Collaborating with the Creative Team
Kate Chisholm, the director, discusses her collaborations on Heartfield:
"For me, collaborating with other artists is one of the most fulfilling aspects of creating theater. Each collaboration requires a different set of communication skills and involves different ways of working together."
Music Direction
"Peter Foley and I collaborated mainly in the sense that we ran rehearsals together. During the first week or so, he ran most of the rehearsals, teaching music to the actors. As I began working on scenes and staging, Peter accompanied the singers and continued giving them notes on rhythms, pitches, lyrics and phrasing. He and I often made decisions about underscoring together, in consultation with the author, Ken Vega. We both helped the actors to clarify their intentions with specific lyrics and parts of songs. When directing musical theater, it is extremely important to have a director and musical director who can collaborate well and have a similar vision for the piece."
Choreography
"I have been in several graduate movement classes with Nancy Romita and have seen performances of her choreography, so I was familiar with her aesthetic and how she likes to do movement work. Likewise, Nancy performed in a short ensemble movement piece I directed, so she was familiar with my movement aesthetic and how I like to work. Before beginning rehearsals, Nancy and I met to decide which songs I thought she should choreograph--as opposed to my staging them--and then we listened to the music and read the lyrics together. We discussed my initial ideas for the scenes, and any props that might be used, such as suitcases, canes, or the barbed wire screens. She generally ran the dance rehearsals, but sometimes I would ask if something could be adjusted or added. She also helped adjust and refine some of the musical numbers that I had staged."
tango posture together.
Set Design
"Initially, I gave Allison
Campbell the script for Heartfield, and we had a wonderful,
long conversation about the show and how it 
functions. She helped me think things
out physically and she came up with good visual metaphors for
the show, some of which were suggested in the stage directions
by Ken Vega. Ken refers to a platform and curtain throughout
the script, so we had to figure out what he was trying to achieve
with that physical idea. I liked the platform idea, but didn't
want it to be overly literal, with a Brecht-style curtain (which
can be seen in his production of The Threepenny Opera
and others). I wanted to have some different levels to work with
and liked the idea of a central platform which would thrust toward
the audience, so that there would be a very strong downstage
area for confrontational moments with the audience. Allison created
a platform design with two levels, with lower, angled platforms
on either side of the main thrust platform. We also knew that
we would need a very large, central projection screen for Heartfield's
artwork to be projected, and two smaller side screens which would
show projections of the captions, or titles of Heartfield's work.
Allison designed a 9 x 12' central rear-projection screen, with
two side screens as vertical banners. We ultimately had to adjust
the side screens so that they could accommodate horizontal slides
of the captions. This created a very open space in the area upstage
of the platforms and screens, which I liked. Sometimes limitations
create possibilities that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise.
Finally, Allison created treatments for the floor covering--black,
red and grey squares--which she painted to look distressed and
worn. The patterned floor created the unifying stage space on
which the action, spanning 54 years, was played. Allison also
oversaw the creation and purchase of furniture, and designed
and painted the curtains which are up for the first two scenes
of the show."
Lighting Design
"Kacey Coffin and I had an early conversation after she had read the script and talked mainly about the differences between each act of the show. She saw Act I as needing primarily white light to expose theatricality; while Act II needed some more romantic color for the Italy scenes. She came to run-throughs a week before the lighting hang to see how we were using the space so she could go home and create a lighting plot. After the lights were hung and initially focused, she and I went through the script and created a rough layout of all the lighting cues. Then, during tech rehearsals with actors, we refined the cues and Kacey refocused lights as needed. We had to make adjustments to keep front light from hitting the projection screens and washing out the images."
Costume Design
"I made a breakdown with
loose suggestions of what each actor might be 
wearing in each scene. Eight actors play
multiple roles and characters, so this was somewhat complicated.
Shannon Maddox read the script
a few times, and we went through the script talking about the
characters and what costumes might best convey them, especially
icons like Dietrich and Brecht. We agreed that we didn't want
to be too literal with the time periods, that a suggestion of
1930s clothing for the first act would be adequate, 1940s for
the second act, and 1950s 60s for the third. Almost all
of the costumes were pulled (gathered from the TU costume collection)
as opposed to being built (designed and sewn). Shannon showed
me what she had pulled as we went through the breakdown and there
were a few places where I preferred one costume piece over another.
