What is up everybody, welcome back to the channel. You guys in today's video, I'm gonna simply just take you through my thought process, through my setup and really just kind of walk you through a Facebook conversions ad for one of my friends, shout out to Sobeard out there in England, United Kingdom, crushing the whole London scene when it comes to social media marketing for automotive, for the entire automotive industry and for garages out there. Huge emphasis on video and social media marketing and Facebook advertising. So my buddy, Rick reached out and said, David, can you do me a huge favor and just take a look at the account? Can you go in there and clean up a few things and just make sure that all the pieces to the puzzle are connected and make sure that everything is flowing? So I said, hell yeah, man, I'll jump in and I'll kind of see what's going on and see what kind of tweaks I can make and what kind of advice I can give. So thought I'd share it with you guys. I'm over here on my YouTube channel and in all my YouTube family, shout out to every single one of you. If you're new to the channel, my name is David. I'm out here in San Diego. I drop a lot of content on Facebook advertising, landing pages, sales funnels and social media marketing. I kind of focus on real estate agents, but every now and then because of my YouTube channel has been growing and I'm attracting many different entrepreneurs from different spaces. I tend to get messages from different people in different industries and I always like to extend my hand and really extend my value whenever I can. So shout out to Rick, which so beard out there crushing it. And again, I just wanted to share it with you guys. So in this video, you guys, I'm going to simply walk you through a few key components that you want to really look for. The whole setup, I just walked through this, I just got done setting up this entire campaign, which I'll show you, but also I want to show you the other components that are so, so important when it comes down to just this one ad. So with this, what the whole intention is, you guys, the whole objective is to capture leads, is to get appointments, okay? So what he's doing is he's driving it, he's driving the traffic to a cartridge page, to a landing page that is designed to capture, not necessarily just capture the lead, but also schedule the appointment. And so it's a simple page right here that he's driving traffic to. So when that ad is seen in the newsfeed, they click, which I'll show you the ad, I'm going to walk you through pretty much everything, but they're taken to this simple page right here where there's a simple intro video and the whole goal is to get them to smash that button and schedule a call, right? So right when that button is hit, a calendar opens up and there goes the appointment. Okay, so we use cartridge for a lot of this, you guys, for the landing pages, for the email automation, and especially for the online calendar. So this is just a full blown page, right? Services that they offer. So really cool page that we put together, simple, clean, and super, super effective. So the ad is going out, they're clicking, they're landing here, okay? So this is conversion. So when you come in and when you smash this green button, you always want to make sure that you know exactly what you're doing, right?  Sometimes you put out an image post and the whole goal is to just get people to engage, okay? And then in many cases, which many businesses, you know, I would say 90 plus percent. If you ever run an ad, the whole freaking goal is to hit one of the main conversions, hit one of the main events, special events is what Facebook calls it, conversion, special events. And one of the main three is a point, or actually all three, is either I'm running an ad to capture a lead, I'm running an ad to get someone to schedule an appointment, or I'm running an ad to get someone to freaking make a sale to buy something, right? So it's either lead, appointment, or sell. That's conversions, right? That is conversions. So nine out of 10 of your favorite marketers out there that are really doing it online, Facebook advertising specifically, they run conversion ads, in fact, 10 out of 10. 10 out of 10 will be running conversion ads. Now, the whole purpose of all of these other ones is really just to get in my professional opinion and based on my real experience in the ad account for the past few years, the only reason why you'd even run any of these other ones is to get the ad account going to start spending money to let Facebook know, hey, man, I'm serious, here's my credit card, start smashing it, start freaking hitting the credit card a few times. That is so important in the beginning of a brand new ad account. And that's why a lot of times with my clients, I'll have them run a like ad first, just to get the ad account warmed up, to let Facebook know, hey, man, here's the credit card, smash it a few times and let's just get this thing started, right? So that's one reason why you'd run a video ad, you'd run a traffic ad, you'd run an engagement ad to get the ad account warmed up, right? But another reason is to collect the data, AKA the custom audience. And I'm gonna show you all the behind the scenes of that as well. But if you're gonna be running a traffic ad, an engagement ad, a video view ad, a brand awareness ad, a reach ad, a message ad, well, yeah, message ad as well, for sure.  If you're running any of the damn ads, any of these objectives, setting up a custom audience is the most important. And that's one thing that I feel most don't talk about is the importance of custom audiences, which I'm gonna show you our setup, right? But if you're running any of those, you wanna make sure that you set up a custom audience right away. And so again, in his account, that's what I'm looking for, that's what I'm really trying to tweak for him is making sure that everything is connected, right? Everything is flowing, custom audiences are set up. So in this case, we're running a conversion ad, right? The conversion ad.  You wanna set up a custom conversion. The custom conversion is based on the thank you page. Okay, so as I'm showing you these two pages, right? We have the opt-in page and then we have the call confirm page, right? So when they go to the page and they hit that button and they schedule an appointment, once that customer, once that lead, not customer, but once that lead schedules that appointment or they opt-in and now you capture the lead or they bought something from you, whatever page they land on next, that's your confirmation page. That's your thank you page that in this case, it's a call confirm page. If you're selling something, that's your thank you for purchasing page, the actual thank you page, right? That needs to be a whole different link. And so that's this page right here. So if I just opened up this page for you guys real quick, let me, in fact, I got these damn lines in the way the white line.  Just for privacy, but this right here is the thank you page.  You have to let Facebook know what the conversion event is, what link, what page, what is the most important link domain that you're trying to get people to. That's the link we're gonna set up a custom conversion around. So what you would do, and I'm gonna tie these full blown tutorial videos down in the description, how to set up a custom conversion, how to install your pixel, how to set up a custom audience. So I'm gonna link those in the description, but today I'm just giving you a 30,000 foot overview, view of the actual campaign and these super important components that you wanna have set up. A conversion, a custom conversion is one of them. So this right here, this link, that's set up as a custom conversion. And so right here, this is the custom conversion, right? So again, the link in the description will show you, hey, click on this blue button, it'll walk you through the full blown tutorial on how to set that up. But I'm just, again, giving you the overview of it. So there's our custom conversion. It's active, right? And so once you set it up, and again, in the video, in the description, you'll see once you set it up, you wanna go to that page, that confirmation page, refresh it just so Facebook can read it for the first time and you'll see this pixel right here. Actually, well, if you guys don't have this pixel helper, you guys can easily install, it's a free plugin, Facebook Pixel Helper. You can Google it, Facebook Pixel Helper and you'll get it from the Chrome Store and you wanna install it because this gives you good tracking.  It just allows me to know that my shit's working, right? So it sits here at the top. If I'm on anyone's website, this thing will light up and it'll let me know that that person's pixeling me, which I don't have it there for that reason. I just have it here, the Facebook Pixel Helper so I can test and make sure that my pixels are working, so there's the actual proof that the pixel is set up, the conversion is set up and you wanna make sure you refresh that. Once you refresh the page, then over here in the custom conversion event area, this will become active. So we know our custom conversion is active and that right there is good, so that's one thing. Make sure you set up the custom conversion first, that's one thing. And then once you actually run the ad, once you set everything up, once you go from step one, what I call the campaign level to step two, the ad set level to step three, the actual, the ad level, right? These are the three steps, right? Campaigns, ad sets, and then you have over here to the right ads for one campaign. But once you actually set up the ad, one thing you wanna do right away is set up a custom audience, especially if it's a video, right? So it's this one right here. And I'm gonna set that, I'm gonna link that in the description as well, that video on how to set up a custom audience. That's what I did over here. So I made sure that a custom audience, because it's a video ad that is being ran. So you wanna make sure you set up a custom audience around that right away. Okay, the moment you set up the ad, come back here before it's even fully approved, before it even goes live, set up a custom audience. Okay, so again, that video will be in the description on how to set up a custom audience. So one thing you also wanna do is make sure that you set up the actual iOS 14 integration, right? So that's super, super important as well. So once you set up your custom conversion, Facebook will actually push you to set up the configuration, aggregated event measurement. And so from over here, I'm viewing it from over here. So you can click on the three lines to the left, click on events manager, and that will bring you to this page right here. Okay, so down here, I can simply click on aggregated event measurement, and then click on the blue configure web events. And then over here, you're looking for the actual domain that it's being sent to, right? And it's this domain right here. This also needs to be verified. So I'll link that video in the description as well on how to verify your actual domain with Facebook and with your domain registrar. I highly recommend GoDaddy for your domains. Some of you guys use a bunch of different domain registrars, but I get all my domains through GoDaddy and it's super simple on how to integrate it with Facebook through GoDaddy. So I'll link that in the description as well. But in here, I can click over here, go to manage events, click on edit, and you'll see right here the web configuration, the web event configuration. This is super important. This is required actually. In here, you just click the dropdown, go to custom conversion, and then choose that custom conversion. This is the custom conversion that we just set up. Okay, so this part is super, super important. It's required. And I'll link all these videos in the description on how to do that. So that looks good over here. So