Strategies

A Convenient Truth

If green is the new black, then upcycling is recycling's cooler cousin

by Eliza Bent

Challenge
Sets are expensive and often pitched after one use.

Plan
Restyle old theatre sets and buildings into new ones.

Key Players
Innovative set designers, friendly junkyard operators, organizations such as SHHHH Salvage Projects, Build It Green and Materials for the Arts.

What Worked
Cooperation and creative solutions cut spending.

What Didn't
Cheap/reused set materials aren't as stable and require more human labor.

What's Next
Iimaginative resource swapping—trash as treasure.

Do you print on scrap paper? Proudly ride public transportation? Shun bottled water, buy farm-fresh and sport organic cotton? Yes, yes. Being green is all the rage—various media outlets even tout it as trendy. Just Google the phrase "Green is the new black," and you'll see a dizzying number of hits. So, how does being environmentally friendly relate to theatre—and how might theatres profit from green systems in the current economic downturn?

To start with, there are many shades of green. Some theatres are solar-powered (Berkeley, Calif.'s Shotgun Players comes to mind as America's first to rely 100 percent on that energy source), while others have created new buildings out of old ones (Portland, Ore.'s armory building is now Portland Center Stage's Gerding Theater, while Austin's Palmer Auditorium was recently refashioned into the Long Center for the Performing Arts, which houses not one but two theatre spaces). Some theatres have even eschewed paper playbills, opting for electronic ones (Chicago's New Colony estimates it saved $1,323 in printing costs on its recent production FRAT). But perhaps new strategies of set-building—calculated to avoid waste that conventional practices produce—are something we can all potentially learn from.

I first heard the term "upcycle" in conjunction with Les Freres Corbusier of New York City's rollicking musical show Dance Dance Revolution. (In fact, William McDonough and Michael Braungart, authors of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, coined the term.) I thought "upcycle" was a precious substitute for "recycle," but DDR's scenic designer, Donyale Werle, differentiates between the two: "Upcycling uses the product in its current state to create something of greater aesthetic value. Upcycling suggests an artistic process."

According to Werle, DDR's director, Alex Timbers, wanted a set with a "post-apocalyptic, neo-Gothic, futuristic universe/dance club" feel. Plastic sheeting tangled in a street gutter was Werle's first inspiration. "It was weirdly beautiful, torn and aged," she recalls. Werle began by experimenting with different plastics and found objects, then hit the streets of New York City's five boroughs with a team of six other artists. Stops along the way included Materials for the Arts and Build It Green. (For her subsequent project with Les Freres Corbusier, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Werle worked with SHHHH Salvage Projects, an organization that connects theatres who want to swap set resources.) Borough-hopping Werle and her crew gathered raw materials such as foil blankets from marathons, hair rollers and plastic bags and containers. "Items were collected for their intrinsic aesthetic value, to fit our very tightly controlled palette of clear, silver, black and green," Werle says. DDR's lighting designer, Justin Townsend, worked closely with Werle to integrate these sculpted pieces into the show's design. "The result was a viscerally sculpted, partially transparent environment that felt simultaneously urban, gritty and modern, yet did not resemble the trash from which it was composed," says Werle. More generally, she adds, "It makes no sense that we build our temporary sets out of materials that are designed to last a lifetime and toss them into the trash."

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, designer/director Joel Sass contemplated the design for Jungle Theater's Crime and Punishment, realizing he needed a space that was neutral enough to serve as an apartment, the interior of Raskolnikov's head and the inspector's office. Enter the now defunct Theatre de la Jeune Lune. "Most of us in town have had some relationship to Jeune Lune," says Sass. "The building blocks of our set were basically waiting in their Dumpster. I asked if I could look in their basement and they said, 'Sure!'" Dormant Jeune Lune materials created the bulk of the Crime and Punishment set, which ultimately cost about $220. (A nine-foot crucifix complete with Russian iconography that Sass added cost quite a bit more.)

"It's not that I like to work cheaply," Sass explains. "However, I will not allow a lack of resources to limit my pursuit of an interesting or worthy stage vision." Last season at the Jungle, Sass says, a spate of "room plays" lent themselves to an extreme example of reuse: The Gin Game's set was refigured into a run-down Masonic lodge for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, then repainted black for David Mamet's A Life in the Theatre. "Finally, we punched windows in the walls and hung silk wallpaper for an opulent supper club lounge in Souvenir," recalls Sass. That's four shows with the same set revamped three different times.

Sass wouldn't recommend such a strategy for all types of plays. Still, with the economy's gloomy forecast and the reality of theatres closing left and right, a surplus of unused materials is ripe for the plucking. Dumpsters aren't going anywhere. Upcycling is a natural fit for artists, who have an instinct for inventive and creative uses of cast-offs. Take another Minnesota artist, Gale LaJoye, who recently visited a swamp to uncover a discarded Volkswagen van that will be restructured for an upcoming performance.

Still, there are hurdles, such as fire codes and safety measures—and of course, ingrained modes of thinking. As Werle reflects, "It takes design flexibility and commitment, which often means the building process takes much longer. This is the financial trade-off." Then again, with upcycling, Werle finds herself more deeply involved with her sets and the people who create them: "I feel the line between designer and artisan is much closer." Sass agrees: "What attracted me to theatre is that you could take a pile of red velvet, a bucket of glitter and old furniture—trash, really—and on stage, with sensitive lighting and excellent performers, you can create an environment of opulence." What's not green about that?