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The rewards
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Inside!
We talk to NEA chair Rocco Landesman, and
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34
24
Features
16 Light on the Subject
Mod Your CAD—Customizing
Vectorworks Spotlight—Part 2. By David
K H Elliot
20 Telling Stories with
Everyone
The rewards of color-blind and nontraditional
casting. By Iris Dorbian
24 Inside The NEA
An interview with chairman Rocco
Landesman, one year in. Plus a conversation
with Ralph Remington, director of
Theatre and Musical Theatre for the NEA.
By Bryan Reesman
Special Section:
Renovations &
Installations
28 A Renovation Ends
with Big Package
in a “Little Box”
South Florida Community College gets
world-class PAC. By Kevin M. Mitchell
30 Big Idea, Small Space
A look at a portable, private performing
arts center from the imagination of
Christine Jones. By Michael S. Eddy
32 Consultant Spotlight:
Auerbach Pollock
Friedlander
A Q&A with S. Leonard Auerbach, the
founder of theatre consulting firm
Auerbach Pollock Friedlander.
34 Dream Weavers
Theatre consultants and your dream
theatre. By Kevin M. Mitchell
Departments
4 Editor’s Note
Time to bring back haberdashery.
By Jacob Coakley
4 Letters to the Editor
TheatreFace.com users discuss how
to make Coca-Cola boil for an onstage
effect.
ON OUR COVER: Ruben Santiago-Hudson (foreground),
Nyambi Nyambi, Marianne Jean-Baptiste,
and Bill Heck in The Public Theater’s Shakespeare
in the Park 2010 production of The Winter’s Tale,
directed by Michael Greif.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Joan Marcus
6 In the Greenroom
The Pasadena Playhouse emerges from
bankruptcy, the Supreme Court lets
smoking ban stand, the Public Theater
revises its subsidiary rights agreement
and more.
14 Tools of the Trade
New gear piles up while the sun shines.
40 Gear Review
The Bartlett TM-125C Super-Cardioid
Stage Floor Mic enters the Stage
Directions testing chamber. By Trevor
Long
41 The Play’s the Thing
New plays on truth, lies and language. By
Stephen Peithman
44 Answer Box
Turns out you can use moving lights
as followspots—with a little modification…
By Matt DeMascolo
The rewards
of non-traditional
casting
• Special Section on Theatre
Consultants and Architects
• Daring and Small, the Theatre for One Install
• Spotlight on Auerbach Pollock Friedlander
SubHead
Inside!
We talk to NEA chair Rocco Landesman, and
find out what “excellence” really means

Publisher Terry Lowe
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LINDA EVANS
Editor’s Note
One Head, Many Hats
The myth—and necessity—of multi-tasking
While I was at the Seven Devils
Playwrights Conference in
McCall, Jeni Mahoney (the artistic
director of the Conference) was also a participating
in the Conference as a playwright
with her piece Kandahar. At the meet-andgreet
barbecue on the first day a community
member presented Jeni with a hat. On one side of the
hat was the word “Playwright,” on the other “Artistic Director.”
Whichever side was facing forward determined the role she was
playing at any given moment. It was a cute, but necessary, prop
that helped everyone around Jeni know what headspace she
was in, and what questions they could approach her with—but
it also helped her, too. She was able to focus on one thing at a
time, and externalize that choice. I imagine it helped cut down
on a lot of “should”s—I should be doing this, I should be doing
that. Instead, she was able to very clearly define what she should
be doing. Now I’m a playwright. Now I’m the artistic director.
I’ve seen a lot of talk on the internet lately of studies that
debunk the myth of “multi-tasking.” (And if I may cadge someone
else’s joke—the final nail in multi-tasking’s coffin came
when texting met driving…) It turns out you don’t get more
done if you work on a lot of things at once. The time it takes to
re-acclimate yourself to a particular task you just interrupted
negates any sort of time savings gained from working on two
things at once.
But the fact of the matter is that in theatre multi-tasking is
absolutely essential. No one can wear just one hat. Designers
are also teachers. TD’s are also managing directors. Managing
directors are also graphic designers—and all of us are audience
members.
How many of us can’t go into a theatre without looking up at
the grid? Or finding out where the booth is? How many of us will
instinctively ask the crew member in blacks for info about the
theatre before we approach an usher—before we remember
we’re not also on crew?
I ask because I’m wondering how much my theatre-maker’s
perspective is warping my barometer for what I enjoy—and
should it? Can visual artists still experience a charge from Van
Gogh’s Starry Night? Or is that hopelessly recherché for them?
It’s disheartening for me to sit in a theatre full of an audience
who don’t participate in making theatre, and listen to them
laugh out loud and absolutely enjoy a performance while I can’t
separate my audience self from my maker self, and sit there analyzing
every choice. So maybe it’s time for me to buy a new hat,
and really let myself unapologetically enjoy a show again. Who’s
with me? I’m going to my haberdasher today, and together
we’re going to bring men’s hats back in style.
Letters
Heating Coca-Cola
For a one-act comedy we’re producing, an actor
brings out two metal mugs filled with what is supposed
to be heated (boiling, steaming) Coca-Cola.
Two other actors are supposed to smell, taste
(briefly) and reject the Cokes.
This may seem like a simple one to those of you
who do props regularly, but: What should we put in
the metal mugs?
Real boiling liquid seems too dangerous, and
smoke from dry ice wouldn’t look like steam.
Your suggestions are welcomed!!
Charlie Fontana
Dry ice might look too much like a vile liquid prepared
by the evil witch.
This is a long shot, but there are pellets that they
put into model trains that causes smoke to come out
of the smoke stack of the little steam engines. You
would need a little cooker to get the pellets to smoke.
Both could be found in a good hobby store, or online.
I would think the cooker could run off of a 9V battery.
Another possibility might be a small bit of a smoke
cookie.
David McCall
Alka-Seltzer in water with food coloring to darken
it might work. The “fiz” appears to be boiling in the
right light.
Bobby
Will the steam really read on your stage anyway? In
our black box the steam and smell would be a problem
but on our proscenium stage the steam would
most likely not read at all and no one would smell it
in the audience. The issue of the liquid actually being
hot is a consideration. Can the actors be blocked to
handle and set it down somewhere safe? If drinking it
the actors have to be sure to be careful with the dry
ice idea as well.
Kevin Griffin
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Jacob Coakley
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4 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

In the Greenroom
theatre buzz
Smoking Ban Remains as Supreme
Court Won’t Review Decision
The U.S. Supreme Court will not review an appeal to overturn
the Colorado ban on smoking onstage during a theatrical
performance, according to reporting by the Denver Post, so the
ban will remain in effect.
“We’re certainly disappointed, but not surprised,” petitioner
Chip Walton, founder of Denver’s Curious Theatre, told the
Post. His appeals to overturn the ban have lost at every level
for four years since he started his campaign. John Moore and
Jessica Fender, writing in the Post, detailed that “The Colorado
Supreme Court ruled 6-1 in December that the state’s ban on
smoking extended to actors onstage. It ruled that public health
trumps freedom of expression. Theatre companies had argued
that smoke that lingers on stage is crucial to set a mood,
develop character or establish a time period.”
Walton defends his position by pointing to other states,
mentioned in the Colorado Court’s ruling, that have exemptions
on a case-by-case basis, for theatrical performances.
As reported in the Post, Attorney General John Suthers, who
defended the ban in state courts, agreed with the high court’s
decision.
The Public Theater Revises
Subsidiary Rights Agreement
After more than a year’s work with the Dramatist’s Dramatists
Guild of America The Public Theater in New York City has
announced it will restructure its subsidiary rights agreement,
effective immediately, to provide playwrights with greater financial
opportunities to profit from their plays. Under the new agreement,
The Public will not collect any subsidiary rights from a play
until the playwright has earned a minimum of $75,000 in licensing
fees following its Public Theater premiere. The new agreement
allows a playwright 10 years to earn that minimum amount from
a play; if the playwright has not earned $75,000 during that time
period, the agreement will expire and The Public will not earn any
subsidiary rights income from the play.
The Public’s new policy represents a dramatic departure from
traditional subsidiary rights agreements, in which theatres immediately
begin collecting a portion of profits from subsequent
licensing of a playwright’s work. This revision will allow playwrights
to earn substantial income from their work before the theatre
profits from subsequent productions of a play. The Dramatists
Guild hopes this new model will be a trumpet call for theatres to
realize that, in most cases, these revenues contribute relatively
little to the theatre’s bottom line but could be the difference for
an author between paying rent or having to leave the industry.
6 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com
In Brief
The first playwrights of the American Voices New Play
Institute have taken residency at the Arena Stage in Washington,
D.C. The Institute will host five playwrights over three years and
will provide resources and benefits to write and develop new or
unfinished plays. D.C. native Karen Zacarías was announced as the
first Resident Playwright in August 2009 and began her residency
with the Institute in January 2010. She is now joined by Lisa Kron
and Amy Freed, who started their three-year residencies in July,
and Katori Hall and Charles Randolph-Wright, who will begin in
January 2011…The Theatre School at DePaul University has
named Rachel Walshe the inaugural recipient of the Claire Rosen
and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists worth
$30,000… Great Lakes Theater Festival’s producing partnership
with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival will expand this season to
include the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival. As part of the collaboration,
the three theatres will share a single artistic company,
exchange entire theatrical productions and maximize collective
resources… Playwright Tommy Smith will be the 2010-11 Lark
Play Development Center Playwright of New York Fellow,
… Music Theatre International, the agency that created The
Broadway Junior Collection, received the Educational Theatre
Association’s (EdTA) 2010 Standing Ovation Award, which recognizes
a corporation or business making significant contributions
to promote and strengthen theatre education… The United
Performing Arts Fund of Milwaukee raised $9,450,382 for its
34 Member and Affiliate Groups. UPAF’s mission is to advance
the excellence and sustainability of the performing arts in metro
Milwaukee through community fundraising, advocacy, collaboration,
support services, and the responsible investment and allocation
of resources.

theatre buzz
Pasadena Playhouse Emerges
from Bankruptcy
On July 7 the Honorable Thomas B. Donovan,
a judge in the United States Bankruptcy Court in
Los Angeles, approved the Pasadena Playhouse’s
Plan of Reorganization, allowing it to emerge
from Chapter 11 bankruptcy after nearly two
months. The theatre has been closed since
February 7.
“We are deeply grateful for the collective
support that has allowed the Playhouse to expeditiously
move through this difficult and sometimes
painful process,” said Pasadena Playhouse
Executive Director Stephen Eich in a statement
on the theatre’s website.
“The City of Pasadena, our Board of Directors,
and our small staff have all combined to create
a plan to resurrect the Playhouse from years of
unbearable debts,” continued Eich. “Although
we will be moving slowly in the future to ensure
financial responsibility and stability, we will in
fact be back.”
A large part of what will enable the Playhouse
to make it back is a $1 million matching pledge
made by anonymous donors who read the
news about the Playhouse’s decision to explore
financial reorganization. Along with fundraising
efforts to meet the matching donation the
Playhouse, the State Theatre of California, is
restructuring its administrative operations in an
effort to rid itself of long-standing debt. When
the Playhouse entered bankruptcy hearings it
owed $2.3 million. While it listed assets of $7
million in its filing, most of that total ($6.7 million)
is tied up in a fundraising drive for a new
space, or linked to improvements made to their
current space.
“We cannot fully enough express our profound
gratitude to the anonymous $1 million
donors, whose remarkably generous gift—and
indeed the challenge to match that gift which
comes with their pledge—will allow our beloved
theatre to stand strong and proud as we move
forward,” said Pasadena Playhouse Artistic
Director Sheldon Epps in the statement on the
website.
Eich further acknowledged the Playhouse’s
loyal subscribers and donors, many of whom
have contributed money to ensure the future
of the theatre. He said, “Without these loyal
people, we would not be able to get through
this difficult phase of the theatre’s rebirth."
Future plans, including a Fall 2010 production,
will be announced at a later date.
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 7

Green Room
HME Part of Old Globe Renovation
San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre recently opened their newly-renovated Conrad
Prebys Theatre Center, featuring a 250-seat arena-style theatre. Installing a wireless
communication infrastructure for the backstage crew proved difficult, as the
massive amounts of steel and concrete used in the new construction, as well
as the fact that two floors of the Center were below ground, posed a uniquely
complex problem for the production crew’s communication needs. HME, an
international wireless communications company based in San Diego, provided
engineers and a HME PRO850 intercom system to solve the problem.
Each PRO850 base station has two antenna connectors, one for receive and
one for transmit signals. To solve the Center’s need for better coverage HME engineers
built a custom antenna splitter/combiner, which took the three individual
transmission antennas and merged them into a single line that could connect to
the PRO850. The three transmit antennas were placed throughout the building to
offer comprehensive coverage despite the concrete and steel barriers.
The newly-created hands-free communication system allows the backstage
production crew the ability to stay in constant, clear communication with one
another both above ground and below, as well as up to 400 feet outside of the
theatre center itself.
industry news
City Theatrical Expands
Into London
City Theatrical has added standing inventory to their London
office, enabling same-day shipping of the City Theatrical product
line, fulfilling a long-time dream of City Theatrical president, Gary
Fails. Until now, customers could place orders at the City Theatrical
London office but the products were shipped from the U.S., and the
customers had to wait for delivery as well as pay customs charges
and shipping charges from America. Now, customers can order
products and have them shipped the same day from the London
office, and the price is fixed in pounds sterling with no shipping
charges from the U.S.
PLASA and ESTA Vote to Merge
ESTA, the principal trade association for the entertainment services and technology
industries in North America, and PLASA, the lead body for those working in the live
events, entertainment and communication industries worldwide, have voted to merge
their two organizations.
In a joint statement, PLASA CEO Matthew Griffiths and ESTA Executive Director Lori
Rubinstein said: “We believe the logic driving the merger is totally sound: the strengths
of both organizations are evident and we have an unequalled opportunity to increase
the value we provide to Members through services, networking and improved business
opportunities. A united approach to the issues and challenges of our industry will
provide major long-term benefits and greatly broaden the role of the PLASA.”
The announcement comes on the back of lengthy consultations with both sets
of memberships, which concluded recently in a formal vote of Members. More than
93% of Members from each association voted in support of the move, which will see
ESTA and PLASA integrated to create a single international trade association operating
under the PLASA name.

