J. E. Johnson: When I see the perennial behind-the-scenes tour groups gawking wide-eyed at the 10,000 square foot scenic studio outside my office at The University of Texas, I am reminded that I have a very cool job. Every year our staff of professionals and students produces beautiful stage sets and generally “make the magic happen.” Even so, I feel like the magic is fading in our shop. Returning students have confided to me that work in the shop is “not as much fun anymore” and, reluctantly, I have to agree. We feel less like a team. There’s more stress, less camaraderie, and less vitality.
I blame the students. But I’m convinced it’s not their fault.
13 comments:
What a brutally truthful article. It's really hard to look at it this way. I remember learning to do hand-drafting in undergrad and while that was a long time ago and I've mostly forgotten it, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate it. When you mention hand-drafting around school here the freshmen all look like you're about to punch them, but when i look back on that class and the long nights and early mornings spent in the drafting labs, I think about how secure I felt in knowing how those items went together and how I felt like I could have explained those items to anyone. But also, I grew up in a house where my dad taught me how to change a tire when I was twelve, and a mom who carries a leatherman in her purse, so maybe I had a leg up there by having a dad that was happy to teach me those things, and a mom who encouraged them.
I think this is something that we need to remind ourselves of daily when working in the shop or really anywhere in the theatre industry. We need to teach students the skills to do things by hand and not always rely on technology. The article talked about using the CNC and while this is a great thing for getting things taken care of precisely and quickly it doesn't do anything for teaching someone what and how to do something without technology. I've often spoken about how I think the scenic designer's use of the laser cutter for their models is detrimental to their education since they rely on it to make their pieces. Once you leave here you are not going to have these tools so they will be a large disadvantage going into the real world.
As one of the students that this article is talking about, I absolutely agree with everything the author is saying. One of the things I've always wanted to improve about myself is my ability to work with my hands. In public school they don't let you touch anything more dangerous than a drill because of liability issues, let alone teaching you how to use more complicated tools. Some kids have access to opportunities to learn outside of school- many do not. This means that once we get to college, many students are so far behind in terms of skill level that they get relegated to jobs like cleaning steel in the shop. This makes sense in the moment- the crew heads don't want to waste time teaching basic skills- but it also means the few students who come in to school with skills get to exercise those skills and learn new things, while the rest of us are stuck at a level of basic labor. Since we have amazing technology like the CNC machine, we can work around this, but I feel like sometimes it does a real disservice to our students. It comes down to what the final goal of stagecraft is. Is it to get the show built, or to educate the students? If we build a beautiful show, but none of the students did anything more complicated than screwing together platforms that were pre-cut by a computer program, are we really meeting the goals of an educational program, or are we using our students as unskilled labor in an assembly line?
There is something about working by hand, doing things the long way and using technology-free methods that always makes me feel very accomplished and satisfied with my work. If I need to draft now I draft with CAD, but it definitely is not nearly as fun as hand drafting was freshman year. It is, of course, more time-efficient, accurate and convenient. It is hard to draw the line (ha) and decide when something should be a technology project and when something should be a hand-process project. We were just talking about ways to layout a project in the shop in TD1 the other day, and how nowadays most people did that by computer. I think what it comes down to is that students should be taught how to do things the traditional way first, and then the newer, probably more tech-savvy way later, so that they can understand how the process works and why we do the things we do. I love that we learn hand drafting first here, because the level of attention to detail and minutia that goes into that means that when you do a CAD drafting, in the back of your head you are thinking about the “regular” way to do this. Understanding which shortcuts the technology allows you to take enables you to a better problem-solver, and to have a better grasp on the big picture and processes associated with building scenery.
