2020 is NOT what anyone thought it would be. I think the only way I have stayed positive and active is by focusing on the new opportunities and trying to learn from the lessons the pandemic is teaching us. When we don't have opportunities to design and produce theatre, it becomes crucial to create your own opportunities. That is why I am starting a series called Let's Talk Design. This will be a new video series on my YouTube channel.
The function of this series is to have a place for more theoretical and academic discussions about theatrical design. While I am not committing to having those talks on a fixed schedule, I am committing myself to share them for the benefit of theatre at large. The lack of active productions grants us time to sit back and consider our design work. This is the perfect time to share new ideas and reflect on past processes. In the absence of live theatre, we can still do things to improve production.
For the first episode of Let's Talk Design, I sat down with scenic designer Michael Schweikardt. We discussed his photo essay called "Designing The Domestic" which was published in Etudes last December. The essay features the work of many accomplished scenic designers which accompanies Schweikardts' theories about domestic space. After our interview, I hosted a roundtable discussion for Weathervane Playhouse which featured several theatrical designers discussing their thoughts on the essay. That video will be coming out sometime soon. What we took away from it is that domestic space is further reaching than we thought and sometimes lives in our subconscious. We were all able to look back on past shows and see examples of domestic space in our work that we had not intentionally created at the time. I have concluded that domestic space is a very interesting and valuable thing when designing. Although, like anything, it can be overpowering when considered exclusively in the design process.