Editor's Note

By Jim O'Quinn

This issue's annual Approaches to Theatre Training section—“The Designer as Thinker, ”is packed with handsome full-color images of stage designs—sets, costumes, lighting. Why did we crack open the budget piggy bank to make this color section possible? Because the accomplishments of the distinguished stage designers who contributed to it simply can’t be conveyed in black and white and shades of gray. The world of design training is a rich-hued one, where (as lighting specialist Stephen Strawbridge puts it) “to talk about the color of the light, it is necessary to know the color of the costumes and the floor and the background;” where (as set designer Christopher Barreca notes) “my ideas grow out of what I see...and the act of seeing.”

Barreca’s phrase—“the act of seeing”—is a key concept in this issue’s exploration of training for careers in theatre design. It applies handily as well to critic Jonathan Kalb’s penetrating essay (page 42) about the recent translation of the complete works of Samuel Beckett to electronic media—film, television, DVD. “Beckett’s television-play characters are nominally people,” Kalb reasons, “but more emphatically are patterns of tiny, fluorescing dots whose ghostly comings and goings on box-like screens are typically viewed within isolated, box-like rooms.” Kalb makes Beckett’s special qualities as a dramatist so clear and compelling that we feel equipped to encounter these star-studded new adaptations of his iconic work with fresh eyes.

The impact of the visual extends to other parts of the issue—to Affiliated Writer Wendy Weisman’s detailed account of the collaboration between Houston’s Stages Repertory Theatre and haute couture costumer Nicole Miller (page 53); to a candid, deeply informed discussion of racial representation by Asian-American theatre artists (page 71); even to Sarah Hart’s rough-and-tumble overview (page 59) of the theatrical landscape of Dallas/Fort Worth: “If cowboys were what they had in Fort Worth, then they would make art from cowboys—and the town has done so in its architecture, its museums and its theatre,” Hart writes, tongue only partially in cheek.

There’s a lot to look at in this issue—and a lot to see. 

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