An Outstanding Program Emphasizing Skills & Career in the North East
Three alumni of the class of 2023 were interviewed three months after graduation. They give in-depth discussion about the Theatre Program at Plymouth State University, including the faculty, the programs, and the facilities. They are dear friends of mine, and I am happy to share this content here. ...
This workshop explored the use of projected media. Artists from 6 continents used simple motion tracking, infrared cameras & audio sensors to generate visuals for performance and storytelling.
TRANSCRIPT:
The Prague Quadrennial is a massive two-week event that takes place in Prague in the Czech Republic every four years. It has done this since 1967. It is an international festival that ...
If you, your students, or any other group can get to Seattle next spring and would like to explore the USITT Expo Floor, please let me know! You are welcome to attend that part of the conference free of charge, and I am happy to arrange it.
The video and photos below are from the United States Institute for Theatre Technology ...
The meanings and roots of these words
There is a gobo in the photo below. Do you see it? Depending on your background, you are likely to be looking for one thing or another, if you are familiar with the word at all. Most people reading this are looking for a round piece of steel with a ...
The Gist
+ old-fashioned masking tape
¼” Luan plywood
I will explain the reasons for these choices, but let me start out with where this is headed: I recommend covering the floor with sheets of luan, allowing nothing but friction and gravity to hold them all in place, and covering the seams with cheap, wide masking tape. At strike, pull ...
August 24, 2021
Most of my videos are for people who do lots of theatre. This one is for people who are less familiar with it. This is a brief video demonstrating how expectations of safety are different on a stage than they are in a public space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLejwE8n-4o
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT WITH LIMITED SCREEN CAPTURES:
The audience-side of the curtain is public space.
Hi. I’m ...
August 16, 2021
The Actors’ Equity Association was founded 108 years ago in 1913. It is a trade union that today represents over 51,000 professional actors and stage managers in the United States. Equity promotes theatre to society in general while safeguarding the professional well-being of its members. It negotiates wages and working conditions, and provides other benefits, such ...
This is an updated version of my original Theatre Hierarchy chart. It not only shows who reports to who, but it also shows lines of communication that are important.
In this version, I have updated projections as a full design area, I have added fight choreography, intimacy choreography, assistant designers, and tweaked a few titles.
The original hierarchy is at ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUePrmUi0wY
Trailer for the Series
View all series episodes
Planet Silver is dying. The crew of the SilverStar is their last hope. Running against the clock, the crew must search through the unknown in order to recover the Orb of Life that will save their home world.
Solving Problems: Season Planning + Production Design
Throughout the spring and summer of 2020, the ...
Anyone is welcome to use this resource however they like. It is an open-education resource.
This is a beginning lighting design project. It is packaged as a PowerPoint file. Each slide includes instructions to the student on how to complete each step. The PowerPoint file can be downloaded here: https://scenicandlighting.com/downloadable/Light_Plot_Assignment.pptx
Embedded in the PowerPoint file are ...
I am at a point in the semester where ordinarily, I spend two or three classes in one of our theatre spaces experimenting with lights. One of the goals is to bring beginning theatre students to an understanding of how a lighting design is often composed of washes and specials, and what those terms mean. I also try ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovn1EVlo5lg&feature=youtu.be
This video is intended to help individuals who are venturing into the use of scenic projections with modest experience in theatre technology.
Transcript:
Hi. I’m Matt Kizer.
In this brief tutorial, I’m going to provide tips on how to make the most out of projections on stage.
Projections can add a lot of magic to any stage ...
https://youtu.be/8blclBLKc0g
Transcript
This is a design from 2011 for the musical Pippin.
Director Morgan Murphy wanted to keep the medieval setting of the show, but wanted a technological overlay like a rock concert. I showed him pictures of a complex of buildings in Pittsburgh called PPG place. It was designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee. ...
https://youtu.be/wM90OpeLwBs
Transcript
There are times when you are doing a show when you need to make a fireplace. You just need a good fireplace, not some special effects masterpiece. Maybe something simple that you can burn a letter in.
You can make a good fireplace with ordinary scene-shop materials. You might start with a block of styrofoam. ...
https://youtu.be/VsDTxj4nfIs
Transcript:
Today I want to talk about some low-tech methods for achieving interactive projection media. This is BlackTrax, an amazing system of sensors that tracks very small transmitters in 3D space with lights and projections. You can track performers or scenery so that moving lights and projections respond to movement, even pure improvisation.
