Theatre as an Intellectual Art

This post is less about current happenings in my life, and more about general realizations I've had over the past year regarding the art I practice. When I first started college, I became disenfranchised with theatre for quite some time. Suddenly, the thing I thought I wanted to do just didn't feel right any more. However, I decided to stick with it based on some friends motivation and the feeling that if I gave up theatre, I would be giving up a huge part of my life.

Fortunately, sometime at the beginning of the '08-'09 school year, I think I went through change in my viewpoint. I think I came to college expecting theatre to be something similar to high school and in reality this is very far from the truth. For whatever reason, it took me a long time to realize this and then make the necessary changes to the way I interected, so to speak, with theatre. A major turnaround point for me was my Playscript Analysis and Interpretation class, which although extremely challenging provided an intellectual look at theatre in a way I had never before been aware of. Never before had I realized exactly how much goes on in the text of a play and what it meant to me as an aspiring designer. Since then I have not looked back.

Recently I have been sort of scouring the internet looking for designers and other's viewpoints on design, especially lighting. One of the most interesting things I've read is a lighting designer who believes wholly in lighting based on the text above all else. I really enjoyed reading this perspective and completely agree with what he says. I know that I have had the tendancy to pay close attention to what stage directions might say in a script but if we pay those too much attention we can get distracted from the real important material, the words the characters are saying. It is the words from which the real meaning of a text comes from and as designers we have a responsibility to shape worlds based on our reactions to those words.

In this age of ever increasing technology, which don't get me wrong, is wonderful and amazing and fantastic, I think we, especially young designers, have a tendancy to try and create something "cool" and "exciting" before considering whether "cool" and "exciting" fits with the text of the play, musical, opera, etc. being designed. As I go forward into my third year of college I really hope to impress upon people my belief of designing for my reaction to the text, within the context of the entire design team of course, for it is with this belief in what truly good design is that I hope to build my future, and I hope that by expressing it here and through word of mouth I can open up opportunities for myself with others who share this philosophy. Thanks for Reading!