The subject matter in this article is important, and its implications are scary. I left this article questioning if theatre technicians will even be necessary in 10-15 years. It is crucially important for young people in theatre to learn skills with their hands. I know coming into college as a freshman, I had very few of these skills. While I think I have more at this point in my education, this article made me question if I would have even more if it weren't for the technology that makes our lives easy. This article brings up a dilemma that I am sure many arts educational institutes are wrestling with. Teaching students hand skills such as hand drafting and carpentry skills is important, but is it becoming outdated? When do we draw the line between educating students about something that is becoming a dying art? These questions are scary, but important to address, and I am glad this article has courageously brought this subject to light.
This article is painfully true. It reminds me of the generational gap between me and my father. He is very handy and capable of using all sorts of tools, while I am clumsy and awkward, unable to build or create things the same way. This also reminds me of me trying to help in the Tech Shop in high school and not having the same skills as the Technical Director. He would try to teach me these skills but there was no time or money to do so. It's a shame there are no classes on basic handiwork and tool usage.
I believe we should reinstitute mandatory home economics and wood-working skills courses for both genders in order to supply future generations with the skills they need.
There's something horribly frustrating about not being able to do something yet wanting to do it.
This article is so painfully true. My high school cut it's woodworking class a couple years before I even made it to high school and our theatre didn't have enough money to have more than a couple drills and a circular saw. And they only let a few people use them because they didn't want to spend the time to teach everyone and risk the ones who couldn't learn to use it well mess up the set. That's why I'm glad we have the stagecraft classes so we can attempt to learn how to use the tools in a class environment that understands we are still learning. It's not a perfect solution because how much can you teach us students before it really just becomes easier to use the CNC router or hire over-hire to do the work.
I agree with what a lot of the other commenters are saying- it helps for students to understand the process if they learn the old way of doing things like hand drafting first.
He’s not wrong. I walked into my first real theatre as a carpenter about 8 years ago now, and when I first did that I didn’t know much about building scenery. I knew a couple things…how to use a drill, a hammer, and a saw. And I really only knew these things because I spent a summer working for a general contractor installing doors and windows, and remodeling houses. But that was more than most kids at the time. It didn’t take long for one of the Technical Direction students to take me under his wing and teach me some things. But he didn’t really teach me how to be a carpenter, at that time he taught me how to be a good stagehand. Shortly after that I was a carpenter on 1.5 shows, where I built some flats and platforms, and then the following year I lead my first show as a TD. Since then I’ve taught myself how to be a mediocre carpenter and I’ve had a couple carpenter jobs, but there’s an incredibly long list of things that I never really learned or developed to the point where I could consider myself truly skilled. Moving onto grad school, yeah I’ve come a long way and some of my classes and projects have helped me develop a number skills and techniques….but in my mind I still have a long way to go. Still to this day though, I’m a great stagehand and pretty skilled draftsman. Truthfully, unless I take a job in a shop that allows me to work as a carpenter for some time before moving up into a design position (which is unlikely) woodworking and carpenter is likely to become a hobby for me. Or at least I hope it will. Maybe someday after I can crawl out from under the mountain of student loan debt I’ve acquired I can be a homeowner with a shop in my garage and I can again work towards developing a number of those lost and forgotten, or over looked skills. Trust me, I look a good CNC machine as much as the next guy…but there’s so much more beyond that we’ve begun to lose sight of.
It was so interesting to read something from the perspective of a professor teaching theatrical design at another university, because I know very little about other programs like our own. Sometimes I sort of forget that they're out there. Johnson addresses some very big issues that present themselves in craftsmanship today. Personally, coming into this program, I definitely lacked a lot in terms of building skills. My high school did not offer any sort of technical theatre classes, although I remember last year wishing I had taken the wood shop class offered at my high school. I think that this idea of workmanship of certainty versus workmanship of risk captures the central conflict here. With advancement of technology, we have been able to increase our workmanship of certainty, which reduces workmanship of risk. But this reduction of risk is due to the subsequent decrease in hands-on work and personal judgment.
I do not know that there is a clear solution here in terms of balancing our resources, but I agree with Johnson's call to action suggesting that hand skills do still need to be taught.