A few years back, we wanted to explore ...
https://youtu.be/XZ5NVes86cM
There is a common conversation about casters that I hear in theatres.
TRANSCRIPT
“For that short scene, the one with that thing in it, let’s just put it on a wagon.””But I don’t want it to feel like a wagon, so make it as low as possible.””Use the smallest casters that we have.””Maybe even make the wagon extra thin so we can ...
This article has a follow-up article here. The follow-up includes better instructions on how to include multiple pages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no1haJPCWt0&feature=youtu.be
Transcript
This is a set design from 2006 for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It was for Kearsarge Arts Theatre (KAT) Company, a summer children’s theatre program in New Hampshire. They produced in a space with no flies and limited wing ...
I got asked yesterday about the best way to mount a projector to an electric over a stage. This is not hard to do, but it gets a little murky when you try to research it online. The projector industry is aimed primarily at mounting projectors to a ceiling in a classroom or a conference room. Projectors ...
I’m looking back right now to a summer season I did in 2015. It was two shows: Pippin and Man Of La Mancha. They were running in rep together at Jean’s Playhouse in Lincoln, New Hampshire. The set had some minor adjustments between the two shows. My specific portfolio listings for ...
Sixty different countries from every continent, except Antarctica, have participated in the Exhibition of Countries and Regions at the Prague Quadrennial for 2019. This means that each nation or region has a large space allocated to them within the Industrial Palace to express something about design for performance or space in a way that represents their culture.
Each ...
This photo was taken by my wife as we sat at the terrace of the Cafe Restaurant Střelecky Ostrov (which I highly recommend), looking across the Vltava River.
This is the National Theatre at Prague. It’s one of the symbols of national identity, and a big part of European culture. The National Theatre in Prague began as an idea in 1844. ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMY0Hg3wJwM&fbclid=IwAR0GmIUX47TMOccxyVbqQxREpc5QeXcqhMrshCRqskDtasKZQsm1ma087Yw
In this video, I discuss media that I created for a production of Disney’s The Little Mermaid by the Educational Theatre Collaborative ETC in Plymouth New Hampshire at Plymouth State University. The process of creating media for projection on stage is discussed by examining the step-by-step process of creating this media.
© 2019 Matt Kizer LLC All Rights ...
https://youtu.be/B070QFX9Nl0
Transcript
There’s a common trap that captures some people building scenery – especially novices.
Maybe the drama program is run by a solitary English or Music teacher; someone who does everything for the show.
“Okay, students! We don’t have time for anything fancy. Let’s just get these walls up.”
“There’s so much else to get done, we’re going to keep this simple!”
The ...
UPDATE: There is an updated version of this chart available here: https://scenicandlighting.com/article/theatre-hiearchy-chart-2021/
This is a theatre hierarchy chart that I made for a class in about 1999. I have used it for several classes since then.
In 2013, I contributed it to a open-education resource site, BroadwayEducators.com. It has gotten picked up by a lot ...
Making that piano light weight, wireless, playable, and grand.
Theatre is story telling. It is vital that the audience understand the words that are spoken or sung by performers. Words advance the action. When there is also an orchestra, sound gets complicated.
Microphones help, but there is deep magic for mixing a stage full of lavaliere microphones against ...
I have recently had someone reach out to me for some basic information on Dataton Watchout. I love this system. It has some fundamental differences from other video projection operating systems. This can make it a little difficult for some people to understand at first. This is especially true for non-English speakers. ...
In 2012, I designed a production of Sylvia at Auburn University. The design included scenery, lighting, and projections. The visuals were all inspired by cover art from The New Yorker. You can read about that here.
The projected media had an illustrative quality to it that mimicked the cover art. We took this a ...
Sometimes you have a few skilled people building your designs. Sometimes, you have a lot of unskilled labor instead. Design choices can play to your strengths and get the most out of the shop and the crew that you have.
In 2001, I worked on a production called Ananse the Spiderman and the Golden Box of ...
https://youtu.be/w32k-l2-V08
Transcript:
A long time I ago, I worked in a little family-owned furniture store. They sold unfinished wooden furniture. Really nice folks. There was a sort of a large alcove in the store that was filled with all kinds of wooden stools. The stools came in three standard heights:18 inches, 24 inches, and 30 inches.
There ...
