this speech was given on zoom to the graduate design (set/costume/light/projection) students showing their work at the National Design Portfolio Review—a collection of graduating students from Cal Arts, UCLA, UCSD, UW UTAustin, Northwestern, BU, Ohio University, Penn State, and UMKC on 22 may 2020. I’m grateful to Chris Barecca for asking me to give it.

 

it is some advice for graduating designers.

 

I realize the last few years have been nothing but people talking to you. So i hope you bear with my talking to you today, and take it in the spirit it is given because probably the only words you want to hear right now are “congratulations” and “great work” and probably, and most importantly, “you're hired!”

 

And while i cant deny you’re graduating at..uh…not exactly an awesome time to hear the words “your hired,” it is true that this event is a celebration: of your great work, and of who you are becoming. And all the things i'm about to say are just a long and drawn-out way of saying congratulations. And also we, your community and your teachers, care about you. And also also, welcome.

 

it seems to me that the purpose of a design show is to show the world, through a series of images and ideas, WHO YOU ARE. so it only seemed fair for me to start:

 

WHO AM I

 

My name is david zinn and I’m a costume and set designer. I grew up on the west coast, dreamed of a life in the theater, and moved to new york to go to the NYU grad design program as an undergraduate in 1987 without really knowing what graduate programs, having a life in the theater, or even being an adult, meant. I am still not sure about the “adult” business but i do understand more fully what it is to have a life in the theater and am happy to welcome you to it. it is a difficult and rewarding life.

 

As Designers we traffic in memory and images, so as a way of helping you get-to-know a little bit more about who i am, i'm going to tell you 3 stories about things i remember seeing that made a huge impression on me when i was young:

 

in 6th grade i was taken to the original touring production of the musical ANNIE. Since i had spent much of the few years prior to this memorizing the words to ANNIE, this was an exciting day, and i of course i loved the show—its remains great, and the song MAYBE is an extraordinary expression of ache and yearning that deserves to not be sung by a 12 year old. But what stuck with me, and what i went immediately home to recreate in cardboard in our rec room, in my 11-year-old version of “scale” was the door to Ms. Hannigans office. In the show there was a frosted window in the door and the light hitting it suggested the hallway outside of that room in a way that evoked, palpably, and out of nothing, a Space Beyond. Another World. And I wanted to do that.and in 12th grade, i was (secretly, without my parents knowing) at a christmas concert of the Seattle Gay Mens Chorus. Which as i say this i realize reveals something very basic about me, which is that i wish i was, like, a punk rock hardcore rebelling against my parents in a cool way, but in fact all i wanted to do was go to a christmas concert without their permission. Anyways, this was 1986, AIDS was everpresent and the man i was there with would soon succumb to the disease himself. The last song they sang was SILENT NIGHT which is of course very beatuiful, and so the chorus—all in tuxedos and in front of a star drop—sang the first round of it with a sign language interpreter doing the words in ASL on the side. The second go around they sang and everyone—the chorus and the interpreter—sang and signed together. And the last time through they all just signed. no singing. no music. But i heard, we all heard, the song clearly in that signing. And as the lights dimmed towards the end of the music, that silence gave voice, evoked, the absence beseigning the community around us. And i wanted to do that.

 

That both of these things were musical is, looking back, not a surprise, as i have always been drawn to musical events.—which makes me think of that beautiful quote from tenessee wiliams that “In memory everything seems to happen to music.” I do think one of our chief tools is our musicality and my experience at these shows began to make a map for what kind of work i dreamed i myself might one day make.

 

My life so far in the theater is the continuing journey to HOW.

 

and speaking of how—

i wanna talk a little bit about your life in the theater, what you actually do, how you do it, and who you do it with.

 

a designers job is a paradox. Your job is to COMMUNITCATE. but also your job is to use the tools of communication to facilitate POETRY—which, in essence, are those things that cannot be expressed.

 

This is a tension you will be navigating for the rest of your life: you are asked to dream and then you’re asked to facilitate the mechanics of that dream. You dream a world with your production team and then you ask a staff of craftspeople to follow concrete steps a, b, and c to produce, ultimately, not something tangible but something evanescent. Your director trusts you to dream a world, and they trust you to make sure that dream is delivered to the stage. The first part happens in design meetings and rehearsals and is a collaboration with your director and fellow designers. But the second part is also a collaboration—with you prop person, your draper, your master electrician, and their crews. That is an equally important collaboration, and good communication facilitates this.

