BY CARRIE L. KAUFMAN
"It was a pretty youthful scene," wrote scenic designer Linda Buchanan in the Feb. 10 edition of the Chicago Tribune. She was talking about theatre in the early 1970s, when she was a student at the University of Chicago and began designing around town. "There wasn’t much money; a big budget might have been $1,000…That’s all changed, of course. I travel a lot with my work and I would say that Chicago today is way up there at the high end of resident theatres in technical know-how and equipment."
That’s all changed?
Of course it’s changed at the Goodman and Court, two theatres that were fledgling when Buchanan began her career. It’s changed for Steppenwolf and Shakespeare Rep, oops, Chicago Shakespeare and some other theatres, too. But hundreds of theatres in Chicago can tell you that it hasn’t changed, that $1,000 just for sets is a luxury, even after 30 years of inflation.
One thing has certainly changed for Linda Buchanan. She’s grown up.
Not that growing up is a bad thing. The night I read Buchanan’s comments in a sidebar to part one of Richard Christensen’s remembrance of Chicago Theatre, I was watching the Olympics. I marveled at how fast the skiers’ feet moved as they bounced like pinballs down the moguls. I remembered the thrill of successfully navigating a mogul run. During my teens and 20s, my skiing partner, Jamie Johnson, and I would ski with a plan. A couple of blue square, medium runs for warm-ups, then we’d hit the black diamonds. It was our challenge. It scared the shit out of us, but that was the point. I used to say that my biggest fear was that all my other fears would stop me from moving forward. Heading down a black diamond slope was my way of pushing all those other fears aside, giving myself the confidence and daring to move off the mountain and not be afraid to take on the tough challenges in my life.
I’m 38 now. And on a visit home last year, I scooted up to southern Utah to take on the slopes of my old stomping ground. I looked at the black diamond runs, then skidded off in the other direction. Part of it was that I haven’t skied much since I moved to Chicago over 12 years ago. Another reason was that there were only two black diamond runs open last January, and they were kind of craggy. But a large part of it was simply that I’ve grown up. I don’t need to prove to myself that I can take on a challenge. I’ve taken on many. I don’t have to push against my fear so I won’t become petrified. To be perfectly honest, it’s nice to slow down. The ski slope isn’t a metaphor for my life anymore because my life is a metaphor for my life. I’m living it. I’m doing it. And, yes, sometimes it scares the shit out of me.
I’ve grown up. But I hope I haven’t grown out of touch.
A few years ago I was meeting with a couple of PR people about the Michael Merritt Awards. Every spring, a board made up of some of the Chicago theatre elite chooses three world-renowned designers (usually the last trio to have done a show at Goodman, Steppenwolf or Chicago Shakespeare) and a Columbia College design student to honor in the name of Michael Merritt. Merritt was around in the 70s, one of those many young theatre people putting together sets on two and three figure budgets, having fun with his friends, trying to do something that Mattered. He designed sets for most of his friend David Mamet’s productions, including Mamet’s films. He hung out with Barbara Gaines when she was struggling with a Shakespeare company in the space above the Red Lion on Lincoln. One of his best friends was Michael Maggio, whom he was sure was going to die before he did. But, as fate would have it, Maggio got a lung transplant that added nine years to his life; Merritt died of cancer soon after his friend was starting to mend.
The PR people came asking for advice. They wanted to get more small theatres involved in the Merritt Awards, and they figured PerformInk might have some answers. Actually, I think they just hoped I’d write a story telling small theatres to get involved, but I certainly wasn’t going to do that without a reason. Merritt was a great guy, but how does that affect small theatres?
There was one possibility. They had hit upon an idea of awarding one small Chicago theatre about $500 in design budget plus the services of a designer. Sitting across from them in the restaurant, I thought this was the most marvelous idea I had heard in a long time. Those big guys still remember their roots, I thought. They’ve come up with a way to connect smaller and larger theatres by giving their aristocratic design award recipients the challenge of designing a show with a small budget for a small space. How rejuvenating it would be for designers who are used to having big budgets and staffs. What an honor it would be for the lucky theatre company who won the contest to work with one of these designers. The mentoring, the exchange of ideas–qualities that Michael Merritt lived by. One set of people could be helped to grow up a little, while the other set could be reminded of where they came from. It was brilliant!
Of course, it was all in my head. I had misunderstood the PR women, who were horrified when they got a glimpse of my vision. "Oh, no," they said almost in unison, "we couldn’t do THAT. These are very busy designers." Even though the word "gods" wasn’t used, their body language indicated that my faux pas was sacrilegious at best.
Linda Buchanan was one of the Merritt Award winners that year. It’s too bad she thinks the raw theatre of her youth has all gone away. It would have been wonderful to see what she would have done with a small theatre without so much technical know-how and equipment. I understand that she doesn’t need to do that anymore. But sometimes you’ve got to head back down those black diamond runs just to show other people that they can do it too.
Maybe I’m naïve. Maybe I’m a dreamer. Maybe there’s a part of me that’s still not really grown up.