Low Tech Windows that Light Up
In 2010, I was the lighting designer on a production of Company by George Furth and Stephen Sondheim. The set designer was Marni Balint. The venue was our three-sided thrust space that behaves a bit like a black box.
Company at the Silver Center for the Arts in 2010.
Marni wanted ...
https://youtu.be/mcQFnVFTmQE
Transcript:
I am often asked, “What is the Prague Quadrennial?”
This is a not an official video of the Prague Quadrennial. I am just a regular participant.
I believe in their mission.
The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design & Space is a performing arts festival that was begun in 1967.
It is the largest performance design event in the world. It happens every ...
Set changes should look easy. The audience should never feel sympathy for the people moving things around on stage. It would be a rare show in which it would be appropriate to see running crew exerting themselves.
There are a lot of factors that will go into choosing the means by which scenery will move. A big one ...
Sometimes memorable designs come from simple, bold choices. This design is for Orpheus in the Underworld by Jacques Offenbach. This is a comic opera. It is an irreverent, risque, and ridiculous parody of classical opera and Greek mythology.
For our production, we included white acoustic clouds that doubled as projection surfaces. ...
https://youtu.be/NuHW3OAHfEk
Video transcript:
Let’s start out with a projection screen.
Could we dim the lights, please? Thank you.
Let’s look at a projection. This is The Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1889. Maybe you have heard of it. Excuse me, it’s still a little bright in here. Could we close the blinds? Thank you.
Let’s take ...
In April of 2018, members of several groups collaborated at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire in the United States. They engaged in a workshop production of A Dream Play, by Swedish playwright August Strindberg. Jump to video
Some of the creative team had been brought together originally through The International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects ...
This article should forward immediately to this address.
Anything that reflects light – even just a little bit – can be a screen. The bigger question is what makes a good screen. And before we can answer that, we should ask a more specific question: for a specific use, what would be the most appropriate screen?
Some basic variations on screen types include:
Front projection ...
This article should immediately forward to this address.
Design the set around the screens
It is easy to think of projections as being just the background behind the set. An important thing to consider is that this is just one of many ways that you can use projections on stage. Let’s start there, though, because that is the most prominent way that ...
I’m not saying I do, but I am not saying that I do not. In my home, on my breakfast table, I may, or I may not have a gun that shoots butter. If I did have such a thing, it would have a large plastic bellows that you could slam your fist down onto. ...
In the early 1900s, Australia suffered wave after wave of bubonic plague, delivered by trading ships infested with rats.
A group of performers commented on the way that the rats of England traveled outward, colonizing the world, and spreading disease. As a part of the PQ Tribes series, The National Institute of Dramatic Art, Australia costumed a ...
The international and student exhibitions at the Prague Quadrennial belong to a niche when discussing genres of art. Even in Europe, where spatial installations are a little more prevalent than in the United States, the idea of conceptually creating a space to be experienced in a museum setting is still not main-stream. Anyone in the general population knows ...
Promotheus is, in Greek Mythology, a Titan. He stole fire and delivered it to mankind, in defiance of the will of Zeus. As punishment for this crime, he was chained to a rock. Every day, his liver was eaten by an eagle, after which it grew back, because of his immortality.
In these pictures, you see ...
I was asked for a curved balustrade unit that could be moved around the stage by performers. This did not want to be simple wooden spindles. It really needed to be the kind of big, cement balustrade that would be present at an upscale hotel on the Mediterranean in France. This particular season is short ...
This was a lecture-workshop presented in Studio Theatre at Plymouth State University. I worked with Amanda Whitworth, Director of Dance. Together, we presented a series of dance pieces that incorporated interactive projections that moved with her as the dancer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj11A7pKFnk
Art & Ethics in the Internet Age
by Matt Kizer
Among many things, I am a Professor at a beautiful little university, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
One of the classes I teach is about dealing with technology in our profession. We cover a lot in there. One thing we return to over and over, though, is the importance ...
I was recently working as a guest designer at Auburn, University in Alabama. As a part of a fairly casual conversation during a work-call onstage, an undergraduate set-design student by the name of Sarah asked me a very simple question: “How did you get started as a Set Designer?”
“Compromise” is a very ugly word for beginning artists. We don’t want to compromise our vision. This is true for designers, directors, and every other artist involved in the process. A great production team knows that if the collaboration is on the mark, nobody compromises. Instead of anyone giving up ...