Thursday, December 01, 2016
A Call for Equal Support in Theatrical Design
HowlRound: Technical theatre is comprised of designing and constructing. In some areas of design, those roles are separated, and separately compensated. Set and lighting designers overwhelmingly have a technical director and master electrician hired by the company to execute a designer’s plan, even at smaller, non-equity, and storefront theatres. In contrast, costume designers are left to their own devices at all but the largest institutions. Without the support of a technician, costume designers have their hands in each step of bringing the design to the stage—measuring actors, drafting patterns, building costumes, shopping, coordinating rentals, fittings, completing alterations, writing up laundry instructions, coordinating understudy costumes, returns, budgets, the occasional mid-run maintenance, and strike. The stitchers and assistants they work with are usually interviewed and hired by the costume designer and are paid from the designer’s fee, or occasionally the costume budget if there’s room.
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This is actually something that I have been thinking about a lot lately as I went straight from teching the Rover into budgeting the Three Musketeers. Personally, I see scenery and costumes dominating the process, and lighting and sound getting lost. Media is questionable based off of a lot of factors. However, it is either the most important department or least important. Visually I think scenery and costumes take the lead because the actors interact with directly and they really create the world. They also require (in the majority of cases) the most linear time to achieve the end result. One of the ways that I, as the production manager, having been trying to create equality in my production is by always inviting all of the designers to a design meeting. Now this might seem obvious, but for example you wouldn’t have thought to invite the sound designer to a weapons meeting, but by inviting him we was able to stay up to date with the design.
The author makes some very valid points in this article and I don’t want to discount them by taking the discussion too far from the point but it did start me thinking about the different ways designers communicate their ideas in the different departments. The design process we are most familiar with right now is scenic and one of the characteristics of scenic design is that you specify everything in your paperwork, renderings, and models. Each little detail is handed off on a piece of paper and for the most part only needs to be seen by the designer in tech. Props on the other hand do tend to have a little more hands on work from the designer, giving feedback continually. On the other hand, for costumes it seems like many of the decisions are made more within the production process. I started thinking about how that might be a result of the author’s claims that costume designers are unfairly unsupported or weather the hands on nature is required by the costume design process. I don’t know enough about the process to make that judgement but I would be curious to hear from more people involved in it about their opinions.
This author definitely makes some very good points. One being that its ridiculous that Costume designers have to pay stitchers and assistants out of their fee or the show budget. I certainly don’t want to take anything away from what they are say but much like John Walker, I was under the impression that the different structure in costume design vs scenic and lighting design (the designer being so involved in the build process) was due to the more malleable nature of costume design. Now I could be completely wrong, I’ll be the first to admit that I know very little about the world of costume design. But it seems that a lot of the decisions that get made happen during the build and rehearsal and rehearsal processes unlike some other design disciplines where all the decisions are made before hand and plans are handed off to someone else. I don’t know how a process like that would be possible without the designer being involved in the making of the costumes. That is not to say that costume designers shouldn’t get the support and labor that other departments get, they certainly should.
I feel like because we are at CMU, with our larger and bustling costume department, that we are given a warped view of the costume design system. They are given more support than one would expect in the real world? I am not sure as I am not out in the real world, but I definitely think CMU provides a much larger support system for costume designers than many theatres would.
I agree with Jason, I have always noticed costumes and scenic being the predominant design disciplines in a lot of shows. Media is almost an extension of scenic often times, and lighting and sound are seen as "supporting" the design, because they are often the most abstract. But in terms of designers, I do find it very interesting that only scenic and lighting designers are """done""" after they've turned in their designs. Media designers and sound designers are their own content creators and engineers most of the time. This also depends on the scope of the show, but even the smallest show in the Wells will still have an ME. Interesting though, unfair? Maybe. I will see once I actually start working how much this bothers me.
I think this article brings up a lot of good points, particularly about the misconceptions of costume production and gender roles within design areas. We discuss this a bit with Brian in costume management class, how the costume shop used to be the costume studio, but people weren't taking it seriously because "studio" makes it seem like something smaller and more artistic rather than a real place where things are built for the show, like the scene shop. Costume studios then renamed themselves to costume shops in order to be more comparable with the scene shop and hopefully make more pay. I feel like a lot of this really does come from gender roles. You have the man's place, which is the scene SHOP where scenery is built by capable hands and rolled out to the theatre. Then there is the woman's place, the costume STUDIO where they all use their tiny scissors and their thread to make the things the actors are wearing. The problem is obvious. And I think some of it still exists, particularly in the transfer of design to production; I think there isn't enough of a transition between the design and the build stages. When it doesn't exist it sort of devalues both sides of the process, saying "It's okay it's not big or specific enough to need that."
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