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Community Performance Inc.

May 07, 2008

Roads instead of stages. Misty Hayes is a woman in her thirties living with muscular dystrophy. For two years she has been in Swamp Gravy, and is the only cast member in a wheelchair. She can only perform in two places in the theater, neither particularly prominent. She can't climb up the levels to the tops of the stages. Down in Colquitt, Misty's presence is helping Swamp Gravy toward a stage re-design that will be handicapped accessible. This last year, her story was featured in the play REUNION. In that play we rigged temporary ramps to get Misty up to the mainstage. But here in Franklin County, Misty's stage is already built.

Across the front of the mainstage is the bowzag. That's a zigzag, or a switchback, that bows out in the middle as it rises--as if one carved a switchback road in the curved face of a hill. Lying in front of that, and perpendicular to it, is the crescent, a similarly shaped curve with a small raised stage at one end, and a larger stage, in two heights at the other. The bowzag rises to 48", the crescent to 24".

The stages were designed by Joe Varga, my friend and collaborator for almost a quarter century. Joe has many gifts as a designer, but I'll put all of them aside and talk about one stellar ability. Like the best architects, Joe can imagine the experience of an environment so thoroughly that when it is built it holds few, if any, unpleasant surprises.

I'm watching the last couple of days as Harold and Beau and their crew of truss builders assemble the remaining two seating units that surround the crescent. As they rise, more vistas, angles and sightlines that only existed in Joe's mind, come into reality. And they are working amazingly.

Now, regular theater uses flat stages almost exclusively, because of some very understandable constraints. Sets need to be able to roll on and off easily over a foundation disposed equally to any setting. The flat floor lets the set change be accomplished with a minimum of effort. Flat floor, single stage, shoe box house, the typical auditorium theater. Actually a remnant of a period in theater during the renaissance which coincided with the development of perspective in painting. These long narrow theaters replaced amphitheaters of the Greeks, and the wagon stages of street theater.

The shoe box theaters at court created performances aimed at one seat from which the perspectives worked perfectly. This was where the king sat. Action that occurred in the middle of this stage could be made to fool the eye. Actors and scenery followed one another across this sweet spot, hence the need for flat stages and also actors who could stand on those flat stages and be at ease.

Community performance draws inspiration from Shakespeare's stage with its wider angle of audience view, which is similar to the Greek amphitheater. Pods (smaller platform stages raised up to four feet or so), also used in CP, evoke the small wagon stages of street theater.

Multiple stages mean that action can shift with the speed of light cues, and the next scenes can set up in the dark, and just completed scenes can strike in the dark. All the levels contribute to the comfort of the actors by giving them multiple places to sit, stand or move. And in this new design by Varga, the ramps, or roads as they have become in this play, allow an actor to move as never before, and further dispel the nervous energy that can accumulate when a person is asked to hold still in one place and speak. Holding still in one place, or standing comfortably all alone on a flat stage, are skills that take training to acquire. CP helps the actor to feel comfortable by allowing her to walk, sit or climb on a variety of stages or levels, as the director's skill imbues those moves with symbolic meaning.

This takes us to the rehearsals we've been having on these stages. That'll have to be in another journal.

   

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