American DJ Files
Lawsuit Against
California Firm
For Copyright
Infringement
American DJ, a leading supplier of
lighting, audio and trussing products,
has filed suit in the United States
District Court Central District of
California against NSI Audio, Inc., a
California company that sells and distributes
products under several brand
names, including American Vocal and
Vertigo. American DJ’s legal action is
centered on two trademarks recently
adopted by NSI: Vertigo for lighting
products and American Vocal for
audio products. The suit alleges that
aside from using product and brand
names that were the same or very
similar to those used by American DJ,
NSI used copyrighted images belonging
to American DJ in a deliberate
effort to misrepresent its products
and confuse customers.
“There were a variety of deceptive
practices used to imply that American
DJ was the source of lighting and
audio products being sold by NSI,
when in fact this was completely
untrue,” said Kenneth Sherman of
Myers, Andras, Sherman LLP (Irvine,
Calif.), one of the attorneys representing
American DJ.
According to Sherman, American
DJ began using the “Vertigo” mark
in 1999 and federally registered the
incontestable “American Audio” mark
in 2001. In the ensuing time period,
the two names have become widely
recognized and respected throughout
the global lighting and audio
markets.
“We believe this is a flagrant, illegal
and unfair attempt to mislead
consumers in an effort to capitalize
on the good name and goodwill that
someone else has worked years to
establish,” said Sherman.
In its suit American DJ seeks monetary
rewards and statutory damages.
The company is also demanding that
NSI cease selling the products in question,
remove them from distribution,
and destroy all copyrighted images
that have been used in the company’s
marketing and advertising.
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 9

Green Room
industry news
Theatre Resources Directory
Addendum
While we always aim for perfection, in a directory as large as our annual
Theatre Resources Directory, mistakes are bound to creep in. Here is corrected
and updated contact info for some of the companies in our Directory.
To be included in the Directory, or to update your information for the next
edition, please e-mail trd@stage-directions.com
Advanced Entertainment
Technology
735 Los Angeles Ave.
Monrovia, CA 91016
P: (626) 599-8337
W: www.aetfx.com
E-mail: dmacmurtry@aetfx.com
Sections: Special Effects
Serapid, Inc.
5400 18 Mile Rd
Sterling Heights, MI 48314
P: 586-274-0774
W: www.serapid.us
Sections: Flooring & Seating;
Platforms, Risers & Stage Lifts
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W: www.originalworksonline.com
E-mail: info@originalworksonline.
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Sections: Plays & Musicals
Tru Roll, a division of Advanced
Entertainment Technology
735 Los Angeles Ave.
Monrovia, CA 91016
P: (626) 599-8337
W: www.truroll.com
E-mail: Ralph@truroll.com
Sections: Drapery & Tracking;
Rigging & Safety Equipment
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10 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

RiverPark Center and PRG Support Educational Partnership
Production Resource Group (PRG) will join the educational
partnership in Owensboro, Kentucky of the RiverPark Center,
Brescia University, Kentucky Wesleyan College and Owensboro
Community and Technical College. The three academic institutions
and the RiverPark Center have banded together to create
a Bachelor of Theatre Arts degree, which will allow enrolled students
to participate in courses at each of the contributing institutions.
The program will offer opportunities for students to receive
both the creative and technical foundation for future careers in
today’s entertainment industry.
PRG’s involvement with the new
degree program will be extensive, including
training and equipment. They will provide
equipment valued at approximately
$500,000 to ensure that students are
working with the most current and widely
used entertainment technology. In addition,
PRG will assist in recruiting leading
industry professionals to work with the
students. The training provided by PRG
will include the university, the two colleges
and the RiverPark Center staff.
The program is spearheaded by
RiverPark Center’s President and CEO Zev
Buffman, a Tony-nominated Broadway
producer with more than 40 Broadway
shows and 100 National Tours to his
credit. Buffman and Jere Harris, chairman
and CEO of PRG, have known each other
for close to 30 years, having first worked
together while Buffman was producing
Broadway shows. Together, they will bring
their professional experience and unique
insight into the requirements that should
be included in the degree curriculum.
Both PRG and RiverPark, where several
of the classes will take place, will educate
students in the different aspects of
producing and supporting a professional
theatrical production. RiverPark Center, a
non-profit regional performing arts and
civic center, has nearly 100,000 square
feet, including a state-of-the-art 1,479-seat
auditorium (Cannon Hall), the 300-seat
multi-purpose Jody Berry Experimental
Theater, an outdoor entertainment patio
on the banks of the Ohio River, meeting
rooms and a bricked center courtyard.
“We will be able to bring to students
equipment they might not have
the chance to work with in any other
academic environment,” noted Tim
Brennan, vice president of PRG. “We are
very proud of our products and of the
depth of inventory of other manufacturer’s
equipment that we can provide.
The technology these students will be
exposed to will be amazing and will give
them a real advantage going forward.”
Program participant junior and senior college students will
also be given the chance to apply for PRG’s internship program.
The PRG internships cover all aspects of the entertainment
technology industry, including lighting, audio, video, scenic
fabrication and automation. “We are proud that our internships
are so highly regarded. This year, we received more than
1,000 applications for 40 intern positions,” said Richard Rubin,
recruitment/internship program coordinator for PRG.
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 11

Green Room
A.C.T. Appoints
Ellen Richard
Executive
Director
The American Conservatory
Theater (A.C.T.) has appointed
Ellen Richard as executive
director. Richard’s career has
included such positions as
executive director of Second
Stage Theatre and managing
director of Roundabout
Theatre Company. She oversaw
complete financial overhauls
of both institutions, developing
Roundabout from a small
nonprofit organization into one
of the leading performing arts
institutions in the country, with
three performing spaces and
net assets of more than $67
million. During her tenure at
Second Stage, she helped grow
the institution (48% increase in
subscription income and 75%
increase in individual giving)
and brokered the purchase
of the Helen Hayes Theatre, a
Broadway performance space
for the company. She holds six
Tony Awards as a producer, for
Roundabout productions of
Cabaret (1998), A View from the
Bridge (1998), Side Man (1999),
Nine (2003), Assassins (2004),
and Glengarry Glen Ross (2005).
changing roles
Ellen Richard, the new executive director of American
Conservatory Theater
12 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

Chauvet Names Ford Sellers Senior Product
Development Manager
Chauvet has appointed Ford Sellers senior
product development manager for Chauvet and
its sister company for architectural lighting,
Iluminarc. Sellers brings more than 15 years
of hands-on experience in the lighting industry.
After studying lighting design at Syracuse
University, he began his career installing lighting
for the groundbreaking show EFX, starring
Michael Crawford, at the MGM Grand in
Las Vegas, Nevada. While in Las Vegas, Sellers
worked as a trade show electrician and then as
the assistant lighting director for the MGM Grand
Conference Center. From there, Sellers became
a master electrician for Cornell University’s
Department of Theatre, Film and Dance. For
nearly a decade he taught lighting technology,
the mechanics of light, and designed the lights
Ford Sellers, Chauvet’s new senior product development
manager
for several of the 11 productions and plays produced for the Schwartz Center for
the Performing Arts each season.
Nick Wyman Elected Actors’ Equity President
Actor and long time equity councillor Nick Wyman has been elected president
of Actors’ Equity Association. Eighteen members, representing Principals, Chorus
and Stage Managers, were also elected to serve three, four or five year terms on
the National Council, the Union’s governing body. More than 6,500 valid votes
were cast in the election. Wyman, a member since 1974, brings more than 20 years
experience as a councillor to the post. Among his committee work, he has served
on several Production Contract negotiating teams, House Affairs, National Public
Policy and is the Chair of the Alien Committee. Wyman’s stage credits include the
Broadway productions of The Phanton of the Opera (Firmin in the original production),
Les Misérables, Sly Fox and Grease. He has appeared Off Broadway, in regional
productions at such theatres as The Goodman, the Arena Stage and the Guthrie.
Joe Aldridge Takes Office as USITT
President
Joe Aldridge of Las Vegas, Nev., took
office as president of the United States
Institute for Theatre Technology, Inc.
(USITT) on July 1. Aldridge has toured
Japan with Siegfried and Roy, helped
stage Oedipus at Colonus in Greece, taken
plays to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,
and been artistic director for Shakespeare
Under the Stars in Wimberley, Texas. He
has also been with the University of
Nevada at Las Vegas, not continuously,
since the 1970s, serving first as technical
director and, most recently, helping
create and nurture the Entertainment Joe Aldridge took office as President of USITT on July 1.
Engineering and Design Program, a joint
effort of the colleges of Fine Arts and Engineering.
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 13

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Tools of the Trade
Anchor Audio ProLink
Anchor Audio’s new
ProLink system is a digital
wireless intercom system
that transmits in a range of
250 feet through walls and
glass and can operate up to
15 hours using three “AA”
rechargeable or alkaline
batteries. It doesn’t require
a base station and is designed to be easy to set-up and
operate and deliver high quality, full duplex audio. A 4-user
system consists of one master belt pack and three remote
belt packs and is designed for a team which works as a single
unit. The ProLink system can be expanded to a 7-user system
which includes two master belt packs and five remote belt
packs. Operating two separate groups is designed to be easy
with a 7-user system. Users can assign one backstage track to
group A and another track to group B. The person using the
master belt pack can be a part of either group by pushing the
group selector switch on his belt pack. www.anchorprolink.
com
Chauvet’s SparkliteLED Drape
Chauvet’s new SparkliteLED
Drape is a black fabric panel
studded with LED lights which
can be attached together for a
fully controllable field of color
or theatre curtain. Controlled
by Chauvet’s SparkliteLED
Controller, the SparkliteLED
Drape is designed to be a dynamic
lighting solution, and can be used to create a twinkling night
sky, a wall of strobing purple, or an expanse of glowing azure.
Each SparkliteLED Drape measures 236 x 157.5 x 2 inches, is
flame retardant and holds a total of 128 (.25 W, 5mm) tri-color
LEDs fitted into eight distinct and controllable zones. The drapes
can be combined using integrated hook-and-loop fasteners so
they can be as expansive as the design or coverage requires.
The drape comes in its own road case and weighs less than 40
pounds. www.chauvetlighting.com
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GAM Remote Relay
GAM Products has introduced
the GAM Remote Relay,
a new addition to the GAM
Go-Lite system. Users can
select AC or DC Relays, 120 or
230 volts. The Remote Relay
is operated from the GAM
Go-Lite low voltage Controller
and can handle loads up to
4,000 watts.The GAM Remote Relay is housed in a rugged steel
enclosure with provisions that allow it to be hung with a C-Clamp
or mounted to a flat surface and can be used in conjunction with
the GAM Go-Lite Cue Light System since it uses the same 6-wire
low voltage telephone wire for control signal. Switching power
load to and from the Relay is handled through pig-tails. Various
connectors are available. www.gamonline.com
14 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

