"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.]