Three.
Collaboration

Collaboration flourishes when there is an understanding on the
part of each member of the team that the others involved are to
be respected and their authority fully recognized. The motions of
carrying out the collaboration, the different techniques each
group will require because of the personalities involved, make
collaboration a hope, not always an achievement.

Collaboration is a beautiful word, or was until debased by the
Nazis. Its true meaning is working together toward a common
end. Lighting design is a collaborative profession in which the lighting
designer collaborates with backgrounds, things, purposes and people.
In the theatre the lighting designer's collaboration is with all these at
once. No one can say the light in a play "gave a good performance."
It can be said that it enhanced the performance given by others. So it
is pretty important with what the lighting designer collaborates -- and
with whom.
 You cannot collaborate by yourself, except by simply doing what
you are told to do. You can try to make your colleagues think you are
doing what they think they told you to, or you can yell your head off
in a display of more temperament than your temperamental associ-
ates. Or you can be reasonable -- and stubborn. Friendship is not in-
volved. I do not mean that you cannot be friends with your collabo-
rators. But I do find that most of my friends come from among my
associates in organized repertory. Collaborating talents in repertory,
organized for continuing effort, have time to attain, at the very least, a
comfortable respect for each other. For some reason, in the dramatic
theatre in the United States, repertory has seldom succeeded for long.
Not in my working lifetime. For the most part, in Broadway's commer-
cial theatre you make contacts, not friendships. These contacts can be
thrilling and rewarding, but the associations do not imply friendship
at all. Collaboration on each single entity is based on a kind of in-
stantaneous response to the people with whom you work. For the
length of its endurance, this can be a perfectly lovely relationship, but
when the association ends, you return to your home base and they
return to theirs.
 I think I have been pretty much of a loner through all these associa-
tions. I really have only one or two colleagues in the lighting business,
since we are all pretty arbitrary. Working with directors -- often by
nature arbitrary men -- in the brief, intense association of putting on
a show, I have been constantly stimulated by them. Trying to find out
what their image was, what they were searching for, I have found that
it does not take much to trigger the basic images of a production.

Sometimes I think this is because I respond so readily in visual terms.
At others, I think it is because the material we deal with is not very pro-
found. On their part, directors have known they could count on me
to do my level best. The luckiest part of my association with a creative
craft that so often suffers from too much imposition of one person's
ideas upon another's is that I have almost always been hired not out of
friendship but because a director liked my work and wanted me to do it.

 My involvement in the theatre has been within the span of what has
been known, pretty caustically at first, as the directors' theatre. This is
fairly short by historical standards.
 Before the seventeenth century, the European theatre, from which
ours derived, was itinerant and the members of its troupes were as
anonymous as gypsies. Not until Shakespeare's time and Moliere's
time did the person emerge -- the actor as a person, the manager as
a person. With these playwrights plays began to have the kind of pro-
ductions we now know.
 There were properties and scenery and lighting and all sorts oi
means and schemes to foster the illusion that the audience was not in
the theatre but somewhere else -- up a tree, in a room, or wherever,
anywhere but the piece it sat in. Somebody had to be in charge of all
that.
 The nineteenth century saw the actor-managers' theatre create this
illusion in terms of extreme romantic realism. As all theatre produc-
tion in this country began to center in New York, the producers'
theatre took over what had been the actor-managers' theatre. Men
like Arthur Hopkins and David Belasco produced their shows, directed
them, hired designers and with the designers lit their productions.
Reality became more specific. On the stage, a faucet dripped real
water and rain was wet, running along pipes with little holes in them.
As little as possible was left to the imagination.
 The producers spent their own money, kept their own profits, met
their losses, created their stars, dominated their industry. The "road,"
radiating out of New York as the nation's railroads radiated out oi
Chicago, was operated by syndicates: the Shuberts, the Klaws and the
Erlangers.
 A play was produced and tried out in towns near New York, ran for
a limited time on Broadway, and was sent on the road for an extended
tour. Show business was a fairly well-organized, orderly and settled
entertainment industry, full, of course, of the labor-management in-
justices of the time. The artist always faces these injustices when he
brings art to commercial use, but in those days at least a certain regu
larity of theatrical employment existed. Then came the terrible days
 beginning in 1929.
 In the 1930s Broadway began to assume its overwhelming impor-
 tance to American theatre. The objective of all productions became
 the New York run and production teams became part of the organiza-
 tion of the theatre. Producers collected and dispersed invested money
and handed over artistic control to another group of men: the direc-
tors. This was the theatre of Orson Welles, of Elia Kazan, of Harold
CIurman and Lee Strasbe rg (directors of the Group Theatre).
 Their area of authority was concentrated and they were held respon-
sible for the success or failure of enterprises financed by other people.
Failures outnumbered successes and fear of failure increased, or seemed
to, the arbitrariness of directorial dictatorships. This led to some pretty
interesting struggles on the part of their collaborating talents to retain
their own identities. In fact, the preservation of personal identity
seems to be the hard-core problem of the artist today. Why, I am not
quite sure. Perhaps it is only part of what is now generally labeled a
"crisis of identity" in a world where interdependence has become a
prime condition of existence.
 In discussing collaboration in the theatre during the present era, one
must begin with those dominant figures, the directors.

