Saturday, October 03, 2015
Problem-Solving Apollo 13-style
sightlines.usitt.org: The lead engineer tells his team, “Ok people, listen up. The people upstairs handed us this one, and we have got to come through. We’ve got to find a way to make this, fit in the hole for this, using nothing but that.” Then he throws out all items available to the crew in the capsule on a table, and they get to work.
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7 comments:
I wish we did more Apollo 13 style tech design assignments.
I suppose theres two situations where this type of challenge begins. The first is within the scope of a production, I need you to do this show with this amount of resources. That’s fairly easy, because either you can or you can’t. Even if it’s a weird set of circumstances, you estimate the project and you make it happen.
I think the second, and more interesting, version of this challenge happens at dinner break. We have to make this thing fit into this thing which turns with this thing by a crewmember off stage. And you figure out the basic mechanism and you make it work with what you have in stock.
I always enjoy that scene in the movie. Luckily the stakes are significantly lower in the theatre, it’s not rocket science, its just two hours in the dark.
Rocket science situations are perhaps the greatest learning opportunity theatre has to offer, and are what make a degree in the dramatic arts so universally applicable. I have learned more in theatre with practically no resources at my disposal than I ever could from the biggest budget or the fastest work force. To me, this is the designer's greatest thrill. Often, I fear that my process will lose its organicism when I fall back too easily upon trusted methods and resources. That feeling of unwarranted vulnerability and triumph that an actor always describes as arising from a discovery onstage, that is what a designer feels in a rocket science situation. We long for it, too, and we relish it. More so, we know that it is necessary if we are ever to evolve as artists. Such moments can reveal to a designer abilities which he or she never knew they had and give them skills they never knew they'd need. In theatre, the stakes make all the difference - be that in script, in performance, or in process. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think the stakes were high enough. I get the sense few of my fellow artists would be either.
This article brings up the idea of how many challenges designers face when working on a production. The Apollo 13 production designers faced many challenges when portraying the space adventure to the moon, as any production does. I feel that whether it is an elementary school play, community theater, or a big holly wood movie, their are challenges for the designers creating what is wanted in the given budget. But, what the article then brings up is creativity, and I think that is one of the most important parts of being a designer. Not just having the imagination to come up with brilliant ideas for a set, or prop, or costume, but the ability to use change your idea that fits into the budget. Such as using strange cheaper materials or down sizing but keeping the same effect. The important part is that as a designer you follow through and always find a solution to any problem that arises, and you must because it is art and if you do not have the drive to finish something in theater, then it is not the right business for you.
Space… the great unknown…it has only been seen by the eyes of a few. I was not around for the launch of Apollo 13, but space exploration now is just as cool as it was back then. Very few people have any idea what is up there, and that is what makes it interesting. The movie is all we have, since we don’t have firsthand knowledge of the real thing. Neal Armstrong is a celebrity of that time for being first on the moon. Space exploration is something I have been fascinated by for as long I can remember, and the idea of being a space explorer is something that every kid dreams of, but being having the title of “rocket scientist” on my resume doesn’t add up. I guess earth will just have to do. As Mark says in the article “may you be just as successful as the triumphant return of the astronauts of Apollo 13. After all, what they did was actual rocket science.”
Problem solving is a great skill, that is one of those unquestionable truths. Interviewers look for this skill, employers desire this, and innovation needs it. And the theatre is wrought with problem solving. Theatre continually creates new things, sets that have never been built before, effects that have never been seen before. Getting some productions up ion their feet s no small feat. Although we are not rocket scientists solving life-threatening problems, we are constantly nurturing and challenging the skill of problem solving. In my mind, the development of the skill is just as important as the execution of the skill. I wish that there were more efforts to train young people with these necessary skills using the platform of theatre. It would be the catalyst for a generation of new thinkers and innovators, scientific minds that respected and practiced within the performing arts industry. Theatre, especially, is unlike any other industry in that we have a hard deadline that we must meet because ticket sales and performances depend on it. I have never seen a production not start on opening night (though I’m sure it has happened before). We build to hard deadlines where the stakes are very high and we always meet that deadline. You just don’t see that sort of commitment and follow through in the construction industry. Theatre artists are often handed impossible tasks and told to figure it out from the “guy upstairs” and we continually excel at solving the unsolvable.
I have to say, as I am looking forward to a year and a bit from now when I have to decide what concentration I will continue with these “Apollo 13 moments” are exactly the kind of thing that violently pulls be toward technical direction. Sometimes these moments are the fragile minutes when you first hang a flying piece, or test your newest iteration of a falling chandelier. There is something exciting about knowing every single piece of the puzzle and yet the obvious answer isn’t there. You have to dig deeper into your creativity, usually sleep a fair bit less, but at the end of the day when on opening night that curtain goes up it is all worth it. Theatre is unique because at the end of the day we don’t get the option to say that it can’t be done. Sometimes we have to make do with an illusion but once the ball starts rolling we’re going to get it done, and it’s going to be done by opening night.
A metaphor comparing the life saving rocket science in Apollo 13 to working in a theatre. Not a metaphor I thought would work at first, but it did. The so called “people upstairs” are equivalent to directors,designers, and managers; they are the ones handing down plans for things to be made with only a fixed amount of resources. This problem solving, present both in NASA and on Broadway, is an example of just how far the skill set we learn in the theatre can go. I love that how as theatre artists we are expected to be able to solve a possible complex problem in a limited amount of time. I know that what we do isn’t rocket science, but I love it just the same.
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