Live performances have become the currency of the entertainment industry. It’s most obvious in music, where an ever-growing percentage of recording artists derive more revenues from their concert tours than from CD sales. But the rise in the number of live events is evident in many other sectors, from spectacular corporate presentations to events like the celebration at the start of the New York City Opera’s season last year, which saw Times Square filled with thousands of folding chairs facing huge video monitors beneath light and sound rigs. With gala events taking place in unique outdoor settings, it isn’t just Elvis who’s left the theatre.
The technological sophistication of today’s live performances has created a growing need for an educational infractructure that can teach a new generation of students how to make the most of an increasingly complex and integrated world of lighting, video and theatrical effects.
There has been progress in meeting that growing need. More academic programs have added to the technological depth in their curricula, and commercial schools, while fewer in number and more expensive to students, have taken the technology lead. Yet much of the mentality of training for these technologies remains mired in the status quo, with inadequate instruction and access to new technology.
In a paper presented to USITT, “Rethinking Entertainment Technology Education,” Prof. John Huntington writes about how academia has — and hasn’t —incorporated new technologies into their theatre arts programs. His discussion ranges from Britney Spears to big-budget production trends in Las Vegas — hardly highbrow, but important nevertheless.
“Whatever you may think of the cultural impact of these new forms of entertainment, the audience is voting with its dollars, and the language of live-performance storytelling is now evolving fastest outside the theatre world. These new high-tech mega-spectaculars have taken traditional theatrical techniques and have morphed and augmented them into something new. So why do so many college programs act as if theatre is still the only game in town? How many college programs are covering these new technical subjects adequately?”
With others at the New York City College of Technology, Huntington has created a very high-tech teaching environment, and enrollment has grown by more than a third in two years, from 110 to 170 today. Thanks to a $250,000 upgrade last year, the equipment available to students includes Flying Pig Systems Wholehogs, Strand 530 and ETC lighting consoles, Martin moving lights, a Dataton Watchout mega-screen projection video system and MediaLive and FX 6 show control software. “Yet when someone goes into their theatre arts department and proposes something along those lines, the Shakespeare professor shoots them down,” Huntington complains. “The conservatory approach works well for actors and directors, but it’s been inadequate for how the technical aspect of theatre is evolving.”
Penn & Teller’s recent take on Macbeth, with its almost-magical high-tech effects (and copious quantities of stage gore) has won high acclaim and sell-out audiences at the Two Rivers Theater in Red Bank, N.J. As such, it flies in the face of Huntington’s statement about the “Shakespeare professors.” But it doesn’t weaken his point. Instead, it offers a hint of the creative potential that might be unleashed if theatre arts majors had access to better gear.
Modern music concerts, moreover, are theatre, and with the shift in revenues towards live productions now clear, it should also be self-evident that training environments need to evolve as well. Prof. William Kenyon, a teacher at Penn State’s theatre department as well as an LD and a sound designer, is also co-chairman of the USITT’s education commission. He says things are evolving, but not necessarily in a coherent manner. “There are places where the technology is up to date and places where it’s way behind.”
Funding is usually the culprit, so Kenyon’s commission has come up with a few strategies to help academic theatre technology programs cope. First, he notes, theatre departments can build alliances with technology manufacturers and developers. A case in point, Kenyon says, is Nemetschek North America, which will makes its VectorWorks software upgrades available for free for students as long as the university program they’re enrolled in has bought a copy of the software. Several hardware manufacturers have similar programs in place.
“It’s enlightened self-interest on their part, because they get to imprint their brand on the students at a very early stage,” Kenyon says. A variation on the theme is for academic programs to act as beta testers for new products. For period of time, ETC would provide new products to Penn State classes for students to work with, seeking broader feedback. “We become a focus group for manufacturers,” Kenyon says.
In the case of lighting, Kenyon notes, “lots of programs are using old, inefficient lighting gear. I have lights that are 50 years old here.” One strategy that could pry more funding from school budgets to change that is to let more people know about the energy savings that new lighting technology would bring to the school. “Newer HPL lamps and LEDs use far less electricity than older models,” Kenyon says. “Do the numbers and show how the college or university benefits from lowered energy costs that over time also recoup the cost of the lights themselves.” Another idea is to seek out state or Federal energy credits that might be available to reward a switch to more energy-efficient lighting.
A more substantial investment in stage-related technology is undoubtedly needed, and may be surprisingly cost-effective as well. Commercial education companies are more likely to seek out win-win partnerships with technology manufacturers than traditional academic theatre departments. They also tend to have less convoluted budgeting processes. And with a clearer view of the return on a technology investment, they have been much quicker than their university counterparts in adopting theatrical technology upgrades.
Perhaps the biggest return from an investment in updated training technology and curricula is the creative potential it will give to the designers of tomorrow’s live performances. In a future filled with digital downloads, the appeal of a real live performance could reach new heights. But if educators resist change, that artistic potential will never be achieved. That, in turn, will limit the funding for academic programs. And that would be, to be a bit dramatic about it, a real tragedy.
