"'Wicked' costume designer Paul Tazewell on the vision behind his Oscar-nominated work

by Jeffrey Brown and Simon Epstein 

[The PBS News Hour segment on Oscar-nominated Wicked costume designer Paul Tazewell aired on 3 February 2025, part of News Hour’s regular arts feature “CANVAS.”  (PBS warns readers, “Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy.  They may contain errors.”  I do my best to correct these as I identify them, based on reviewing the audio recording of the segment.)]

“Wicked” is the latest version of an enduring American fairy tale. Among its 10 Oscar nominations, one is for costume designer Paul Tazewell. Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown starts our coverage of Oscar nominees this year with this report for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

Geoff Bennett, Co-Anchor of PBS News Hour: The movie version of the hit [stage] musical “Wicked” soared at the box office this winter, and among its 10 nominations, one is for costume designer Paul Tazewell [b. 1964; pronounced TAZZ-well]. [This year’s Academy Awards ceremony will be televised on 2 March.]

[The stage musical Wicked, a loose adaptation of the 1995 Gregory Maguire (b. 1954) novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which in turn is based on L. Frank Baum’s (1856-1919) 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 film adaptation, was produced by Universal Stage Productions. 

[After an extensive workshop development in New York City and Los Angeles between 2000 and 2003, the show, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (b. 1948) and a book by Winnie Holzman (b. 1954), began previews for try-outs at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre on 28 May 2003, directed by Joe Mantello and choreographed by Wayne Cilento, with the production’s set and visual style by Eugene Lee (1939-2023; see “Making a Scene, Onstage and Off” by Sandy Keenan, in “Two (Back) Stage Pros,” 30 June 2014). The try-out opened on 10 June and closed on 29 June.

[After extensive revising, Wicked began previews at Broadway’s Gershwin Theatre on 8 October 2003, making its official première on 30 October. It’s still running at the same theater after 25 previews and 8,249 performances (as of 2 February 2025; the show suspended performances due to the COVID-19 pandemic from 12 March 2020 to 14 September 2021), currently the fourth longest-running Broadway production.

[At the 2004 Tony Awards, Wicked won three awards and was nominated for seven others, including Best Musical. The production also won six 2004 Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding New Musical, and four additional nominations.]

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown starts our coverage of Oscar nominees this year with this report. It’s part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: It’s a visually spectacular world, intended to feel both familiar and fresh.

Ariana Grande, Actress (as “Galinda/Glinda” in a movie clip): The Wicked Witch of the West is dead.

(Cheering)

[The 2024 film adaptation of Wicked (titled on screen as Wicked: Part I) was produced by Universal Pictures and Marc Platt Productions (both producers of the stage musical) and released on 22 November 2024 in the United States, after premièring in Sydney, Australia, on 3 November. The current film covers only act 1 of the stage musical; the second part, Wicked: For Good, is scheduled for release on 21 November 2025.

[Directed by Jon M. Chu and written by Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, the film received 10 nominations for the 97th Academy Awards, including, in addition to Tazewell’s Best Costume Design recognition, Best Picture, Best Actress for Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, and Best Supporting Actress for Ariana Grande as Galinda/Glinda. The film has received numerous other awards and nominations.

[As of 4 February 2025, Wicked has grossed $471.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $251.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $722.2 million. That makes it the third highest-grossing film of 2024 in the United States, and the sixth highest-grossing film of 2024 worldwide. It’s also the all-time highest-grossing movie based on a Broadway play.]

Jeffrey Brown: For costume designer Paul Tazewell, “Wicked” is an enormous canvas of characters and colors, materials in motion, and it’s the biggest thing he’s ever been involved in.

Paul Tazewell, Costume Designer: It’s a blast, one, and it is my life. It is the way that I communicate, I mean, as a painter would. It is my language, and it is my means of being creative.

Jeffrey Brown: We met recently at Steiner Studios, a film production complex in Brooklyn, New York. And he told us that, for all the huge scale, the key is still through his designs and working with director Jon Chu [b. 1979] and actors, most of all Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda, to help create characters, not only their outer clothing, but their inner emotional life.

Paul Tazewell: My focus is who these characters are and how they dress themselves and how to create a world that makes sense within itself and provides a magical environment for this story to exist within.

I mean, so I’m stepping into their shoes. If I’m working adjacent to . . .

Jeffrey Brown: Actually, they’re stepping into your shoes.

Paul Tazewell: Well, there is that. Both.

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown: When it comes to American cultural history, these are very big shoes to fill, beginning with the books, the first in 1900 by L. Frank Baum. [Baum went on to write thirteen more novels based on the places and people of the Land of Oz between 1910 and 1920, as well as a spin-off series of six short stories written for young children (1913/1914.]

Judy Garland, Actress (as “Dorothy” in a clip): But, if you please, what are Munchkins?

Jeffrey Brown: The classic 1939 film that’s taken generations over the rainbow.

[The Wizard of Oz (1939) was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and directed by Victor Fleming (1889-1949); Noel Langley (1911-80), Florence Ryerson (1892-1965), and Edgar Allan Woolf (1881-1943) are credited with the screenplay, though other, uncredited writers contributed to the script. The music was composed by Harold Arlen (1905-86) and adapted by Herbert Stothart (1885-1946), with lyrics by Edgar “Yip” Harburg (1896-1981).

[The classic movie fantasy famously starred Judy Garland (Dorothy), Frank Morgan (the Wizard), Ray Bolger (the Scarecrow), Bert Lahr (the Cowardly Lion), Jack Haley (the Tin Man), Billie Burke (Glinda), and Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch of the West [Elphaba in Wicked]).

[The Wizard of Oz was nominated for five Academy Awards in 1940, including Best Picture, winning Best Original Song for “Over the Rainbow” by Arlen and Harburg and Best Original Score for Herbert Stothart; an honorary Academy Juvenile Award was presented to Judy Garland (who was just 16 when she made The Wizard of Oz). The Library of Congress deems The Wizard of Oz the most-watched movie of all time.]

Michael Jackson, Actor (as “Scarecrow” in a clip): Okay, Dorothy and Toto, seems like we’re gonna have to find our own yellow brick road.

Jeffrey Brown: And “The Wiz,” a 1970s retelling on stage and film through the contemporary Black experience.

[The film version of The Wiz was adapted from the all-African American Broadway musical that ran at the Majestic Theatre from 5 January 1975 to 25 May 1977 and the at the Broadway Theatre from 25 May 1977 to 28 January 1979, for 15 previews and 1,672 regular performances.  (The play had tried out in 1974 in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.)

[After recasting and bringing in a new director, the première was staged by Geoffrey Holder (who also designed the costumes) and choreographed by George Faison. The music was composed by Charlie Smalls, who also wrote the lyrics; the book was by William F. Brown.

[The first stage production received eight 1975 Tony nominations and won seven, including Best Musical, Best Original Score (Smalls), Best Choreography, and Best Direction of a Musical. (The musical was revived on Broadway twice, in 1974 and 2024. On 3 December 2015, The Wiz Live!, which combined aspects of the Broadway play and its 1978 film adaptation [see below], was aired on NBC as a live television special.)

[The film adaptation was produced by Universal Pictures and Motown Productions and directed by Sidney Lumet from a screenplay by Joel Schumacher, who reworked the story from William F. Brown’s Broadway book. Quincy Jones supervised the adaptation of songs by Charlie Smalls and Luther Vandross, and wrote new ones with the songwriting team Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson.

[The star-studded cast included Diana Ross (Dorothy), Michael Jackson (Scarecrow; his feature film début), Nipsey Russell (Tinman), Ted Ross (Cowardly Lion), Mabel King (Evillene, The Wicked Witch of the West), Lena Horne (Glinda, The Good Witch of the South), and Richard Pryor (The Wiz).

[The film was released on 24 October 1978 in New York to critical and commercial failure. The Wiz received largely negative reviews, with many reviewers comparing the film unfavorably to the Broadway version. In recent years, criticism has become more favorable, and the movie’s become a cult classic among fans of Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and the Oz books.]

Starting in 1995, a new series of books by Gregory Maguire conjured a kind of backstory and revisionist history. It turns out we didn’t really know the Wicked Witch, or Elphaba, after all.

That spawned the amazingly successful Broadway musical running 21 years and counting and now the new film.

