Miracles made from simple materials
TNC’s design team deserves props for the look of ‘SHAME!’
Photo by Trav S.D.
Prop designer Lytza Colon creates a
piano for TNC’s 2018 Street Theater production.
BY TRAV S.D.
We say it every year, but this time
may be truer than in the past: We need
Theater for the New City’s annual
street theater production more than
ever. In its 42 years of existence, this
annual topical production — written
and directed by TNC’s co-founder
and artistic director, Crystal Field
— has had much to sound off about:
Reaganism, nukes, the excesses of
capitalism, the evils of racism, and
several wars. But nothing to compare
to the present, when everything evil
seems to be happening all at once,
and a crucial midterm election is just
three months away.
This year’s edition, “SHAME! Or
The Doomsday Machine,” will talk
about all of that and more as it tours
New York City streets, parks, and
playgrounds in all fi ve boroughs from
Aug. 4 through Sept. 16. Longtime
fans of this free, large-cast, smallbudget
annual production will be
glad to see many familiar faces
amongst the cast and crew. Unlike
most American workplaces, turnover
at TNC and its street theater is low,
the surest possible indication that the
job is a labor of love. But some might
say the biggest star of all in this show
is not a human being, but a machine.
That’s the scenic device affectionately
dubbed “the cranky,” which provides
the backdrops for every street theater
production. The hand-cranked
contraption (more formally known
From “Access Upheaval,” TNC’s 2002 Street Theater production: Everybody’s a puppet of a higher power, and the president of
Worldcon Corporation is no exception. Hand puppet by Zen Mansley.
as a “running screen” or a “scrolling
backdrop”) is very old school theater
technology that allows 10 (9’ x 12’)
painted backdrops to be positioned
on the same piece of scrolled canvas,
which can be changed quickly
and effi ciently during the production.
According to TNC production
manager (and cast member) Mark
Marcante, the cranky takes four crew
people to operate: two to crank it,
and two to support it at the bottom.
It comes apart and breaks down for
travel, and needs to be clipped in the
middle to prevent sagging.
Scenic painter Mary Blanchard has
been the principal designer for going
on three decades. She points out
that the use of moving panorama
technology goes back at least to the
early 19th century. Theatrical tradition
informs every aspect of the street
theater production, as each show
embraces such diverse disciplines and
styles as commedia dell’arte, puppetry,
agitprop, vaudeville, mask, and
the great American musical. Prop
designer Lytza Colon, who’s been
with the show for 10 years, demonstrates
what makes designing for the
street theater special when she shows
me a judge’s gavel she is working on
for a courtroom scene. It is a clown’s
gavel, made of foam, and easily fi ve
times larger than a naturalistic prop
would be.
“The street theater is epic realism,”
Marcante said, channeling Bertolt
Brecht, a major infl uence on Field.
“Everything has got to be larger than
life,” he noted, with Colon adding,
“Plus, people have got to see it from
the back of the audience!”
It’s quite rare for Off-Off Broadway
companies to achieve anything like
the scale Theater for the New City
puts into its street theater shows: A
cast of 28, a crew of 10, and fi ve live
musicians (led by “SHAME!” composer
Joseph Vernon Banks at the
keyboard) are the hands-on company,
in addition to a director (Field) with
three assistants, and a design and
production team of about a dozen.
But making life easier in this daunting
task is the fact that TNC has its
own scene shop, and storage for hundreds
of costumes and props. For a
show like “SHAME!,” team members
like Marcante and Colon (and costumier
Susan Henley) have the luxury
of pulling ready-made items from the
Photo by Jonathan Slaff
vaults. Some of it is quite fabulous;
an Egyptian style sedan chair from a
recent Charles Busch production, for
example, is being repurposed for the
current show.
But playwright Field works strictly
from her imagination, which means
that much of the time, new elements
need to be fabricated from scratch,
and on a tight budget. Miracles are
made from simple materials. A wormhole
in space in a fantasy sequence
is devised from black fabric and
garbage bags, for example. But such
is the spirit of play that in the whirl
and excitement of performance those
materials will be transformed into a
phenomenon of deep space physics.
And physics is the touchstone for
this year’s show. Street theater veteran
Michael David Gordon plays a
high school physics teacher whose
students hit him with diffi cult political
questions like, “What’s your relative
speed to prison if you are an
American criminal or a Guatemalan
immigrant?” Like many a street theater
hero before him, the professor
goes on a journey of discovery, tak-
STREET THEATER continued on p. 17
16 August 3, 2018 TheVillager.com
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