She held costume fittings and altered the costumes to fit the
actors, then we had a costume parade in which the actors put
on their costumes for each scene and we looked at them all together,
scene-by-scene. We made a few minor adjustments then, and again
in tech, once I saw the costumes on the actors on stage. We used
costumes to help convey changes in time periods and financial
circumstances. For example, George
Grosz plays the entire first act in tattered and paint-smeared
clothing; then after he has emigrated to America and become bourgeois (from Heartfield's
perspective), he wears brand new suit trousers, a crisp white
shirt, tie, and vest."
Projection Design
"I had created the slides we used
for the staged reading in 1999, so I showed Erik
Trester how to create the additional slides we needed of
Heartfield's artwork. He formatted the images on the computer
in Photoshop then had the digital files converted into film slides.
I gave him lists of all the images needed, their titles or captions,
as well as a list of locations and dates that would serve as
scene headings. Erik created the text slides by shooting pictures
off of the computer screen with slide film--this saved a lot
of money (the ones from digital files cost almost $4/ea.). Erik
learned how to program all the projections, using four projectors,
from a Multivision system, and once he made a rough program of
all the cues, he and I sat in the dark theater and went through
each cue, adjusting the timing and connecting some of the slides
into single cues, creating fewer cues for the stage manager to
have to call. This was a very time-consuming process. I felt
strongly that I wanted to give the audience enough time to really
look at the Heartfield artwork--did this mean leaving an image
up for 4 seconds? 7 seconds? A few seconds can feel like a long
time in the theater, so it was tricky getting the timings right.
He and I met before and after rehearsals in the theater all during
tech week. The night before we opened, we were there until 5
am! While Erik mastered all the technical aspects of generating
and programming the projections, he and I collaborated very closely
on the layout, timing and aesthetic of the presentation of the
projections."
Sound Design
"Tim
Brown came to the first read-through and took notes on the
sound cues
indicated by the stage directions, and
also on other places he thought might benefit from sound cues.
A few weeks before the show opened, we met again and went over
a list of possible cues I had created. Because Heartfield
is a musical, we knew that the sound cues would be fairly simple
and not too many in number. Mostly they were sounds indicating
war, such as gunfire, shelling, or airplanes. Tim and I decided
to add some comic sound effects, to help broaden some of the
comic scenes. We also added sound effects to some of the projections
of Heartfield's work, such as a clock ticking faster and faster
for the image 'Five Minutes to Midnight' and coins jingling for
'Adolf the Superman: Swallows
Gold and Spouts Junk.'"
Prop Design
"There were several props
in this show such as period radios and microphones and a 1950s
television that were difficult to find, so Scott
Susong proposed that we make a bold choice and create two-dimensional
props that would be created from blown-up copies of photographs.
This idea both supported and was 
supported by the fact that the show is
about a photomontage artist. I loved the cutout idea, so Scott
and his props crew set about making several 2-D props. They also
created numerous signs which Brecht put on an easel throughout
the show; each one had a different typeface. Allison Campbell,
the set designer, supervised the pulling, building and purchasing
of furniture. After our initial discussion, the properties crew
mainly worked independently, providing us with props as they
were finished. Ultimately, I was very pleased with the way the
2-D props looked."
Dramaturgy
"Rohaizad
Suaidi, who also played Brecht, had been in the staged reading
in 1999, so he was already familiar with the script and songs
when we began working on the production of 
Heartfield. The first few weeks of rehearsals, he ran a few
exercises and talked about aspects of Brechtian devices to help
familiarize the actors with some of the techniques we would be
using. He and I ran discussions about ideas he was introducing,
as well as discussions about the script and about current events
which were relevant to the issues raised by the show. Rohaizad
has a very strong physical theater and dance background, and
he also helped convey the idea of gesture and "gestus"
through examples. As dramaturg, Rohaizad brought in several books
about the artists and the time periods represented in the show
so that the actors could steep themselves in the artwork and
physical gestures and postures of the periods."
The Director's Process