Paul Tazewell: I acknowledge all of those as I’m designing it, but with the intent of creating new images, new icons, new ways of seeing who these characters are, and a new way of telling the story. And I delight in it.

Jeffrey Brown: In fact, “The Wiz” was the first show Tazewell designed. He also acted in it as a high school student in Akron, Ohio, where his mother taught him to sew. [Tazewell is a 1982 Buchtel High School graduate; he designed the costumes and played The Wiz in the production during his junior year, when he was 16.]

He went on to a hugely successful career in theater design, notably including “Hamilton,” for which he won a Tony and, most recently, “Suffs,” which brought another Tony nomination. He won a television Emmy for NBC’s 2015 “The Wiz Live” and the first Oscar nomination for Steven Spielberg’s 2021 film version of “West Side Story.”

[Hamilton, with book, music, and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, opened at Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre on 6 August 2015 and is still running after 26 previews and 3,317 regular performances (as of 2 February 2025). Shaina Taub’s (book, music, and lyrics) Suffs ran at the Music Box Theatre from 18 April 2024 to 5 January 2025 (24 previews and 301 regular performances).

[Spielberg’s film remake of West Side Story (Tony Kushner, screenplay; Arthur Laurents, original stage book), produced by 20th Century Studios, Amblin Entertainment, and TSG Entertainment, was released in the United States on 29 November 2021. (The film is an adaptation of the 1957 stage musical [conceived by Jerome Robbins, book by Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; directed by Robbins; choreographed by Robbins and Peter Gennaro], itself inspired by William Shakespeare’s 1597 play Romeo and Juliet.)]

So, you’re grabbing images just on the Internet, whatever?

Paul Tazewell: That’s right, that viscerally speak to me. They could be abstract. They could be random. But, collectively, they start to create a world.

Jeffrey Brown: For “Wicked,” Tazewell has taken past icons, the witch’s hat, for example, and made them his own. He created a mash-up of old and new fashions, looked to the art of one of history’s greatest graphic artists, M. C. Escher [Dutch graphic artist whose work features, among other phenomena, impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, and tessellations; 1898-1972], and incorporated patterns in nature, including the swirl of the tornado or twister so indelible in the 1939 film.

He showed me an early plastic 3-D model of a crystal slipper made for one of the characters, the swirl pattern appearing throughout. It’s a detail that required weeks for Tazewell and his team to experiment with, design, and make.

I, as the viewer, seeing the film, I wouldn’t know all that, right?

Paul Tazewell: Right. And my hope is that — and that was for all of the details of Oz and what we were creating for “Wicked,” was that it becomes immersive, that you believe it so much that you’re drawn into this world. And there’s a suspension of disbelief.

Jeffrey Brown: Tazewell says he’s always bringing his own personal connections to the story and characters he’s working on.

He brought up the example of Elphaba, an outsider in Munchkinland, a different color from the rest, uncertain of her own place, and shunned by others.

Paul Tazewell: What I bring to the event is my own life experience and how I walk through life as well.

I have a direct emotional relationship to that, being a Black man walking through life in America. So, decisions . . .

Jeffrey Brown: So, you connect in that sense.

Paul Tazewell: Absolutely. So, decisions around how she emotionally presents herself, what her intention is, I have to build some kind of connection in order to have an honest take on what a character might wear.

Jeffrey Brown: There’s also another kind of history at stake in Tazewell’s Oscar nomination. In 2019, Ruth Carter became the first Black costume designer to win an Oscar for her work in “Black Panther.” Tazewell would be the first Black man to win.

Paul Tazewell: The number of people of color that I experienced coming up in this business, there were just . . .

Jeffrey Brown: Was minimal.

Paul Tazewell: There were just very few, and which is why it’s so important for me to be a face that is visible and out there for other people to see me doing it.

Jeffrey Brown: Tazewell is also seeking to make a case for the role of the costume designer more broadly, something he says is often not well understood and has implications for such things as pay equity within his industry.

Paul Tazewell: What has become more of a priority is to be expansive in a way that is not only identified as a costume designer, but is identified as a creative artist.

And I have tried to turn up the volume on indeed what it is that we do, and the power that we have as costume designers to create character. Our contribution is huge towards that.

Jeffrey Brown: Paul Tazewell vies for an Oscar, one of 10 nominations overall for “Wicked,” on March 2.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in Brooklyn, New York.

Geoff Bennett: And Paul Tazewell is paying it forward. He established a scholarship at his alma mater for design students, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. [Tazewell got a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in costume design from NCSA in 1986. He went on to get a Master of Fine Arts in design for stage and film from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1989.]

Amna Nawaz, Co-Anchor of PBS News Hour: It’s amazing, amazing work, and we wish him well at the Oscars.

(Laughter)

Geoff Bennett: That’s right.

[In his more than 30-year career with the PBS News Hour, Jeffrey Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe.  As arts correspondent he has profiled many of the world’s leading writers, musicians, actors, and other artists.  

[Among his signature works at the News Hour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the News Hour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with the New York Times.

[Simon Epstein is a multiple Emmy Award-winning producer.  Simon’s long-form productions include three historical retrospectives on the District of Columbia for public television, and the public affairs specials American War Generals, and “The Last Days of Osama bin Laden” for the National Geographic Channel.  Simon’s work also appears nationally on Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, A&E, and the History Channel, as well as a number of international broadcast outlets.]

Two Reports On New York Theater Activities (Post-Pandemic)

 

[At the end of last month, two television news programs aired reports on different aspects of the performing arts in New York City in the (hopefully) waning days of the COVID pandemic.  If you’ve been following the news from this city, Broadway theater has just started to return—not without setbacks—and other performance venues have been following in its wake.

[First up is a report from PBS NewsHour, known for its in-depth coverage of issues and current events, looking at the financial implications of the 18-month shutdown on the artists and artisans whose work is off stage.  That’s followed by a report from WCBS on its CBS2 News At 5 newscast on a performance art troupe that’s been using the public spaces of New York City as its stage for two decades.] 

“THE SHOW MUST GO ON:
BROADWAY HOPES REOPENING BOOM WILL PAY OFF DEBTS WORSENED BY PANDEMIC”
by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport 

[The following report was aired on PBS NewsHour on 29 September 2021.  The transcript and the video of the segment is posted at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-show-must-go-on-broadway-hopes-reopening-boom-will-pay-off-debts-worsened-by-pandemic.]

There’s no business like show business, but for 18 months during the pandemic, Broadway theaters had virtually no business at all. Jeffrey Brown recently visited the theater district’s artisans who are making sure Broadway puts its best face forward and comes back to life. It’s part of our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

Amna Nawaz: Well, as the saying goes, there’s no business like show business.

But for 18 months during the pandemic, there was basically no business in Broadway theaters.

Jeffrey Brown recently visited the theater districts artisans, who are playing a key role in Broadway’s return.

It’s all part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: The green suit, worn by Lin-Manuel Miranda in the musical “Hamilton.” Miranda told the costume designer it should be — quote — “the color of money.”

Crystals and mirrors on Elsa’s ice dress from Disney’s “Frozen.” From “Phantom of the Opera,” what else? The mask. They are defining images of contemporary Broadway. But even live in the theater, you don’t get to see them like this.

Brian Blythe, The Costume Industry Coalition: What I think is so great about this is that when you’re sitting in the fifth row or the 10th row or in the balcony, you’re never this close  . . .

Jeffrey Brown: Yes, that’s for sure.

Brian Blythe: . . . to the costumes, to the point where you can see the amount of craftsmanship, the workmanship and the details that go into each one of these.

Jeffrey Brown: Brian Blythe helped put together this exhibition called Showstoppers!. He’s a founder of The Costume Industry Coalition, a group of more than 50 small businesses that make these amazing garments, like this dress from “Wicked.”

Can I touch it?

Brian Blythe: I will let you touch it, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

Jeffrey Brown: Why do you do all of this underneath in such exquisite detail?

Brian Blythe: Because they’re living in this fantasy world. You know, they’re in Emerald City. And when an actor puts this on, they become the character. That’s how they realize their character, is through their costume.

Jeffrey Brown: But starting in March of 2020, no characters, no costumes, no shows. Now, gradually, tentatively, the spectacle is coming back.

The musical “Six” was supposed to open the same day Broadway shut down in 2020 [12 March]. The six, by the way, are the wives killed by Henry VIII. Now they have come to life onstage. And opening night recently was sold out.