Serapid High-Speed
Trap Lift
Serapid’s new Trap Lift is
designed to be the fastest
trap lift known to the market
today. It’s built with their
Rigid Chain Technology,
backed by Serapid’s record
for safety and reliability, and
can be used to carry scenery,
objects and actors from areas under the stage up to stage
level. The Trap Lift features a standard speed of 20 feet per
minute and travels 12 to 15 feet, depending on the model.
Each unit has a three-foot-by-four-foot platform mounted to
the top section. It is portable, sitting safely on the floor without
anchoring or outriggers. Additional options for the units
include speeds up to 150 feet per minute, a convenience outlet
on the platform and a pallet jack. www.serapid.us
Rational Acoustics Smaart v.7
Rational Acoustics Smaart
v.7 is the latest release of the
Smaart brand acoustic test
and measurement softwareIt
is the culmination of an
intensive 2 year development
effort and is the first version
of Smaart designed and
released solely by Rational
Acoustics. Smaart v.7 is built with an object-oriented program
architecture which means that users can run as many simultaneous
single-channel (spectrum) and dual-channel (transfer
function) measurement engines as their PC will allow. Smaart
v.7 also includes multi-channel and multi-platform capability,
able to access modern multi-channel input devices and
operate native in both Windows and Mac Operating Systems
(including 32- and 64-bit versions). Additionally, Smaart
v.7 can run multiple, simultaneous Spectrum and Transfer
Function Measurements. www.rationalacoustics.com
Studer Vista 9 Digital Console
The new Studer Vista 9
digital console is designed
to combine advanced ergonomics
with complete system
flexibility, pristine audio
quality and new features
to create a console fit for a
new age of broadcast and
live production. The Vista 9
supplements the Vistonics
interface with “wide screen” based TFT metering, FaderGlow
and other innovations. The new metering is designed to
give precision feedback on signal status. Studer’s patented
Vistonics is designed for speed and ease of use and has a
similarity to the analog channel-strip way of working. Each
touch-sensitive TFT screen shows 10 channel strips, with
rotary encoders and switches mounted directly onto the
screen, providing the operator with “Where you look is where
you control” ergonomics. www.studer.ch
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 15

Light on the Subject By David K H Elliot
|
Commanding
Presence
Mod Your CAD—Customizing Vectorworks Spotlight—Part 2
Previously on “Mod Your Cad” [in the April 2010
issue —ed.], we added a key command to a stock
Vectorworks’ menu item and then consolidated
the Spotlight items under one customized menu. This
time we’ll record a Custom Selection command to use
repeatedly and then convert it to a plug-in object,
which are command macros that can be installed as
menu items.
There are many procedures and tools built into VW
that I never use and others I use occasionally. I’ll run
“Purge Unused Objects” towards the end of a project,
reducing the file size before distributing it. There are
still others I use frequently, like “Lock” and “Unlock” or
“Save View.” As shown in Part 1, the Workspace Editor
can add key commands to make frequently used commands
readily available.
But then there are the procedures and tools that are
missing, the ones not included. For example, how do
you simultaneously select all the lighting devices in a
drawing? While the built-in selector, “Find and Modify”
Figure 1
(Figure 1), is a useful and powerful tool that can target
narrow selections and modify the selected items, it
can’t select all the lighting devices at once. With “Find
and Modify” you can grab one particular device type—
Light, Moving Light, Accessory, etc.—but only one type
at a time. What if you want them all at once? And what
if you want to make that selection again?
Selection Macros
There are two things you can do about missing
commands. One is to buy them—or a lot of them anyway.
The shareware
add-on, AutoPlot
for Spotlight (www.
autoplotvw.com/),
includes in its
hundred-plus commands
one called
“Select All Lighting
Devices.” The other
thing you can do is
build some yourself.
While building
a command set as
extensive and versatile
as AutoPlot requires a working knowledge of
Figure 2
VectorScript and draws on years of drafting and programming
experience, there are simple, useful commands
that are easy to build and require little knowledge
of VectorScript to create.
Selection macros are some of the easiest to create.
Using Custom Selection under the Tools menu, we can
select all the Lighting Devices at once, save the selection
as a command, name the command, run it from
an open script palette and finally turn it into a plug-in
object which can then be added to a menu.
The steps to create the command are:
A. Under the Tools menu, open the Custom Selection
dialogue box (Figure 2).
B. Under Command, check "Select Only" to deselect
all objects in the drawing before making a new selection.
Under Option, check "Create Script" to save the
script for future reuse, then click Criteria.
C. The Criteria window (Figure 3) opens to display
three drop-down menus. The first selects the type of
criteria, the second sets the comparison option and the
third lists the parameters available for selected type.
To define the selection criteria, determine what types
and parameters the objects you want to select have
in common that apply only to those objects. Lighting
Figure 3
16 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

Devices have two things in common, the Type and
the attached Record, that also are unique to the
group. We can use either to select all of them.
D. In the first drop down, select “Type.”
E. Leave the second drop down on its default, “is”.
F. In the last drop down, select “Lighting Device.”
Click OK.
G. In the Assign Name window that opens, name it
“Select Lighting Devices Only”.
The Okay button takes you back to the drawing
and opens a Script Palette window (Figure 4) displaying
the newly created macro. Double-clicking the
command runs
it and selects
all the lighting
devices. (If it’s
not open, Script
Palettes are
found under
Window >
Figure 4
Script Palettes.)
Scripting
The new Script Palette and commands appear only
in the document where they are created. Commands,
however, are a resource. They can be imported into
another document using the Resource Browser.
But to import is to interrupt. If I haven’t remembered
to import the commands before the exact
moment they’re needed, it means interrupting the
workflow, hunting down the resource, importing it,
opening a Script Palette and then
running the command. While I
could include them in the master
file I use at the start of any project,
I prefer a leaner master file
and import resources as needed
from dedicated resource files I
include in my Favorites list. For
me, importing as needed works
for symbols but not for commands.
Commands need to be
in every document, new or old,
from the moment the document
is opened. Commands need to be
readily available and repeatable.
Commands need to be menu
items.
Transforming a command into
a menu item is done using the
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 17

Light on the Subject
The next steps are:
E. Under the Tools > Scripts menu, open the
VectorScript Plug-in Editor (Figure 6).
F. Click the New button.
G. In the Assign Name window, select “Command” if
it isn’t already selected and enter a name under 28 characters
for the command, “SelectLightingDevicesOnly”
Figure 5
VectorScript Plug-in Editor. It exists to create and edit
plug-in objects, command macros that appear either
in menus or tool palettes. Using the Editor, we’ll take
the Select Lighting Devices Only macro built using the
Custom Selection dialogue and turn it into a Plug-in
Object ready to be installed in a menu. This method
requires little knowledge of VectorScript. Which is good,
because I don’t know much VectorScript.
To create a plug-in object this way, a few steps are
required. First we need a copy of the code from the command
we created earlier. To do that:
A. Open the Script Palette (Figure 4) that contains the
command to be added to a menu.
B. Option-double-click the command to open the
VectorScript Editor (Figure 5).
C. Drag through to select the text and copy it.
D. Click OK to exit the dialogue box.
Now we’ll take that code and paste it into a plugin
object that can be installed as a menu item. A
Figure 6
Vectorscript programmer could start here, open the
Editor and write the code. We’ve used a Vectorworks’
built-in tool, the Custom Selection dialogue, to write
the code for us.
Figure 7
in this case (Figure 7).
H. Click OK to return to the Editor.
I. With the newly created command still selected,
click the Script button.
J. Paste the code from step C above into the
VectorScript Editor (yes, we were just here). It should
now look just like it did in Figure 5. The difference is,
when you click OK and return to the Editor, the command
is now available in all VW documents, not just
the file where it was created. To make it accessible to
each document, however, the command needs to be
installed as a menu item. And the last important step
to do that is to Assign a Category
K. With the command still selected, click the
Category... button. Enter a name for a Category. An
easy to remember name like “My Commands” will help
locate the command in the Workspace Editor. With
the category name assigned, click OK to return to the
Editor window, then click OK again to exit the Editor.
And you’re done. We’ve built a command that selects
the Lighting Devices only and created a Vectorscript
that can be installed in a menu using the Workspace
Editor as shown in Part 1 of this article. A handy selection
command is now rapidly available in any document.
It’s installed, not imported.
18 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

Feature
|
By Iris Dorbian
Harlan Taylor
David Ryan Smith, Daphne Gaines, and William McNulty in Actors
Theatre of Louisville’s 2008 production of A Christmas Carol.
Telling Stories with Everyone
The rewards of color-blind and non-traditional casting
When Joseph Papp, founding artistic director of
the seminal Off-Broadway house, The Public
Theater, began casting African-American
actors, such as James Earl Jones, in roles normally
reserved for white actors, such as William in Henry V,
50 years ago, a revolutionary act in theatre was taking
place. Seeking to create a theatre representative of
the racial and ethnic diversity in which it was operating,
Papp became a pioneer and champion of both
color-blind casting, which relates to issues of race, and
nontraditional casting, which affects race, gender, age
or physical challenges.
Now what was once so radical is commonplace in
American theatre. And The Public Theater, under the
artistic direction of Oskar Eustis, is still leading the charge
in this area; but several questions linger: What are the
“Racial identity is an insufficient
category to describe a human
experience.”—Oskar Eustis
rewards and pitfalls of color-blind and/or nontraditional
casting? When does it enhance a production and when can
it detract from it?
Eustis, who’s been at his current post since 2005, doesn’t
feel it can ever detract from the casting of a show because,
according to him, the audience is color-blind and willing
to suspend belief while watching a theatrical production.
“No sane being thinks that they’re actually watching
King Lear,” he insists. “Theatre is about creating fiction.
What we have is an affirmative action policy toward
casting: We want the players to mirror the composition
of the culture in which we’re performing.”
For instance, Passing Strange, which was produced
at the Public in 2007 before transferring to Broadway
in early 2008, featured a mostly black cast in the roles
of white Europeans. Eustis said this was a conscious
artistic decision to play up the fact that the story was
being told from the perspective of a black man. The
show, an autobiographical musical about a young
black musician’s coming of age experiences in Europe,
featured a book and lyrics by Stew and music by Stew
and Heidi Rodewald.
“It was the right lens with which to look at it,” says
Eustis, who previously served as artistic director of the
Providence, R.I.-based Trinity Rep. “Most of the artists
know that identity politics has its limit; racial identity
is an insufficient category to describe a human experience.”
Showcase the Actor
Often the power of an actor’s talent can cause a
director to cross gender or race during the casting
process. When actor/director and college professor
Lori Adams was casting a production of Anna Deveare
Smith’s Fires in the Mirror earlier this year at the St.
Louis-based Mustard Seed Theater, she simply was
looking for the best actors and not seeking to make a
political statement.
20 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

Tips For Effective Color-Blind and Nontraditional Casting
How can theatre companies use this casting practice
effectively without seeming gimmicky?
• Be balanced throughout the production, and your
theatre’s entire season. “You don’t want it to be Here’s our
one token person',” says Zan Sawyer-Bailey, associate director
of the Actors Theatre of Louisville. “You must mix it up
so it goes across the entire production. So you don’t have to
explain why you have a black Dorothy and a White Auntie Em
in Wizard of Oz. If you have enough people of color, the audience
will understand this is a multicolor world. Make sure it’s
a rich fertilization rather than a hodgepodge.”
• Think about why you want to interracially cast a role. Is
there a point you’re looking to make? “Or are you trying to
suspend the audience’s belief about race to make another
point?” asks Oskar Eustis, artistic director at New York City’s
The Public Theater. “What is the aesthetic language that you
want the audience to understand? Try to take risks about that
language.”
• Trust your directors to find the best actors. “An actor
during an rehearsal process will transform,” says Director Lori
Adams. “If you think about America, it’s what we see: We look
at something and we make a judgment. If we can stop just
looking at the surface and listen and try to understand, that’s
what it is about.”
The show, which tracks the
viewpoints of a wide range of
characters connected to the
Brooklyn Crown Heights riots in
August 1991, was originally performed
solely by Smith, a black
actress/playwright. When Adams
was holding auditions for Fires
in the Mirror, she was given carte
blanche by the producer to use
whomever she wanted.
“I found the two actors who
were the strongest during the
auditions—a white actress and a
black actress,” recounts Adams.
Both played a variety of genders
and races. And according
to Adams, the casting raised no
eyebrows.
“They were really gifted
actors,” she explains. “We just
did the simplest costume changes
to differentiate one character
from the other, and then on the
overhead screens the audience
was told who each character was.
We had talkbacks after several
of the shows. The audience did
comment on the characters they
thought were extremely successful;
sometimes the actresses were
playing their own race and sometimes
they weren’t. The audience
went with it.”
Like Eustis, Adams feels that
what makes nontraditional casting
so rewarding is that it gives
opportunities to talented actors
who, 50 years ago (unless they
were working for Papp), would
never have been considered for
these roles.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 21

Feature
Michal Daniel
de’Adre Aziza in a scene from The Public Theater’s production of Passing Strange, directed by Annie Dorsen.
for an actor,” she says. This kind of casting can push an
actor to a limit they haven’t done.”
One of Adams’ most memorable experiences as a
theatregoer was seeing an Illinois Shakespeare Festival
production of Pericles in which the lead actor was deaf
and mute. “That is a performance that has stayed with
me all my life,” she recalls. “The power of that performance
was amazing in that another character spoke
the lines and he signed the lines. The greatest moment
of anguish for the character was in the line where he
screamed, so the sound that came out of him wasn’t
from a monitored place.”
For Adams, the negative aspects of nontraditional
casting would be “if you’re pushing to somewhere
that’s so far from you that you can’t understand it or if
you feel like you’re doing a gimmicky thing or playing
a caricature.”
Telling Stories for Everyone
In a similar vein, just because an actor is brilliant
doesn’t mean he or she is right for the role.
“I think there are certain situations where it’s not
appropriate or helpful for a play to cast an actor of color
just to have an actor of color,” says Zan Sawyer-Bailey,
associate director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville. “I
think you have to be careful when it comes to nontraditional
casting. Does it give mixed signals with what the
playwright actually intended? Does it position someone
in a way that’s not socially correct and gives the wrong
kind of inference about the character?”
Courtesy of Mustard Seed Theater
Michelle Hand as Michael Miller in the Mustard Seed Theater production of Fires in the Mirror
At the same time Sawyer-Bailey, who has been a casting
director at the Actors Theatre of Louisville since 1985
and sees more than 1,500 professional auditions annually,
wants to find the best actor for each role being cast.
“There are many times when we realize that the color
of an actor’s skin has nothing to do with the telling of
the story,” she continues. “That’s the ideal situation. It
has taken all of us to think that way automatically that
any actor can play this role if they’re good enough and
right.”
But just like The Public Theater did five decades ago
and still does today, the Actors Theatre of Louisville will
frequently opt for nontraditional casting to reflect the
racial and ethnic composition of their audiences. This
is illustrated by their annual production of A Christmas
Carol.
22 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