 I hesitate to talk about people as individuals -- including myself --
partly, I suppose, because I am so much a technician. Technicians re-
late to things, and our reactions to people may often be in terms of
how they relate to our things. To the extent to which we are artists,
we may also be intuitive about people as well as things. If I do see
other people very clearly, perhaps comprehend them through this
visual clarity, but hesitate to claim that I do, although, of course, I
think I do. I can only present my collaborators as I saw and compre-
hended them, working with them.
 Orson Welles related to every single thing about a production. He
was really in the older tradition of actor-managers and he had a great
deal to do with creating the directors' theatre. Orson was, and is,
visually monumental and his dominance was, I must say, pretty over-
whelming. At the Mercury, no one else had any identity for him at all.
You were production material. if he liked you, the association could
be pretty pleasant. If not, it was injurious. As a director, he approached
other talents as he did his Gargantuan meals -- with a voracious appe-
tite. Your contributions to his feast he either spat out or set aside
untouched, or he ate them up, assimilated them, with a gusto which
was extraordinarily flattering.
 The initial stages of anything with Orson were immensely entertain-
ing, which carried everything along. I have come since to suspect that
he was born bored and that much of his overabundance of energy has
been spent in alleviating that boredom. He never counted the cost of
anything to himself or to anyone else.
 I do not think that Orson made the utmost use of his collaborators'
talents, although he often inspired their achievements. He did make
the utmost use of his own talents in the beginning, but perhaps his lack
of respect for others accounts in some measure for the ultimate dissipa-
tion of his own multiple talents. I suppose this is unimportant, since
his genius did mark the theatre and the cinema for all time.
 Since those days in the Mercury, I have collaborated with many a
directorial talent: with the cannibalistic genius of Balanchine in ballet,
under the persuasive omnipotence of Tyrone Guthrie. "Gadge" Kazan
flourished his whip, like a ringmasteis, openly; Garson Kanin carried
his behind his back, held in one of his velvet gloves. The Lunts per-
mitted someone else to "direct," while keeping every element of
the collaboration under their capable control. Jerome Robbins, an im-
mensely creative choreographer, was one man in dance repertory and
quite another in musical comedy, where his dominance tended to be
crushing.
 The ideal of the "happy creative whole" Martha Graham strives for
is very rare in the commercial theatre with its hit-or-flop syndrome and
the frantic, sometimes hysterical, search for opening-night perfection.
One director who has it is the young Mike Nichols, whose commercial
successes have followed each other in phenomenal succession.
 Mike is likely to choose his associates, from those available, for the
important reason that they enjoy each other. Toward his technical staff
and his cast his attitude is that he and they are going to have a great
time. So far they have. Although Mike has not (yet) tested his quality
on anything more profound than deft comedy, his attitude toward his
collaborators remains as warm and respectful as it was in his early
partnership with Elaine May when they performed as comics. Nobody
could write an article, much less a hook, claiming that Mike had under-
mined his integrity as an artist.
 The director is in charge and it is his failure or his success. That
makes the responsibility of the designers subject to his. But the de-
signers, by a kind of logical arithmetic, partly economy and partly be-
cause there are fewer designers than there are directors, have usually
done more shows than the director has. You have already made more
mistakes than he has. You know that what seems like an original pro-
duction idea may really be only a revival of discarded and forgotten
errors of the past.
 Working with those of us who had much longer experience in the
theatre than his own, Mike exhibited a flattering deference toward that
experience. He was not hung up on his own originality. He did get
his own way, essentially, but with the unfailing courtesy and considera-
tion that made it seem to be -- and often was -- your way, too. If
Mike has yet to learn from failure, because he has had none, success
has not swelled his witty head.

 It has been my good fortune to work, over the years, with many very
talented people. Besides my first mentors, Martha Graham, John
Houseman and Orson Welles, madmen and geniuses in ballet -- like
Lincoln Kirstein, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins -- contrib-
uted in extraordinary measure to my education.
 In the big-time commercial theatre, I have been associated with
tremendous talents. Among producers, still theoretically at the top of
the theatrical hierarchy, that strange impresario David Merrick has re-
turned a measure of artistic control to the producer's role. Arnold

[Luv is] suavely lit by Jean Rosenthal so
that a night scene manages to look both
atmospheric and cheerful.
             -- Harold Clurman

[During the filming of Catch 22]: On the
set they all perform like a rep company,
with no upstaging, no prima donna an-
ties or tacit reverence for Mike Nichols.
-- Newsweek

Saint Subber is one producer who understands the technical aspects of
his productions. The "names" that last are almost always justified by
talent: names in music like Leonard Bernstein, in design like Oliver
Smith and Boris Aronson, in direction like Franco Zefferelli.
 Cinema stars may survive without anything more than "star quality"
and careful direction plus expert cutting rather than talent. Stage stars,
never. Consider the longevity of careers like those of Katharine Cornell,
Judy Garland, Alfred Lunt, John Gielgud, Zero Mostel.
 Beautiful stage actresses are a special problem to the lighting de-
signer. They survive their youth on talent, but they are obligated to
remain beautiful. (In the days before there were lighting designers,
Maude Adams, that most delicate of beauties, became so fascinated
with lighting that when she retired she moved to Schenectady and
worked to develop lighting equipment in the laboratories there.) Most
pretty actresses are light-conscious, but not light-wise. They tend to
flutter toward the hot spot, moths to flame, regardless of what happens
when they do, often wearing base makeup which absorbs light and
tends to make their faces invisible. To match makeup properly, to
light it well, is one of the interesting studies in lighting design. Also to
choose the colors that suit the beauty. The black hair and alabaster
skin of Lynn Fontanne take neutral colors; lavender tones make her
coolly beautiful. (She understood this very well.) Gwen Verdon's red
hair is made entrancing and delicate by pink or straw colors. The
raven complexion of Anna Magnani can stand powerful, Toulouse-
Lautrec poster colors. The easiest coloring to light is the brunette with
her definitive hairline framing her face, the most dangerous color to
use on anyone is gray, which makes hair and skin run together mud-
dily. If hair is not its own color, the best light to pick is one that suits
the skin tones. Too many actresses are under the impression that pink
lighting always prettifies.
 Sometimes it does. Pink is good for Mary Martin -- she is a pink-
tinted lady. But what you really light for Mary is her ineffable grace
and vitality. Onstage, Mary is always in motion. Thus the lighting for
her can be full of motion, "happening" on cue. Mary is quicksilver,
and you treat her as quicksilver,liight glancing irom her shining surface.
 Part of Lynn Fontanne's glamour, on the contrary, comes from her
ability to be absolutely and beautifully still. Her magical voice could
create, out of her physical languor and her physical beauty, humor,
radiance, sexuality, intelligence-- and the desire on the part of every
woman in the audience to be Lynn Fontanne.
 Lighting Lynn was a meticulous affair. There was a special session to
focus on her. She would come to it in a duster, her hair in a knot on
top of her head, with no makeup. If you made her look good that way,
she would be ravishing in costume and makeup. The director (after she
and Alfred Lunt left the Theatre Guild, they took Bretaigne Windust
with them as their director) would sit in one corner, the stage man-
ager in another. Alfred moved around constantly, while Lynn went
through every one of her lines. In each position the lights were focused

Jean had great respect for Lynn's lighting
instinct. Lynn would point to a spot that
was doing the harm and Jean would go
into fits of laughter, saying only one
other actress could do that--Jane
Cowl.
-- Alfred Lunt

I am embarrassed to admit that I do not
know the name or number of the pink
gelatin that Jean found which did project
"me" best. Sometimes Jean had one of
the pink gelatins in the front spot, some-
times two. At other times pink in one
while the second spot was white.
After all Jean was, yes, a craitswoman, a
technical expert, but she was equally an
artist she used lights instead of oils.
-- Mary Martin


Jean Rosenthal was by far the most ex-
pert in stage lighting we had ever known.
Every play she did for us, she did to per-
fection. Furthermore she took less time
than most others.... This is pretty ful-
some praise, isn't it; but she was truly
remarkable.
-- Alfred Lunt

and never changed after that. You could not do cues for Lynn, but you
could count on her. She moved onstage as if her feet were wheels, on
invisible rails, and she was always exactly where she had planned to be.
It was this meticulousness, applied to every aspect of the show, that
made Lunt-Fontanne productions so dependably perfect.
 It is a pleasure to collaborate with stars who use lighting as part of
their performances. Angela Lansbury did and so did Maria Callas. Part
of the reward of working on Night of the Iguana was that Margaret
Leighton and Bette Davis (no longer beautiful by then, but fantastically
skilled) understood how to play into the lighting.

 The lighting designer is privileged to collaborate with everybody in
a show -- and is often criticized by everybody. The producer: "There's
not enough light!" The director: "There's too much light!" The scene
designer-: "I don't like what's happening in that part of the set." It is
important to keep your central idea (and your counsel along with your
temper). If your closest collaborator, the scene designer, respects and
recognires your area of authority, you will be able to return to that
central idea and to prevent anything from happening that will wreck
the inner disciplines of your design.
 Some designers argue that all the scenic aspects of a production
should be under a single control. Jo Mielziner is one; Donald
Oenslager another. This is perfectly valid. I have enjoyed it myself
when I have carried out the entire scenic design. But nothing is more
rewarding than to collaborate truly with an artist who respects what
you have to offer the collaboration.
 Easel artists can do marvels in scene design when they accept the
practical limitations of designing for the stage, accepting the craft as
well as the art. Most professional scene designers are able craftsmen
-- otherwise they could not last in the competition. (Sets are rarely
criticized in reviews, but I have seen sets that overpowered and killed
plays -- perhaps better dead!) Only a few are artists. Robert Edmond
Jones was an artist. Oliver Smith and Boris Aronson are artists.
 I think both these men are pleased when they are asked to work with
me. I think our separate talents have the special harmony that con-
tributes to a creative whole. They are gifted and complex, which does
not make it easy. (Oliver's floor plans get more difficult and compli-
cated all the time.) But I like a challenge -- not for its own sake, but
when the challenge is so worth meeting, within a collaboration.

 Design in the theatre is the creation of atmosphere. It is either
representational atmosphere, such as in the naturalistic theatre of ac-
curately placed suns and moons, or it is the abstract arrangement of an
environment that creates an atmosphere right for the dramatic inten-
tion of the play -- even if it is so ludicrous a place as the inside of a
typewriter, as in archy and mehitabel, or a pile of garbage pails, as in
Endgame. A set may contribute immeasurably to extending the emo-
tional and physical limitations of the stage. And the lighting designer is

In a way, Jean almost directed that play
[Night of the Iguana]. Her lighting pat-
terns affected where people stood,
where they moved, and their reactions.
Leighton and Davis are very sensitive to
light ... many actors and actresses are
not.
               -- Oliver Smith

I liked working with Jean so much I
used to make it part of my contract
whenever I could. I consider her a great
artist.
She enjoyed finding solutions. If she
ever came to a designer and said, "l can-
not do this," he had better listen.
               -- Oliver Smith

I  resented Jean when I first met her --
and ended up refusing to do a show
without her if she could be had. It was
not like working with a technician or
craftsman -- it was working with a the-
atre person. Her shows carried her own
signature.
               -- Boris Aronson

the set designer's closest collaborator -- whether working with a set
such as the one Oliver Smith designed for Becket, a marvelous Gothic
spider web, or one such as the one he designed for The Odd Couple,
which he wanted to look like a terrible old cigar box -- and it did. You
carry out his intentions, just as you both carry out the intentions of the
play.
 Collaboration does not flourish under the do-it-yourself attitude of
the old actor-managers or of certain directors. It flourishes when there
is an understanding on the part of each member of the team that the
others involved are to be respected and their authority fully recog-
nized. The motions of carrying out the collaboration, the different
techniques that each group will require because of the personalities
involved, make collaboration a hope, not always an achievement.

 When I began my career the theatre had accepted women as stars,
set designers, stage managers and even directors, but not in the tech-
nical field. In the long years since the time when women's roles were
even played by boys, that had remained a closed male world.
 To overcome rude prejudice, I used courtesy, on which my mother
had insisted since my birth. I also cultivated a careful impersonality,
which disregarded sex, in spite of the "dears" and "darlings" used
between the sexes as part and parcel of social usage in the theatre
world. My only real weapon, though, in the battle for acceptance,
was knowledge. I did know my stuff, and I knew that the technicians
knew theirs. I honored, truly, their knowledge and their prerogatives.
And gradually they came around -- from stagehands to directors --
to honor mine.
 It was easier with Americans. They give greater credit where it is
due to technical ability. I remember one radar expert in World War II,
from the Deep South with a deep prejudice against blacks. He was
asked if he would work peaceably under a black officer in his field.
"Sure," he said, "if the son of a bitch knows radar!"
 My first experience lighting European productions was during the
war and was war. I came to the conclusion that European men might
love women, but did not like them or respect them, and that European
women did not like or respect other women either. Also, whatever
they were doing, Europeans clung to the traditional way of doing it,
backed by centuries of self-approval.
 In 1944 1 was hired as lighting director for the Marquis de Cuevas
ballet, which he was bringing over from Paris where there was no ballet
because of the war. It was an international European company.
 To house the company, an old theatre on Columbus Circle, empty
for sixteen years, was bought from the estate of William Randolph
Hearst. It had been used exclusively for the showing of Marion Davies
films, and the only good thing left in it was the central box, suspended
over the balcony, from which Mr. Hearst could watch Miss Davies. We
kept that private box for the Marquis de Cuevas and gutted the rest
of the house.

I never really had to tellJjean what I was
trying to do. She would look at the
plans, get the point, and use it as an
inner core. She worked just as hard on
The Odd Couple as on Becket.
-- Oliver Smith

lean's quality of tranquil impersonality
was not real. It was self-protective. She
had a hard time in the theatre. There
was constant and long-term and even
violent opposition to her from the elec-
tricians because she was a woman, in the
beginning a child, and show business is
death on women, especially in the tech-
nical end. She had to weather it, so she
cultivated a great invulnerability, along
with her courtesy, to deal with this.
-John Houseman

Jean taught me a great deal about work-
ing with people. We never did a thing
against the unions -- if I wanted to have
a chair on the stage, I would ask if I
could have one. "Not if you ask like
that, Martha...." They always called
me Martha and Jean taught me how to
ask. She would say, always through the
microphone, so that no one else over-
heard, Jloe, that light on 31 isn't work-
ing very well. What's the matter with
it!" They loved her because she always
gave them honor. I believe there are
failures in the theatre where directors or
producers do not give honor to tech-
nical people. Without it, they are noth-
ing. With it, they will do anything for
you.
-- Martha Graham