[Historically, King Henry VIII (1491-1547; reigned: 1509-47) only “killed” two of his queens: Anne Boleyn (c. 1501-36) and Catherine Howard (1523-42), numbers 2 and 5, both beheaded for adultery and treason.  He divorced two, Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), whose marriage was actually annulled, and Anne of Cleves (1515-57), numbers 1 and 4; one died in childbirth, Jane Seymour (1508-37), number 3; and one survived the king, Catherine Parr (1512-48), number 6.

[A mnemonic for remembering the fates of the six wives is: “Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived.”]

Gianna Van Rouendal, Theatergoer: This is my first Broadway show back, which is very exciting. And I think it will be so inspiring.

Jack Nix, Theatergoer: We are just thrilled for Broadway, and we cannot wait to see “Six.” And we will be back to see a bunch of shows.

Jeffrey Brown: “Six” is one of 15 Broadway shows reopening throughout September. Twenty more are set to open before the end of the year, with patrons masked and required to have proof of vaccination or negative test results to enter theaters.

Charlotte St. Martin is president of The Broadway League, a trade group representing theater owners.

Charlotte St. Martin, President, The Broadway League: We said from day one we will not open unless we feel we can keep the audience, the cast and crew safe.

They might be a little bit sensitive about the Delta variant, but we’re trying to spread the message that we’re safe, we’re secure, and all of the magic they loved about Broadway is still there.

Jeffrey Brown: Magic and money. Broadway is a business with a large behind-the-scenes ecosystem fed by ticket sales, with every production employing scores of workers crucial to making the show go on. And then there’s its wider impact on the city.

Charlotte St. Martin: We’re responsible for 97,000 jobs in this city, and 80 percent of the tourists that are coming here for pleasure give Broadway as their number one, two or three reason for coming to the city. So we need to be open not just for us, but to bring New York back.

Brian Blythe: We lost over $26.6 million in gross revenue in 2020. And we have incurred an immense amount of debt during the pandemic.

Jeffrey Brown: Showstoppers!, occupying an out-of-business sporting goods store on 42nd Street, was conceived as a fund-raiser, with ticket sales benefiting costume workers.

According to Blythe, they face a collective debt of $3.5 million. In an industry where nothing but the best will do, some of the people who make these costumes took part in the exhibition.

Camilla Chuvarsky is a theatrical milliner[;] she makes hats.

Camilla Chuvarsky, Lynne Mackey Studio: I think there’s a bit of a false perception with costumes that they’re not as well-made as everyday garments.

And, in fact, the opposite is true. They have to hold up through eight shows a week and still look beautiful the entire time, because, when you’re going to Broadway, more than regional theater, what you’re paying for is the production value.

Jeffrey Brown: The pandemic, she says, forced some to leave the industry or retire early, revealing just how fragile some of the costuming trades are.

Camilla Chuvarsky: There are a lot of techniques and skills that really are passed down through training on the job and that a lot of people don’t know and would honestly be lost. If some of these shops closed, there’s knowledge that would just vanish, because it is so particular to the industry.

Jeffrey Brown: Another behind-the-scenes art form, fabric painter.

Hochi Asiatico has worked on Broadway for 25 years, painting everything from the most detailed patterns to a character’s sweat. [Asiatico is the subject of a New York Times article I posted on 29 May 2021, “‘Broadway’s Dirty Secret: How to Turn Costumes From Riches to Rags’” by Erik Piepenburg.]

A painter for a Broadway show, most people probably don’t know there is such a thing.

Hochi Asiatico, Owner, Hochi Asiatico Studio: No, people don’t know.

And they just get the feeling of something. And I think they get into the character. But, really, the painting is very important for the development of the character.

Jeffrey Brown: Asiatico hand-painted these robes, set in the early 19th century, for the play “Golden Child.”

Hochi Asiatico: So, we had to research the colors that were available at the time and the style of the time. Also, we wanted them to look a little bit embroidered. So we have to consider the distance on stage, how the lighting works.

Jeffrey Brown: The people we met are now back at work making costumes for productions.

But will the audience return? With tourism still down in New York City . . .

Oprah Winfrey, Producer/Philanthropist: This is Broadway.

Jeffrey Brown: . . . Broadway League has a new $1.5 million ad campaign narrated by Oprah.

Oprah Winfrey: This is the return of something truly spectacular.

Jeffrey Brown: Strategically targeting those within a car drive.

And, as we saw recently, those who are coming are glad to be back, even amid continuing uncertainty.

Audrianne Speidel, Theatergoer: I’m loving the fact that the shows are back and being able to come and see as many shows as possible. So, yes.

Woman: And please let Broadway open, please.

Audrianne Speidel: Right.

Jeffrey Brown: For now, at least, it is.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in New York.

[Jeffrey Brown is the chief correspondent for arts, culture, and society at PBS NewsHour.  Anne Azzi Davenport is the Senior Coordinating Producer of “Canvas.”

[Showstopper! Spectacular Costumes from Stage and Screen, the costume exhibit from the Costume Industry Coalition, closed on 26 September; it had been housed at the former Modell's Sporting Goods store at 234 W. 42nd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues in Times Square.] 

*  *  *  *
 
“‘IMPROV EVERYWHERE’ REMINDS NEW YORKERS TO CELEBRATE SHARED SPACES”
by  Steve Overmyer

[This “Snapshot New York” was broadcast on 30 September 2021 on WCBS, Channel 2 in New York City.  Improv Everywhere, formed in 2001 by Charlie Todd (b. 1978), is a performance art group based in New York City.  Its slogan is “We Cause Scenes.”  (The video for this report is posted at https://newyork.cbslocal.com/video/6052800-snapshot-ny-improv-everywhere-reminds-new-yorkers-to-celebrate-shared-spaces/.)

[In their own words: “Improv Everywhere is a New York City-based comedy collective that stages unexpected performances in public places.  Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere aims to surprise and delight random strangers through positive pranks.  We joined YouTube in April of 2006, making us one of the first comedy channels on the platform.

[“We have staged hundreds of projects involving tens of thousands of undercover performers.  Highlights include making time stop at Grand Central Terminal, giving Best Buy 100 extra employees, and letting random strangers conduct a world class orchestra in the middle of Manhattan.

[“Improv Everywhere produces television series (recently, Pixar In Real Life for Disney+) and has produced commercials for brands like Target, ESPN, and Hallmark.”]

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — For more than 20 years, Improv Everywhere has been turning New York City into a playground for positive pranks.

Most of the moments came before the pandemic, but their messages remains the same. That’s the focus of this week’s Snapshot New York with Steve Overmyer.

“I’ve always looked at the city like a playground,” said Charlie Todd. “That’s been our motto, always, that we cause scenes. But we’re causing a scene that’s funny, that catches people off guard in a positive way and a way that makes them laugh and smile.”

For more than 20 years, Improv Everywhere has been creating moments that allow everyone to join in. They’re called missions.

“Giving people this fun, unexpected moment of joy that maybe they carry with them the rest of the day. Maybe it makes their day 5% better,” said Todd. “Our best projects are the ones that invite people in rather than us just forcing ourselves on people. We like to lure people in and invite them into our world.”

On any random day, you might see an impromptu dance party with a few people from Improv Everywhere. But it becomes infectious.

“Does there come a time when you’re not sure who’s in the troop [sic: ‘troupe’] and who’s just a random person that’s walking by?” asked Overmyer.

“Yeah absolutely. Those are the greatest moments,” said Todd.

As New Yorkers, we have an unwritten, social contract to keep our heads down, don’t talk to anyone and, no matter what happens, don’t react.

That’s impossible when Charlie Todd is around – even on a depressing morning commute at the 53rd Street subway station.

“There are these two giant escalators in that station with a staircase next to it, but nobody takes the staircase because it’s like you’re going up four stories,” Todd explained.

That day he added a flair of color by simply asking everyone to lend a hand.

“Over the course of about an hour, my friend Rob gave out 2,000 high-fives to commuters,” he said.

Their brand of performance art has stretched across all five boroughs. It all started with a harmless prank that’s become an annual tradition: “The No Pants Subway Ride.”

“I love it when something happens in the city where strangers have a connection,” Todd said.

Improv Everywhere reminds us while we are all leading millions of different lives, our unique connection to our outside spaces gives us a chance at a shared experience.

It’s a reminder that playing like a child can be liberating. All we need is someone to give us the OK.