again, the whole purpose of this video is just to kind of give you an overview of me going in and making sure that all the T's are crossed, all the I's are dotted, and making sure that all the pieces to the puzzle are right here, which it is. So this is the full blown walkthrough of what needs to be set up prior to that ad being live. Okay, so web event configuration, that looks good. And then we have the actual ad. So in here, what you wanna do is again, when you click that green button, you're going conversions. And so in here, as you go to the setup of the conversion, you'll also come to the second step, which is the ad set level. And in the ad set level is where you'll see the actual custom conversion. So as I come in here to the second step, I'll scroll down, there's the pixel, and there is the custom conversion. Okay, so sometimes by default, it's there and sometimes it's not. So if you don't see it there, then you'll just simply click inside the box and you'll see the dropdown and then you'll find it in the dropdown. So that looks like it's going well or that it's set up well. The conversion event is the custom conversion. So that's perfect. Okay, so one last thing I wanted to show you was the actual ad. You always wanna take a look at the actual ad in real time. And that's what I always try to show my clients is look at the ad in real time. And to do that, click on the edit and then come over here to share. And the one way I do it is just go down here to Facebook desktop newsfeed. And then once you click on that, another browser will pop up and you'll just kind of scroll down, scroll down and then you'll see the ad, right? So here's the ad right here. So there's the text, there's the video, there's the learn more, right? So we click on learn more and it takes us straight to a page which we built this page instead of Cartra. So if you guys are new to online marketing and capturing leads and email automation, one huge reason why I use Cartra is because of not just the landing pages but because of the email automation and the online calendar. So if you're in the client services business, those two services, those two softwares are super, super important. Your email auto responder and your online calendar. So in Cartra it happens to all come in one. So if you're into that type of stuff, there's a link in the description, profitwithCartra.online, there's a 14 day trial. You can play around with it. Once you activate your 14 day trial, you'll receive an email from me with the opportunity to jump on for a free strategy call where I walk you through and teach you how to use the entire platform for free. So activate your 14 day trial. That link is in the description but simple capture page designed to get appointments for so beard. So that's kind of what I wanted to show you guys. What else can I kind of touch on with this video? That's about it. So this ad is gonna be going live and they're just getting started, man. They're just getting started. So I'm super fired up for them. I'm super fired up for you guys. So if you're new to the channel, subscribe. My name is David. Again, if Facebook ads, online marketing, paid traffic, if social media marketing is your thing, hit the bell for notifications. Drop me a comment below. Let me know where you guys are coming from and let me know how I can bring value to what you're doing online. All right guys, so step your game up. Organic is one thing, but paid traffic is what you'll find on this channel. All right guys, so I'll see you in the next one over and out.


The Appalachian Advantage plan is the simpler, better way to get the phone you actually want instead of paying hundreds of dollars up front.  It's called the Appalachian Advantage and is available at Appalachian Wireless. Wednesday, May 4, Martin County hosted the ribbon cutting for the Addiction Recovery Cares White Oak Hill Residential Recovery Center. The center will offer inpatient drug and alcohol treatment and will create 50 long term jobs for the county. This is really special. This is the newest ARC facility that is going to help repair lives, get families back together and get people back into the workforce. The opioid and drug epidemic has taken so many lives and it's deterred and detoured so many others. What we're seeing here today is a community that has come together to provide the resources to give so many people second chances. And the best part is clients of ARC, those in recovery and treatment have come over from Louisa to be a part to remind us all of why we're doing what we're doing. White Oak Hill will open in the fall and will house 140 patients. Addiction Recovery Care has focused on rural communities without patient and residential programs and White Oak Hill will be the 19th treatment center opened by ARC. You know, rural communities usually are the last to get access to things. But one of the things that I'm proud about in eastern Kentucky, because of Operation Unite, because of Congressman Hal Rogers and the work that they've done, they plowed ground here in the 5th district for organizations like us to start. And so eastern Kentucky may be national, the national ground zero, the opioid epidemic. But if you look pre-pandemic, eastern Kentucky is also number one in the nation in reducing overdose deaths. We're glad to be a part of all the other efforts that's led to that. The treatment center is housed in the former Inez Middle School, giving a second chance not only to those in treatment, but to the building. So first our partners on this facility, Greg May and his group have done a tremendous job. And when you walk through, you see that even though we're going to be treating rural population, low income population, we believe in the dignity of every life. And so the investments that he's made that we'll make in our facilities to make sure people feel that love and dignity when they walk through the doors is going to be great. And then I love that we've taken this building and given it a second chance.  For more information on addiction recovery care and their programs, visit arccenters.com. For Mountaintop News, I'm Brianna Robinson.


2000 people joined together to search for a missing 13 year old girl near Baron Wisconsin today. The new ground search for Jamie Kloss comes several days after an effort with 100 volunteers turned up nothing. Baron County Sheriff Chris Fitzgerald says some items were found during a search for clues into the disappearance of Kloss, but they still are being assessed and they don't seem to be linked to the case. Jamie's been missing since October 15th when deputies responding to a 911 call found that someone had broken into the family's home in Baron and gunned down and killed James and Denise Kloss. Authorities believe Jamie was abducted and have ruled her out as a suspect in her parents' deaths. Fitzgerald said Monday that investigators had received more than 1300 tips and have closed 1100 of them. Some of the tips led to the decision to resume the ground search, he said, although he declined to elaborate. Investigators are searching for two cars, a red or orange Dodge Challenger and a black Ford Edge or black Acura MDX that may have been near the Kloss's family home on the night of the attack. There's no information about the car's license plates. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland news, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


We're just, um, we're just, um, sewing online. Okay, so welcome to the clearance panel. Thank you so much for coming and hello out there to the live-streaming audience. Thank you for listening in. It should be a pretty interesting discussion. I'm Amy Mueller. I'm the artistic director of Playwrights Foundation. I think I still am. And I would like to introduce Mellie Kotakulis, who will be his meeting is now. I'm a non-linear thinker and there's this long line of pictures I'll be showing you. So the first part of our discussion today will be actually a little bit more like a presentation. Where I'm just going to, with visual aids, talk to you through my work, specifically with new plays, in kind of a chronological order, because that sort of makes sense. When I was thinking about how to do this, it made sense to me to do it in that way. And I've kind of talked about different aspects of each show briefly. So if you have any questions, feel free to ask them while I'm doing this. It's pretty important for what I'll be doing. And then after we're done with the slides, I'll invite Clarence to come up and talk about playwright design. So this first slide is One Big Lie by the Stephanie Adams. This was the first commission that we did with Playwrights. So a little bit of background would probably be good. Actually, let's go back a little bit further. The way that I got involved in new plays, specifically as a designer, was right after college. I was trained in a very intensive program that was very commercial theater bound. And I was pretty dissolutioned by that in four years about that. I didn't think I liked theater anymore when I was done with college, which is really sad to date to be in after studying for four years. And so I moved to London because I heard that there was really good theater there. And I was like, well, I'm just going to have to go there though, because I don't really want to go there. And I saw all of the better theater for about six months straight. And my favorite, favorite, favorite show was something that I saw at the Bush Theater, which was downstairs in the basement in Pub where I was drinking theater. And it was so wonderful. I connected straight to the story. And what was wonderful is that it was a new play that had just been written by somebody who was probably around my age, a little bit older, and there was such an immediacy to it and such a relevance. And I just felt like, oh, this is theater that I want to do from now on. And so I came back very inspired. I moved to San Francisco and then worked in an insurance agency. But I did theater at night and started doing as much theater as I could. And I started a collective company that was now kind of viable, which you sort of know for working in new playwrights. And it was sort of accidental, but sort of on purpose in terms of those connections that make sense to you. And this was our first commission that we had. And it was through the Playwrights Foundation that we did it. And so we commissioned Liz, which we had already done whatever plays, and we commissioned her to write play specifically for our theater company with our company and mine and our actors. But I was also included in the process, which was wonderful from the very beginning. So that was the first time I went to a retreat for the festival, which we just did a couple weeks ago, or even last week, and started in Olympus very early. And that was the first time I'd ever worked with a playwright that early. I had always encountered a script after it was written, or was close to being done. And this is the first time I'd ever done a play where not a word had been written at all. It was involved with workshops and things that normally designers aren't involved in, just because they're not. And that was a really interesting experience to start to be part of that process and really have the playwright listen to us through workshop group, laying on the floor, doing live stage, talking about those strange things. It was really, really fascinating for me. And the idea for the set actually came to us after the retreat. So it came quite early, which doesn't always happen. It was a playwright who was a little dumb. But it was a musical, which was the first time I'd ever done that, either. And you can see from it, it's in a tiny space, just pretty typical, often of new work, or very, very new work. And I guess there are certain principles, sort of rules, I don't know if they're really rules, but they end up happening over and over again. And a lot of the design work that we've