Joan Marcus
Linda Emond, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and Jesse L. Martin in a
scene from The Public Theater’s 2010 production of The Winter’s
Tale, directed by Michael Greif at Shakespeare in the Park.
“You really try to figure out
a nice racial balance to that
cast,” she says. “Sometimes we’ll
have a racially mixed family.
Sometimes one of the ghosts
will be an actor of color. That’s
a play where a large segment
of the audiences will come to
and you want to make sure that
everyone who comes to see it is
represented.”
Eustis agrees with Sawyer-
Bailey but sees the entire issue
of color-blind and nontraditional
in a larger societal context.
“It’s terribly important that
no actor is barred from playing
great roles because of the color
of their skin,” he says. “The legal
and moral employment aspects
should be enough to say you
can’t have restrictive casting.
Unfortunately, it still takes place
at some major theatres. We have
to make sure all of our theatres
are open to Americans of all
race.”
Iris Dorbian is the former editor-in-chief
of Stage Directions.
She is the author of Great
Producers: Visionaries of the
American Theater
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 23

Feature By Bryan Reesman
|
Inside the NEA
An interview with chairman Rocco Landesman, one year in.
Michael Eastman
Rocco Landesman, chair of the National Endowment for the Arts.
A
man who has held a lifelong love of the theatre,
Rocco Landesman ascended to the position of the
chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts last
August. A man who produced shows on Broadway for nearly
25 years, Landesman lives and breathes theatre, possesses a
passion for the arts, and is on a mission to prove how arts
education is not only important for individual growth but
vital to business innovation and our country’s economic
competitiveness in the global marketplace. Landesman has
a tightly packed schedule, but he was more than willing
to take some time out to chat with Stage Directions about
his position at the NEA and his plans for the organization’s
future.
Stage Directions: You’ve had many roles throughout
your life—horse trader, fund manager, baseball team
owner—and you studied theatre in school.
Rocco Landesman: I acted in plays in high school and
college, and I was at the Yale School Of Drama for eight
years as a student and teacher. Theatre was a huge part of
my education and obviously has been most of my career.
Why have you stayed with it after all of these years?
Theatre is something that once it gets in your blood, it’s
there forever, whether you’re an actor or designer or stage
manager. You get used to that milieu and the people in it.
It’s a world unto itself, just like the racetrack or baseball.
Theatre is its own culture really. I’ve always loved it.
Are you planning to balance the pursuit of supporting
“excellence” in the arts—you have mentioned major
theatres like Steppenwolf and Goodman—with the
NEA’s need to fund the necessary arts organizations in
New World Symphony President and CEO Howard Herring shows off the construction site for the
Symphony’s new campus in Miami, designed by Frank Gehry, to Rocco Landesman.
smaller communities throughout the country?
I never really backed off of my statement about Peoria
and Steppenwolf and Goodman. I do believe that our job is
to support excellence wherever we can find it. We don’t just
find it in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles but all around
the country. I think that the NEA has always had kind of a
dual mission, which is to support excellence in the arts and
also artistic merit. I think artistic merit is something that
is more broadly defined and has a more democratic and
perhaps geographically diverse aspect. We’re trying to be
attentive to the needs of all of our constituents, and one
of the mandates we’ve given to our education discipline is
that we want to have at least one arts education program in
every single Congressional district. I think arts education is
maybe a way for us to get the geographic reach, rather than
forcing artistic grants to areas where there may not even be
an arts institution.
What is the NEA’s role in supporting art and theatre
education in schools?
I think we have a whole education discipline which
gives grants to various programs. There is the Town Hall
foundation in New York. There’s TADA—Theater Arts
and Dance Alliance. There is Shakespeare In American
Communities. We have a big educational program and
outreach, and we’re talking with the Kennedy Center
now about a new educational program that they’ve initiated
in Sacramento, Calif. It’s very exciting. What they’re
doing is called Any Given Child, and they’re using the arts
institutions of the community. Sacramento has a theatre,
opera, ballet and symphony orchestra, and what they’re
doing is going into the schools and giving each grade an
24 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

Yamila Lomba, courtesy of the NEA
immersion in a particular art. So fifth
grade might be theatre, sixth grade
might be dance, seventh grade might
be classical music. Without spending
a lot of money and hiring a lot of
new people, these arts institutions,
which have educational programs
themselves, will go into the school
and use their resources to teach kids
in the school. Without major expenditures
or new funds, you’re going
to get a real arts education in an
immersive way in each of the grades
as these kids go through school. I
think it’s an exciting program, and
we’re going to start partnering with
the Kennedy Center to replicate that
in other areas.
One of the arguments being used
to support the arts right now is
that they are economic engines.
You’ve certainly been hearing a lot
about that from us.
You’ve been addressing that on
the Art Works website. What do
you think makes that argument so
compelling and effective?
I think in this economy, given the
situation we have, if we went to
Congress or even to the private sector
and said, “The New York City
Opera is going to go out of business
unless it gets $3,000,000 by Labor
Day,” people are going to say, “That’s
a shame. That’s a great cultural institution
that we wouldn’t want to see
anything happen to. It’s too bad, but
we’ve got bigger, more important
parties on our plate right now. There
are two wars going on, a huge deficit
and an economic recession.” I think
people would say it’s not the most
important thing right now. On the
other hand, if we can go to Congress
and say that the arts are a huge part
of coming out of this recession, that
the arts have a vital role to play in
neighborhood revitalization, urban
renewal and economic development,
and that the arts are a catalyst for
economic growth, then I think we
have a completely different narrative.
We have a different story to tell and
one that gets a much better hearing
throughout the government. It
seems obvious in the face of it that
that’s the story that we should be
telling.
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 25

Feature
Elayne Gross, courtesy of the NEA
Rocco Landesman tours a classroom at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies (CCS) with CCS’s president,
Rick Rogers.
By claiming that the arts are an economic engine, there
might be those who would ask why they should be funded
by the government as opposed to private businesses.
I don’t think the private sector has a broad-based plan for
economic development on its own. A wiser small business
administration supports small businesses. Some might say
the marketplace should support small business. The government
believes that certain small businesses need assistance
to get established, and once they do they become significant
employers. I think that artists are, in fact, small businessmen.
They’re entrepreneurs, and we know that if we bring art and
artists into a town, it changes that town radically. It changes the
entire ethos of the place, and it also becomes a different place
with a different economy. We have a lot of data that proves
that—where you can create artist clusters you really jumpstart
economies in place after place. Artists are great place makers,
and they are transformative in communities. We know this, and
that’s the case we’re going to be making tirelessly.
I was recently in Stratford, Canada, where the Stratford
Shakespeare Festival is. It’s run by my good friend Des McAnuff.
The Canadian Council For The Arts makes significant grants to
Stratford, and it is one of the most thriving communities economically
throughout all of Canada. It’s amazing to see what
happens. They still do rep there, which is mostly unheard of in
this country, and you really see how the presence of the arts
can transform a place. It’s a textbook example.
www.stage-directions.com/roccolandesman
ONLINE BONUS
For the complete interview with
Rocco, including why Long Day’s
Journey Into Night is his favorite play,
visit www.stage-directions.com/
roccolandesman
For you, what constitutes the success of an NEA funded
project?
I think are two criteria. One is artistic. If it’s theatre, and
the play contributes to the field and is interesting artistically,
is compelling in some way, reaches and effects an audience
or stimulates thought and discussion and engages the com-
Rocco Landesman with Dowoti Désir, a Haitian priest and scholar, who is installing an altar to accompany
“African Continuum: Sacred Ceremonies and Rituals” at San Francisco’s Museum of the African
Diaspora.
munity, we think that’s a success. There’s an artistic metric in
and of itself. The second aspect, of course, is how it relates to
the community, to the whole place in which it functions. We’re
looking to artistic organizations to jumpstart economies in a lot
of communities and for a lot of this artistic activity to have an
economic impact. So there’s a double criteria there.
During recessions we usually have arts programs being cut
in schools.
It should be the last thing cut, and it’s always the first.
How can the NEA effectively stress the importance of these
programs to schools that are struggling to make decisions
about what they should cut?
Our point is that if this country’s going to be economically
competitive around the world, we need innovation and
creativity. We need to be training well-rounded kids who are
going to be able to make this country compete in areas that
are going to be important in the future. Our manufacturing
base keeps declining. We’re probably not going to increase
our manufacturing footprint in the world as we go forward. If
you look at a lot of our exports in entertainment and technology—areas
in which we have economic traction—creativity,
innovation and imagination are integral parts of this, and arts
education is vitally important to that.
What should we know about the NEA and your plans for
moving forward?
I think we want to partner with other federal agencies and
with the private sector to expand the arts footprint all across
the country and really raise the level of the conversation about
the arts, to bring the arts into the national conversation. It
would be a great legacy for us.
Do you think that the Great Recession is going to be the
biggest hurdle you’re going to have to deal with in your
time at the NEA?
No doubt. It’s affecting all of the arts institutions. It’s affecting
the NEA and its funding. It’s affecting everyone. And we
have to deal with it.
Photo by Ellen Shershow Pena, courtesy of NEA
26 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

The NEA’s Face of Theatre
Lisa Miller
Ralph Remington, director of Theatre and Musical
Theatre for the NEA
As Director
of Theatre
and Musical
Theatre for the
NEA, the recentlyappointed
Ralph
Remington comes
from a rich arts
background. He
has been doing
theatre since high
school and was
also a dancer for
ten years, tackling
jazz, tap, modern,
African and acrobatics.
He has also
been a political activist since a young age and found
a way to straddle the worlds of art and politics, as
Stage Directions learned when speaking with him.
Stage Directions: You’ve moved between the
world of theatre and politics throughout your life.
How did you go from theatre into politics, and
how do you manage to balance the two?
Ralph Remington: All of my theatre life has pretty
much been involved in politics, and as an individual
I’ve always been torn between politics and art, so I’ve
found ways to combine both. A lot of my art making
has been sociopolitical in nature. I was a political
activist from early on. I was involved in homeless
squatters rights in Philadelphia when I was 12 or 13
years old. I was the first president of my high student
body at a performing arts high school in Phillie, so I
lead walkouts and sit-ins and demonstrations on the
Board of Education. That’s the kind of stuff I had been
involved in for quite a long time, so for me theatre
became an active form of social change. Ironically
enough, what got me into musical theatre in the first
place was musicals—just watching West Side Story,
Oklahoma, Mary Poppins and all those musicals from
back in the day. All of the stuff drew me into theatre.
Originally I was an actor/singer/dancer going to high
school, and prior to that I started studying dance
at 14 years old, so from the time I was 14 until 23 I
was jazz/tap/modern/African/acrobatics. That was
my original calling. Ben Vereen was an idol of mine,
along with Louis Gossett Jr., James Earl Jones, Al
Pacino and Robert DeNiro. Those were the people
who shaped my vision of being an artist—then
Baryshnikov, of course. I would go see whatever he
did. I worshiped at the altar of Baryshnikov. All of
these things came to play, and eventually when I was
at performing arts high school my sociopolitical self
really emerged as the strongest thing. I looked at the
careers of dancers and realized that a lot of them end
up crippled or hobbled. I feel stuff now from things
I used to do, not just in performance but in clubs. I
used to do a lot of club dancing, too—just for fun on
the street and on the floor and all that. I was on the
cutting edge of the hip-hop movement because I was
one of the original hip-hop generation people. Sugar
Hill Gang, Rapper’s Delight, Grandmaster Flash, LL
Cool J and all of those folks came about when I was
a junior and senior in high school. I just heard that
stuff at block parties. The generation before was
informed by Vietnam and World War II, and now a
hip-hop/rocker/Creole generation has come about,
and the epitome of that is probably Barack Obama as
the President. We’re the same age, so his influences
were probably very similar to a lot of mine and a lot
of people that you see in different fields.
What are your plans as Director of Theatre and
Musical Theatre at the NEA?
The thing that everyone is asking is how do we
survive as an art form, and not just survive but thrive.
How do we get audiences that are excited? How do
we speak to the American moment? How do we create
bold, new, innovative ways of presenting theatre
and musical theatre? How does that happen? Where
are these artists? How can they get funded? In looking
at old subscription models, we need to look at
exploring membership models for theatre subscription.
For instance, every month if Joe Blow or Suzy
Q gets $10 or $25 deducted from their checking
account—if they don’t miss that $25 and it goes to
a theatre subscription—they don’t have to come up
with $300 or $500 to subscribe to be a member of
theatre. They’re subscribers by $20 or $25 coming
out of their checking account every month. Perhaps
they could be brought into a pool of theatres that
share in that subscriber base, so people can be flexible
not only in the shows or in the seats that they
get to go to but also the theatres that they get to
go to in a more fluid fashion than we look at theatre
patronage today.
www.stage-directions.com/ralphremington
ONLINE BONUS
For the complete interview with Ralph
Remington, head over to
www.stage-directions.com/
ralphremington
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 27