“We try to provide unique opportunities for people,” said Todd. “If they say yes and if they want to come into our world, they can have a once in a lifetime experience.”

“Creating moments of joy and bringing people together is important. We create this joyous, euphoric moment for no reason, just to celebrate life and be funny and have a good time,” he added.

To date, Improv Everywhere videos have 470 million views on YouTube. They’ve completed two missions during the pandemic as a way to remind us to celebrate our shared space.

[Steve Overmyer joined WCBS in February 2011 as a sports anchor and reporter.  He hosts Sports Update every weekend on CBS 2 and its partner station on Long Island, WLNY 10/55.  Previously, Overmyer anchored and reported for the cable network SportsNet in New York (SNY).  

[Overmyer was the field reporter for Jets Post Game Live and studio host for 1st and Goal with football reporter Mike Tannenbaum.  During his time at SNY, he was utilized in a number of capacities from anchoring the nightly highlight show to talk show hosting duties to field reporter for all New York teams.]

"Design & Tech: The Magic Of Design," Articles 8 & 9

 

[The final two articles on the AT series on stage design and technology are largely about recognition and invisibility—and both use Broadway’s Tony Awards as the context in which to examine these issues. 

[In her article, Pamela Newton spotlights costume designers, though her points, and those of the artists she interviewed, can clearly be applied to set, lighting, and sound designers as well.  John Gromada has a somewhat different point to make with respect to sound designers, and I’ll have more to say about his article below. 

[As I have throughout this series, I suggest that ROTters make a point of going back and reading the foregoing seven articles in this collection.  None of the nine pieces depends on any of the others for comprehension; they all cover different aspects of the arts and techniques of theatrical design of production. 

[The result, though, is that the Special Section of the AT design and tech issue taken as a whole provides a panoramic view of stage design and tech, one of the least-well understood facets of play production among most theatergoers.  (I have already admitted that theater tech has always eluded my grasp.)  This is a good opportunity for readers who haven’t been following along to see what the design and tech fields are all about nowadays.

[To remind you all, Articles 1 through 7 were posted on 9, 12, 15, 18, and 21 September.  You can read the five posts in any order.]

“THE BROADWAY SEASON WAS DIVERSE OFFSTAGE TOO, NOT THAT YOU’D NOTICE”
by Pamela Newton 

[Newton’s report, which wasn’t published in AT’s print edition, was posted in the website on 7 June 2016 as part of the feature “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion,”]

The invisibility of stage designers cuts both ways: They lack for recognition (see this week’s Tonys [Sunday, 12 June 2016]), but they can also build diverse careers—if they get the chance.

NEW YORK CITY: The Great White Way has never been as ill-fitting an appellation for Broadway as it was this past season. Shows all along the district have presented a wonderfully diverse range of voices and experiences, from The Color Purple [10 December 2015-8 January 2017] to Allegiance [8 November 2015-14 February 2016] to On Your Feet! [5 November 2015-20 August 2017]. And this is all happening under the giant shadow of Hamilton [Broadway: 6 August 2015-Present], with its rapping founding fathers and a cast that is almost entirely African-American, Latino, and Asian.

Amid a panoply of directors, playwrights, and performers of color, it is easy to overlook that this [2015-16] is an unusually diverse season for designers as well. Emilio Sosa, who is black and from the Dominican Republic, designed the costumes for On Your Feet! Riccardo Hernandez, who is Latino, did the costumes and sets for the Gin Game [14 October 2015-10 January 2016] revival starring James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson. Toni-Leslie James, a black costume designer, channeled the 18th century for Amazing Grace [16 July-25 October 2015], the short-lived musical about slavery and the eponymous Christian hymn. And this season there were two costume designers of Asian descent at the helm of high-profile shows: Anita Yavich for the revival of Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love [8 October-13 December 2015] and Suttirat Anne Larlarb for the Sara Bareilles-composed musical Waitress [24 April 2016-5 January 2020].

You may not see this backstage diversity reflected on Sunday’s Tony Awards broadcast, though, since only two designers of color employed this season were nominated for Tonys: Clint Ramos for Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed [6 March-19 June 2016] and Paul Tazewell for Hamilton, both for costume design. (Ramos also designed the set for Eclipsed.)

[Ramos won the Tony for Best Costume Design of a Play and Tazewell won for Best Costume Design of a Musical.  All the 2016 winners and nominees are listed on the Tony Award website at https://www.tonyawards.com/nominees/year/2016/category/any/show/any/; there’s search engine at the top right that allows you to go directly to the various design categories.]

Tazewell, a black costume designer for whom this represents a sixth Tony nomination, is excited not only about his nomination, but also about what shows like his say about the current state of Broadway.

“The possibility has opened up for a new way of telling a story, presenting an idea, presenting a musical,” he says. “It’s no longer as interesting to see a Broadway musical served up in the usual way.”

This is Ramos’s first Tony nomination, and even as he celebrates the diversity among this season’s design pool, he bemoans that designers aren’t more visible to the theatregoing public.

“There were quite a number of designers of color this year, but you don’t see us,” says the designer, who is of Filipino descent. “It’s hard for us to get any attention. A lot of people ask, ‘Where are the designers of color?’ And I always say, ‘We’re out there! We’re just as busy as other designers!’ But we work behind the scenes, so we can’t get as much attention as the people onstage.”

Although it is par for the course that designers of all backgrounds stay out of the spotlight—and many of them prefer it that way—Ramos thinks this invisibility exacerbates the diversity problem in design. Though there has been no demographic study about designers on Broadway specifically, a recent study from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, which surveyed 1,000 cultural nonprofits, found that out of 346 theatre designers polled, 81 percent were Caucasian (the percentage was the same for the 1,676 technical/production staffers polled).

“There is a dearth of young artists of color going into design for the theatre,” says Ramos. “And part of that is because they don’t see themselves in it. I never saw people who looked like me. I was never exposed to them. I had to seek them out.” It creates a vicious cycle, he explains. “How can we address the problem when we can’t attract young artists of color into the design field?”

The answer may be to start at the institutional level. Cecilia Friederichs, the national business agent of United Scenic Artists, a union for designers and scenic artists, says that the stage design field is having a conversation now not only about racial equity but gender disparity as well. Apart from the category of costume design, women are woefully underrepresented in all categories of USA’s membership. And according to a study released last year by the League of Professional Theatre Women, men Off-Broadway outnumber women in all backstage disciplines save for costuming and stage management. The union has formed a diversity committee this year to address both gender and racial equity in theatrical design, and plan out action steps to promote both.

Still, on the production end, small changes can be made to highlight more of the creative team beyond just the directors and writers. Ramos believes that designers’ names should be included in the publicity materials for shows.

“It’s important that people see my last name there,” he says. “Because I think young artists will see a last name like that and think, ‘Oh, there could be a place for me there.’” He cites a trend about 20 or 30 years back that saw some female lighting designers using only their first initials and last names to increase their chances of getting hired in a male-dominated field. “I understand. They wanted to even the playing field. But I think it also didn’t serve a lot of women designers because it masked the reality.”

Tazewell believes that a big part of the burden for fostering diversity falls to the people at the top. “It will take forward-thinking producers and directors asking designers [of color] who are just great designers period,” he says. “Inviting them to design Shakespeare, inviting them to design Ibsen, inviting them to design a musical that’s all showgirls and sparkles.”

Tazewell’s résumé also includes a number of African-American-centered productions, which he is proud to have been involved in. But to him one of the great frustrations for designers of color is being told that they “should be working on a production that is specific to a diverse story.” It’s ironic, considering that audiences never see the designers. “There is no reason for Broadway or commercial producers to distinguish between designers of color and white designers,” Ramos says. “Unlike with casting, we have the benefit of the fact that it doesn’t really matter what we look like. If the design is good, it doesn’t matter.”

In this sense, Ramos suggests that the invisibility factor goes both ways: It may be harder to see designers of color than actors, but it’s easier to hire them based on skill—that is, if you can find them.

Over at United Scenic Artists, the diversity committee is working to address the disparity by urging established designers of all backgrounds to hire and mentor assistants from a more diverse pool. Explains Friederichs, “We’re interested in getting involved in encouraging people to choose assistants in a way that fosters a growth of diversity.”