placed in I've found is that the design office to be open and somewhat simple and very, very flexible. The play is not always done when you have to make someone build it, or when you have to design it, or when you have to create your part of it. Things that aren't always going to completely finish state. So working with that is a very different experience. And so keeping it open and having a single person we've had, we sort of created a space where a lot of blocking was possible and a lot of possibilities existed. And then the director could explore those without too much impediment. But we didn't want this set to repeat things. So it was sort of like a larger environment for the play to kind of grow and change and evolve. Even through preview. We had done shows where we really cut big pieces and set them during the last couple of years. So I've learned over time to try to accommodate that in the early stage so that it's not an impact. Do you want to tell your story, Amy? About the costume? Yeah, sure. Oh. Yeah, well we don't have a picture of it, I don't think. No. But we actually might be on the Pride and Fire website. So the costumes all came in and the characters were gods in first act. Or there were god characters in all of that before gods. Right. Yeah. And so they were each dressed in, you know, with different eras in my opinion. That was another thing too. This was a sort of mishmash of a lot of different types of mythology. And to try to ground it, we said it quite a specific place in terms of it looking like a certain style, but heightened it. Sort of like being specific while being general and the same. That way the costumes were more defining. I wish I had more pictures. Yeah. I think it's on their website a little bit later. And so one of the costumes came in and it was a whole bunch of layers of tulle. And the god was kind of like a, she was like a, I'm trying to think of the right word, a sadistic sex god, what is that called again? Scominatrix. Thank you. So she was a dominatrix. And the tulle kind of was covering her gorgeous long legs. And it was around midnight or one o'clock in the morning, one night. And I was like, guys, she just looks really awful. Because the tulle thing, you're looking really bad. And you can't see her beautiful legs. And so at some point the costumes, I was like, you know, you need to, I'm done, you know, I have to work on all this stuff. So, you know, I said, can I take a picture?  So the actress put the thing on and I don't know, I put myself into a state and you went into the room and I just started cutting like it was hair. And I didn't know what I was doing. I really didn't. And it was, it was amazing. I mean, I guess it's a good testament to the idea of improvisation and being able to be flexible. You know, a lot of times when I do theater, when I design a show, that's not necessarily a new play, but you know, the stash, whatever it is, a known writer. And maybe people have seen this play in many different renditions or whatever it is, we, the idea of creating a concept or imposing an idea on the play is pretty common and it happens all the time. And then you're like, this is my idea, what am I going to do with the play and I'm going to do that with the play. And the new plays are not at all about that at all. They're about having the person in the room who can create the work. And maybe they're not always in the room with you, but it's new enough to where you can have a conversation with that person and talk about it and really get to the part of what's happening. You're not putting an idea on top of another idea, you're just illuminating it, which is a completely different experience, I think. But there is that improvisation that happens, this sort of like, it's not working, let's make it work. The next show was also about Liz Duffy Adams. So this is a very different circumstance where this is a play she had already written. And so we weren't part of the development or I wasn't part of that. So, okay. And this is The Listener. It's sort of a post-apocalyptic world. And again, it was really wonderful to have her around, even though the piece was already written, to be able to ask questions and have a relationship with her and establish that. I think that's another part of playmaking that I really love and cherish and love as a designer is creating relationships with writers and having them last through more than one production and having, I guess, certain, how about, I guess, what's even in intimacy, just sort of knowing their language really well, already knowing an aesthetic that they have and fine matches, you know, it's a partnership. It's often like I keep working with the same directors and keep working with the same writers. It comes kind of with them, in a lot of ways. And I mean, a lot of the ideas for this play came from having lunch, having casual conversations. You know what I mean? It wasn't formal meetings where you would sit down and kind of have these good ideas. It was cool for you to put, can you make this big, even though it's an off bit, maybe it's easy to do. Yeah. I wonder if this... What's that? F5. What's that? F5. Thank you. Is that better? One more. Yeah. Good. See more. Well, here's the next one. Okay. How do I go back? It's good. Here? Huh. This is a larger environment. And it was made... This was also a very improvised piece.  Necessarily. I did know, you know, the listener's house was a smaller environment than the larger environment. We talked a lot about it. There's an object in the play called the machine and it's a way in which the listener listens and tries to communicate with this other world or is sort of on this abandon in this world. But she doesn't write what the machine is. She just calls it the machine. Which to me is like a dream as a designer to be able to interpret that. You know, because that could mean anything. And for me it meant coke machine. Which I'm sorry about getting that out of the junkyard. But, you know, the idea that that could be open to anything. You know, oh Liz, I have some idea. I'm taking the machine to coke machine. Because like when the world ends, the only thing that's going to be left is copper, which is a coke, you know, or whatever. You know, what would be the detritus of our society? Like what are the specific things that we pick? And you know, having conversations about what will be left, if you look at the bottom here, these are all trash bags at the bottom of the screen. And kind of scurrying the whole thing. You know, she had given us this dramaturgical stuff. These articles about how most plastic is swore in the ocean, in the middle of the ocean. You know, these sort of, these facts that you find out as you research the play that, you know, make you make the decisions that you make. Getting that extra information. You know, you can collaborate with people and play right about what, not just what's on the page, but what's on their minds and how they hate to write or play with their feelings about them. So this was sort of all happened. There was no, I mean, it's a linear process to begin it and end it, but within that there was just a lot of back and forth of creating it. This is San Francisco Mytru. This is an experience of a designer working with a collective of writers, which is really challenging. The play that worked would change a lot. And so, again, this is not the best picture, but there was a play about genetic, friendly food, genetically altered food and the effect of it.  It's a very broad style, comane style. And so there's a certain design aspect that will probably, won't change. It feels like a cartoon. But that was also the play was changing all the time. I also didn't quite know who to ask questions to. You know, if you ask people as a group as a whole they don't agree, they agree. It was really a dynamic experience, but really I also had fun to kind of learn the ins and outs of kind of negotiating and kind of relationship. And of course, I haven't spoken necessarily about the director, who is obviously a huge part of that relationship. Sometimes it's a new play, but we don't have access to the playwright all the time. So that's the person sort of leading the charge depending on the relationships. I hope the name of this play was immediate. This is a play called Archaeology by Rachel Axler. And the next one is called Handfoot Marvin based by NatSmart. And these were two plays that I did at UCSD when I was in graduate school. That was sort of the next step was to go to a place where lots of playwrights were all the time so I could talk to them whenever I wanted to for the next three years. You know, like that was a very big part of wanting to further my education and be part of a collective of people that playwriting was at the center of my design experience in graduate school. And so these were new plays that were being created at the time. If the two playwrights wanted to talk to me, they would talk to me as they were writing it which did happen a couple of times and very, very involved in the process because they were still processing it. And so this was part of the involvement in the play, for instance. This first one is called Archaeology which is an idea of this woman sort of mining herself out of these holes that you see in the ground. And that's Sam. I've been sort of assembling herself in the Earthquake, the medical earthquake sort of making discoveries about herself. And this play was a retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story which was a really interesting idea of taking a classic story that they all know and retelling it. This is Eurydice by Sarah Bull. I also did the same with CSD. And it was a really interesting process. This is where I started to learn about the idea. The director came in and said, this hasn't been done, it's not only been done, I think you want to replace the country. I didn't play it to my credit for the first time. I didn't know anything except that. It was great for me in a lot of ways. Such an amazing experience to feel so connected. And so the director said, oh, you know, we're not going to talk about what the play is about at all. We're going to solve certain moments in the play and that's how we will come to figure out the visual landscape of the play. And I had no idea what he was talking about. I was like, what are you talking about? I want to talk about what I think the play is about and that's how we came up with the design. I said, no, no, no. We have to discover what the play is. Which was language I hadn't quite understood yet. And we were at an impasse for a while because I felt like we were speaking to different languages. And I said, can we just call Sarah up and let us ask her some questions? And he said, sure. And it went from phone calls to her actually coming to UC State which was the very part that she was and engaging conversation with her. And that completely opened up the play for me. It was so helpful to have her answer questions. And she didn't, you know, one of the big questions I asked her was why is she a, there's a theme of play if you don't know it, of water and river sticks and she's always searching for this water source. And she's, you know, and I said why is she always looking for water? But what is that? She's like, well, you know, she's thirsty. And I thought, that, okay. But that really started the conversation with the idea of thirsty and was it going to be thirsty? And in this play, how do you, in a visual way, create the landscape of the play about the water that lives in the idea of water without ever having any water creating that visual metaphor? And that's what we did for it. That's sort of, that one question and that one answer, it just sparked the design process in a way that I think never, I know would never happen otherwise. Just answering that question. And so we have this wall of water bottles. There are water cooler bottles. So you see the water cooler there. And they're on end. And she has these amazing stage directions which are impossible to actually, to accomplish in theater. A lot of the stage directions that cerebral rights are like, she calls them enormous lifestyles where they're very fantastical and beautiful and they're about to feel in the moment. And so that was the stage directions for when she falls into hell. Part of the play takes place on Earth, the rest takes place in the underworld. And she also says that the set doesn't change which I thought was really challenging as well because the director's like, well of course the set changes, but it doesn't change. And someone says to you, the set changes but it doesn't change. You have to figure out what that really means. And so I thought, what if it, what if, what's it we see on stage exists in a different way. So we've seen it one way and then we'll just see it a different way. So that was the idea of the bottles. You see this wall of bottles, it's Earth. And then they all fall down in this big tidal wave which was wonderful because it looked like water. And then they trudge through these bottles for the rest of the play.  