 

Here are a few easy things to do to help facilitate good communication:

 

1. dont be late. to anything. ever.

 

2. the answer to the question “do you think we can do that?” is YES. or at the very least “im not sure but lets try.” but in general? say yes first.

 

3. unless someone is a very good friend and they are directly asking you for notes, the only useful response to someone whose show is in previews is “great work”. Also, if someone is asking for a note, don’t give a note unless you also give a suggestion for how to address it. That is both a good discipline for you, and is actually helpful to the person who’s asking.

 

4. this perhaps seems obvious, but it took me a little while to learn it: in addition to dreaming and being creative, your job is to pick stuff. you choose things for a living: that one, not that one. that one, not that one. Taste and experience are the things that help guide those choices. Anything you bring into a room, a fitting room, a design meeting. your website. pick it. They should be your best ideas. Maybe include a B+ idea or two for backup, but don’t bring things into a room because you think someone else might like it— YOU need to pick it. you pick stuff for a living, so make sure everything you pick you love.

 

5. i used to think about this differently, actually, but at this point at this point in my life i think i can say—learn how to draw. it only helps you communicate and think. you don’t have to be great, but…learn. However, if you can’t draw people’s faces—and i get it, people’s faces are hard—if you can’t draw people’s face, don’t fucking draw people’s faces.

 

Also, lastly, i’m not sure who among you needs to hear this, but every color goes with every other color. There are no rules about that stuff. People that say that there are, are wrong.

 

Now for some slightly more subjective observations. Some of these might seem like contradictions? But theater is a job which traffics in contradiction—its inherent nature is a lie which tells the truth, so please take these in that spirit.

 

1. your job is to make an event for the stage, but shows are almost never better than they are in the rehearsal room—that is, btw, the special gift that only theater workers are privy to—we get to see these magic things up close and unadorned, as family. So that’s the cool part about the rehearsal room. But learn from the simplicity of the rehearsal room because as a designer you need to make a good case why there needs to be other stuff. And that case can be made. But a table, chair, and a music stand can tell the story. So wherever you end up, at any scale, try keep what’s great about the rehearsal room and don’t lose that in the theater.

 

2. as a general rule, directors don’t want you to do exactly what they’re asking for. If you do that literally you will usually scare them and make them think you don’t have any ideas of your own. I understand the desire to please someone, but directors, if they’re good, don’t like to be “pleased”. It freaks them out. So listen to what they’re saying (and frankly this is true with everyone you collaborate with), listen to what they’re saying, but don’t necessarily assume that’s what they mean. Generate your own solutions. That’s why they hired you, and that’s what they asked for.

 

also, be careful of words: words mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. “naturalism” “abstract” “experimental” “expressionism” “realism” “deconstruction”. none of these words actually means the same thing to anyone, so avoid using them.

 

you know what else doesn’t mean anything?

PLAYS.

Plays don’t mean anything. plays aren’t about anything. They’re not puzzles that need to be solved. Please, while i understand the strictures of graduate school and design shows, please never talk about plays like you’re giving a book report. If a director is asking you to illuminate themes in a play in a way that illustrates them in an on-the-nose fashion, then they are making a mistake and you are diminishing the work. You’re not making a book report. you’re not finishing a thesis. You’re making the circumstances for the story, a place for it to resound. You’re making what Richard Foreman calls “reverberation chambers.” You’re making a world, you’re containing air with space. You’re either making the light, or you’re making things for the light to hit. Don’t talk about what the play is about but rather how do you contain it, what does it push against. What interests you in the play. What can you see.

 

__

 

As a theater maker you’re always building your own library inside your head. And you’ll be looking for partners and collaborators that see things the way you do, sense the same rhythm you feel. You should also look for people that challenge you, because that—the pull between hard and familiar—is what makes you grow. If you don’t want that to be a process, if you don’t want that to be an evolution which never stops, then you’re going to stop doing your best work, and if you stop doing your best work I’m not sure why you’re doing this. Right now own my library contains the seeds of: that Annie i saw, and that the gay mens chorus concert, and the cockettes, and dries van noten, and margiela, lynne cohen photographs and paul mccarthy, yannis kounellis, Callot Souers dresses from the 1920s, the Gordon Parks photos of a showgirl backstage on pay phones, and 18th century stomachers, Terence Davies movies, and Wu Tsang, and Tony Feher, and the one director that taught me that the OBSTACLE was everything, the other directors that want all the scenery to disappear, the director who wants every performance to feel like a party, and the director that wants everything to feel like it was always already there. And it contains Nakhane, Shamir, and Big Freedia, and Fleetwood Mac and Wozzeck and Ozark and joan armatrading sinead oconnor and joni mitchell. These are all in me when i come to work with you. Your libraries will contain different things but should and must be full and ever growing. Because—and this is important—your ACTUAL JOB is to be an interesting person. It’s become a kind of trope lately, but it is true that what’s weird about you is the best thing about you. Have obsessions, deep ones. know a lot about things that other people don’t and treasure those things.