There are also hopeful signs on the national level. Crowded Fire Theater in San Francisco, for example, provides grants and professional development to Bay Area designers and technicians under the auspices of its Ignite Fund, described in its official wording as having “an eye toward supporting the plurality of race, culture, class, gender, and age in our local design and technical community.” And Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.[,] has an internship and fellowship program for designers, technicians, and administrators, named after Allen Lee Hughes, a black lighting designer who has worked at the company since 1969.

Ramos also cites the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as two companies that, in his experience, have made it part of their core mission to attract diverse theatre artists. The Guthrie offers internships and a job fair for artists on and offstage. OSF offers a fellowship and residency program, called FAIR, for theatre practitioners, including designers.

In spite of the headway being made on Broadway and beyond, though, it remains to be seen whether this season was an inspiration or aberration. There have certainly been other years when Broadway has offered daring fare and showcased underrepresented groups: Take 1996, when the proto-hipster musical Rent [29 April 1996-7 September 2008], August Wilson’s Seven Guitars [28 March-8 September 1996], and George C. Wolfe’s black history musical Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk [25 April 1996-10 January 1999] (with costumes by Tazewell) were all up for Tonys, and many thought it heralded a new age. But the next year it was back to the safety (and predominant whiteness) of A Doll’s House [2 April-31 August 1997], Chicago [14 November 1996-Present], and Titanic [23 April 1997-21 March 1999]. (Notably, there was a Broadway revival of The Gin Game that year as well, starring white actors Charles Durning and Julie Harris [20 April-31 August 1997].)

Both Ramos and Tazewell maintain a cautious optimism toward the current moment. “I think if you asked people of color, most of us have a guarded sort of stance,” says Ramos. “We think of it as a blip, something that may not happen again.”

“I am hopeful that this is the direction we’re moving in,” says Tazewell, “but history has proven that there’s a pendulum. The pendulum I think will start to widen, start to open up more possibilities, but it is bound to shift back, because that is the nature of the beast.”

Ramos pointedly cautions that the work is not over. After all, this has been a notably diverse season for designers only in relative terms.

“We’ve certainly made strides in terms of diversity on Broadway,” he says. “but for designers and people who work backstage, it’s still not as diverse as we want it to be.” For him, the key is to take the present momentum and keep on moving forward. “If we in the American theatre are really invested in diversity and the breadth of human experience, then it is imperative that we populate our industry with more designers of color who, just by the nature of who they are, offer a different worldview, with a different body of experience.”

[Pamela Newton is a freelance writer and college writing teacher living in New York City. 

[I don’t know if the diversity issue had progressed among theater designers in the ensuing five years since Newton wrote her report, but it occurs to me, reading “The Broadway Season Was Diverse Offstage” that the same points the author and the artists to whom she spoke make above are equally valid with respect to artists with physical handicaps—and I’d bet that they meet with the same discrimination and invisibility that women and artists of color have.]

*  *  *  *
“TONY, CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
by John Gromada

[Gromada’s article, published in the “Opinion” feature of the print issue and posted on 6 June 2016 on the website, is a protest, born of disappointment. The Tony Awards on Sunday, 12 June 2016, omitted the contributions of sound designers.  The absence screamed loudly for Gromada, who had campaigned to have sound design added to the award categories; it was included in the 2008 awards.

[Gromada was nominated for the award himself in 2013 for Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful, but the next year, he saw the Tony committee yank the award away again.  What he couldn’t know when he wrote his article, though, was that the Tony Awards Administration Committee would relent and on 24 April 2017, would announce that the sound design awards would be reintroduced for the 2017-18 season.

[I’ve decided to run Gromada’s argument anyway, even though the reinstatement renders his main point out of date, because the article is still an important examination of the problem theater design artists have fought since stage design became part of the theatrical landscape: lack of recognition.  As you’ll read, the work of designers is either overlooked entirely or considered the realm of technicians and craftsmen, not artists.

[That’s just among other theater pros like producers and directors; among theatergoers, the work is often not even noticed.  (I read a lot of reviews when I write my performance reports and it’s clear the review-writers don’t know what to say much of the time when it comes to the designers’ contributions.  If the reviewers mention them at all, it’s a few words at the end of the notice, almost as if they felt obligated to say something.)

[I said at the start of this series that I took several design classes in grad school in order to learn more about that part of the business.  That put me in a position later as a director to appreciate what designers do for a production—which goes far beyond making pretty pictures or sounds.  They also solve problems, smooth over glitches, and enhance the drama—or comedy—of the production in ways that actors, directors, and even playwrights never could on their own.

[And I never made the mistake of feeling that what they do is anything less than an art.  So John Gromada’s other point is right on target.  As Linda Loman said in another context in Death of a Salesman: “Attention must be paid.”]

The absence of sound design categories at the Tony Awards screams louder each year.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of my professional career in the theatre, where I’ve had the good fortune to make a life designing sound and composing music for numerous productions, many of them on Broadway. I have been privileged to receive one of the highest accolades in the theatre for my work: In 2013, I was nominated for a Tony Award for designing the sound for Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful [23 April-9 October 2013].

Unfortunately, I am one of the few sound designers who have been recognized, or might ever be recognized, by the Tonys for their work; the following season was the last the awards were given. That’s because the American Theatre Wing announced that they were eliminating the Tony cate­gories for sound design, relegating any recognition in that area to the occasional special Tony.  [The Tony Awards Administration Committee made the announcement on 11 June 2014.] The reasons were enumerated in The New York Times: “Many Tony voters do not know what sound design is or how to assess it; a large number of Tony voters choose not to cast ballots in sound design categories because of this lack of expertise; and some administration committee members believe that sound design is more of a technical craft, rather than a theatrical art form that the Tonys are intended to honor.”

Suffice to say, the decision was an incredible blow to me. And I was far from the only one: The afternoon of the announcement, I started an online petition asking the Tony administration committee to reconsider, thinking that if I could get 1,000 signatures, it might persuade the committee to change their minds. In an hour, I had 1,000 signatures; in a few hours, the numbers grew to 5,000, then 10,000. In a week, more than 30,000 people from around the world signed the petition—including luminaries like Hugh Jackman, Stephen Sondheim, [director] Diane Paulus, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

People from all disciplines expressed shock and dismay. What the Tony committee saw as a simple administrative adjustment demoralized thousands of people around the country who felt as if their role in the theatre had suddenly been invalidated. For so long we had fought for respect and recognition for our art. After many years of lobbying, we were able to get Tony categories for best sound design—one for plays and another for musicals—established in 2007 and implemented for the 2008 ceremony. It seemed that the battle was over. The Tony Award was the last of many hurdles our profession had faced in gaining respect, visibility, and the potential to make an adult living. Or so it seemed.

Getting sound design recognized as a legitimate career and art form has been a long and arduous process. In the late ’90s, we were able to convince United Scenic Artists [the union for artists and designers in the entertainment industry] to represent us, marking a major step for our profession. For the first time, working sound designers were able to have employer-based health insurance and could look forward to a pension upon retirement. And we began to close the pay gap between the fees we received and what other designers made, meaning that to make a living we no longer had to do twice as many shows as our colleagues just to get by. We could spend more time, energy, and thought on any given production, and maybe, just maybe, even think about supporting a family while engaged in this business we love.

Sound design is now such a necessity that most major theatre graduate programs in the country offer sound design MFAs, turning out scores of young bright designers looking to make a living in this field.

Meanwhile, most of the other major awards, in New York and elsewhere, have added sound design categories. When the Tony Awards joined in the trend, it was a monumental validation. As a nationally recognized and televised event, the Tonys finally gave us access to the highest level of visibility available to a theatre artist, and the potential to turn that visibility into a sustainable career. A designer with a Tony, or even a nomination, can command higher fees and respect, and use the honor to leverage all sorts of opportunities.

Now that opportunity for recognition is no longer available to us. The manner in which the categories were eliminated, and the way it was explained in the press, gave the impression that some kind of mistake had been made in adding sound design categories in the first place, as if previous sound design winners didn’t truly deserve their awards because, after all, Tony voters never knew how to judge what we do. I was told that many people on the Tony administration committee believed that sound design was nothing more than a matter of “Can I hear them?” and that to justify the continuation of the categories we would need to change that perception.

Of course, we had already jumped through all of those hoops back in 2006 and 2007 during the process to establish the categories—a process that included months of lobbying, education, and gentle persuasion. In 2006 after a preview of Lisa Kron’s Well, which I had designed sound for, producer Liz McCann [1931-2021; she died this past 9 September] came up to me and said, “John, I love so much what you’re bringing to this production. I think you should win a Tony Award!”