Right now. I didn't have to walk through these bottles but it was, the physical thing that it did to the actors was really great in terms of having this obstacle, this thing to try to get through to get to this other person who plays very much about communication and try to say I'm not being connected with other people. This is one of the last moments of the play where Orpheus is in seniority and then he has to leave the underworld. And so that moment of the play was this very huge light that eliminated kind of eliminated everything in the way that I think it seemed to be. And then this is another shot. So basically we had water in that wall. Obviously I did. And that actually leads me to sort of the process that we're doing here. These weeks that, these art designers have been involved with the playmaking process and what the Playwrights Foundation does which allows the writers to do whatever they need to do with their writing for the next two weeks for a period. And our job as designers is to just talk with them and maybe give them some visual ideas of what we have and how the play makes us feel. And I do this method which I learned in graduate school which I still do a lot but they're called Cornell boxes. If you're not familiar with Joseph Cornell you should sort of get familiar with him and be familiar with him by looking at something like this which is a sculpture made out of kind of objects. And the reason I think, okay. Okay. Okay. Cornell's in a copyright. What do I do? There we go. No, it's freaking out. It's a saucer signal. Is that a saucer signal? Yeah, that's better. Okay, I can talk about that for a second. And it made a found object a sculptural thing just having a deal designed from here to create a sculptural landscape for the play, a visual landscape whether we're set designers, costume designers, sound designers, light designers, it's all about the landscape, the world in which the play lives. So that's the reason I think the Cornell boxes do so well because the objects are real and when we deal with theater we certainly deal with this other world but it is a reflection of the real world. And so there's some collage work up right now which is sort of the first step of getting into the Cornell box but it's the idea of collaging and creating. Is it a five? Yes. This is a Cornell box I made from blood wedding so obviously it can be for anything, any play I've done them for collage work it's a reaction to piece of art, piece of written art. There's another one for costume designer all along. The idea of something of that scale as well feels very intimate which I think works very, very well. This next show is called The Bright River by Tim Barski. This is an experience where I worked with a writer who was also a performer in the play that I had to really experience that before where I would be going through a design process when the writer was present but then present through the entire experience including the performance. And he, the way it's also very individual how people work he was really into putting things on the set himself this set was sort of an assemblage this is also a post-apocalyptic world it was an assemblage of a lot of metal where this junk dirty feeling very sculptural but as I was assembling it he was a pretty integral part which I thought was wonderful I loved that idea of having a partner in the creation of something visual. This is also this was an experience of creating a play with a group of people as well. This is Linky by Octavio Solis I did this play with him with Cornerstone Theater Cornerstone Theater is a professional theater something that creates community-based theater and the way in which we did this play is Octavio and I and other people went out to the community it was going to be written and listened to stories so this play is about people at the end of their lives and their career people who specifically the play ended up in a place of people with dementia and Alzheimer's who's memories are intact and about people who love them who love them and care for them and so the community was part of the whole entire process including creating the play writing the play Octavio ultimately was a playwright that they were involved from the beginning to the end and then they joined the company of actors and performed the play and so having going to story circles again was a very I had never done that before I had never seen the evolution of how the play was created by listening to other people writing it into a piece of art the set again was sort of an environment an environmental type of thing all things that you see there are some giant graphs of photographs framed photographs these are framed photographs of everybody who was involved with the play so every single photograph on that set was somebody that in the play knew was their family and was that a deep connection that we felt it was really really important to create that on stage to know that your environment you had that deep connection to it and everybody participated so it felt like I wasn't designing the set for myself it felt like everybody was there with me and then for moments of memory some of the pictures laid up we had them light up when the memory sequences were happening so the set sort of helped create an understanding of what was happening in the play at that moment and sort of eliminated it and then this was another play I did with Octavia called Gibraltar at Thick House right here in this space and so by that time I knew Octavia really well because we had done the cornerstone show and so I already had a very short end with him and this play had already been done in working shapes and I said do you want to talk about the set from there because that's what we wanted to discuss and we said no no no let's you know make our own play and I thought that was an interesting experience if I'm working with a writer who who's played it already been done not very many times, whatever time but the idea of starting over and doing something new with that was really exciting I had a little bit of a fear like well I'm going to have to do something something else is done and so I ended up looking very different I think from the original production I don't know about it but we created a it's about Gibraltar and the play feels like it's very much on the boat so that we sort of created you can't see it but it felt very much like this thing was floating in space in water on this space this is Nero by Stephen Satter and Duncan Shee this is one of the first musical things that I had done with writers again the idea was sort of backstage of the circus which is sort of how they wrote the play but the director had a very big influence on the visual elements of the play she was very movement based so when I read the play and heard the music and then she sat down and talked about what she wanted to do it was totally different than what I read to play so it's interesting to have her point of view and then what I thought was happening and then the writers in the room they turned into this really interesting triangle of like I don't know like throwing them all to each other and sort of figuring it out and changing it so there was a real evolution of what happened and this is sort of what we settled on which was again a really open space that had some specific elements but allowed for the possibility of things to happen so we had this this stereo that moved around and we saw the space before and the grubs and some doorways and the idea of being able to do really interesting movement and I mean that should have changed literally obviously but I think it changed after like it never stayed the same and so you have to I feel like as a designer like I have to be prepared for the idea that they're going to completely cut a different piece or add another piece and then be prepared to be part of that discussion you know and the idea of versatility there was like there was like I pulled this picture there was also there were these chandeliers and we didn't have I was like let's make them so that we could pull them down enough not ever having an idea of what that would mean but we did make the set very versatile like movable and versatile so that we could pick stuff up and move it if we needed to and it ended up for the fire during the fire sequence you know and that was how we created that fire and we didn't know that at all until we were like in the room she hadn't figured that part out yet and then we were like she was like oh the chandeliers come down and I was like thank you they do you know what I mean so we have to do that part so fun moment this was in the same exact space an hour later this is for a new play festival called Hot House of Magic Theater and so again very open space being very flexible this plays about three different people this is morbidity and mortality for the Baron the idea of being able to be very versatile with your three actors on stage and move them around but still having the second picture the design looks pretty different the lighting designer is crucial I think anyway but in terms of having that difference your scenery doesn't really change having the ability to really change the movie this is Aaron's play first person shooter that I did we did at the XF Playhouse this is the model the reason I want to show the model is because it's almost impossible to get a picture of the entire set in that space at all it's so like intense as well and his play is about video games if you want the one word what it is and there was a lot of projection that had to be shown for the show and it's a challenging space in which to do that but I also felt this very claustrophobic feeling in the play there's this feeling in the track all the time there's this presence of feeling in the stage which is kind of where I went with that but also this sort of feeling of a blank slate that you can make it anything you want which is what it is because the video games really did color the set and a really interesting way during this playing with and then here it's more environmental here's not about the video games Aaron do you want to see anything about that we started to have a discussion about it lunch or something during the retreat and I was like oh that's so interesting I didn't know I didn't really know what it was but you said you had this different and you can come down and take the guy what's the sorry this was my first serious professional production and it was I had done a fulling play with Crown of Fire in a matchbox before that but this was the first time I actually acted and I sort of I grew up reading plays where the playwright was quite prescriptive about the set Tennessee Williams is like there will be a script and this will be that there's this room here and there's this wall here there's a telephone and Ibsen does the same