 

Those will be the ever-evolving answer to the question of WHO YOU ARE.

 

in terms of HOW that is expressed? I’ve already mentioned rhythm and musicality as something all designers traffic in. Here are a few others from my own personal glossary—they are essential to me and are things I’ve been trying enunciate successfully over the years. Though as Charles Ludlam said “you are a living mockery of your own ideals, if not you have set your ideals too low” So with that in mind, these are my ideals, yours might be different.

 

the ideal of GENEROSITY

 

Do A LOT. Make a SPECTACLE—which in my mind just means abundance. A lot. Go to the Nth degree. Don’t hedge your bets. I think this can manifest in a lot of ways, but just go FAR. if you’re making a big skirt MAKE A VERY BIG SKIRT. If the space is pink MAKE THE SPACE VERY PINK. If you want to fill the room with chairs FILL. the room with CHAIRS. If you’re taking everything away from the stage except one table. TAKE EVERYTHING AWAY, and if you only want to light the scene with a flashlight. LIGHT THE SCENE WITH ONLY A FLASHLIGHT. Complete Your Gesture. Generosity and Spectacle are not just about numbers but about how fully you complete the idea. And that fullness—whether it’s 10,000 flowers, or the reddest red, or 20 pianos, or just actual darkness—that “completing the gesture,” is a gift to the audience. You’re saying “We care enough about you to see this all the way through. We didn’t compromise for you.”

 

Your idea about how to present a show is a promise—Listen to that promise and make sure you fulfill it. When Devo covered the rolling stones’ “I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION” the music cant actually get any satisfaction—it never catches up with itself. When Prince sings LETS GO CRAZY, the music during the big instrumental break actually goes crazy. Spectacle is not just size—The myth of the empty space is just as much a lie as the biggest broadway musical. We traffic in lies. Spectacle is a way of saying thank you. It is generous. And it can happen at any scale—so, be mindful of what is in your means to achieve but achieve that to its fullest degree. I guess what I’m asking you is to, first, HAVE convictions—then have the courage to express them up fully. We are asking an audience to watch and listen to us—to surrender to our story, Our obligation is to tell it fully, and in that way we take care of them.

 

and speaking of taking care of them.

 

the ideal of COMMUNITY

 

Please right now put to bed the idea that “you are not a political person.” You just graduated from a theater program in the United States, and your commitment is to tell stories. YOU ARE A POLITICAL PERSON. If you have the luxury to say that you are not a political person then you are a political person who is actively blinding themselves to the world around them. You choose whose story to tell and who to spotlight, you align yourself with an institution that tells particular kinds of stories. you bring people into a room. These are political acts and it is your obligation to be mindful about what your politics say. Who are you amplifying? and who are you silencing. And that obligation is good news. You will be a part of a many communities, of overlapping communities. That is what is good about what we do. Those communities will embrace you, so take solace in that, and strength from that. But theaters are also in a community and they serve that community. So embrace that. Activate that service. Use the gifts that you collectively have for good—not just within in your building and amongst yourselves but in and for the community around you.

 

the ideal of CONTINUITY

 

Look, theater in america as we know it today hasn’t been around for a long time. You are joining a relatively small group of theater makers. I’ve been looking into the “genealogy” of the modern costume and scenery shops in new york, and it’s a fast line from Brooks Van Horne in the 19th century to Ray Diffen to Barbara Matera to the costume shops today. It’s a fast line from the PCPA costume shop of the 1970s to your draper at the Old Globe, who used to work at the Guthrie with a Tailor from the Alley. We are privileged to do a very cool thing for a living, and we get to do it with some other pretty amazing and talented people and the space between you and the rest of the people that do that, have done that in this country, in the world, is pretty small. You will get to know many of them, and if you’re like me you’ll be moved by, and inspired by, that lineage.