I responded that many in the theatre community shared her opinion that there should be a sound design category. She then offered to begin a process to make it happen. The conversation expanded to include several of my sound design colleagues, representatives of our union, and members of the American Theatre Wing who valued sound design and understood our place as partners in the process. Our allies on the committee shepherded the idea through the byzantine and opaque political process that shapes Tony Awards policy. They arranged for an education session in which David Budries, head of the sound design program at the Yale School of Drama, spoke to committee members and Tony nominators about what we do, and what to look for in judging sound design.

What Budries told them is that sound design is a discipline that defies concrete definition, and that it’s often best when it’s not noticed. Still, any perceptive theatregoer is equipped to vote on excellence in sound design. All it takes is simply to think a bit about what you’re listening to. It doesn’t take any more special knowledge than it takes to judge lighting design or orchestration or even costume design. Listen to the design and think: Does it serve the play and production? Is it distinctive in some way that is unique while helping tell a story? How does what you’re hearing make you feel?

Admittedly, we generally aren’t used to thinking about the sounds we hear, because sound is processed in a very different part of the brain than visual stimuli. Sound works on the unconscious, animal parts of our brain; we’re often not aware that it’s happening or what kind of effect it’s having on us. That’s why it’s both so potentially powerful as a design element and yet so easy to overlook.

Some heard and understood what Budries said, but others reportedly found it hard to break out of the traditional notion of what constitutes theatrical design. To them, design is what they can see, not hear, and sound design, as far as they could tell, was simply about making things louder. Still, after more than a year of work lobbying and gathering endorsements from theatre industry leaders around the country, we had enough support that when a vote was finally taken to establish the sound design categories, it passed in 2007.

I clearly remember that day; a producer on the committee called me excitedly with news that the motion had passed. There was no better evidence that sound design had finally come of age than the American Theatre Wing recognizing our art with a Tony Award.

For us sound designers, being considered for a Tony Award was a long-awaited vindication of an essential concept: that we were an integral part of the theatre world, and have been making invaluable contributions as artists to productions on Broadway and across the country for a very long time.

I first learned this myself 30 years ago in 1986, when I made my professional and Broadway debut designing the transition sound and music for Jonathan Miller’s production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, starring Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey. I was 22 years old and a senior at Duke University, where producer Manny Azenberg had brought the production to try out. I had spent nearly four years at Duke doing this thing called sound design, inspired by Jeff Storer, a charismatic teacher/director who had thankfully steered me away from acting and into this relatively new discipline, where I could perfectly combine my musical ability and my love of theatre.

That semester I was doing an independent study in music composition that included work with one of the very first samplers—an expensive and rare instrument that few had access to. While in rehearsal with the show, Miller discovered that he needed some kind of music or sound to tie together the different scenes in his production and indicate the passage of time, and there was no time to bring someone in from New York to execute it. Friends who were interning on the production steered him to me, and I soon found myself in a room with Miller, who hummed for me examples of the tone-like music that was in his head. Overnight I composed a little sound score of pieces that pleased the director; they made it into the production and onto Broadway. Though a modest contribution, it was part of the glue that held the entire piece together. And I actually received a paycheck for it.

After Miller trusted me to compose transitions for his productions, I arrived in New York at a time when directors were just beginning to clue into the possibilities of sound, and there seemed to be a shortage of sound designers approaching productions as artists. I found myself working with forward-thinking directors—JoAnne Akalaitis, Michael Greif, Anne Bogart—and veteran designers, including [scenic designer] Ben Edwards [1916-99], [lighting designer] Tom Skelton [1927-94], [costume designer] Jane Greenwood [b. 1934], and [lighting designer] Jennifer Tipton [b. 1937]. They treated me as an equal member of the design team and understood how my work complemented theirs and how aural elements could be used to tell a story. And my skills were enough in demand that I was able to cobble together a living among Off-Broadway nonprofits, resident theatres, and a Broadway production or two most seasons.

In 1990, I found a home at the Public Theater during Joe Papp’s last year, where I composed the sound score for Grief’s landmark production of Machinal [25 September-25 November 1990] and won an Obie for it. I’ll never forget the thrill of being at my very first awards ceremony, feeling surrounded and embraced by a community of theatre artists. At that ceremony, and the others that followed over the years, I felt like I was part of a family of people all trying to make a go of it in this crazy collaborative business. What these awards have said to me is: We value you. You are part of the family. We understand and appreciate the hard work you are putting into our art.

That’s why in 2013, after having designed sound or composed music for 35 Broadway productions, it was so satisfying to finally gain validation for all those years of work from the Broadway community in the form of a Tony nomination for my work on Michael Wilson’s fine revival of The Trip to Bountiful. I understood the Tonys as a high-visibility marketing tool, but still thought that at their core the awards were about recognizing excellence within the Broadway family, a family that I have long felt a member of. As I partook in all the Tony events leading up to the ceremony, I sat at luncheons and cocktail parties with actors and producers and other designers with whom I’ve worked for years, and listened to members of the American Theatre Wing and Mayor Michael Bloomberg [in office: 2002-13] talk about how important theatre artists are to the life and economy of the city.

Most importantly, I felt I was part of a community. Had I won that year (my colleague Leon Rothenberg won for his sound design on The Nance [15 April-11 August 2013]), this is part of what I would have said in my acceptance speech: “Thank you to all of you out there for embracing me and my work as part of this Broadway family for so many years. I feel most privileged to have been able to make a life of this, creating art with you all. Thank you for listening. And thank you for your continued support of sound designers as part of the Broadway community.”

A year later, after learning the categories were taken away, I was speaking with a colleague on the Tony administration committee, asking him how this could have happened. He told me, “I’m so sorry. You guys were just beginning to come into your own.”

Just beginning? I thought. Haven’t you been paying attention to what we’ve been doing all these years? We’ve been here for decades. A sound designer’s job isn’t just to set the volume on the microphones. It’s to convey the world of a play or musical to the audience’s ears; it’s creating and structuring sounds that underscore text, choosing or composing music to facilitate a scene transition, or making the orchestra and singers sound as good as they can, even to the rear mezzanine.

And when sound designers are not recognized at the Tony Awards for our efforts, it sends a very clear message: that what we do isn’t creative, that we’re not true theatre artists, that we are a disposable member of a production’s team. All because a group of people won’t take the time to understand the creative and necessary work that we do. Somehow the voters for other notable awards—the Drama Desks, the [Lucille] Lortels [New York Off-Broadway], the [Laurence] Oliviers [professional theatre in London], the Jeffs [Joseph Jefferson Awards, for theater produced in the Chicago area], to name a few—have figured out how to determine excellence in sound design. Tony voters, of which there are more than 800, sell themselves short when they think they’re not equally equipped.

As Lin-Manuel Miranda said in a recent Rolling Stone article, “Set designers sculpt with physical materials, lighting designers sculpt with light, and sound designers sculpt with sound. They are responsible for your aural experience at a Broadway show,” adding that we create “literally the sound of Broadway.” It’s about time Tony voters learned how to listen.

[John Gromada (b. 1964) is a Tony-nominated sound designer and composer. He has designed 37 shows on Broadway and numerous works Off-Broadway and regionally.  He’s won many awards both in New York City and around the country.  Gromada also works in film, television, and radio.]

"Design & Tech: The Magic Of Design," Articles 5 & 6

 

[There are two articles from American Theatre’s “Design & Tech” Special Section in the fourth installment on Rick On Theater.  The first is a report on robots on stage and the second is a description of the Costume Collection run by the Theatre Development Fund, a boon for costume designers from all over the country.

[As I’ve affirmed all along, these nine articles are independent of one another, aside from their common theme of theatrical design and technology, and it makes no difference to their comprehension in what order you read them.  Nonetheless, I strongly recommend checking out the four preceding articles already posted in this series because they cover many important aspects of current design and tech applications on today’s stages.  The first three instalments were posted on 9, 12, and 15 September.]

 

“DO ROBOTS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SCENE PARTNERS?”
by Amy Gijsbers van Wijk

[Van Wijk’s discussion of robots in use on theater stages was posted on the AT website on 6 July 2016 as a feature of “Education.”  It’s one of the articles in this series that didn’t appear in the print edition of the magazine.]

