Dear Friends and Colleagues,

As we compile this issue, Ann is working on her book, Theatrical Intelligence, in New Hampshire, and Roger is grappling with a few space planning challenges in Manhattan. Both of us are entrenched in that all too familiar process of dueling demons. So we wrote about it. A convenient distraction-from-deadline you may ask? Perhaps! The result: Roger’s TSM, and Ann’s On Writing: “A Deep-Sea Dive…”

It has been a festive spring! Both of us were honored as “Distinguished Members” of the Ensemble Studio Theatre, with the highly esteemed actor Dominic Chianese. Photos of the award presentations at EST’s Annual Gala are on Ann’s Theatrical Intelligence blog – Just click on the link in the side column.

It’s hard to believe that summer is almost upon us; enjoy every minute of it! And come fall, we’ll provide more useful information about theatre buildings in Theatre By Design.

Theatre by Design is a quarterly newsletter with useful information about the business of building theatres.

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USEFUL BLATHER
TSM
by Roger Morgan

I enjoy the challenges in my work. Even when I’m short on the three basic ingredients required to plan theatre spaces: Time. Space. Money. TSM. Keeping TSM in balance makes a happy owner and a successful project, so it becomes another challenge of my job to convince the owner that a significant investment of T is required jut to get started. This is a tough sell. Why? A comprehensive Architectural Program is necessary to predict TSM, and a Program is hard to understand.

Architectural Program: ar•chi•tec•tur•al (adj) pro•gram (n)
Quantified list(s) of rooms, spaces, floor areas, expressed in net square footage and/or diagrams; prose descriptions of qualities that can’t be characterized in data.

I think of it as the recipe for the design and construction of the project. Ann compares it to a dress pattern: you have to know how much and what kind of fabric, which way to cut it, and how to stitch it together.

Here’s the catch: an owner often expects to begin his or her project with the design. Without a Program, and with a budget. Our job is to communicate the value of the Program to the decision makers, and especially to owners who are not in the business of building buildings. It can be tricky, because we’re in the design world and we love to draw; owners are bottom-line-driven and want to see what their project will look like. So it is tempting for all of us, and discipline is required of everyone! Otherwise the project gets out of hand, ends up costing more than anyone imagined and doesn’t meet anybody’s expectations. Not a preferred scenario.

Here’s the way we’ve found it works:

THE DESIGN TEAM WORKS WITH THE OWNER AND USERS

Interviews + Observation + Comparisons + Documentation = THE LIST

THE LIST:
How many?
How big?
Why?
For whom?
For what purposes?
Near what?
Why?
+   How often
Sq Ft, Ht + adjacencies

TRANSLATE THE LIST INTO BUBBLE DIAGRAMS

REVIEW DATA WITH COST ESTIMATOR OR QUANTITY SURVEYOR

CONVERT:
Net Sq Ft to Gross Sq Ft
Apply $psf cost values
Synchronize with local construction costs
RESULT: a prediction of project cost

In 40 years, I’ve never witnessed a preliminary cost estimate that has met with contentment. This often becomes another challenge of my job, since accuracy and qualifications of the team are usually questioned.

This can be the most intense time in the life of a project, because sometimes its very life is at stake. There are many ways to proceed. Often the programmed spaces must be reduced. Assumptions are challenged – what can the owner live without? Soul searching begins. Difficult decisions are made. Eventually the Program and budget are brought into alignment. TSM is clear. And 90% of the most important decisions for the project have been made.

The surprising thing is that all of this takes place before anyone has drawn a line. It’s my favorite moment in a project, because the design process is about to begin. For me, that’s when it really gets to be fun.

THE VIEW FROM HERE
On Writing: “A Deep-Sea Dive…”
by Ann Sachs (Also posted on theTheatrical Intelligence Blog. Click Here)

This week I’ve been immersed in another solo writing marathon in New Hampshire, cast in my current favorite Theatrical Intelligence role: Writer. Several times when Studio projects required my input, I’ve stepped out of Baker Library and into my role as Producer or Manager. I have a quick-change-agility at jumping from Manager to Performer to Producer to Director. I am not, however, agile enough to change roles when I’m writing. So it’s been a challenging week.

“Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you’re called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can’t ever get back down.” That’s writer Dave Eggers, quoted in a recent article:¹ There’s the rub, as that Danish fellow would say.

Eggers’s “hours to get into it…” are many. And I am slow. Before I write one word I’m compelled to prepare my writing space, adjust my light, arrange my reference materials and make sure I’m stocked with old fashioned supplies known as pencils and erasers. I get pretty sick of myself.

I remember reading that Ernest Hemingway would sharpen twenty pencils before beginning to write. Alice Walker meditates. (I begin to feel a kinship with those two great writers.) There’s a ritualistic quality to it.

To quote the mighty Virginia Woolf: “Arrange whatever pieces come your way”. That is the one that stirs my soul today. Inspires me. I realize how fortunate I am that millions of pieces have come my way! Every single day I am aware of one piece or another from an early decade or a more recent one; I act on many of them and file others away for later. So whether or not I am in an Eggers deep-sea dive after answering a phone call or an email, I can arrange my pieces.

So that’s what I began to do. Arrange my pieces. As I pondered and reflected, more pieces kept coming at me and it was harder to pay attention to the phone and the emails are still waiting.

Oh, what a wonderful day.

¹ The Observer, by Rachel Cooke, March 7, 2010