He may have a common name, but David Taylor is a designer with an uncommon resume. The English native has been involved in theatre since he was a teenager working in the West End. After stints at the University of London and the University of Massachusetts, he went to work as a draftsman for Theatre Projects in Covent Garden, London. Through the years he has been involved in hundreds of projects and has garnered many awards for his work. He has served as the secretary of the Association of Lighting Designers and on the board of ESTA, all the while contributing lighting designs to several theatrical productions as a freelance designer. He rose through the ranks of Theatre Projects, first as director of project management, then as senior consultant, a member of the board of directors and the “face” of TPC. In 2006, he left TPC to go to work for Arup, an international design firm of multidisciplinary engineers, designers and consultants. Taylor leads the performing arts sector of Arup in the Americas. His background in theatre and architectural lighting design gives him a unique perspective as a consultant and designer, making him the perfect subject of the PLSN Interview.
PLSN: What is a consultant? And what does a consultant do?
Taylor: A consultant should be a qualified expert who listens to a client — a user, owner, constituent or stakeholder — and offers valuable advice to enable them to achieve their aims in building, renovating or just thinking about a performing arts venue. The best consultants are those that connect directly with these clients and give a sense of championing the client’s dreams. I feel I have succeeded when I have solidly achieved these aims — listening, championing and bringing unique and useful experience to the project. Often I am in a leadership role, so it’s up to me to kick the project forward, inspiring an otherwise lethargic process into one which captures the team’s imagination and commitment.
My theatre consulting group provides four main services: theatre and concert hall planning, design and acoustics, performance equipment design and specification, and arts building design and construction project management, from inception to after opening. At Arup the wider team can provide an even more diverse range of services, including traditional engineering services and more esoteric ones such as fire engineering, audience flow dynamics and visualization and auralization.
How does one go about becoming a consultant?
Experience, a sense of calm and a solid mentorship are the best ways to ease into a valid consulting role. Some of the best people I have hired have come from a mix of production backgrounds, but ones touched by the construction industry. The best consultants remain connected with the industry as designers or production folk so that they continue to remain live in the business and suffer the same frustrations with buildings, technology and politics as the people who are our clients. I lit an opera earlier this year and soaked up the day-to-day successes and challenges of regional production. Every moment gave me some sort of insight into how to better support the people who are building buildings for the arts.
What kind of educational background do you need to be a good consultant?
I have mostly hired folk with MFAs or equivalents, but thinking hard about this, such qualifications are pretty irrelevant behind good interpersonal skills, a bright and inquiring mind and buckets of hands-on experience in music or theatre.
Which practical skills are most important? Typing fast? Diplomacy? Auto- CAD? Speed reading? A strong stomach? Patience? Tolerance? Vision? Listening skills?
Most important, skill-wise, is the ability to listen and prioritize information. Every theatre person has their way of doing things, but your job as a consultant is to add value through experience outside of the client’s box. Confidence and the ability to speak — in between listening — is very important. The worst consultants are those who say, “This is the way you should do this.” There are numerous consultants who have their way of doing things, be it designing an opera house or specifying dimmer faceplates. I strongly believe that the industry as a whole grows through understanding the uniqueness of each company and their place in the future. It doesn’t mean that history or previous successful projects are irrelevant, but they are only relevant in the context of the particular theatre you are privileged to be creating for a particular client. The ability to keep calm in the face of considerable arrogance — from architects and one’s peers, especially — is a useful skill, too!
Describe what you might do in a typical day or in a typical week.
My specific skill, despite growing up as a theatre designer, is in programming and planning arts buildings, particularly ones for music. A week might involve flying to meetings to listen to an orchestra committee and maestro discuss their needs for physical and psychological layout within their building — who needs what, where they want to perform, prepare, relax and record — and then work up some accessible visual means of recording this with drawings, schedules, diagrams, renderings and animations, and offering it back to them in a prioritized way that is meaningful to them and the architect and engineers. Later in the week, after taking in a concert or opera, I might meet with a manufacturer to discuss a console, a production network philosophy or motorized winch. I often spend time discussing with constituents seat count, seat count, seat count, but then back to the office to work with the design engineers on progressing the physical design of the theatre, be it infrastructure or the details of the performance equipment itself. A week would be rounded out by a visit with an existing client for feedback on how their facility is working or not, and family time for me.
I think the key here is that a good consultant listens, goes back to the lab and analyzes with his team, and then offers meaningful results and interpretations. The media for this include risers, plots, construction drawings, schedules and sometimes perspectives. The scope is so wide — from lighting to audio to audience flow to rigging and lifts — that there is a wide range of tools we use to best describe the users’ needs.
What are the real opportunities for an aspiring consultant? How many consultants are there in the industry? What are the odds that someone could aspire to become a consultant and actually become one?
The ASTC, the professional society for theatre consultants in America, lists more than 50 consultant members, and within their offices — they mostly, but not all, are in practices of more than two people — there are many more consultants and support staff who provide services to colleges, schools, cities, theatre companies, dance programs, orchestras and, most recently, lots of churches. The best path to consultanthood is a good education, tons of practical experience within a theatre, opera company, manufacturer or orchestra, and then an internship, apprentice position or mentorship within a renowned practice. My best hires were friends from companies I had worked with or students or associates who had come back into the company after an internship or relationship with those of us who teach.
What personality type is best suited for the job?
Calm but passionate. Oh, and talkative when appropriate. I am often shocked at how many lighting designers sit comfortably in consulting roles — I put this down to a couple of things: their role in theatre production teams is often one of quiet confidence, and they also have to imaginatively understand, yet clearly describe, concepts way before they exist in real life.
When you first started, what most surprised you about the profession for which you were not prepared?
The travel. It was fun for about two weeks. I wish people would build theatres in the little town in which I live so I could walk there, but my three million air miles are a testament to the fact that they haven’t, yet.
What’s the best part of your job? And the worst?
The best part of my job is the thrill of seeing people open and then use buildings that have been crafted from my input, seeing the joy and excitement on their faces and cementing that into long-term relationships and friendships which transcend the projects themselves. I have clients I still regularly see that I first worked with 20 years ago, and relationships with friends in major cultural and entertainment groups, such as Disney, and orchestras, such as the Philadelphia and Hollywood Bowl orchestras and the LA Philharmonic, who are still pleased to see me after all these years. The worst part of the job has been trying to balance a family life with my wife and sons, and my family back home in Europe, with a schedule where everyone wants you somewhere else, now! My exit from my beloved Theatre Projects to my leadership role in the structured practice at Arup is an attempt to address this.
Would you recommend the job to your children?
I would be awesomely proud of my sons if they found they enjoyed creating buildings for the arts. Making theatres, concert halls and opera houses is an enormous privilege, as they last for hundreds of years. So your decisions had better be right. It’s stressful but so rewarding.
Of all the projects in which you’ve been involved, what are you most proud of?
Oh gosh, that’s a difficult question. The New Amsterdam for Disney — their flagship musicals home on Broadway — was a hugely challenging project, but very rewarding. As they change over from The Lion King to Mary Poppins, the feedback is still good that the technical infrastructure is up to it, even now — and it looks so beautiful. I have also been working on a new home for Michael Tilson Thomas’ New World Symphony in Miami Beach, which will open at the end of this decade and will redefine the way in which music performance and production relates to audiences and the music world in a global, net-connected way. I am terribly proud of the work I have done since the first twinklings of that project.
If you had it to do over again, what would you do differently?
Maybe I’d ask to be born earlier so that I could save the world from all those terrible theatres from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Then again, we wouldn’t have the Internet, and I can’t imagine arts without the rich and growing opportunities we have from the Web.