Robots onstage are less likely to replace humans than to heighten the contradictions of the human condition in a technological age.

In recent years, the question of where theatre and technology meet, and if they should at all, has been in the air. From live-tweeting during plays to tech-driven shows [Article 1, posted 9 September], theatremakers have their brains in the Cloud. With technology onstage and off reaching greater and more ambitious heights, what’s next frontier? Most likely robots.

And not just actors playing robots, as in Mac Rogers‘s riff on Kar[e]l Capek [1890-1938], Universal Robots [first presented: 2007 Off-Off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Source; based on Čapek’s R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), 1920], but actual programmable performers constructed of metal and wire. As a playwright, I’m personally interested in the topic of robotics in theatre. So while pursuing an MFA in playwriting at Carnegie Mellon University, I have attempted to make work with a robot.

In 2014 and 2015, I collaborated with a roboticist and artist named Garth Zeglin, and we attempted to create a short play, Remembering, for a robot named Herb, who lives at Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics lab in Pittsburgh. The piece featured an unnamed man putting his deceased father’s belongings into boxes with the help of his son’s robot. It was a fitting topic, considering that Herb is a robot that was made to physically assist the elderly. But because Herb lives in the university lab, his parts are always being upgraded and replaced. When I met him, Herb’s body comprised of [sic] a large metal torso supporting two robot arms, an X-Box Kinetic camera for eyes, and legs on a Segway base. He also wore a bowtie.

“The Herb project was originally a side project of the Carnegie Mellon robotics lab,” says Zeglin. “The notional thought was that drama has the lessons that talk about how bodies communicate meaning, and maybe we could use that in research.”

I was first inspired when I learned Herb had previously performed in a play, directed by then-BFA directing student Sam French. He felt the project would allow him to explore elements of theatre not examined in his university experience thus far. “I was really burned out on the phrase ‘the human condition,’” says French, now a freelance director. “I was interested in a production that looked at the human condition of a robot. I wanted to do anything to show that that phrase could sometimes be meaningless.”

This short experiment resulted in a scene from All in the Timing [1993] by David Ives, performed by Herb and a student actress named Olivia Lemmon. It was a fruitful if technically challenging experience, according to French. The “biggest roadblock,” French says, is that “the internal clocks of the processes for a human actor and a robot are just not the same.”

Still, though it took a robotics team to program reactions into Herb that would be instantaneous for a human actor, French was inspired by the interactions between the human body and technology.

“What was really beautiful about it was actually bringing Herb in,” he says. “Rather than removing an actor, it felt like we were adding 20 actors. The team was helping to develop his movements, his voice. And it was all being done from a dramaturgical and a scientific perspective.”

Eventually the lab’s work on Herb went in a different direction: He started as a fully functioning robot but ended up reduced to just a hand, and ultimately there was no way to perform with him. But that doesn’t mean that a collaboration between theatre artists and robots is impossible.

Robot-based production and theatre collaboration often develop between universities or faculty and theatre artists. A Double Bill of One-Acts, written and directed by Oriza Hirata and featuring the Seinendan Theater Company [Tokyo] and the Osaka University Robot Theatre Project, premiered at the Japan Society in New York City in February 2013 before touring nationwide.

For Washington University in St. Louis’s acting professor Annamaria Pileggi, work in the world of robotics began when she started working with Bill Smart, a roboticist at WU. “Originally, I started doing research exploring the use of actor training techniques to improve human/robot interactions,” says Pileggi. She and Smart developed a series of short exercises featuring humans and robots performing nonverbal actions. One memorable piece, The Forgiveness Piece, featured a human actor seeking forgiveness, wordlessly, from a robot.

“At the time, we had a very rudimentary robot that was like a trashcan on wheels with a camera for eyes, and no arms or legs,” recalls Pileggi.

The tests resulted in a commissioned play called SKY SKY SKY by Liza Birkenmeier, an alumna who had acted in the experiments. The play, which ran in March 2015 at the university, imagines a world where an elderly woman named Joan puts her life in the hands of a robot caretaker, with the intention of ending her life. The actions of a robot named Harris were programmed by David Lu, a doctoral candidate at the time.

“When we were workshopping scenes with Harris, he would have maybe 30 seconds of what I would call choreographic demands,” says Birkenmeier. And as with any piece of complicated technology, working with a robot led to a number of glitches.

“At one point, Harris was supposed to brush my hair, and that didn’t quite work out as planned,” recalls Nancy Lewis, who played the elderly Joan. “My hair got caught and he kept going. It was one of those things where you realize: Okay, this isn’t a real person. Someone has to stop him.”

Like people, different robots have different abilities and strengths, as well as different kinds of bodies. A production in New York City last year used a robot with a less imposing physical presence who could respond to questions: the bust-sized Bina48, a social robot created by Martine Rothblatt and Hanson Robotics. (Bina48 stands for “Breakthrough Intelligence via Neural Architecture 48.”)

Bina48 was modeled after Martine’s partner, Bina; thorough research and interviews with Bina served as the foundation for the social robot’s persona. Director Andrew Scoville came across Bina48 while researching trans-humanism, a broad philosophical ideology concerned with ways that humans can be enhanced and harmed by technology. Last fall, for the Big Outdoor Site Specific Stuff Festival [October 2015], run by En Garde Arts [New York City-based theater company specializing in site-specific performances], Scoville created An Evening with Bina48, which ran at the Hudson River Park. It featured Bina48 interacting with actress Lynne Rosenberg. “We landed on this idea of a blind date,” recalls Scoville. “The success of the piece rode on Lynne. She was able to dance with Bina48 in a way that I think was essential to making the piece work.”

The rehearsal process for the production was less like a traditional rehearsal process and more like going over a game plan, Scoville explains. The key was making sure that Rosenberg was comfortable and that logistics were in place to handle where the conversation would go, as well as how to end the date.

Bina48 is supposed to be able to carry a conversation in her Siri-like speech patterns. But occasionally she would respond to a question with a non sequitur, or—in a way that was arguably quite human-like—without responding to the question at all.

“Once, Lynne asked her, ‘Do you feel comfortable talking with me?’ and she just answered in this way that was truly nonsensical,” recalls En Garde Arts executive producer Anne Hamburger. “She went off onto something else altogether. But you could also see how the audience was so interested in her, and what she would do or say next.”

Dramaturgical functions notwithstanding, a common thread among these robot theatre collaborations is a simple appeal: Working with robots is just plain cool.

“It’s not about replacing humans,” says Scoville. “I’ve always been very curious about robots.” To him, robots can just be another tool in a dramatist’s toolkit. Like other tech-heavy effects, such as video design, “We just have to accept them for what they are, and the limitations that they bring.”

Theatre artists aren’t going to stop working with robot[s] any time soon. If anything, the prospect is becoming mainstream: Cirque du Soleil’s newest show Paramour, currently running on Broadway [Cirque du Soleil Paramour, May 2016-April 2017], features eight drones flying over the actors and audiences (a collaboration with Verity Studios). The kicker is that these robots are autonomous; no remote control is needed.

Considering that audiences have a hard time just turning off their phones in the theatre, is putting robots onstage just feeding our debilitating dependence on devices? Have we reached peak technology?

“I left this work feeling even more conflicted about technology, because I’m dependent on it, and yet I see how it’s isolating us as a society,” admits Pileggi.

As for me, I find this ambivalence to be the most compelling element about making robot-based work. If a robot can provide comfort, labor, or entertainment, then shouldn’t humans be providing the same for one another? The stilted-ness of a robot’s movements and speech patterns should serve to illuminate our own seamless bodies, their agelessness heightening our aging flesh.

It is my hope that after an evening of robot-based theatre, when the novelty of robotics has lost its sheen, the unanswerable question of what makes us truly human will remain—and theatre artists and audience members will seek answers, with or without the help of robots by their sides.

[Amy Gijsbers van Wijk is a journalist and playwright based in New York City.

[One participant in robot theater says, “Rather than removing an actor, it felt like we were adding 20 actors,” and another asserts, “It’s not about replacing humans.”  The contradiction is disconcerting—and not at all comforting. 

[Just as the American Federation of Musicians was exercised by the appearance of recorded music and synthesized orchestras, displacing live musicians in a theater’s pit (see “The Sound of Muzak,” posted on ROT on 16 June 2011), something tells me that Actors’ Equity Association and the other performers’ unions are watching very carefully and preparing for a campaign against robotic actors on U.S. stages.]