thing you change Ibsen's set and any of his ideas is like your own hero he actually sat for a year and he was planning where every character is at every moment whether they're on stage or off stage he was like don't you change anything so I always had that kind of playwright who was my responsibility to design the set for somebody to know the physical space so this was the kind of set there will be a shadow screen I don't even remember what you wrote exactly and so this was very different from what I had written and I think it was so I ignored it completely you ignored it completely I believe much the improvement of the play that what I said in the description was that all this stuff that was going to happen in shadow screen projections characters behind the shadow screen were in development yeah it never worked it never works I was like no I believe it could work that's great yeah you're obviously going to keep talking you don't want to do that and so this idea of using video rejections enabled us to suddenly have all the various places in place set in Illinois in Silicon Valley there was a scene in the hotels in a new studio and because of the projections we were able to make all of those things possible it was a really sad scene and we were also able to do some rejections for the game itself where the co-workers create a deep video game environment and capture video footage of that so it made a lot of stuff possible it would not have been possible did that change the way you write stage rejections? it changed the way I write stage rejections things most interesting about it changed the way I thought about the play so then that set you designed what became the set for that play in my head for a while and when the play was done I was like where is it? it wasn't necessarily done then in the same way again so one production that Trump actually did shadow screens that suggested that was hard for Trump as well even smaller space I think this would be a good time for other players to come down and sort of shift the conversation to I guess to you guys as well in terms of designing how do you think of design do you not think of it how do you think of it in terms of have there been moments like what you just described changing the way you talk to things does it change all the time that's a lot of questions I love talking to designers because I my visual mind goes part of the way my visual imagination kind of caps out because I'm such a worthy person you should probably introduce we have people watching Erin Lo who wrote my nation my DT I'm sorry, have you? Romany I'm Lauren Yeath I wrote this I'm sorry and George Brant I wrote this one play where I had a character because I love talking to designers I ended up refraining from trying to micromanage having a world that was going to happen and I think that's been the beauty of that play it's never been the same twice and it's always been true it's never been that productionist which is kind of what it needs to be and I am inevitably surprised by what your microscopic choices were made in the moment between dimension and the space using a combination of sound however they ended up doing it that if I had tried to write it I could not I would shut that down when I get a stage direction like that for somebody turns into a bird that's one of the most exciting things I've read you know what I mean there's all this possibility of what that is and it just gets you into deeper you know what I mean the opening opens it up so much which is so great for me to know because as a writer who likes metaphor quite a bit it's wonderful to be able to create metaphor and then trust that the actuality will take it the rest of your life I think for me my relationships with designers helped me to kind of see what kind of writer I am I think in looking at the sets that have been designed for my plays my work calls for a lot of surprises and kind of like cuts and I feel like the most successful sets that I've had have kind of built in the abilities to like review things quickly and close it out and then come out of you know the ground and go back and so like the flexibility that you were talking about in terms of sets I thought really resonated with the pieces that I had worked on and so yeah there are those impossible things that you could try to map it out very carefully into a play it just moved out for me to me the thing that's interesting we were actually talking about this this morning is the way that most playwrights now are not writing for any space do you know historically playwrights do they have a company or they have a sort of stance and they consciously or unconsciously if you read Stringbird there are really specific stage directions that are all about the thing on that door the thing on that door is its theater and so for me it's really a question of writing really specifically to the action that the room that the action takes place in but not the room that the play takes place in because I have no idea what that room is so I guess I'm looking in a design I'm looking for something that can connect those two things and the play has unfortunately usually an abstract relationship to where a room is going to be and that's just a totally different change so I want something that stands out yeah I think my place I don't have much increasingly less and less stage directions and scenic descriptions however while while I'm writing I definitely have a pretty realistic it's two people talking in a room I see that room in realistic terms kind of more three dimensional 360 so that is always a jarring moment when it is brought out of that world into our world by a set designer in which as you say maybe the scene needs to change you know like I mean there's a place you know we have multiple locations but each one of those locations while I'm writing it is fully fleshed out you know if there's a bookcase it's building books and obviously when you get into the real world and you've got a change between five locations each of those locations can't be fully realized and that's always a bit of a jarring moment it takes a little getting used to that oh okay that room is now just a table okay alright then maybe there's a glass on the table and then the mind then fills in the mind of the audience fills in everything that was there in your own but yeah that's always jarring every once in a while you get that fully realistic set that was a little closer to what's in your head and that's a different matter as well I think that happens a lot where there are multiple locations that would be you know if you were making the film version of it there would be no but you know in my mind we're not making the film doing theater so it actually forces me to think about the world of the play as opposed to where the location of the play which I think is more interesting you know then you start to ask yourself questions about the sort of the touch of healing questions that we were sort of exploring at the retreat of how does this place smell how does it taste how does it feel you know it was a great like those more visceral qualities of the play which as a designer are much needier than you know are they in the kitchen or you know where are they exactly of course they're still in the kitchen but then what is the shell what is the sort of envelope of the plays can be answered and I think it also serves the plays maybe have that present all the time no matter what the play may be that there's this presence around it no matter where we are around me has sent to the world of play it's interesting you picture the room of the plays do you picture that to some of you I mean I don't know it's interesting and you look at it I mean when I say the room about for a piece of dialogue to make sense I know that this person isn't the 5 feet from that person proximity and silence between two people means something if they're sitting at the table and it means something if someone is standing in the door so that's a really for dialogue not to be abstract it's dialogue not the whole person it's those kinds of things it's really possible I mean in the same way that time is really possible you know how long something takes so for me yes it's that kind of room and then design is an element yes it's a totally other element that's crucial to that but it's more I mean is it like spatial relationships essentially the same? not like this room has to be the way it's completely radical radically different in two different connections and they're all they need to be perfectly wonderful but you know all the solutions don't have the same answer but they have the same questions I think like I do the same thing I completely picture something specific but it's not the beautiful it's just specific because you have to have clarity in my mind as to the relationship in certain circumstances of the character so they can have some kind of emotional or true so they can have a conversation like there's this probably the same place where it's just so important for me to know in my brain that these two train drivers are standing in a very small space because they're in a train that is hurling forward and they're in a small space that they can't face each other they're just facing forward and they're having a conversation this is really important to me now whether you put them in a box or just have them stand there could kill us do you know what I mean? but it's important to me to know that that's the quality of their proximity that's the quality of their can't really look directly at you from a physical point of view that's really important to me to know for them to talk in that time and in that space I think it's actually really similar to when you have play you have a transition and it's just like a pause or a silence or something so I think most playwrights have a very good sense what happens in that but you don't write silence or questions for a child because you're not that's what they have to do they have to get from one side or the other to that moment and you just have to say there's a moment and I think design in a really simple way you set a certain stance but if we're telling what it's desirable to do then we're trying to do a job that we're not actually and it's a great question and that kind of leads to my next question just how involved are you with design or is it always the same is it different? it tends to be whether you're in that city or not sure and whether you're actually at rehearsals ideally in my experience I kind of use the director as a conduit to communicate with designers so that they're not getting the director thinking versus the playwrights I think I've tended to step back just because I am not kind of a director I don't know how to block things or what the movement's supposed to look like I imagine a very specific room but I have no idea how much space there are those types of things so I can step back I guess in some years I tend to be in the logistic empire I mean otherwise it's a visual medium it's very hard to be involved if you're not busy but I feel like when you're in a premiere process and the play is still sort of finding its first production personality there is a back and forth and oh wow yeah I'm going to now adjust this moment because I didn't know that was possible who knew you could give me that you know what I mean so for premieres for sure and then that's usually the one that I'm deciding to add because you're sort of at the moment your play's done you're done-ish right like you know that we rid it I don't always do we're at a point where it's no one who can develop so now we can produce have any of you had involvement with the designers before a production for that moment what was that when I was workshopping Agnes under the big top which means the play that went through a very large and complex development process it was one of those projects that we we had this really interesting particular journey where certain stages were more about text and certain stages were more about all the area of the clowns you know like that and you had one stage which was that interactive theater in Philadelphia that was about talking to designers and they acquired for my amusement a set designer and a hmmm sound anyway so it was a stop where we would read the draft of the play and I hung out and they had all read the play and we hung out for about two hours just great story about the role I might look like it was really fun and I ended up with some kind of amazing sketches that were made on the fly and I was like wow and I got to keep them and that was fabulous the play was not finished so it was like an interesting combination of I can use that thought and no that's not what I'm talking about like it was a little bit of both like that but we had a debate about windows and which way it's okay to orient them on stage it was and it got kind of intense because it was like no and they're like you know strong opinions that are really general the interesting thing about it is the play is still morphing most designers work on things where they're not still morphing sure so there's like there were things where I was like oh holy crap and every single production since that conversation has had the pull which you can pull in some way and that came out of that conversation and I was like I've never let go of that that is the best thing to learn and so that's great that's an amazing thing but then the other side of that when you're the other side of that for me was that I have been in the window into the play which I saw the actor looking out onto the audience and that was important to me metaphorically and the feeling in the room was that no if you want to create more space the window has to go on stage and so we had a long debate about windows and I walked out of that debate going you know you're wrong and no production has ever gone on stage it's always been you know so it was fun really the session it was a fun like play session really great things and that's great also I mean maybe the great thing about the window is you really knew that you were right like you really solidified your conviction and now I really know I write about that window because when I talked about it for hours on end I really fought for that you know it's your play so if there's something about that well now that I've debated it to death that's exactly right but I have no doubt because it never caused my mind before to debate the window because I've never thought I would have a window on stage right yeah I have a window when I was discovering I actually went to a recent place that yeah where that window is and when it exists at all as you say they're just looking you know how yeah I had a plate the mourners bench that was just a shooting red and the set called for a few things but where those things would be was debated quite a bit there's a baby grand piano that we're told is sitting in the bay window of this house but the third act the woman is spending all her time sitting at the piano staring out the window and figuring out how that was possible and whether we wanted to have her facing upstage for you know a half hour as you're saying okay that's not really real so where we've got to turn this piano what angle the piano was going to be at and where it ended up moving into a little more an abstract but extended reality let's say as the bay window was pretty far away from her on the piano but they put a little window seat on the edge of the stage and the piano was pretty far back but the seat was there so there was still a window out there but we spent a lot of time just that design director and I just wrestling with where you just needed a staircase a piece of wall a piano and a window and I thought that that was simple it gives you the realities of production sort of once it's like shown back to you oh maybe I didn't think of it that way but then now that we put it on the stage it actually with people and furniture and stuff that makes this different thing I had a crazy realities of production experience with this play that I wrote that can do three acts and do an act and I you know I grew up doing theater in small theaters for some reason a light board so it was not a big deal and the first production because I was like okay I program out the whole show and so the fact that you want this to be done in any order I'm going to have to be able to have nine different programs we don't even know how we're going to do this but we'll stop the whole show and reprogram the board in order to do the act so they eventually figured it out because that to me that's hard but it should be done that's a hard thing to do there's certain things you honor when you write a play these are challenges but they don't they don't define the laws of physics so some people use to play they do they ring one of the acts so it's like the first two they can count on or so they're like the first one they can count on because that makes it easier for them but yeah it turns out the technology it moved to a point based on the assumption of linearity of theater that it made it extremely difficult for theater designers to be able to figure out how to do something that was dominant and so we learned some skills that they had let me just explain for myself now I'm just realizing that as you're talking about it's interesting what problems are yours and what are the designers and that has to remind me that people were like well it's not your problem it's not your problem about the window but now I'm remembering that it wasn't my problem which is that there were drapes not they were supposed to be drapes not the window that are cold at one point and that was kind of important so it became a choice drapes or downstate window because we could not have imaginary drapes on an imaginary window so the drapes the drapes hit the road and I was like ok I have a question I'm important are the drapes so we decided how do you deal with that did you solve that problem in a different way in a different way at the moment that you needed without the drapes yes but it did require just attention rewriting because he was she's staring out the window at something and her husband closes the drapes which is a pretty big action in the play so without that we needed to replace it with something else so that was a required rewrite and then you kind of wonder what deal do I leave that in the script are the drapes still gone or could someone else solve this but the drapes are gone we decided no one else could solve this problem that I created I also find that designers are also in charge of a lot of how much is highlighted for an audience or how much is foreground I had a play that was actually performed in this huge huge space and it just so happened that the way the set was designed was that most of the action happened on this small little platform and so it was actually we had to reblock everything we could see because most of it we couldn't fit everything in the little island that had kind of been designed I realized halfway through that not all the spaces in my play were as important as the others that I had imagined like oh you know we have like say five different locations you know it's kind of spread out and I realized like no like 70% of the play happens on the small little part of the stage so that was kind of like an education did you feel you needed to make that space bigger when you realized that or was the size I realized that that was like the center of the play that was the center of our universe and that we should have taken it and put it in the center and made it bigger yeah like there's certain there's certain also roadblocks sometimes when I feel like the design is linked up to the play game I mean what are you talking about how do you think in those services how do you learn I mean I think if like the designer the director might have all thought about it and really evaluated like what are the really important actions is it the opening of drapes is it that or in this particular room like if we actually gone out and charted the whole play and seen that yes what the action occurs in this one room rather than all these kind of you know spaces I think we might have I've designed myself into a corner and it reminds me of times where I feel like I've designed myself into a corner because it's too specific with the designs which I think it's a very general thing to say you know that creating something that's so specific that there's no room for expansion and contraction it's like not a good idea with a new play because if it's a new play to everybody including the writer that you didn't know by the end of producing it it's one thing to write it in the top of that if I always had ideas and plan for it but then for making it happen and changing the drapes or like moving the subject play those things you have to hopefully have some sort of plan ahead of time knowing that that might happen and create you know and you do come up with a different design and my purpose as a designer is to serve serve and play you know it's about play so if that's what it needs it's not about that I'm just excited about serving a person I think that in a very different way than maybe you can think in a different way or no yes can you say more about your time in UCSD when you said that you were actually working with playwrights in real time well in real time in terms of that I was in school for 3 years with these people they were my classmates or you know in your head and often writing them sometimes at the time that we were in school what are you doing what are you playing and so there were lots of discussions where some people who wanted to talk about it were really vocal about it and what they were working on and wanted to talk about it which I just never I was like wow really I had lots of friends who were playing friends who called me and I've had people email me scripts and I was really worried about this part of the play do you think we can do that as a sex designer do you think that's okay and almost 9 times out of 10 I go it doesn't matter if it's somebody who's really going to make the play then talk about it because you shouldn't have to worry about that right now I really don't think we should that's my own opinion but that's not I can react to the play and tell you how I feel about it and what I think about the play but in terms of like a specific moment do you think that physically this is possible or whatever is irrelevant at the time that someone's writing a play I think because that will interfere with whatever they're doing as creating this art creating the work that physical impossibilities are irrelevant they should be anyway like in theater I don't know I don't realistically for many artists it has to be fair reproducibility of whether or not I know I'm in like this wonderful world but we all want to be in that I guess it depends on which stage you're at if you're done with the play you're like okay now read it but I've also had things where I've been sent this is our group of pages that I don't understand but I was supposed to make a judgment and I don't want to do that but that's exactly my question though because it sounds like what's being really interesting here is people talking and designing earlier you don't collaborate earlier and you're talking about this old model of serving a play when it's done but we're talking a lot about like we're always trying to figure out what the play is that it's been trying to be served and I'm curious about how designers are helping playwrights find what play that is that should be served and I want to hear more about well I think those are two different things I'm learning that like right now like in the last two weeks right and I sort of knew it but so we've been talking about the last few minutes is about the production process so the play is already written it's going to change because it hasn't ever been produced before so there isn't an element of something that's going to happen and change there'll be an evolution but it's a lot different and you know your plays right now the workshops are in different stages of finished and unfinished they're all over the place I wanted to come and start the new play design lab which is what we're doing during this festival to the relationship between the designers and the writers that either doesn't exist very much ever and or just add another voice to the development process that isn't always there sometimes it isn't but to see what is that like when you add another voice to the room and that voice is a visual mind and things of the play are in a different way than a director does and so it is the idea of just adding a voice in and seeing if that helps it's as simple as that so it's not at all about practicality or maybe it is if that question is asked if that's what's going to help the play but I think it's more about the development part of it not the production part so that's why I brought these ideas the idea of creating collage the idea of creating a visual idea of what the play might be and doing the 3D collage but not going any further than that not being prescriptive at all about what things should look like at this point because maybe that's not what the play needs maybe some of these plays do want that maybe that is their next step but in this moment just adding a visual voice to that conversation and enriching the experiences for the records I think that's great I think that's great I kind of want to challenge this idea of reproducibility I'd like to challenge the idea of reproducibility because I don't understand I don't know what that word means reproducibility? I don't know what it means let's engage I don't have a friend who doesn't write plays anymore because he doesn't know what to play and he used how to staircase the dance numbers were too complicated and on a critic review night the actor tripped on the stairs pulled his hamstring and continued to dance through the night and the times panned it and the times didn't say that set was too treacherous the time said he's an awful writer and so he stopped writing plays and he that's one reaction that artists have to the fact that their ass is out of the wind when they write something that's too complicated so some writers I'm not saying this is the right thing to do I'm saying that playwrights do think about reproducibility they think about okay am I asking for a set that will cost a million dollars and if I am will anybody ever produce it or am I asking for something to happen that will be so complicated in which case maybe I shouldn't do that because the people who really stick their neck out there to be really humiliated by the press or actors and playwrights really go into the neck so I think playwrights do sometimes have to think about that or not I still don't just do this crazy stuff hey yeah do it in any order many writers don't take any risk when you do that there's certainly a thought that you should be more conservative what you're saying is I feel very bad with this playwright that sounds horrible but it sounds like the director or the choreographer or the scenic designer actually did this playwright a bad turn it wasn't that it was too complicated or the fact that it had a staircase on stage it was not done in a way that was doable so for instance I think if you look at I think the reason that I don't understand that word usability is because if you go around to the theaters in San Francisco if you came to the thick houses and you were probably at a certain level you would say how the hell could you produce anything in here and make magic happen okay but we saw this slide of Mellie's production of Gibraltar which I saw and this space looked completely it was transformed it looked completely different from one another magic definitely occurred I don't know what this is like 14 by 18 and that and then it was done it was done in just like an order of shapes a huge space with millions of dollars I don't know how much there $100,000 for production $200,000 half a million done for what? $20,000 or whatever so the idea that the playwright is responsible for the reproducibility of the play to me is bullshit because it's the producer who's responsible the producer won't I mean we can talk about it from a perspective of art we can talk about it from a perspective of reality because we don't always meet I can see her pretend like I agree my question is how are you any of you responsible for the reproducibility of your play when you don't know how much your budget is what theater you're going to have it in what those elements a waterfall in a Broadway show is going to be totally different from a waterfall in a crowded fire show and crowded fire is responsible for saying hey we want to do this play and we need to figure out how to do the waterfall because we have a $20,000 budget and so we're going to use ingenuity to make that happen and produce your play I mean who knew that crowded fire could produce good goods talk about it in a possible produced way especially at the boxcar theater and it worked beautifully because the producer figured it out not the playwright that's I think what I would love to hear you talk a little bit about and you guys too what is your responsibility around being something producible and how can you say that I shouldn't even have gotten but I think for playwrights the more concrete all of that kind of thing is cast aside it's a kind of expense everyone I think I'm sure run into theaters where design is maybe a flexible expense because the design is a flexible solution but the difference between paying six equity actors versus five equity actors is a definite budget item and that constricts what we're doing to me I think where and how design constricts is more a sense of it's like a weird sense of self-selection like different theaters will do different kinds of designs or we'll see a play if it's a fairly realistic play that might ask for three different fairly realistic sets if you're at work in Shakespeare and every single knick-knack is going to be a bother but but someone else and there will be a theater that says I don't know we can do this totally creatively with light or with something but there will be a theater that says we actually have a realistic vision of theater and we can't do three sets and that theater is it going to say we'll do a waterfall with my love so I think it's not the conversations you have it's the conversations that you don't have I guess so that to me is my sense of what it's about that is the cast size and that kind of stuff the sets are the more common stuff that I'm totally I think where it's half to grapple with in some sense there's some place you want to introduce anything about that I just know often I've had conversations with other writers we've looked at the script of mine and said are you out of your mind the chance of this being done in a way that won't humiliate you is very, very tiny from a design and production like asking somebody to do a play in three acts in that order is an incredibly hard thing to ask for theater but Ron in a very hard play you're playing very hard we could only do acting so would you like to do your acting actually would do hard and so there's some sense that you sort of think about well should I or could I ignore myself from that particular risk should I mitigate risk to the play by asking for something a little simpler or not and then once every my name is Sarah Ruel then I can start asking the concept you had originally for the play Redundant do you know what I mean because I guess my solution is I know that universe exists where I'm not going to get produced because of what I wrote but the responsibility for the producibility that I have is I have a play that is very hard to produce but you can't tell when you read it it's called Love Person it's bilingual you have to have a deaf actor you have to have an incredibly high level ASL you have to have a South Asian you have to have technology you have to be able to cue both deaf and hearing actors during the tech is a nightmare you need a signmaster to translate the script people read this play and they think oh what a nice four person chamber piece so I actually responsibility that I take for that play is if I happen to know of a print if I'm contacted which I'm not necessarily but if I'm contacted about it I explain how hard this because huge risk of you know horrible things happening and they hate me and they never want to produce me again but I actually almost spend time dissuading them or at least making sure that they realize that we're talking signmaster your first week of reversal you can't read through the play because half of your cast doesn't have their script yet that's not something you can anticipate you don't know so I have like a two page thing where I'm like here are my words not doing that but you know and that's my responsibility to that play because it is actually almost unproducible but no one gets it until they're like halfway through with it I mean I guess another question I would have here because I totally get what you're talking about because maybe what you're really saying is if I want to have a play at this level then what are the requirements that I need to put in there that will allow for that is that what you're talking about? in many ways I think about that I come from a pretty DIY background in theater as well as I said I'm a board operator and when you want to start being a board leader in a really big place there's a level of what is called professionalism you know things happen in a way but to get there there's a sort of mid-range where there's stuff really too hard and chances that it will be done but yeah I knew what you were saying it was interesting I was kind of fired for many years and sort of knowing what you're doing you said like totally unproducible things and so we are attracted and attract a certain type of writer because of that we found you're home you sort of you migrate towards the people who want to produce these or whatever it is there's a certain group of people that end up being a collaborator because of that I've found that sometimes having less resource less money makes it better I can't believe I'm saying that but because I'm saying that if there's only this many solutions to it then that's what we're going to do you know what I mean and so I mean design is certainly problem solving and producing is certainly problem solving but it seems to be much more creative when you know or if you think you have these five solutions all of a sudden there's more of them because you have to think them up you know what I mean which is all it's interesting it's created in a different way than the visual thing that I'm talking about too it's two parts of the same life that we're producing I would say from a producer's perspective that it's a small budget I look at plays and do you think can I produce this well for $20,000 and the answer is often no and not no because it's asking for sort of crazy magical things it is easier to do in a lot of ways in a small budget but you know it's like George's play where I need the baby grand piano and it's like well maybe I can come up with the answer to the solution to not having a baby grand piano but that might for me feel like I'm not really serving to play then and therefore it doesn't feel like I'm going to play then I can do well and I feel like people with $40,000 budget could look at the same script and think they couldn't do it well but I mean that I think that is that is a real question but I don't know and I do feel like that's something that's what I read plays with the lyrics think about the varying degrees I think it was a grand piano right here oh yeah it was somebody brought that up I was like ah it's so many and do you put in parenthesis if you have to enough right but please no keyboards