Design

Last night there was an outpouring of disgust, sadness, confusion, anger, and frustration over a decision to again treat our field as though we are not as important as the rest of the team. This rush of emotion comes because this is not new to us at all. The amount of work in order to be validated by the Tony Awards as a category, which was instated in 2008, seems to have meant nothing at all if it suddenly goes away. It’s not about an award. It’s not about the spotlight—most of us work very hard to go unnoticed during a performance (unless we need to be noticed). It’s about validation for the work that we do and how hard it is to do this work.

Jonathan Mandell writes about the life of prolific costume designer Carrie Robbins, and her new ambitions as adaptor and playwright.

We usually consider a fight choreographer’s job to be staging the fights so that they are safe. Certainly safety is essential: actors should not be getting hurt in the exercise of their art. But a violence designer is far more than a mere “safety foreman.” Like any other artist working in the theater, the violence designer’s primary role is doing interpretive work: making choices that help tell the story. Not the story of Hamlet, but the story of this Hamlet: that is to say, the story that this production of Hamlet is telling.

Stage combat is the art of creating the illusion of violence for the sake of storytelling. Some illusions are easier and/or less expensive than others. One thing I’ve found myself saying many times is that the difference between one character pulling a knife on another versus breaking a bottle and threatening to attack them with the broken base is hundreds of dollars.

Kyna Hamill interviews Casey Kaleba—a certified fight instructor with Society of American Fight Directors and blood expert—about the secrets to using blood in production.

Inspired by the Adele’s song for Skyfall, the artists of the new play By and By collaborated with the band The Kilbanes to reframe the experience for the audience members.

A call to designers to carefully consider the details of their work, no matter what budget size they have, as it is in the details that show deliberate care of the design.

Michael Rohd writes about the importance of listening when collaborating with civic partners, and how sharing assets may just be the key to uniting theaters with the communities they serve.

Composer and Sound Designer Robert Kaplowitz writes about the tendency in mainstream American theater to focus on servicing and clarifing one single idea.