Matthew Bourne's award-winning Swan Lake, featuring all male swans streams online this weekend. With award-winning designers Lez Brotherston—sets and costumes—and Paule Constable—lighting— Bourne has re-imagined his 1995 version of the classical ballet for the 21st century. A very different take on the ballet compared to the Nureyev version for the Paris Opera Ballet, for example. Filmed at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London in 2019, Swan Lake comes to us online this weekend of March 12-13-14, 2021 by way of New York City Center as part of a month-long digital festival of Bourne's work. Buy tickets here. For many people this weekend marks one year since the lights went out for the entertainment and events industry, and we all hope to see the doors reopen very soon!
Swan Lake, trailer
Training & Webcasts.
• March 12: USITT21—Virtually Anywhere: Final day of USITT's 61st annual conference and stage expo goes 100% digital. Information and Registration Here.
• March 12 @ 12noon Eastern: Theatre Art Conversations: Special guest Paola Irun, playwright, teacher, director and international award-winning artist from Paraguay, one of the poorest countries in South America, where turmoil reigns. Register here for a Zoom link.
• March 12 @ 1pm Eastern: Disney On Broadway presents Women On Broadway 2021: In celebration of International Women’s Day, Disney on Broadway announces free registration, programming, and participants for the 4th annual “Women’s Day on Broadway” virtual event. Agenda. Register Here.
• March 14 @ 6pm Eastern: 4Wall Sunday Roundtable: Episode 37, Production Electricians: Hosts Drew Quinones of 4Wall and LD Jeff Croiter chat with a panel of production electricians comprising Paul Chadwick, Dan Coey, Tom Dyer, and Iris Novick. Rich Easter who will provide incite into the recently passed Shuttered Venue Operators Grant. Watch Here.
Looking Ahead, Register In Advance:
• March 16 @10am Eastern: Introduction to XTEN-AV: This Webinar is organized to provide you with an insight into the functioning & efficiency of the platform. The session demonstrates Creating Projects, Creating BOMs, Proposals, Auto-generate dwgs/racks, X-DRAW, AYOB, My Library, Templates, and much more. Registered as an AVIXA Renewal Unit (RU) Provider, the session earns you 0.5 RUs. Register Here.
• March 16 @ 1pm Eastern: Speaker Series: Women in Theatrical Design. UMass Amherst Theater: Lighting designer Jane Cox in conversation with professor Penny Remson. Register Here
• March 16 @ 2:30pm Eastern: Chicago Flyhouse Training: Truss Use and Inspection: • A brief history of truss-making • Truss terminology • Understanding manufacturer load tables • Truss inspections – frequent and annual • Truss loading – cantilevers, rules of thumb While truss is used in the creation of outdoor structures, this class is not about those structures. We may touch on some situations relating to stage roofs or other structures, but the focus of this class will be more on the truss itself. We hope to offer a structures class in the future. Instructor: Ed Leahy. Register Here.
• March 17 @ 11:30am Eastern: The Maxon 3D and Motion Design Show: Valuable tips, techniques and real-world production workflows using Cinema 4D, Redshift and the Red Giant suite of products. Presenters Jonas Pilz, Elly Wade, Daniel Hashimoto, Athanasios Pozantzis. Register Here.
• March 17 @ 1pm Eastern: Harman: Special Martin Lighting Product Launch Event: A special global launch to unveil the most impactful Martin lighting product to debut in a decade. Be part of the excitement (check for additional) global session times. Presented by Peter Skytte, part of the Martin team since 1993 and launched and managed the MAC TW1, MAC Aura, MAC Viper and other stage lighting products. He currently leads the Martin product management team. Register Here (check here for other time zones, there are several presentations).
• March 17 @ 2pm Eastern: Bill Sapsis Remote Seminars: Behind the Scenes (BTS) Mental Health Initiative: Lori Rubinstein, executive director of Behind the Scenes, and Bill Sapsis will talk about the initiative and how it can help members of the entertainment community. Register Here.
• March 18 @ 1pm Eastern: Ahead Of The Curve: Host Geoff Platt chats with guests Arminas Kazlauskas from Notch and Elburz Sorkhabi from The Interactive & Immersive HQ in an engaging conversation about the evolution of real time technologies, tips and tricks and the power of what these tools offer you today. Real time graphics and visual effects; The power of real time solutions; Notch; Touch Designer. Watch Here.
Conferences & Special Events:
• March 16 & 17: LEDucation: Presented by the Designers Lighting Forum of New York, virtual conference and online marketplace for solid-state lighting innovations. Complete details here.
• March 27 @ 11am Eastern: OISTAT: World Stage Design 2022 Online Event/ World Theatre Day: Theatre Design Salon invites three World Stage Design winners to share their design process and experiences of attending WSD. Theatre design is key to engaging audiences. Are you curious about how theatre designers transform a concept into reality? What are the challenges they face in design? How do they adapt creativity to overcoming challenges? Join OISTAT to explore what goes on inside theatre designers’ brain. Register Here (by March 21).
