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Nov. 15th, 2007 01:08 amI have so many thoughts in my brain.
I am never going to be satisfied with a design. I know this, because it's a product of my undergraduate training, a training I loved and appreciated but which did twist me just a little. No set is ever going to be as good for a director as I want it to be or look exactly like the picture in my head. I'm at peace with this -- it doesn't bother me, exactly, it's just there. I look at a finished set and I see what it could have been with more money, time, energy, or ingenuity. That wouldn't change if I had all the money and time in the world.
Despite that, when I look at a completed set I am happy that I've given the director and the actors something good. I wouldn't allow anything less. When I work on a show as a dramaturge or anything else it's about what the audience sees and thinks, but when I build a set it's about creating a space that works not just for them, sometimes not even primarily for them, but for the people who have to populate it. I don't hold with the idea of the stage space as sacred; it's not a place of worship until there's something there, and that's a product of a lot of people working together.
I realised today, mainly this morning, that the year I spent in grad school for scenic design ruined me as a designer, and only with this show have I recovered what I had. I spent a year in a program that wasn't interested in the kind of work I want to do, which is small "storefront" theatre. My program put me into the paint shop, where I didn't want to be, and required of me that I conform to some bizarre Broadway standard of hyper-realistic design that I wasn't interested in because it's terribly fucking boring. This morning I painted a backdrop and it looked awesome and I used very little more than a roller, two brushes, and a sponge, with five colours to mix from (black and white being two of those). It restored my faith in myself as a painter independent of the apathetic, disinterested shop that I had worked in as a grad student.
Tonight the director turned to me and said, "Your job as a designer is finished here." I can't describe how that feels. There's still work to be done on the props but that's really just set dressing and to look at a set and see people on it and hear those words is amazing. I made that. Look at how happy it makes them.
So today was a good day, despite the fact that I'm bone-weary. I came into the flat around half past midnight and R's girlfriend looked at me lying on the couch and said "You look like you're about to cry." I wasn't, not in the slightest, but I can understand how it would seem that way.
I don't have to go in to the theatre tomorrow to paint or build; I'm going tomorrow afternoon but I won't have to stay past seven. That'll take care of the last dressing and paint issues and then I'm well and truly finished.
It's not so different from writing, in a way. I made a world -- not the same one as this world, not a world that functions independently or exists outside of a little black room, but it's mine. In return for this amazing ability, I have the responsibility to make it the best world it can possibly be. I might fall perpetually short, but it's better to aim high and fail than set the standard too low and fail anyway.
That's real.
I am never going to be satisfied with a design. I know this, because it's a product of my undergraduate training, a training I loved and appreciated but which did twist me just a little. No set is ever going to be as good for a director as I want it to be or look exactly like the picture in my head. I'm at peace with this -- it doesn't bother me, exactly, it's just there. I look at a finished set and I see what it could have been with more money, time, energy, or ingenuity. That wouldn't change if I had all the money and time in the world.
Despite that, when I look at a completed set I am happy that I've given the director and the actors something good. I wouldn't allow anything less. When I work on a show as a dramaturge or anything else it's about what the audience sees and thinks, but when I build a set it's about creating a space that works not just for them, sometimes not even primarily for them, but for the people who have to populate it. I don't hold with the idea of the stage space as sacred; it's not a place of worship until there's something there, and that's a product of a lot of people working together.
I realised today, mainly this morning, that the year I spent in grad school for scenic design ruined me as a designer, and only with this show have I recovered what I had. I spent a year in a program that wasn't interested in the kind of work I want to do, which is small "storefront" theatre. My program put me into the paint shop, where I didn't want to be, and required of me that I conform to some bizarre Broadway standard of hyper-realistic design that I wasn't interested in because it's terribly fucking boring. This morning I painted a backdrop and it looked awesome and I used very little more than a roller, two brushes, and a sponge, with five colours to mix from (black and white being two of those). It restored my faith in myself as a painter independent of the apathetic, disinterested shop that I had worked in as a grad student.
Tonight the director turned to me and said, "Your job as a designer is finished here." I can't describe how that feels. There's still work to be done on the props but that's really just set dressing and to look at a set and see people on it and hear those words is amazing. I made that. Look at how happy it makes them.
So today was a good day, despite the fact that I'm bone-weary. I came into the flat around half past midnight and R's girlfriend looked at me lying on the couch and said "You look like you're about to cry." I wasn't, not in the slightest, but I can understand how it would seem that way.
I don't have to go in to the theatre tomorrow to paint or build; I'm going tomorrow afternoon but I won't have to stay past seven. That'll take care of the last dressing and paint issues and then I'm well and truly finished.
It's not so different from writing, in a way. I made a world -- not the same one as this world, not a world that functions independently or exists outside of a little black room, but it's mine. In return for this amazing ability, I have the responsibility to make it the best world it can possibly be. I might fall perpetually short, but it's better to aim high and fail than set the standard too low and fail anyway.
That's real.