Special Section:
Renovations & Installations
A Renovation Ends
with Big Package in
a “Little Box”
South Florida Community College
gets world-class PAC
By Kevin M. Mitchell
specs limit the scope of what they wanted to do.
“For every situation that might call for compromise, we turned
it into an opportunity,” Garven says.
The school’s technical director Bil Kovacs, who has been with
the college for 20 years, asked for everything and the kitchen sink,
and pretty much got it (yes, he’s still stunned by it all). “Everything
went away!” Kovacs says. Save for most of the concrete exterior,
he’s correct—new lobby spaces, new seating arrangements and
new production equipment were all part of the renovation. It
would have been easier starting from scratch, he admits, but that
did not stop the team—it only made them work harder.
Making It Fit
The original South Florida Community College (SFCC) theatre
“did the job for 31 years,” Kovacs says, saying that the 1,445 seat
single-level theatre had an excellent PA and great lights. “It was
“
This is a state-of-the-art facility with features you would
normally only find in a building that was built from the
ground up,” Brad Garven says of South Florida’s Community
College’s practically new and extensively improved theatre. “It
was an unusual renovation.”
Garven, of the Sth Architectural Group, a Leo A Daly Company,
adds, “They wanted a first class PAC, and the final outcome is
something that is typically found in a major urban area—it’s quite
exceptional.”
TSG Design Solutions was the theatrical consulting company
for the SFCC project, with Stephen Placido as project manager.
In his 21 years as a theatre consultant Placido has completed
more than 100 live event spaces, but none has been quite like
this one. “It’s one of the few projects where at the initial meeting
we were already discussing dimensions in inches,” Placido says.
Conversations immediately went to “if we run the ramp here,
we’ll miss the existing footer by 2-1/2-inches,” etc. “Those kind of
discussions were happening very early on.” This wasn’t bad—it
helped define things early on—and the team didn’t let existing
The new façade of the South Florida Community College Performing Arts Center
just very dated.”
The theatre presents about 150 shows a year, from a single
lecturer behind a podium to big traveling musicals, which always
highlighted the old theatre’s biggest problem: its lack of fly space.
At a mere 39-feet, there was no place to fly anything. Today the
theatre offers a 24-foot high proscenium, and the roof over the
stage goes all the way up to 68 feet. The extra space allows few
limits, and the full, walkable wire-mesh grid over the stage also
opens up all kinds of possibilities for lighting placement.
But the first thing the audience will notice is the new tri-level
lobby, which lets the visitor know straight away that this is not
the old auditorium. Long-time supporters appreciate the elevator
and the 20 side boxes in the audience chamber that can seat up to
160. The side boxes and balcony are also new. Yes, the renovation
added a balcony.
When SFCC asked if a sweeping balcony could be put in, “we
said of course we can!” Placido laughs. But raising the roof over the
seating area to allow for a huge balcony proved impractical. So a
smaller one and the boxes was the right approach.
28 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

“Side boxes are typically only in high-end PACs, and originally
we had a balcony that was going to horseshoe around,” Garven
says. “When you stand on stage and look up, you can be in any
opera house in the world.”
Another point Kovacs is proud of is how wheelchair accessible
the new theatre is. There are now 18 spaces for wheel chairs, 12
just 40 feet from the stage.
The way they got more space in the same space proved to
be under their nose—or more specifically, under their feet. They
went down, creating a lower portion that would be the lobby, and
thus created more room in the rear to accommodate more seats.
“We elevated the rear seating area enough to accommodate the
plan, but not so much that patrons would be banging their head
on the ceiling – again, this is where ‘inches’ came in! And we took
every one we could.” To accommodate this plan, the control
booth was placed under some seats much closer to the stage.
he was able to alert the team that an initial scheme was not going
to work well sound-wise. Duggar’s input on exactly how the seats
were divided and how the floors were raked allowed him to adjust
the acoustic throw patterns of the room. “It’s tailored to different
areas of the room so that the space always feels filled up with
people. And when they just want to use the front part of the seating
area, they can dim down the theatre sound-wise to the point
that it’s as if it’s a theatre with half as many seats.”
Duggar says that they talked early on with TSG about what
speaker system would be put in, how it should be a line array, and
where it should go. “On all the projects we do, we don’t design
the work, but we influence it. We call it ‘proper adult supervision,’”
he jokes.
The line arrays were flown, but in a manner so that they
wouldn’t be in the way for more intimate performances. They
have a speaker cluster that hangs above the stage so that it’s
Edward Duggar
Bil Kovacs
A new fly tower for the South Florida
Community College PAC was built, giving
them a new trim height capable of
supporting bigger touring musicals.
Side boxes give the PAC a classic opera-house feel.
The “Candy”
The theatre includes a video monitoring system where those
in the greenroom or in the dressing rooms can see what is happening
on stage. There’s two Christie LX1000 with optional long
throw LNS TO3 lenses in the theatre.
For their audio needs the team chose a Yamaha PM-5D board
running digitally into a Meyer Sound Galileo 616 Digital Processor.
There are 10 Meyer MICA line array speaker cabinets, plus four
700-HP subwoofers under the apron, and another five Meyer UP
Junior UltraCompact VariO loudspeakers on the front apron for
good measure.
But don’t look for any monitor gear, as there is none, and it’s
not an oversight. “My perception is since we don’t have a person
on staff to run monitors, when we need them, it’s better to rent
them and the person to run them,” says Kovacs
Kovacs says the acoustician Edward Duggar, of Edward Duggar
and Associates, was a major component of the project’s ultimate
success. Duggar was involved from the very beginning, and says
mostly out of site when not in use, but can be brought down easily
when needed.
In the end, for Duggar, the hall sounds like he thought it would.
“Acoustically it serves well for the events and shows that come
through. There’s enough variability that it can handle amplified
events, too. It’s a very performer-friendly room. It’s always nice to
bring another theatre into the world.”
They have an ETC Eos lighting board driving an impressive collection
of lights. “We have six new Mac 700 Profile moving heads,
and six Mac TW1 wash fixtures, which I would recommend,” says
Kovacs. An eight-hour training session on the new lighting console
helped him over a major learning curve, and he enjoys that
it’s so much friendlier when working moving lights.
An embarrassment of riches?
“Somebody used the phrase, ‘kid in a candy store,’ but it’s
bittersweet,” Kovac says, adding that it was hard to go from all
analog sound to all digital, and he did so with a tinge of regret,
as to his ears analog sounds better. “But now that I’ve learned the
PM-5D it is amazing.”
For the theatre’s opening pianist/singer Paul Sauk performed
and 1,500 special guests, including those who labored on the
project, were on hand. “I have to tell you one of my favorite
moments was on the first night, I was sitting near some longtime
patrons and the woman stood up to go to the lobby for a
moment, and she turned to her husband and said, ‘Oh how nice,
we have so much more leg room!’ That was incredible: more seats
in the same space and more leg room.”
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 29

Special Section:
Renovations & Installations
Big Idea, Small Space
A look at a portable, private
performing arts center
from the imagination of
Christine Jones
John Huntington/controlgeek.net
The Theatre for One performing arts center fine tuned its technical requirements during
a stint at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology before its Times Square run.
By Michael S. Eddy
Most theatre consultants say the theatres they love the
most are intimate ones; spaces where you feel that you
are right there with the performer. Well, there’s now
one that can only be described as the most intimate theatre that
you will ever find—Theatre for One. This jewel box of a theatre is
the brain child of Tony Award-winning scenic designer Christine
Jones. As it says right in its name, it is literally a theatre for one;
one audience member and one performer. In May, Theatre for
One had its first public residency in New York City’s Times Square.
In its initial 10-day run, the theatre presented more than 600
performances.
Theatre for One (T41), is a 4-foot-by-9-foot portable theatre
built—using roadbox technology—in sections so it can be easily
modified or re-configured down the road as needs change. It has
essentially two sections, which, when joined together, create one
space. There is a hard shutter that separates the two sections and
acts as a proscenium and curtain. Each side has a separate doorway,
one for the audience member and one for the performer.
The interior is lined with rich red velvet and has a lighting and
audio system as well as fans to keep everyone inside comfortable.
Outside, connected by a data and power snake, is a rackmount
control center where the stage manager can operate the lights
and audio using a camera to monitor the progress inside the
booth. The T41 can be operated off a small, low-noise generator.
T41 Artistic Director Jones, who describes T41 as “a portable,
private performing arts center” drew her inspiration from disparate
areas. “There were two main inspirations,” she says. “I read
about artist James Turrell designing a church. I had been thinking
how great it would be to design a church, but I figured that the
chance of anybody commissioning me to build a church was
unlikely. It made me think if I built a church for one, I could build it
myself. Around that time, I saw Steve Cuiffo, a magician, perform
at a wedding, He went around the room and sat in front of me and
performed a magic trick right before me. I just found the experience
of having something normally witnessed publicly presented
in such a private way incredibly moving. I loved it so much; I
started thinking about how I could recreate that experience. Out
of those thoughts came the idea of making T41.”
Calling Out
When Jones read that the NY Theatre Workshop had a call
for projects she thought it would be a great place to try her idea
out. She built a plywood box and looked at church confessionals
and peepshow booths for research. “During that research I met
the man who builds all of the peepshow booths in Manhattan.
He gave me a chair from a peepshow booth and I put that in my
plywood box. I put in some lights, some sound and then I worked
with three writers to write plays for that venue. We tried it out and
I found that indeed it was a compelling experience.”
Two years later, with a grant through Princeton University,
Jones constructed the current T41 box. LOT-EK Architecture (pronounced
“low tech,” they’re a firm that takes modern society’s
castoffs and repurposes them to greater effect) suggested the
idea to use the roadbox technology to define the space. Using
the new design, Jones worked with the students at Princeton and
Juilliard. Glenn Weiss, Manager of Public Art in Times Square with
the Times Square Alliance, saw the T41 project online and invited
Jones to make the first public presentation of Theatre for One in
Times Square.
It may be a theatre for one, but it still takes quite a production
team to operate the space, including Jane Cox as Lighting
Supervisor, who has been working with Jones since the Princeton
residency, Lighting Designer Bradley King, Joshua Higgason as
Technical Director, Emily Levin as Stage Manager and Project
Coordinator Megan Marshall. True Love Productions was also a
producing partner for T41.
Taking the T41 out of storage, where it was since 2007,
Jones and company set up at CUNY’s New York City College of
Technology, also known as City Tech, to fine tune the technical
requirements for Times Square. “While T41 was at City Tech huge
improvements were made in its lighting and sound systems by
City Tech’s John Huntington and John McCullough,” describes
30 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

John Huntington/controlgeek.net
During its run in Times Square, the Theatre for One showed more than 600 performances.
Higgason. “They made T41 a real theatrical space and I just had to
figure out how to make it a mobile one. I put together a separate
roadcase that was a small mobile control unit. Lighting control
includes three Chauvet four-channel dimmer packs and lighting
control via ENTTEC LightFactory, a PC-based system with a USB-
DMX adaptor. The audio playback and control is run by a 1.5 GHz
Apple Mac Mini Single Core running Qlab, an Echo AudioFire 4, a
Samson MDR6 mixer and an ART SLA4 four-channel amplifier. The
four-output Qlab package includes four channels of playback. We
also have a monitor system that includes both video and audio for
the stage manager to call the show.”
Inside the T41 the lighting includes four PAR Birdies, four
3-inch Fresnels, two Linestra linear incandescent sources, a
proscenium arch with 18 small white 25W globe lamps and
an MR-16 Nano Strip light. Audio includes two JBL Control 1
speakers over the stage, two 65W speakers that are built into
the chair and a handheld Shure SM57 mic for amplification or
reverb effects. Power is provided by a Honda EU3000is generator,
which provides 3,000W (or 25A at 120V) while producing a
maximum of 58 dB of noise. T41 runs for 10 hours on about two
gallons unleaded gasoline.
Higgason notes that “Kyle Chepulis at Technical Artistry and
Eva Pinney at Tribeca Lighting were integral in putting together
the system, not only with their expert advice and recommendations
about the equipment but also with their quick turnaround
in providing gear. James Robertson and Pierre Kraitsowits of
Daedalus Design & Production in Greenpoint were also huge
supporters.”
On Its Feet
During the work at City Tech, LD King and lighting
supervisor Cox put in time pre-cueing some of the performances.
The rest were done on site, all depending on
the schedule of the performers. During the run, at least
three people were on hand for the operation, including
SM Levin, TD Higgason and PC Marshall. They also
had a group of volunteers to help manage the line and
answer any questions from the audience members as
they waited, including “No, this isn’t the line for TKTS”
and “No, your picture will not be on the big screen on that
building.”
For Levin a typical day
began about noon for a
1 p.m. start, “We called
actors about 30-minutes
before show time,”
says Levin. “We would
tech them and do a runthrough
with them. Fifteen
minutes ahead we started
to generate the line. We
liked to have three to four
performers for every block
of time. It’s fun to keep
something new in the
booth so that people don’t
know what they are walking
into. In between each
person, we may only have
a 30-second break, which
doesn’t seem like a long time but it’s long enough me
to get somebody out of the booth, reset the sound and
lights and get someone else in.”
Levin cued the door to open and close; ran the consoles
for lights and sound, as well as got the actors in and out.
There are no dressing rooms in Times Square so they used
the booth itself and there was a “backstage” area with
drapes to hide the different performers from the audience.
“We have a wide range of performances that last anywhere
from 2-1/2 to 10 minutes,” explains Jones. “I have
seven plays, one dancer, two puppeteers, a magician, a
standup comedian, eight poets and three musicians. We
have also had musicians drop in for impromptu performances.
We had Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong come
in for a surprise set one evening; somebody was in the
booth that was a huge fan and the whole booth was shaking
because he was pounding on the walls with excitement.
We have had people exiting in tears and other
times laughing; it’s just been amazing.”
Jones is navigating the many offers that are coming
her way on possible uses of T41 and she pointed out,
“I would love to see it be a part of other festivals. We
are taking it to Governor’s Island for the Figment Arts
Festival. We are going to be working with theatre company
Clubbed Thumb and have it in the lobby of the Ohio
Theatre before their performances. People have been
asking us about renting it out for private events, which
we may consider doing. That would be a way to support
it. I am hoping that Broadway Cares could find a way
to use it to raise money. I think that it has tremendous
non-profit possibilities.” Education and training are also
roles that Jones sees for the future of T41. “I would love
to make one for every public school in New York City,
because it’s a great way to learn about the performing
arts,” comments Jones. “So many schools are so challenged
with arts-funding, but even in a miniature form,
you still explore and learn all of the different aspects of
creating a production.” Whatever Jones decides to do
next with Theatre for One it is sure to be worth everyone
experiencing it, one at a time.
31 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com
www.stage-directions.com • June 2010 31

Consultant Spotlight
Building
Relationships
A Q&A with S. Leonard Auerbach, founder of
theatre consulting firm Auerbach Pollock Friedlander.
All photography courtesy of Auerbach Pollock Friedlander
Jackson Hall at the UC Davis Mondavi Center
Robert Canfield
S. Leonard Auerbach
One of the great things about the theatre is that the path
that one’s career follows can be as rewarding and diverse
as the productions and projects that it touches. S. Leonard
Auerbach, Founding Principal of the theatre consulting firm
Auerbach Pollock Friedlander, is a case in point. His path began
backstage, on the lighting crew, and then, as house manager for
the original Off-Broadway company of The Fantasticks. Hooked
on theatre, he attended Carnegie Tech—now Carnegie Mellon—
earning a degree in stage and lighting design and a graduate
degree in theatre architecture. From Pittsburgh, he moved to
Minneapolis, where he became resident lighting designer for the
Guthrie Theatre and in 1967, he became the in-house consultant
for their first renovation. From there, he was recruited by BBN—an
acoustics and theatre consulting firm—starting his consulting
career in their New York office, and then, in San Francisco where
he founded his own consulting practice in 1972.
One of his very early projects was the Minneapolis Children’s
Theatre Company, with the prestigious architect Kenzo Tange.
Q What was special about that project?
A Len Auerbach: The Minneapolis Children’s Theatre was conceived
as a significant regional theatre for children. It required
an intimate and comfortable space with good sightlines for both
adults and children in a mixed audience environment. Tange
sought to create a womb-like and intimate interior. We collaborated,
designing a 750-seat space with a homogeneous orchestra
level and two very shallow balconies to reduce viewing distances
and encourage the perception of space that confirmed Tange’s
concept.
Q How do you find out special project needs beyond your
work with the architect?
A It’s a process of engagement. When you are planning a
space for a new theatre, it’s all about building relationships,
sharing visions and exposing the client to possibilities that
they may not have considered. Not as a matter of persuasion,
but as a matter of shared dialog and understood values. The specific
needs and the philosophy of the client—whether that client
is a high school, a university, a community theatre, a symphony
orchestra or a spectacular entertainment company like Cirque du
Soleil—each has unique requirements that you have to understand
and react to with design concepts.
This is especially true for educational projects where preparation
for avocational interests as well as pre-professional training in
the theatre provides broad user requirements that must reflect the
institution’s values and community. It’s not so different from our
projects for more commercial presenters and institutions, including
dance, music and popular entertainment. For example, we are
currently doing a space for SFJAZZ that is a highly specific space
for jazz music of all types, with presentations geared to a diverse
audience demographic. We have spent a great deal of time with
the artistic director, understanding his vision and discussing vari-
32 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

Main Theatre at the Emerson College
Paramount Center
Peter Vanderwarker
Bernard André
Cabrillo College, Visual and Performing
Arts Village
Aptos, California
Envisioned three decades prior as part of a Campus
Master Plan, the 8-acre Visual and Performing Arts Village
is comprised of five buildings around courtyards. Auerbach
Pollock Friedlander provided theatre consulting for the programming,
planning and design for all of the performing
and fine arts facilities including 2D and 3D art studios, the
“Forum” - a 250-seat arts and media presentation facility and
the 577-seat Crocker Theater, a 200-seat Black Box Theater
and production facilities and a new music department building
with a 369-seat recital hall and practice rooms.
Music Recital Hall at Cabrillo College,
Visual and Performing Arts Village
ous opportunities for this exciting new downtown venue. On all
projects, this type of interaction always takes us in new directions.
That’s what keeps consulting interesting and exciting.
Q So what’s your competitive advantage?
A I feel our strength comes from the people and the depth of
knowledge we have in our firm. My partners now include Steve
Pollock and Steven Friedlander, Paul Garrity, Mike McMackin and
Tom Neville on the Auerbach Pollock Friedlander side and Patricia
Glasow and Larry French in our architectural lighting group,
Auerbach Glasow French. All are very talented designers with
real theatre experience and each of these individuals came to the
firm with unique live performance backgrounds. This hands-on
experience is drawn upon as common ground with our clients.
Our senior staff is well-balanced and supported by exciting
new and creative talent in our San Francisco, New York and
Minneapolis offices. We bring these skills to any project that has
an audience, whether it is an educational facility, a 21,000-seat
conference center, a small 99-seat Off-Broadway venue, a popular
entertainment venue or a major opera house or concert hall.
No matter what size and scope of the project, we have the
same responsibility to our clients; understand their needs and
reconcile those core requirements—and values—with their available
funds. Success is measured in how well we meet these goals.
Sometimes, it is a matter of providing good, simple working
space. At the other end of the spectrum, we are not shy about
the development of advanced technology and the design of large
scale automation and stage machinery systems for our recent
work with Cirque du Soleil in their permanent venues in Las Vegas
and Asia.
But the focus is not to push technology. Appropriate technology
must follow good programming, planning and design. We
strive to be responsible to everyone in the project—from the client,
the architect and engineers to the board of trustees and governing
agencies. These are voices that must be considered along
with the requirements of the artists, technicians and productions
that may be mounted in the venue. Bridging gaps that naturally
occur between these parties, while gaining the confidence of our
clients on all levels is a giant step along the road toward navigating
the path to a successful project.
Emerson College, Paramount Center
Boston, Massachusetts
Auerbach Pollock Friedlander provided theatre and audiovideo
consulting for the redevelopment of the Paramount
Theatre and the adjacent “Arcade” building. The project is
a combination of adaptive re-use, renovation and new infill
construction including a 596-seat proscenium theatre that
occupies the footprint and recreates the original art-deco
finishes of the 1,500-seat Paramount Theatre which originally
opened in 1932. Additional program areas include the
experimental 125-seat flexible black box studio theatre and
The Bright Family Screening Room with a 180-seat a film
sound stage, rehearsal and media studios, practice rooms,
classrooms, faculty offices and a scene shop designed to support
all of Emerson’s theatres.
University of California, Davis, Robert and Margrit
Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts
Davis, California
Auerbach Pollock Friedlander provided full scope theatre
consulting for Jackson Hall, a 1,800-seat multi-purpose venue
and a 200-seat Studio theatre. The Center marked the fulfillment
of the University’s long-awaited goal—a world-class
arts destination, serving the University and the surrounding
community with a facility with superb acoustics for classical
music; accommodation of all forms of proscenium stage
productions; and rapidly changeable stage configurations to
allow dense scheduling.
San Francisco • New York • Minneapolis
www.auerbachconsultants.com
Advertorial

Special Section
Renovations & Installations
Kevin G. Reeves
Westlake Reed Leskosky helped the Kohl Building at the
Oberlin College Conservatory of Music earn LEED Gold status
and critical raves for its bold design, including jewellike
panels of brushed aluminum, and vertical windows
arranged to remind one of piano keys.
Dream Weavers
Theatre consultants and your dream theatre
By Kevin M. Mitchell
Building a new or redesigning an old theatre space is a
dream come true for many in the arts. Getting the funding
and pushing the project along is exhausting and stressful,
but ultimately it's rewarding—if it turns out well. Ensuring
success are the theatre design consultants who ask the right
questions and bring their experience to the table from day one.
SD sought out nine especially innovative projects to learn more
about this vital part of the process. While we had time with these
brilliant designers, we also asked about general trends to get a
feel for what we want in our theatres today.
Studio T+L
Jason Livingston started Studio T+L in 2006, and says one of
the most interesting projects they completed recently was for
Union City High School in Union City, N.J. The administrators
came to him wanting a 970-seat proscenium, but the space was
small. They couldn’t build down for more space because there
were classrooms beneath it. And raising the roof was problematic
as well, because, well, there’s a football field on it. But build
it they did—and a 99-seat black box theatre, all supported by a
suite of dressing rooms, control booths and a scene shop.
The tight space required some creative thinking for the rigging.
“One thing that turned out well was that we gave them
a tension wire grid above the stage, which is basically a web of
aircraft cable drawn tight within metal frames,” Livingston says.
“This gives them the ability to walk around anywhere above the
stage safely.” He’s particularly proud of this because, increasingly,
schools are curtailing student’s backstage involvement
due to liability issues. He says when he thinks back to his early
theatre experiences, and how he climbed ladders and focused
lights, the idea of kids today not getting that thrilling backstage
experience would be a shame. But that’s not a problem here. “It’s
all access—there’s no way you can fall through it.”
Working with any school requires a different approach, he
says. “The challenge can be the school administration. I’ll be
meeting with the superintendent and ask about the production
schedule, the type of shows, how many kids typically involved,
and they don’t know. I’ll ask to meet with the theatre educators
and they’ll say 'No, not yet …' I say over and over that I want to
meet with the people who are going to use the space. I don’t
want to design my theatre, I want to design theirs.”
Trends. “It can be a budget-buster, but we’re frequently asked
about motorized rigging instead of manually operated rigging.
Motorized is more expensive, and if the school really wants it,
they need to contact the theatre consultant early on to plan for
the expense.”
Novita
Ontario-based Novita was founded in 1972, and David Jolliffe
joined Novita in 1990 as a system designer and has been manager
of Technical Services and a partner since 1997. Recently he
and the Novita team embarked on a renovation of the Grace
Hartman Amphitheatre in Sudbury, Ontario. It is a public space
in a large, urban park, but had fallen prey to underuse because of
the increasingly deteriorating stage facilities and a sound system
that was doing too good of a job—or at least that’s what the
neighbors and other parkgoers thought.
Jolliffe’s background includes spending two summers traveling
with the likes of the Grateful Dead, U2 and the Rolling
Stones, among others, where he documented everything that
had to do with outdoor festivals. This experience proved helpful.
“Grace was built in 1967 in the classical Greek amphitheatre
style,” he says. “It had high concrete steps and is built on a
hillside.” Novita surveyed the site with the architect to ensure
they would make good use of the existing landscape, and have
proper seating placement. But among the biggest challenges
was creating a sound system that would attract the popular acts
but not cause noise complaints.
“We turned the amphitheatre slightly away from the lake and
increased landscaping to contain the sound.” They also curtailed
the sound by making the space into a larger fan shape and strategic
placing of berms. But most of all, Novita took advantage of
new technologies, specifically line array technology, which was
permanently installed in Grace Hartman—something that has
34 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