I'm somewhat surprised by how one sided most of these comments are. Frankly, I'm not even sure where to start when discussing this article. For the sake of comment length, I guess I'll limit this to the scope of carpentry and fabrication in general.
As a someone who certainly has a tendency to favor digital processes over traditional methods, I think this article talks about what students have lost, but not what they've gained. I fully understand that the average incoming college student is probably less proficient in manual skills than a student of years past. But is that deficit not made up for by increased "technological" skill? The author does establish that IN THE END, he saw improved results by employing CNC machinery and computer drafting.
So, therefore, shouldn't we be training students to employ the most efficient, cutting edge, objectively BEST processes, so that in the real world when they are working on *generically large, important, big budget project*, they can do the best job possible.
I understand the argument that deemphasizing hand skills reduces the "educational experience" of students working in the shop. Therefore, shouldn't we understand that this educational decrease of focus in one area should be matched by by an increase of focus in another? I suppose examples here at CMU might include the addition of AutoCad to freshman drafting, or the Advanced Fabrication class.
Ultimately, there must be some compromise right? I agree that traditional fabrication teaches certain soft skills in a way that cannot be replicated. But to cover our ears and move blindly into the future and not embrace new technology as it arises is foolish and I believe not who we are here at CMU, an institution deeply rooted in both arts and stem.
As someone who is more skilled with my hands than I am technologically, I can see how more and more we are moving into a world that depends on "workmanship of certainty" rather than "workmanship of risk." Art of risk is definitely a beautiful process with a magical ending but so is the art of certainty. It depends on how you use the tools. For example, I have read about artistic controversy with 3D printed objects. Sure, a 3D printer can print a really accurate box if you tell it to. But people are also using it to print new, more intricate dresses and clothing than ever before. The Victoria's secret fashion show last year had a winter angel outfit that was completely 3D printed. You couldn't tell on the television and maybe some of the "magic" was lost in that a seemingly normal angel outfit was 3D printed. However, what the camera didn't capture was that the garment was made of millions of different snowflakes that were printed together by the 3D printer. You can't make a durable and successful garment of snowflakes by hand and I think even attempting to make that work is being an artist of risk.
So, maybe the take away is to learn when to use your hands and when to use technology since, depending on how you use your tools, you can always be an artist of risk.
I came to this article because I had clicked on ”precollege,” expecting to read a piece about how extensive a current actor/ musical theater student’s training must be in order to get into BFA programs. However, I’m glad that I found something quite different. I know hardly anything about the background of students who study design and production; of course I have friends in the major and have extreme respect for the work that they do, but I’ve never really asked what or how rigorous their past training was in order to get into this school. I was surprised to see that many students currently going into scenic design majors across the country are not very experienced at the point they arrive. Someone not being able to hold a hammer correctly is equivalent to an acting major never having read a play before: how could they have gotten accepted? Is this how it is with most scenic design majors? Are the standards for acceptance lower than they used to be?
54101A, Andrew Smith Acting I
It is a sad fact that arts education in schools is decreasing. At my high school there was only two visual arts classes, Basic Art and AP Art. They only offered one section of Basic Art and because so many people needed that class for arts credit it was so hard to get into. They did this because they only hired the art teacher part time. I didn’t get the chance to take art in high school because of budget cuts which is really sad. This then means that other students like me, when entering the university level might not have as much skill because of lack of exposure and instruction. But this possible minimization of skill of the students entering university level should not decrease the learning at university level. I would rather be challenged and expected to complete projects using techniques and materials that I have never used before, than be given easy projects with little skill involved. The later option offers no room for growth and that’s what I am at university for. I think CMU does a good job at challenging students to acquire new skills by expecting them to use and develop skills at a fast pace in order to keep to the quality of work that is expected of us. This challenge is what drives me to learn new things and it was one of the most important thing for me when I was looking for a university program.
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