 

the ideal of ERASURE

 

i am not the first person to liken what we do to sitting around a campfire—right? you gather around the light and act out stories which somehow populate the empty dark around you. And you sing songs—the same songs that people LAST year sang around the campfire, and the year before that. And the theater is that conjuring, it is that ghost story—sitting close to the light and making a place for emotions that evoke presence, absence, continuity. It is that singing. And then the fire goes out. It’s the next morning and only the ghost of the fire remains—it has alchemized into ash, which blows away. Theater is the making, and it is the erasure. I’ve said this a thousand times before but theater really is for me the buddhist sand mandala. you spend incredible energy making the most beautiful thing possible and then sweep it away. and KNOWING that it will be swept i believe is what makes the experience so bitterly sweet.

 

the ideal of FORGETTING

 

sarah ruhl shared this recently, from Lewis Hyde’s A PRIMER FOR FORGETTING

 

“the empty studio. Said john cage to the painter philip guston, when you start working, everybody is in your studio—the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas—all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you’re lucky, even you leave.”

 

For you, today is a beginning and an end. Your head is likely crowded with voices from your school years and even right now you are forgetting them, becoming your own voice. I’m sure it feels like you’ve probably jumped out of a plane and opened your huge colorful parachute and announced your arrival on the ground. And you have arrived. AND (theater is contradiction) you have also just started. A life in the theater is a slow story. it is a walk, not a run. And it is not a solo journey, there is no arrival, there is just make—make the most beautiful thing you can, and sweep it away; and make, and sweep away.

 

i said I’d tell you three stories, so this is my last.

 

When i came to new york from seattle in 1987 i was a weird kid who loved musicals, loved other men, was terrified of dying of AIDS, hated republicans and had at some point discovered (in what was called “experimental” theater) the power of a moment when the image didn’t match the text—that moment produced mystery and tension in the space between what i was hearing and seeing. And, paradoxically that confusion made me feel understood. My head didn’t understand it but my heart did.

 

I had read about the wooster group and i had seen that company of actors perform in a richard foreman play called symphony of rats the year before, but in 1988 i got to go see their own production, FRANK DELL’S TEMPTATION OF ST ANTHONY. And that night my life ended. And it also it also started, though i honestly don’t remember a ton, literally, about it: there was a big wall with a bed strapped to it that raised and lowered, the sound was crazy, people on the tv monitors scattered around reenacted a fake local cable porn show and meanwhile flaubert’s text of st. anthony wove through some story about a cheap hotel and a 3rd rate performance troupe, i think.?… And while not really understanding a word of it, i felt like i really GOT it. or, it really got me.

 

and that felt like home.

 

and i have been trying, in some way, to recreate that FEELING for people ever since. That there is chaos, and confusion, but in that is some weird kind of poetic grace. A state which i think is only possible in the theater.

 

anyways it was very much—though it was in a smallish performance space in Soho, where they still perform and where the walls surrounding you are very visible, where there is no attempt at either illusion or honesty—It was very much a spectacle. Though of the spirit more than material—a spectacle of ideas and of simple straightforward materials put to devious, feverish, means.

 

One of the silver linings of this horrible Lockdown is that a lot of theater and opera companies have been putting their archived videos online. And while I’ve never been able to see any of that FRANK DELL again, the wooster group did recently post 2 of the videos that played on tvs during that performance. So, not the whole performance but a fragment of the whole—like a memory theater in which a small thing stands for an entire world. Anyways it was only up for a couple of weeks, and is down now, which in some ways makes it even more beautiful, since encountering it already felt like a mirage.

 

I recorded a little bit of that on my phone: a fragment from a performance that i encountered as a young theater maker equally besotted with spectacle and mystery. And as the actor in the video said these final words (while (music, again) Christine McVie sang SONGBIRD in the background), while the actor Ron Vawter said these words, the heart of the city literally dying in the streets and hospitals around him—even he was dying though i didn’t know it yet—i found something like a benediction, which i offer today, if it feels meaningful, to you:

 

and this, well it’s poetry, really, this is transcribed, literally, as i heard it on my phone. a fragment of a fragment, so all errors are mine.

 

“… in to the winds, we have to move away… and uh learn to live uh happily. and uh, and treat each other well and uh, be happy, and be matter and to fly and never come back and, and uh, and until i see you again… id like to wish you all the best of luck. and uh don’t feel that you have to, you know, fly all this… you can walk. walk on. good night.”