the thousands of hours I have spent in dark theatres, tweaking light levels or audio fades, finessing a video mask or a series of fly cues. I ask myself, as I attempt to reconcile a somewhat arcane craft with the drama outside the playhouse: In a world in which human beings are hurting, does it matter whether the reverb tails out to silence before the channel is muted? Does it matter whether the downstage drop clears before the front-of-house units are added to the wash? Does it matter whether the cut of the mother’s evening gown is authentic to the period?
No. Of course it doesn’t.
And yes.
We define ourselves, our society, and our values by the stories that we choose to tell and the artistry with which we tell them. We need the theatre to challenge us, to open our eyes, to bring us together, to celebrate that within us which is worth celebrating, to reveal the parts of us that we are more comfortable forgetting. If that does not matter, what does? When the world has forgotten what counts, getting these things right is more important than ever.
The theatre is a human institution: it belongs only to us humans, and it belongs to all of us. Those who do not treasure it and nurture it are susceptible to forgetting who they are and what they believe in. When we have lost our way, when we feel that we cannot go on, we need the theatre to tell us that we are not alone. In William Saroyan’s play The Beautiful People, Jonah’s daughter Agnes finds herself newly full of love for a stranger, and her love cries out to be shared. Jonah says, “You needn’t tell me, Saint. Tell the night. Tell the little children who aren’t sure and the old people who’ve forgotten.” That is what we do. That is what theatre is for.
Our tools are simple, almost crude. Wood and fabric, music and light. Even after thousands of years of development and transformation, theatre itself retains its primeval dependence on live actors and real communal gathering. In spite of its age and the modesty of its means, the form is as potent as it ever was, and we still, as designers, have the power to create images of arresting beauty. There is meaning in a beam of light slicing through the dark. There is meaning in the musical cycle of dissonance and resolution. There is meaning in the palpable silence that envelops a riveted crowd when we have been brought closer to something real. That meaning stays with us, a little bit of fire in our bones, when we leave behind the lights of the theatre and walk into the night.
Perhaps the final word on the subject should go to the folk singer Phil Ochs, who knew more than most people about making art when the world was hurting: