Guild of Scenic Artists: My interest in environmental stewardship – called ecology back in the day- began long before I knew that design and scene painting were career paths. In eastern Tennessee where I grew up, reduce, reuse, and recycle (or upcycle) were common practices, even though practitioners had never heard those terms. I recycled and avoided disposable items in my home. At work it was often a different story.
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I think it's a universal truth that in the theatre business scenery and paints are the most wasteful departments. Scenery, depending on the theatre, throws away a great amount of wood each show, and paints isn't much better. I like this article because it gives real and achievable changes that nearly every paint shop can implement without much extra cost. My favorite that I pulled from this article that the author added in as more of a footnote, was the idea of using your rinse water as paint thinner for your next mixed batch. Often times using pure water dilutes the paint too much, which then leads to this endless cycle of adding paint then water then pain then water, until you suddenly realize that you've watered down your entire gallon of pure paint. This way, as you add water, you also add pigment into the mixture, helping the paint maintain it's color.
It's really great to see articles like this, as I have harbored personal concerns about theatrical sustainability since coming here. It has become apparent to me that theater is a somewhat inherently wasteful medium, due to the inevitable strike of sets t the end of production. I feel that this is a bit of a distasteful contradiction due to my belief that art should be reflective of my values, sustainability and eco-friendly practices being one of these values. That is why I feel encouraged to see that others in the business are also grappling with this, and further more, coming up with tangible solutions to move the industry forward. I believe that theater can and should lead the way for our values as a society, and adopting sustainable practices is a vital example of that role. We cannot lead from behind, after all. I hope to see more articles like this in the future, and look forward to the changes they bring about.
Here we are again looking at ways to save in an industry that hates change and doing things differently than how they have been done for a hundred years or more. This time the point of the conversation is the paints department and the areas of waste that this article hopes to crack down on. The first area is in the lighting of said shop, where most commonly large scoops are used instead of the preferred LED lamps. This falls more towards a facility's issue of needing to update but has a direct impact on paints due to possible color shift and is often forgotten about when making this change. Second, they mention trying to use recycled paints, which will work for some small theatres, but when it's not a budget issue the desire for more stable and repeatable color quickly overrules this possibility. Third mentions recycling ones paint which everyone should already be doing! The fourth suggested to try and use less water by doing a prewash, a great idea but has its short falling when working in very large or very small settings. The last two points were sadly not very conducive to the standard process one about sample boards which are usually done from scrap, to begin with, and the second was more of an infomercial about her program.
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