only been done a few times, Jolliffe says.
Trends. Last August in Alberta, an
outdoor country musical festival stage
collapsed killing one and injuring 15
others. In part because of this, there’s a
movement toward the more stringent
European Union standards in outdoor
theatre/festival construction, which
Novita is responding to. “We’re dealing
with a project right now where a stage
has to support a 44-foot stage roofing
system weighing tons, and we’re hired
in as consultants to ensure safety, proper
emergency routes, etc. We bring confidence
to the table.”
Graham, Swift & Company
Unofficially known as “the Theatre
Guys,” Larry Graham and Charles Swift
have had their hands full with the
Jefferson County School District in
Alabama. “They are creating six 750-seat
theatres in each of their high schools that
are fully motorized and complemented
with new lighting and sound equipment,”
Swift says.
Graham, who has been in practice for
30 years after teaching theatre design
in college, and Swift, a lighting designer
now in his 10th year as a consultant, say
that one of the challenges is, despite
being in different buildings, all needed
to be as equal as possible. Just to make it
more intriguing, the team is working with
three different architecture firms.
“What is interesting to me is that this
project is important to the school district
leaders because they know what value
the arts have in education,” says Graham.
“They know that these kinds of programs
improve test scores.”
Swift says working with different architects
involved educating them on the
production process, and dealing with
how to integrate all the theatre demands
into the building process—“That’s key to
what we do.” With this project, though,
even working with the same architect on
two of the projects involved extra meetings,
as there were different electrical and
mechanical engineers to work with.
“We work to inform the design, and
look at it all from a functional point of
view as a theatre,” Graham adds.
Trends. Swift says more theatres aremoving
toward motorized rigging. “It’s
more expensive but the schools are looking
at liability issues, and there seems to
be more accidents with manual rigging.”
But the caveat is motorized needs to be
operated by someone who is very welltrained,
and the layout of the stage needs
to be such that the person operating
needs to be able to see all the rigging that
he or she is operating.
Auerbach Pollock Friedlander
In Aptos, Calif., just south of Santa
Cruz, Cabrillo College turned to Auerbach
Pollock Friedlander to help with their
Visual, Applied and Performing Arts
Complex (VAPA). Cabrillo’s Music and
Theatre Departments—each now with
its own building—have earned a significant
reputation south of the SF Bay Area
for their support and development of
Cabrillo Stage, a professional summer
musical theatre company.
“It’s highly unusual and commendable
for a community college chartered
to grant Associate degrees to have such
facilities,” says Steve Pollock, ASTC, vicepresident
and principal of Auerbach
Pollock Friedlander. “The new VAPA facilities
have created a critical mass for the
arts on campus, showing a unique commitment
from the community college
district to the large number of enrollees
in Cabrillo’s programs.
The new Crocker Theatre is a 550-seat
proscenium house with a large orchestra
pit, a fully rigged fly tower/counterweight
and hemp system, a comprehensive ETC
theatrical lighting system with Ethernet
control network, and expansive audio systems
with capacity for in-house control of
basic and touring audio requirements for
local arts presenters. Production facilities
also include a 125-seat black box
with full tension grid and coordinated
theatrical systems on a somewhat smaller
scale, scene and costume shops, a scenic
design studio and light lab, a rehearsal
studio and a full complement of dressing
rooms sized to accommodate music theatre
principals and chorus.
From programming through to postoccupancy
services, Auerbach Pollock
Friedlander worked closely with architecture
firm HGA, which provided key leadership,
while allowing the opportunity for
consultants to build relationships with
resident faculty and their programs. The
project team worked with a core group of
faculty and staff, many of whom had been
involved in a previous programming and
design effort that was never implemented
from approximately a decade before
the VAPA projects were funded.
More and more, Pollock sees the
JERIT/BOYS INCORPORATED
Programming, Space Planning, Technical Resource
Information, and System Design
for the Performing Arts.
Theatres
Auditoriums
Concer t Halls
Production Spaces
Management Spaces
Teaching Labs
Dance Studios
Av/Tv Centers
Galleries
Museums
Arenas
Amphitheater
F o u n d i n g M e m b e r s
of the American Society
of Theatre Consultants
Ron Jerit, ASTC
Teddy Dean Boys, ASTC
3712 North Broadway,
PMB 642
Chicago IL 60613
t 1 773 472 1497 • f 1 773 477 8369 • e tdboys@attglobal.net
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 35

Special Section: Architects & Consultants
importance of video and media as basic to the training of performers
and technicians. “The focus on training for performance
for the camera has become very popular, especially on community
college campuses which are more likely to offer technical
training leading to work in the field that is practical and less
theoretical.”
Landry & Bogan
Landry & Bogan work with plenty of high schools, but a
recent client had a request that is rare: They wanted a thrust
stage.
“The level of sophistication of Bellarmine College Prep in San
Jose made this 450-seat project unusual,” says Rose Steele, who
along with Heather McAvoy, owns Landry & Bogan. Bellarmine
has a strong drama department run by three full-time theatre
faculty members. Steele commended them on their bravado to
not only go with a thrust, but fully equip it: it has a stage lift, two
vomitoriums, a fully-rigged stage with 36 manually-operated
line sets and two dimmer banks with 192 circuits each. They also
put in a scene shop.
“Because they have a strong performing arts program, we
had a lot of input from the faculty with regard to their programming
needs,” Steele says. The project took three years to complete
at a project cost of $30 million. (The new 52,000-square
foot building includes a music room and art studies.) Despite
the financial support, cost was an issue as the architects weren’t
always clear on numbers for a theatre. “They have a handle on
costs and what is available in the market in general, but they
don’t usually know how much per square foot a theatre like this
can cost.”
Steele adds that while sometimes a project like this can
get “dumbed down” in the process, that didn’t happen here.
The team was focused on making the space work to its utmost
capacity.
Trends. “The trend is for better spaces for theatres,
period,” Steele says. “There’s more buy-in at the district level for a
really good space as opposed to the ‘gymatorium.’” Many of the
California’s universities require a year of performing or visual arts
to be accepted into the college, helping fuel the recent upsurge
in new/redone theatres there.
Jerit/Boys Inc.
Teddy Boys, vice president and principal consultant for Jerit/
Boys, began his career as an acoustics consultant and co-founded
the consulting firm in 1978 with Ron Jerit. For the Dakota
Middle School in Rapid City, S.D., they are turning a middle
school into a combination Community Performing Arts Center
and alternative high school.
“It’s this wonderful big, stone building,” he says. He’s especially
pleased that the community has this approach as opposed
to a complete teardown. “I love the idea that the building is
going to be saved for the arts.” The school district is leading the
project, but it’s being done in partnership with several local arts
orgs, including community theatres and music groups like the
local symphony, who spent 15 years raising $4 million.
“The town already has a road house at the convention center,
so there’s no reason to have a 1,400 seat auditorium. This is
probably the first time I haven’t done a seat-count driven project,
so they’ll be getting wider seats and rows.”
A three-sided balcony will be lightly refurbished but mostly
left alone. “It’ll look a whole lot like what went up in the 1920s,
but solve a lot of modern theatre issues.” They won’t be able to
expand the stage but are are expanding the apron and orchestra
lift and installing a pipe grid and brand new lighting and sound
systems.
He adds that the key to a project like this is having a good
first meeting. “We always ask what they are doing right now and
what they want to be doing in 10 years,” Boys says. “You have to
have a really great series of conversations, and develop the spirit
of the project. The facts you can find anywhere. So many projections
start out with the solution, and the not the questions.”
Westlake Reed Leskosky
In May, the Kohl Building at the Oberlin College Conservatory
of Music opened in Oberlin, Ohio, to rave reviews. Home of the
college’s programs in jazz, music history and theory, the building
includes spaces for teaching, practicing and recording.
“The building includes a ground level plaza which is one of
the most actively used spaces now on campus, as well as a rooftop
terrace designed to host concerts,” says Paul Westlake, part
of the design team for the project at Westlake Reed Leskosky.
“The third floor includes a bridge to the other Conservatory
buildings; this bridge contains the sky lounge which is a social
gathering space with great views of the campus.”
In addition to all of that, the building is a LEED Gold music
facility. “It uses a geothermal heating system that is energy
efficient, but also minimizes the use of ductwork for space conditioning.”
Deemed contemporary in style and a big draw for the
school’s jazz program, the $24 million building is dazzling
36 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

Courtesy of Studio T+L
For Union City High School Studio T+L was constrained by classrooms and a football field to make the space necessary for a 970-seat proscenium
theatre
everyone despite its relatively modest
footprint: 37,000 square feet of space on
three levels, plus a basement. Rather then
be hindered by an odd space for it to fit,
Westlake and the creative team appear to
have been inspired it.
Trends. “The stage house is the heart/
essence of many arts facilities,” Westlake
says. As tours become larger, more technology
is incorporated, and audience
expectations are higher. “Stage technology
and design require a robust infrastructure
and must be flexible, and we
are seeing many examples of academic
institutions adding smaller spaces to
complement older larger venues.” He
also adds “collaboration”—institutions
seeking partners and resources off their
campus—as a trend.
“Key physical needs that an arts center
of the future need to anticipate and
address include high bandwidth for fiber
optics, adjustable lighting fixtures and
digital projection to accommodate trend
toward digital scenery,” he adds. “The
theatre of the future will accommodate
multi-disciplinary interaction and productions.”
Scheu Consulting
For Peter Scheu, it’s often about educating
the educators. Currently the theatre
consultant, who has had his own firm
for a decade, is working on the Rockland
Middle School/High School project in
Rockland, N.Y. “It’s an educational process
for those who aren’t completely
familiar with theatre systems, including a
lot of architects,” says Scheu.
Listening to everyone is key for Scheu,
as schools might have a strong music
program but want to build a stronger
drama department, and need help figuring
out what they will need. That’s what
he did here, and came up with appropriate
lighting and audio gear that, while
more than they initially budgeted for,
was to their liking.
The theatre will have 750 seats with
a stage that is 100 feet wide and 30 feet
deep. They weren’t able to build fly space,
so it’ll have a hybrid rigging system with a
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 37

combination of dead hung and motorized
equipment. “It wasn’t possible to
go further in air, so we had to work to
come up with a system that was friendly
and flexible. I wanted to make sure they
ended up with systems that were going
to last as long as the original systems did
but were more flexible.”
One challenge for Scheu was that the
school has an advanced media center
that has live broadcast capability, so he
had to make sure all his A/V systems
could interface. “The media center sits
away from the theatre, so that was a little
bit new to us. But the administrator was
very knowledgeable, and we worked it
out.”
Trends. While moving lights are out
of the budget range of most secondary
schools, Scheu says he’s increasingly
being asked for infrastructures that can
handle them anyway. “This is for if down
the road they can get some, or at least
when they rent for a particular show.”
R.J. Heisenbottle Architects
When Florida Memorial University
sought to replace its outdated Matthew
W. Gilbert teaching auditorium with
a state-of-the-art performance venue
for drama, musical theatre, dance and
chamber music it initiated an architectural
design competition. The winning
design came from Coral Gables,
Fla., firm R.J. Heisenbottle Architects
with the assistance of Fisher Dachs
Theater Consultants of New York City.
Overlooking the lake at the center of
the University campus the Lou Rawls
Center for Performing Arts has become
the focal point of both student and
community life.
“Historically a black university, FMU
named the theatre in honor of legendary
performer Lou Rawls to acknowledge
his lifelong fundraising efforts for
black colleges and universities,” says
Richard Heisenbottle, president of R.J.
Heisenbottle Architects. “Rawls was
able to host the theatre’s opening performance
just prior to his passing.”
The glass-enclosed lobby provides an
elegant setting for both students and
community theatregoers and a sense
of place on the campus. The 450- seat
multi-purpose hall surrounds the patron
in warm woods and comfortable fabrics,
creating a soothing contemporary atmosphere
amidst lively acoustics and exceptional
sightlines. The stage house, 44 feet
deep by 86 feet in width, is cavernous by
university theatre standards. The concert
38 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

Special Section Architects & Consultants
CONTACT INFO:
Auerbach Pollock Friedlander
225 Green Street
San Francisco, CA 94111
P: (415) 392-7528
W: www.auerbachconsultants.com
Graham, Swift & Company
3003 Summit Boulevard, Ste. 1500
Atlanta, GA 30319
P: (404) 460-4245
W: www.theatreguys.com
lighting and the acoustical shell reside in the fly loft and allow overnight conversion
from concerts to dramatic performances. State-of-the-art rigging and lighting systems
mean the Lou Rawls Center can seamlessly handle all types of performances.
While The Lou Rawls Center is an entirely new facility, Heisenbottle sees a new trend
developing in college and university theaters. “Because of dwindling budgets, there is
a clear trend towards renovating existing college theatres, rather than constructing
new, and retrofitting them to accommodate new media, new technology. University
theatres are becoming laboratories for emerging entertainment technologies such as
immersive video projection and surround sound audio in live performance.”
Jerit/Boys Inc.
3712 North Broadway, PMB 642
Chicago, IL 60613
P: (773) 472-1497
W: www.jeritboys.com
Landry & Bogan
733 West Evelyn Ave.
Mountain View, CA 94041
P: (650) 969-5195
W: www.landb.com
Novita
307 Jane St.
Toronto, ON
CANADA
M6S 3Z3
P: (416) 761-9622
W: www.novita.on.ca
R.J. Heisenbottle Architects
2199 Ponce de Leon Blvd.,
Suite 400
Coral Gables, FL 33134
P: (305) 446-7799
W: www.rjha.net
Scheu Consulting Services
310 Falls Boulevard
Chittenango, NY 13037
P: (315) 510-3368
W: www.scheuconsulting.com
Studio T+L
123 7th Avenue, #283
Brooklyn, NY 11215
P: (718) 788-0588
W: www.studio-tl.com
Westlake Reed Leskosky
925 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44115-1432
P: (216) 522-1350
W: www.wrldesign.com
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 39