Cassio Cassio if you do it y'all are not okay, Cassio absolutely not it's interesting to talk about this because I feel like I've learned a lot from being incredible as a designer from having just being in that place of like freaking out because I just don't know you know and then figuring it out you know learn more from that sometimes that you know having this very comfortable budget and sort of the solution seems very obvious you know that can be more pain sometimes you know it can be great and sometimes it is nice and there's also what's nice about knowing the money or whatever is the flexibility of oh I thought of a solution and now I need to accommodate it you know so it's it's interesting there's no answer no as a director you know as a director and just tell me to shut up but as a director I've been in situations where you know in a theater with lots and lots of money where we did a DIY DIY you know what I had to really think that went through and my staff will all ask me oh yeah do it yourself okay so you know that's how we started we started in teeming in those spaces and the play moved on and got a big production at a very large regional theater and several of them actually and so at that point it was interesting to go back to my original thought you know about it things that I had imagined that I had gone no budget and bring that into the conversation and then be questioned like why are you adding this is it just because you have a lot of money and that was interesting that was interesting you know I had to go through that process but it was actually because I had always imagined it in some of the work it's really funny that reminds me of something I just did last month which I opened a show in New York and it's a musical and it's a show called Flemme Dreams it's like a band called Flemme Dreams and it's really about fire it's all about fire there are songs called desserts on fire where they ran around with desserts on fire and they sing about the fact that they had these desserts on fire and somebody dies in a flaming banana fostered accident it is truly about fire and I read it and it was hilarious and all this stuff and I don't know anything about New York theater really this is the first show I'm going to do there and I meet with the director and I was like oh we're going to talk about all these like magic tricks and there's going to be flames and the first thing he said to me was there's no clear knowledge of any flame whatsoever on stage at all you just can't it's illegal, you cannot do it even if you fire through the whole theater it's not going to happen and so we had to come up with this solution and it ended up being pop-up flame which really fit the spirit of the flame it ended up serving the place so well and now we're talking about it moving to this other venue because it's probably going to have another life and we all agree that it's going to be like we're going to say it will not be fire it's so perfect and we found the solution that's going to work no matter how big it gets flames might be there but the spirit and the idea was born out of a restriction what was the procedure that ended up really doing something great so it's an interesting thing to the question as we get larger the more it involves the more it's in this different circumstance the first time we did it did we really do it the way that best service play and that's not always true to the view but it's an interesting question to ask I actually get more concerned about that place being over designed than under designed I'm way more concerned about them being kind of underneath design concepts and things that don't really support them well like concepts like what you were saying that imposing your idea on play I never thought about my ideas imposing on play and sometimes they do and you have to be really careful about that I think it's something you see all the time particularly with what you were talking about earlier in classical production Shakespeare and the part that's on Mars fits really well with two thirds of the play and then you're like I've been through and they're wearing replators and it's like no and to me that's the thing about design concepts so maybe you're right it's why treat it differently why should my mind think differently about a new play than Shakespeare sure and I don't think it has I think maybe that is my brain has evolved in that way in a way that I think is not about the concept something that can hold the whole play something that can hold the entire play and not just there was an an Onion article once a radical theatre director decides to set Merchant of Venice to Venice and it was that can't be done can't be done and they were interviewing the director and he's talking about all the clues and it's being set in Venice and I kind of threw it into I threw it too too crazy curious how working with designers has affected the way you view your plays and the way that you write them what has that changed for you really really not descriptive about most things with the exception of I have a thing about sound I'm just kind of it's just something that is important to me and I guess I'm just more of a visual person or something but I tend to if there's going to be a soundscape it tends to be really specific and really crafted in my plays and that's partially because I know what's possible with sound and that excites me that sound doesn't have any sound it's not oh we don't have enough input for this like the sound whereas I don't really have a whole lot of insight into what it's going to take to do a lot I don't prescribe like I don't prescribe sounds and I'll work with sound and what you hear is what if you're working with designers I'm going to show you I've learned my jobs to give them a sense of what this world might be so that some of you might like to know some of your bad lines stupid shows they're going to do a better job of it but they will visually know what's possible so really just giving them a sense and then writing, stage writing and stuff that is actually really critical for the plot or being willing to change it to be with there's another idea that comes from time I think it's about being open and then when you actually go through these premieres just being open to what their interpretation of it might be except where maybe it might be with your students does that happen do you you don't have three specific you can tell it to you you can tell it to you I think instances where the thing becomes too important seems to stop so that we can slowly watch this thing move across the stage reveal the costume as opposed to just continuing with the pace it's usually in the realm of adults I'm really descriptive about what needs to happen but I know how it happens but I guess it's what parents are really prescriptive in stage directions about specific actions not specific tone but not how yeah I think as I mentioned that less and less I think it's about letting that air in I think my older work was a little more airtight as far as maybe what needed to happen or what even actors you know a lot of parentheses we were talking about this the other day angrily whatever that's definitely gone out the window as much as I can just to invite collaboration there was a point in my writing where I was like oh okay I need to open this up it's not there needs to be an invitation as you were talking about with your bird effect and it's great there's a song in there and then when it was published they really wanted me to okay what's the melody well there really isn't one that's up to the production to make their own and that's been one of the most fun parts about seeing different productions is just hearing what they do with this song because it does kind of shape the whole evening because it does start to play and I think something like that really does as you were saying give ownership to the production and then as Lauren said I think the only danger though then is in the storytelling I feel like you hope that people don't just get excited about the design possibilities but also really look at okay what is this calling for and you know at least settling on that kind of guideline what is the script calling for and spending enough time with that to make sure that it makes sense sometimes choices get made that make perhaps not as much sense I was Aaron how you came up with that I loved that it was like a shower curtain but it became like a corn field oh the corn curtain how did you do that that was Bill I've worked very closely with Bill English who is the director as a play house who is also a set designer and I believe the first person to be discussing this was the first time he actually let anybody else design a set in his house and no pressure and then he did design the set and I think the reason why one set created such an interesting challenge of how we were able to do it in order we went through lots and lots of discussion about what the corn field might look like so my head was going to be somewhere off on the side of the thrust stage of the massive 1,000-seat house where players could be done there would be this permanent installation corn field right now obviously that was that every now and then we spent a bunch of time thinking about there was an initial idea off the sides of the stage there would be rooms on tracks and we would quickly get them in and you could see them then just become a corn field and then they go out so the aesthetic of the play-play starts with children's pageants so the idea was everything in the play could feel children's pageanty but we couldn't get the room corner so we ultimately came up with this idea of sort of a gauzy curtain that would form things about it because the light would always be sort of dim because all the scenes were set in the dust so it would give you the sense of being an housewife and this is actually it worked really well for us but it's also one of those stories where you know you end up having terrible things happen which is the night of our press preview off Broadway the corn curtain got stuck and on the stage you guys would see the corn curtain and we were all like dying every second and then unfortunately the stage manager came in on the God bike and just as she says it gets unstuck and the play goes on it was one of those things that happened in life it was a very nice nice device to create a very different aesthetic because we were coming in front of the stage and we were literally screaming so I think we have about two minutes what you guys were saying kind of sort of reminded me of the opposite of that which is you know when I was first meeting plays in high school and you get the Samuel French version and the first thing I would do was go to the back and look at the ground plan you know of whatever the first production up was of it because that's what I was interested in reading the process you know what I mean it's like what I would do before I went to play and I'm really glad I mean I'm at a point where I don't know Samuel French still does that but that's not at all of course hard to play now but I'm so glad that's not included because it just really colors your experience and like when we did Octavio's play I didn't want to know when we talked about it I don't want to talk about the previous production of it it just colors your experience in a way that really doesn't happen you know so it's interesting I mean it's in today's playwrights this is how we think of design in terms of how you approach it and you know in sort of in the past it's sort of like actually literally drawn out for you in the back of the script which is a completely just a very different paradigm in terms of how designs thought of you know where our relationship has changed in terms of between playwrights and directors thank you thank you thank you all for watching that concludes our playwrights panel and they are in the rights festival thank you thank you good ok very good enjoy the