• April 6-8: New World Rigging Symposium (NWRS): Produced online by ESTA and USITT. Register Here.
Webcasts & Podcasts On Demand:
• GLP: 10 Out Of 10: Jim Tetlow: Mark Ravenhill chats with Jim Tetlow, of Nautilus Entertainment Design, who has worked on some incredible projects including events for GM, Apple, IBM, Porsche, AT&T and over 55 cruise ship designs! Jim has also worked with the presidential debates, the Senate chamber (US Capitol), and is currently finishing up on the House of Representatives! Watch below:
• Geezers Of Gear Podcast: Promoter, Tour Manager, Tour Accountant Larry Richter: During 30 years in the business, Larry Richter has produced world class concerts, tours and events for the biggest names in music from North America to China, Jamaica to Russia. He’s been a tour manager, tour accountant, tour director, promoter and venue owner / operator. Much to learn from this episode... brought to you by GearSource. Listen Here.
• Light Talk With The Lumen Brothers, Episode 205: Looney Tunes: Join Steve, Stan, and David as they pontificate about: Stan's CPAC visit; Lumen Factor; Planning for productions this summer; What should be in an Electrician's "Tool-kit"; Soldering tips; Slot Cars; Is the Fresnel Obsolete?; The Post-Pandemic classroom; Learning metaphors; "MAGA Volt 5000"; What will Post-Pandemic Manhattan look like?; Electricity from outer-space; What does "SWAG" mean?; and We are all thieves. Listen Here.
• Live Design's Plot Lines With Jeff Croiter: Tony-Award winning lighting designer Jeff Croiter shares and discusses the plots for his award-winning work for Peter and The Starcatcher. Hosted by KOI Award-winning LD/projection designer Roma Flowers. Q&A via live Zoom. Register Here to watch on demand.
• Casting Light Podcast: Host Jason Marin chats with DP Bill Berner on the serious business of lighting comedy. Berner talks about how he creates lighting for television, how the TV business works, and the protocols he works under on set during the pandemic. His nearly 40 years of experience on camera, first as a lighting designer and then as a director of photography, gives him insight into and informed opinions about nearly every aspect of the job. Listen Here.
• Artistic Finance Podcast: Taxes With Cory Pattak: This new episode features lighting designers Cory Pattak and Ethan Steimel discuss how to organize and itemize receipts for tax time. They go line by line through the actual list of itemized categories on their taxes. Once they make it through the 25 items, you can see it isn't as complicated as it seems. Listen Here.
• Making Theatre: Episode 18, All Things Props With Lizzie Frankl: A chat with props supervisor and director of Propworks, who clearly loves her job and the people she works with. We learn that research, organization and creativity is key, the feel of a prop can be as important as its look, and that it is vital to have a fascination for detail. Listen Here.
• in 1: the podcast episode #104 Quarantine Happy Hour #8-UK Edition: Hopping over the Atlantic to chat with some amazing designers based in the UK. Before that, however, Howell Binkley’s long-time associates Ryan O’Gara and Amanda Zieve join us to talk about the newly created fellowship in Howell’s name and the upcoming March 1 deadline to apply. Then it’s on to the roundtable with lighting designer Tim Deiling, scenic & costume designer David Farley, lighting designer Lucy Carter, scenic designer Chiara Stephenson, and scenic designer Andrew Edwards. Hosted by Cory Pattak. Listen Here.
• ETC Study Hall: Steve Terry chats with Dave Cunningham on the details of developing the ETC Source Four:
• USITT: No More 10 Out of 12's- Why It's Time for Change: A discussion about the move for changing the traditional rehearsal known as the 10 of 12. Sound designer Lindsay Jones, scenic designer Regina Garcia, actor Rachel Spencer Hewitt, and stage manager Lisa Dawn Cave participate in this discussion. Watch Here.
• Tony Award-winning lighting designer Ken Billington, guest on the Artistic Finance podcast, discusses how he has managed his personal finances during more than sixty years of designing on Broadway and running a design studio. With over 100 Broadway shows to his credit, not to mention a slew of other shows from Las Vegas to SeaWorld and beyond. He has been nominated for nine Tony Awards for Best Lighting Design, and won for the musical Chicago. Thanks to Ethan Steimel for this interview with one of my favorite LDs. Listen Here.
• Featured podcast: Changing The Landscape: In 2020, a group of theatre designers, directors, actors, managers, and technicians, produced an open letter titled ‘We See You White American Theatre," and laid it square in the public eye. The letter detailed the many transgressions accumulated toward theatre-makers identifying as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, by the predominantly white American theatre in the United States, and has reverberated through management structures, teaching institutions and theatre producing organizations at all levels prompting a new, thorough, unavoidable level of public conversation and accountability. Joining host Alan Edwards to discuss these topics: Award-winning scenic & costume designer and activist Clint Ramos; assistant dean and assistant professor adjunct in Theater Management for Yale School of Drama and general manager of Yale Repertory Theatre Kelvin Dinkins, Jr; and managing director of the Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts at Northwestern University Al Heartley. Listen Here.
