France’s Next Top Set Designer Pt. 1

Well, here I am back on the other side of the world working that whole theater thang!  That’s right your trusty Theater Manager and resident Lighting Designer has once again flown to France, this year the first of 2 trips, to conduct workshops with design students who will hopefully build part of our set, saving us the cost of shipping it to France.  Though I’m only here for 10 days and only 2 days in so far, it has been amazing.

So let’s start with the plane ride, I don’t know if anyone really cares about this part of my trip but I like writing about it so you can skip a few paragraphs or you can indulge me, whatever.

Woke up at 9a on Sunday, the plan was to hit the gym to get some exercise, but as I realized that I had yet to pack I thought hitting the Wii Fit might be a better choice.  Though I hadn’t hit my weight loss goal the regular gym visits were definitely helping my strength and balance and I managed high scores in all my Yoga poses (don’t ask me how you score Yoga poses).  Then it was off to the airport and a nice little 12 hour flight to Paris.  Fortunately, the flight wasn’t very crowded and I was able to stretch out in my row.  I didn’t get much sleep, I think I’m still too excited by plane rides, but I did rest a bit.  And of course I watched a few flicks on the way.  Dinner for Schmucks: should be called Movie that Sucks, come on Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, you are two of my favorites and this was just bush-league you can do better (plus I discovered Paul Rudd’s gem performance in Veronica Mars but more on that later).  Un-Stoppable, for those of you who don’t remember this film it’s not a surprise it is about Denzel Washington driving a train to catch another train and yep its about as entertaining as that sounds, should have been called Un-Eventful.  I suppose on a larger screen the fast trains whizzing by would be really exciting but when you reduce the action to 5 inches you need a story to back that up, Ridley Scott should know better.  The constant reminders that the film took place near Pittsburgh didn’t help as I knew I was missing the SuperBowl which I was happy to learn went to the Cheeseheads in Green Bay.  I didn’t know the score until a fellow American in the Paris train station saw the Ravens sweatshirt I was wearing and as a true football fan recognized that it was indeed a protest for the hated Steelers getting a trip to Dalls told me of the glorious result, congrats Aaron Rodgers, the Favre era is officially behind you.  I finally submitted to watching The Other Guys, the movie where Will Farrell and Mark Wahlberg play reject cops who eventually save the day.  It turned out to be much more amusing than I expected.  After landing at 11a Paris time (that’s 2a SF time) I met up with Sue, Word for Word’s AD who got me situated with my plane ticket and pointed towards the right platform.  Then it was a quick 3 hour train ride to Nantes which managed to round out something like 36 hours of travel (that could very well be an exaggeration but it certainly felt that long and my brain can’t do all that time conversion in one sitting).

The next day had me at a 6a wakeup to head to the Design School in Nantes which is where the true excitement really happened.  Students there, who are mainly based around spacial/interior design, have been working on designing their own vision of the play we are bringing to France.  This is a very interesting task for interior designers as approaching a set design poses many different considerations.  It very much reminded me of my pre-CounterPULSE days when I met, now CP Board Member, Ed Grant for the first time when he helped build a few walls for a set.  He built them like he was building a friggin house and it took forever to knock them down, I had to explain that the objective in theater was the illusion of solidness not necessarily withstanding an earthquake.  The parameters that the students were given were that the set had to be taken on the train with us everywhere we travel and of course it had to fit with the play in some way.  I then got to meet with each student individually to discuss their models that the constructed out of their ideas.  First of all can I say how jealous I was that these student are just given an 8 hour day and an empty room in which they get to play with all their materials and try out different ideas, it’s like a designers dream and makes me yearn for grad school.  The students had such fascinating design approaches but more importantly I was amazingly impressed with their deep thought and comprehension of the story.  Nearly every student was able to relate the connection between their design and some important aspect to the story, whether it be the strong but chaotic relationship between the two lead women, or the impending fear inherent in the ending, they all commented so exquisitely on these aspects and the result was better designs.  I also found out later on from their English teacher that she had shown them Lars Von Trier’s Dogville as an example of minimalism, which is essentially how we describe our touring set.  I felt bad that they had to sit through that film as I struggled with it myself, don’t get me wrong I love Von Trier’s work but that film is ridiculously self indulgent, I love it as an experiment, but three hours with nothing to look at is for a designer somewhat of nightmare I believe.  I definitely saw this influence reflected in a lot of their work but I did need to explain that the film was an extreme version of minimalism and that minimalism does not necessarily mean not realistic for in fact our sets tend to be very much based in realism, but when we say minimal we simply mean we can’t carry everything and the kitchen sink.  I was also quite bit surprised to find a lot of students wanting to work with video projection.  This too I had to explain is a major challenge for our tour as the size and capabilities of the theaters in which we perform vary so greatly and video really demands a great deal of time and finesse to make it effective, those are too commodities we rarely have on tour.  Though I am a video designer as well and I love the moving image I am constantly encouraging artists to really identify the importance of such a choice.  Even though technology has reached a place where we can afford to play with these new toys I don’t think we have quite perfected their integration into design work and I would caution anyone considering it.  All in all though the designs were quite brilliant and luck me I got to have essentially 25 production meetings in one day.  It was certainly a lot for my brain to handle but I greatly enjoyed playing teacher for a day and it has certainly made me consider that option more realistically.  I also got the rare treat of sitting down with three of the teachers for a much needed beer at the end of the day and it was also great to get their insights into where the students were in their progress, they have such high standards but it is obvious that they feel the students are simply, to quote a great theater director I had in high school, “too good not to be better.”

After that is was home to Chris Evain’s with whom I am staying while in Nantes.  She has been a long time Word for Word fan and advocate and helps us with a lot of the advanced planning.  She has three teenage daughters at home, 14, 15, and 17, so you can imagine how I ended up watching a Veronica Mars marathon.  But once again it presented such a unique cultural experience as all of us enjoyed the show but found ourselves laughing at very different moments.  I of course was very amused by the musical references and jokes about American culture, one of my particular favorites was a jab at Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 fame who also shares the name with the shows writer/producer.  I do have to say however, that I was greatly frustrated by the lighting design and if you want an example of some very aggravating color and directional choices this would be a great sample of what not to do.  Other than that it was very cute and just what I needed to let the brain unwind after an intense and jet-lagged day.  I suppose my desire to write is permeating this too much so I’ll round it out now but check back for more updates in a few days.