Howdid the new position with UWM come about? Who approached whom?
They approached me. [Peck Schoolof the Arts Dean] Wade Hobgood and I had gotten together socially. Just acouple of days before I met him, I decided I was going to leave the Rep. I madean announcement and he asked what I was going to do. I’d been teaching atNorthwestern [University in Evanston, Ill.] and enjoyed it a lot. WhatI was thinking about doing, I couldn’t name a position for. I just knew Iwanted to change things up a little bit. We chatted for a while and he gave mea call a couple of weeks later. He’d talked it over with some of the faculty,and the chair of the department at the time said, “If we could make somethingwork, would you be interested?”
Theaterdirecting and design students don’t always communicate very well right aftergraduating from BFA programs. How does that fit into the program you’redeveloping for UWM?
That’s a generalization.I thought Northwestern was an exception. I really enjoyed the program there.One of the core classes was a collaboration class I was teaching with AnaKuzmanic. We did a Shakespeare collaboration class. We worked on a productionof The Tempest and divided into threedirector/design teams. Each team would take it from the inception all the wayto the first rehearsal.
You have a design trackand a direction track, and when people actually start working on a production,designers are used to designing sort of in a vacuum. They read the play [anddecide what they’re going to do] and then the director comes in and decides, “Thisis the floor plan I like, these are pictures of what I want it to be. This iswhat I want for the set. These are what I want for the costumes.” It doesn’treally work that way at all.
Every team, just likeevery rock ’n’ roll band, is going to be different. The dry onesthe ones thatjust aren’t going anywhereare where you have five people firing off ideas. Orthe director just having a group of people that they’re dictating a bunch ofideas to. There’s never any kind of synergistic energy.
With people who are yourpeers who you’ve been working with for decades, you can work out what you thinkthematically is at the heart of the playwhat’s going to connect with people.It’s a very give-and-take kind of thing. It’s lots of meetings, hundreds ofe-mails. I like mentoring that processexploring what that energy is. There’sno right way to do it. It’s unique with each group.