Gear Review By Trevor Long
|
The Bartlett
TM-125C
www.theatreface.com/tm-125c
I
have an overwhelming desire to like the Bartlett TM-125C Super-
Cardioid Stage Floor Mic.
I’ve got a fairly intense love/hate thing with boundary mics
in general. I love them in use for a variety of reasons but hate seeing
the things. Despite claims in advertising literature, just because
something is black doesn’t make it invisible—especially when it is
so close to the audience. So, in that way the Bartlett TM-125C has
an advantage for me. It’s a little less than an inch and three quarters
shorter side to side than the Crown PCC-160 and a quarter inch
shorter upstage to downstage. The height between the two is essentially
the same. So, that’s one big checkmark in the plus category.
Additionally, the same microphone has a model that comes
without a permanently attached cable—the TM-125—so the
cable can be detached and run under a piece of scenery or put
through the floor more easily—also making it less obtrusive.
Channeling my desire to spend as little money on equipment as
possible, the other very attractive feature of the Bartlett microphone
is the price. This supercardioid condenser stage-floor microphone
will run you $199.00 per unit. For comparison I did some online
shopping and averaged 20 retailers’ prices on the Crown PCC-160.
The average price was $247.20. Another big checkmark in the plus
column.
But just because it’s smaller and costs less won’t mean a thing
if the audience isn’t getting the best possible sound—or if your
designer has been driven batty trying to get that sound. And that’s
why we put this to use in as many different ways as we had time for:
I got some time to play around with the microphone in a couple of
rehearsal halls; a friend borrowed the two test units to do a Flamenco
dance concert; a composer/sound designer tested them in his theatre;
three additional engineers tested them in their home studios;
and they were used to provide support for a business meeting/
corporate event.
The rehearsal hall floor tests were first. Different types of materials
were put under the microphones to see if there was any noticeable
difference in the sound quality and to see how sensitive they are to
picking up the severity of footfalls on things like linoleum, medium
density fiberboard (MDF) and carpet (both ‘70s shag and office style).
We all stomped around and talked and walked and talked, a few
people even sang. (I didn’t.) The pickup of the voices was great. Only
the hard-soled shoe and MDF combination caused some legibility
problems, and then only at certain distances. The microphone diaphragm
is perpendicular to the floor, so floor vibrations do not make
the diaphragm move in and out.
Next up was the Flamenco concert. When setting up the sound
tech noticed that the pattern is more open on the backside than
what he expected. He was getting bleed from the front row seats.
Fortunately there was room to make adjustments in placement.
The sound of the concert itself was very natural with minimal EQ
needed. He felt the self-noise of the TM-125C was quieter than that
of the PCC-160, and he also really appreciated the sturdiness and
build quality.
The other real world workout that the microphones got was to
support a business presentation. For this event the engineer knew
that the podium mic would not be sufficient because a particular VIP
on the schedule was known for coming out from behind the podium
The Bartlett TM-125C super-cardioid stage floor mic with permanently attached cable.
at random times. With a house of almost 3,000, that can be annoying
to the audience. He called the Bartletts into use, and the speaker
came and performed as promised, stepping out a number of times
in his speech. The board op was able to smoothly increase the gain
on the TM-125C’s to accommodate. After the speech, the VIP’s handler
expressed how pleased she was. There was a lot a feedback (the
good kind) from the client as well.
Tests aside, what happens when some working sound engineers
and a designer take a look at the microphone side by side with the
PCC-160? After all, Bruce Bartlett, owner of Bartlett Mics, designed
both. He worked for years at Shure and Crown, and that company
has a nice patent certificate for the PCC-160 with Bruce’s name on it.
Of the five people who were interviewed the results were pretty
similar. We’ll start with the matter of the two models. All five would
choose the TM-125. They all cited the fact that for theatre a mic’s
cable is hidden in some way. The ability to disconnect and replace
the microphone easily was a key factor for them.
In terms of sound, two of our testers stated that they would like to
purchase the Bartlett to have in their arsenal of microphones. These
were the same two that did the corporate event and the Flamenco
concert.
Four of our testers reported that the TM-125C required more EQ
to get a natural sound versus the Crown. As one of the testers put
it, “the initial sound through the new mics was boxy. It took some
heavy EQ’ing to get a flat signal.” However, given that the PCC-160
has been the industry standard for years now, this may be a result of
trying to get the TM to sound like the PCC, and what engineers are
“expecting” to hear.
[Bartlett responds: “The mic sounding ‘boxy’ is very odd…Maybe the
frequency response of the mic changed when its cover was removed,
and maybe the mic cover was reversed front-to-back. I’ll measure the
mics when you return them to make sure their performance was what
I sent from the factory.” During the review process (documented online
at www.theatreface.com/tm-125C) the cover for the microphone was
removed prior to sound tests. We’ll update the online page after Bartlett
takes his measurements, and also run the update in an upcoming issue.
—ed.]
What separates the Bartlett microphones is the price. You can
figure on anywhere from
fifty to a hundred dollars less
Bartlett TM-125C
What it is: A super-cardioid
stage floor mic (boundary
mic)
Highlights: Small size;
picks up audio, not floor
noise; good price
What it costs: $199
www.bartlettmics.com
than the Crown PCC-160s,
and still get the sound you
want from the engineer who
designed both mics.
ONLINE BONUS
To see the entire review
process, go to
www.theatreface.com/
tm-125c
40 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com

The Play's the Thing
By Stephen Peithman
|
Word for Word
New plays on truth, lies and language
Words are the playwright’s building blocks, but in
the plays featured this month, the use of words
expands to become the central focus.
Aditi Brennan Kapil’s Love Person is a love story told
in three languages—English, Sanskrit and American Sign
Language. This beautifully written and insightful work asks
whether we can truly express love through language, and
whether mere words can bridge the gap between two people.
Layered with mistaken identities and miscommunications,
Love Person becomes a kind of mystery play that reaches
beyond conventional ideas of attraction and sexual orientation.
Kapil’s characters yearn for deep emotional connections,
forcing them to navigate—often awkwardly—a landscape of
words and signs in their search for happiness. Three females,
one male. [Samuel French, www.samuelfrench.com]
A very different search is central to The Sequence, by Paul
Mullin. Renegade researcher Craig Venter has developed a
controversial “shotgun” technique for sequencing DNA, making
him a fortune in the private sector. At once, he becomes
both the most loved and hated figure of contemporary science.
Competition arises in the form of a folksy doctor named
Francis Collins, who wants to outdo Venter and be the first
to synthesize life itself. Their rivalry provides journalist Kellie
Silverstein with the biggest science story of all time—the
race to decipher the dynamic code of life hidden within the
human genome—while she runs a race with her own mortality.
In this remarkable play, Mullin manages to combine dramatic
tension with dark humor. The two scientists cheat, lie,
manipulate the public, and generally have a good time doing
so—sometimes with hilarious results. Two males, one female.
[Original Works Publishing, originalworksonline.com]
“A translaptation” is how David Ives describes his new version
of The Liar, the classic 17th-century comedy by French
playwright Pierre Corneille. In other words, it’s a “translation
with a heavy dose of adaptation” of the adventures of a
young and charming pathological liar named Dorante, who
comes to Paris and passes himself off as a war hero. When an
arranged marriage threatens to derail his romantic agenda,
his actions prompt a mistaken-identity involving the winsome
Clarice and her sharp-tongued friend Lucrece. As the
tangled web of lies continues, so do the plot twists, each
more complicated than the last. Ives has added subplots to
Corneille’s original, trimmed long speeches that might not
play today, merged two characters, and cut one character—
but maintained the dialogue’s rhymed verse. Purists may
object, but this should be a sure-fire audience pleaser. Five
males, 3-4 females. [published by Plays in Print/Smith & Kraus,
www.smithandkraus.com]
Constructing an effective full-length play is always a challenge,
but doing so in a play that lasts only 10 minutes is even
more daunting. Nevertheless, there are 50 ten-minute plays
by 50 New England playwrights in the new collection, Boston
Theater Marathon XI. There’s amazing variety here. Some
plays deal in absurdist humor, like Ryan Landry’s memorable
Joan, Joan, Joan and Hitler, in which Adolf conducts a group
therapy session for Joan Crawford, Joan Jett and Joan of Arc.
Many plays go for the slice-of-life approach, from dramatic
(Laura Crook’s But for the Grace of God, in which three women
at a playground discuss the challenges of motherhood) to
comic (Nina Mansfield’s Missed Exit, in which a family is taken
in unexpected directions by their car’s navigation system).
In Jack Neary’s Talkback, a playwright gets to speak with his
audience—to his great regret. Andrea Fleck Clardy’s poignant
Safely Assumed centers on a middle-aged shoplifter
who shares her secrets with a juvenile offender while waiting
for the probation officer. Scott Malia’s comic The Interview is
about a young man who gets more than he bargained for as
he chats up his date’s mother. And Stephen Faria’s Inheriting
Cleo deals with a man who, in escaping from his own relative’s
funeral, connects with a mourner across the hall. [Smith
& Kraus, www.smithandkraus.com]
Words are very much the centerpiece of John Kolvenbach’s
Gizmo Love, a spoof of the Quentin Tarantino-style of movies,
with each character exhibiting familiar traits and the snappy
dialogue full of killer lines. Ralph, a mild-mannered author,
has sold a property to a big-shot Hollywood producer who, it
turns out, only likes the bare bones of Ralph’s script. The producer
sends over a rewrite man, and then dispatches a couple
of hit men—shades of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—to
ensure the job is done properly, with unexpected results.
Kolvenbach has created a brilliantly comic story that sheds
light on the conflict between art and commerce in Hollywood
film-making. Four males. [Oberon Books/Dramatists Play
Service, www.dramatists.com]
www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 41

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www.stage-directions.com • August 2010 43

Answer Box
|
By Matt DeMascolo
Hempfield
Making the Movers Into Followers
Turns out you can use moving lights as followspots—with a little modification…
The makeshift handle yoked to the fixture lets the “followspot” op aim the light while the color, gobo
and intensity of the fixture are all programmable at the lighting console.
High School student Ryan Stewart, operating a modified Mac 2000 Performance as a “followspot.”
I
was moved to write this Answer Box piece after
reading the interview with LD Joseph Oshry
in the March issue of Stage Directions. In that
interview, Oshry says “I would like to point out that
a moving light is not an effective substitute for a
good followspot with a good operator…Moving
lights are simply not followspots.” With all due
respect (and an acknowledgement that I agree
with Oshry’s larger point), I would like to suggest
that moving lights can make great followspots—
but you still do need great ops.
I am the Lighting Systems Manager for
Production Express, Inc., a certified Martin repair
technician, programmer, ME, up and down rigger
and freelance lighting designer, among other
things. I also love lighting high school musicals.
I love the educational aspect of getting the kids
involved and teaching them the correct way to
hang a fixture or read a plot, as well as teaching
them how to understand lighting paperwork and
program a console.
The most recent musical I lit was for the local
high school production of The Secret Garden. I have
lit many shows at this school and am familiar with
the space’s limitations. One of these limitations is
the followspot position. It is all the way at the back
of the house at a horribly low angle. Low enough
that you get the “circle of death” on backdrops.
For most of the shows that I have lit in this space
I could work around this problem by using some
specials, or movers—or just moving the actor.
Unfortunately, due to the set and the nature of
this show, those solutions wouldn’t work this time.
Alternate positions for the followspots wouldn’t
work either—putting followspots in the box boom
position still resulted in a bad angle and limited
room, and there was no room (or money) to modify
the front of house catwalk to place them there.
The only way that I could make followspots work
from the front of house catwalk was to use moving
lights—only slightly modified.
I disabled the pan and tilt motors on Martin
MAC 2000 Performance fixtures and hung them at
the same elevation at the rest of the FOH fixtures.
Then I made a custom handle for the fixture and
strapped it to the yoke. I placed a high school tech
behind the unit to act as a “followspot” operator,
and voila! Yes, the handle could have been a little
more aesthetically pleasing, but results could not
have been any more pleasing.
The location gave me a great angle for the spot,
I had full CMY color mixing, shuttering, gobos for
texture on the actors—it was a thing of beauty.
The one danger was cueing the spots. What if the
spot was not where it was supposed to be when
the light came on? To prevent this I had all my spot
ops write down all of the standard cueing notes as
if they were running the spot without any automation,
and I let them know that when the spot was
not on, it needed to be pointed to the sky. They
did a great job, and I didn’t even see the one cue
they missed.
44 August 2010 • www.stage-directions.com