*  *  *  *
“WORN AGAIN AT THE TDF COSTUME COLLECTION”
by Allison Considine

[Considine’s article on the Costume Collection appeared only online at https://www.americantheatre.org/2016/07/06/worn-again-at-the-tdf-costume-collection/, posted on 6 July 2016; it wasn’t published in AT’s print edition.]

Threads from Broadway, tours, and the Met hang out between engagements at an Astoria warehouse that’s now accessible to shows all over the U.S.

“Oh, if only these costumes could talk . . .”

Stephen Cabral repeats this as he leads me through the impressive home of the estimated 80,000 costumes at the TDF Costume Collection. Housed in a 16,000-square-foot warehouse at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, the costumes—most originally created for theatre and opera productions in New York City—hang in 12 rows 4 tiers high. In the last year, 12,000 of them have traveled to 36 states and appeared in more than 1,000 productions across the country.

“In some ways, most of TDF’s programs are about getting people into the seats,” says Cabral of Theatre Development Fund, which runs Times Square’s TKTS booth [same-day discount tickets to matinee and evening performances of Broadway and Off Broadway musicals, plays, and dance productions; there are three other locations in the city (with varying hours and practices); check the TDF webiste], as well as a popular membership program. “Our program is not about getting people into the seats—it is about the experience they have once they are in the seats.”

As the director of the collection, Cabral is a walking encyclopedia of costume history; at a glance he can usually recall where certain costumes came from, many of the productions they were rented out for, even the famous stars who wore them onstage. As we turned a corner, he pointed to an elaborate brocade cape that was donated by the Metropolitan Opera. The weighty piece is one of many in the collection from the Met, the organization that kickstarted the collection with a generous donation in 1969.

Costumes find their way to the collection by way of touring shows, estate donations, and the unfortunate scrap of Broadway costumes in previews—such as pairs of tall military boots I spy on a top shelf that appeared in Hamilton when it was at the Public Theater [Newman Theater, January-May 2015]. No donation is ever turned away, a policy that has amassed bins upon bins of patent leather dress shoes and the occasional gem. Cabral describes the process of sorting through a new donation like Christmas: You never know what piece will come through the doors.

The collection is separated by type of garment and period: Bustles live in aisle 7, flapper fare can be found in aisle 6, Shakespearean styles can be located in aisle 10, etc. The many designations are laid out in a handy map for customers, many who pull the costumes themselves.

“It is a little more leg work for the customers that come in,” says Cabral. “But they can create the show by going to the specific period of the show they need. It allows the designers who come in really great artistic freedom, because they are not taking someone else’s idea of a show—they are pulling their vision of the show.”

On any given day among the racks, Broadway designers mingle with parents volunteering to pull costumes for an elementary school play. For theatres located too far away to travel to the collection in person, the TDF Costume Collection recently began offering the services of an in-house designer who can assist in pulling a show: A costume designer can provide TDF with sketches, research on the production, and the cast’s measurements, and TDF’s in-house designer can pull costumes and ship them anywhere in the United States.

The services rendered by the costume collection thus allow nonprofit theatres to [. . .] put quality costumes onstage at little cost. Prices are determined on a sliding scale according to the length of performance and the number of seats in a facility. A costume is defined as anything that an actor can wear at one time, from bootstraps to bonnets.

And while Western hats and Colonial coats can be spotted at church productions and in school auditoriums, costume pieces from the collection also appear in films and on the occasional episode of “Saturday Night Live.” Costumes are rented to commercial projects on the basis of artistic merit—the collection is not the place for social events or high-end Halloween parties to browse, and they’re not allowed to be rented for anywhere that food and drink will be present. In any case, large corporations pay more. “In some ways our commercial rentals are helping to offset the costs of running the place for the not-for-profits,” says Cabral.

As we pass racks of clothing that have already been pulled for shows, I spot a blue silk gown and a row of coat blankets for a production of Gypsy. Nearby hangs a row of curtain dresses and nun’s habits gathered for The Sound of Music.

[On the assumption that a coat blanket is the same as a “blanket coat,” it’s a long coat, often with a hood, made from a blanket (Native American blankets are very popular, and may have been the origin of the practice) or blanket material; they may be belted or not.  It’s also called a ‘capote,’ which originated in Canada among fur traders.

[By the same token, a curtain dress, as far as I can gather, is a dress made either from an actual curtain (think Scarlett’s famous green gown in Gone with the Wind or the parody in The Carol Burnett Show’s 1976 “Went with the Wind!” sketch—but I even found a reference to a dress made from a shower curtain) or from curtain fabric.  Another interpretation is a dress that drapes over the body rather than being fitted; I found a reference that called an Indian sari a “curtain dress.” ~Rick]

Next Cabral takes me to the Special Stock Room, a section deemed worthy for brand-new pieces, costumes from notable productions, and pieces built by well-known designers. There I walk between bedazzled suit jackets designed by William Ivey Long for The Boy from Oz [1998; Broadway, 2003] and a hand-beaded evening gown by Bob Mackie. There are also some newer, brightly colored fairy-tale dresses and bright green leisure suits—popular items for costume designers looking to jazz up a classic show.

“Everyone is doing their own spin on different period,” says Cabral. “Nobody wants to do a production of Titus Andronicus that looks like a period production of the show.”

But there are also historic pieces in pristine condition, properly swoon-worthy for period productions. I pull out an Elizabethan gown with intricately embroidered sleeves; it is so heavy that Cabral helps to hold it up. The gown was built in the 1970s for the Met, and Cabral shows me the corset stays inside the waist and the adjustable fasteners on the seam that have allowed for the dress to be worn by performers of many sizes. Clearly the Met spared no expense, and the ornate costumes have lived on: Eight tags are sewn inside with different actress[es]’ names.

Customers can gain access to the Special Stock Room if they have rented from the regular stock and followed the rules of the collection, returning each piece within the allotted time and dry cleaned. As we reenter the regular stock room, Cabral shows me a distressed velvet jacket with gold buttons. The piece once lived in the Special Stock Room, and like many costumes, the repeated dry cleaning, sweat under hot stage lights, and gradual wear and tear have moved it through to the regular stock room and into the “distressed” aisle—a haven for designers pulling for Les Misèrables. In a few years, the jacket may appear in one of the two annual bin sales that the collection holds, at which hundreds of customers seeking costumes for high schools and church plays pay a flat fee to fit as many pieces into a bag. It’s an event that sometimes dictates what shows a given organization is able to produce that year. Other designers sort through the recycled pieces with measurements in hand, pulling specifically for productions.

The loudspeaker sounds that it’s almost closing time, and costume designer Kate Mincer scurries to gather helmets from a bin. She is pulling pieces of armor for a Nine Inch Nails-inspired dystopian Rome production of Julius Caeser in Stonington, Me. The TDF Costume Collection is one of many places that she has come to gather armor pieces that are too difficult to build. “It is possible to put together a really sophisticated show and to give the audience what they want to see,” says Mincer about her many trips to the TDF Costume Collection over the years.

“This is the type of situation that is a big portion of our business, where designers are not getting the entire show here,” Cabral adds. “People are getting the portion that is impossible to build, or the portion that is too expensive to build.”

[Costumes can be “made,” but inside the world of theater, especially among designers and costumers, they are “built”—just like sets and scenery. ~Rick]

Mincer says she plans to ship the [. . .] unwieldy armor up to Maine, another helpful service provided by the collection.

Before I depart, I try on a massive hat from the Christmas Spectacular Show at Radio City Music Hall; judging from the ruffled feathers, it made its debut many Christmases ago. I’m reminded of that feeling an actor has when they first try on their costume—that simultaneous sense of transformation and ownership, as the clothing changes you and you take that on.  At the costume collection, that feeling is elevated—after all, the hat on my head was worn by [a] Rockette. And who knows? The dress you may try on just may have been created for Carol Burnett.

[Allison Considine is the senior editor of American Theatre.  She studied literature and cultural studies and theatre arts at Pace University.

[The next installment of ROT’s republication of American Theatre’s “Design & Tech” Special Section will appear on Tuesday, 21 September.  Article 7 is all about flying on stage—and I’ll let you all see what that means.  I encourage all ROTters to come back then to read the next articles in the series there are some very interesting topics on the fields of theater technology and design still to come.]