 For the reconstruction, I got Willy Nolan, of Nolan Brothers scenery
builders. When there was anything tough to be done technically, I
always got Willy. Until his death we collaborated. I think we had
fallen in love, a little, when I was "that girl at the Mercury." Willy was
a roughneck, an uneducated, large, round Irishman who had started
life as a stage carpenter and who knew everything there was to know
about making things work, from winches to stage floors, steel girders,
rigging. He understood backstage in his bones, and his relation with
things was personal and profound. Materials were human to him.
When a designer would ask for the wrong material, Willy would say,
"it don't want to do that!" And "it" didn't -- and wouldn't. Willy was
always right. Given his own way, he could accomplish anything for
you with his friends the materials.
 Willy understood about star traps for the nineteenth-century ballets,
in which dancers were always appearing or disappearing in flashes of
smoke or whatever. When he got through, there wasn't an inch of the
stage -- with movable beams -- you could not put a trap in. Willy
also rigged my lighting system my way, which was based on all I had
learned from lighting the Martha Graham and the Lincoln Kirstein ballet
repertory companies. I had already toured the system for Lincoln,
through South America, before he went off to war. I knew that the sys-
tem would work under all conditions and how to make it work. But it
did give, basically, a new look to ballet, and when the designers and
choreographers arrived from Europe, I was in trouble.
 They did not accept the idea of lighting design anyway and they had
always seen their ballets lit just one way: that is, the first ten feet of
the stage was pretty well lit and after that you got flat, nineteenth-
century lighting, without mood. You could use color-- go blue for
Swan Lake or pink for Les Biches -- and if ghosts came on, you might
have some green specials, but only in a restricted area. Ninety-nine
percent of the quality had to come within those first ten feet. The system
of lighting was based on the standard equipment available in every
European opera house, which was based on the gaslight era, and was
inflexible.
 My lighting was in depth and they did not like it. Their culturally
conditioned eyes object to change. Lordly, autocratic people like
Massine and Madame Nijinska threatened to throw me out of the
theatre. Madame Nijinska, during a rehearsal of her Bolero, did.
 I was not the only problem in that financially disastrous venture.
There was no communication among the fascinating designers (one of
whom was Salvador Dali) about the actual size of the stage or the
repertory schedule. The fact that no two shows could occupy the stage
space at the same time had been ignored. We got through because
one does, and I had my way for the most part because there wasn't
time to fire me and start over. But the only time I laughed during the
whole season was when Eleanor Wise telephoned from the TPS office
to report that Madame Dali had asked when Miss Rosenthal had "her
assignation with my husband."

 After the war, Madeleine O'Shea, a partner in TPS and my "house
philosopher"-- a marvelous woman who taught acting as her regu-
lar profession and taught me a great deal about the theatre -- told me I
must go to Europe. I listened to her about this as about everything
else and I took my accumulated pennies and went to Europe. Mostly
on that trip I just looked. I think I was the most indefatigable museum-
haunter in history. My debt to Europe is as great as my inheritance --
my father was German, my mother Rumanian. I understood after that
trip why Europeans clung so to tradition. They had so much that was
marvelous to cling to.
 Later, Ballet Society, which became the New York City Ballet, sent
me to Europe many times. These times were doubly rewarding, not
only because of the amusement, and the pleasure, of bringing work to
Europe, and the exchange of ideas, but also for the very special experi-
ence of working in the great theatres of Europe -- not only in terms of
the way the crews operated and the theatre was organized, but in
terms of the architecture of the structures themselves. It was a way of
gaining an enormous amount of information almost impossible to
acquire any other way.
 All this was grist to my mill -- since my real interest is the theatre as
a whole, visually, with a specialized use of the visual in terms of light-
ing and a kind of space designing.

 My second career, as a lighting consultant, brought me into collabo-
ration with architects and faculty members. Even though most of this
work was within a theatre framework, in buildings which were the-
atres or in university dramatic departments, the collaborations were
very different from those within the theatre itself. For one thing, both
architects and professors are more inclined to be romantic about the
theatre than theatre professionals are.
 Architects, in my opinion, are generally by nature dreamy and im-
practical. They are trained in practicality but are always ignoring prac-
tical considerations. (Sometimes I got the impression that they had all
read The Fountainhead too young.) I literally found myself explaining
once that an office building, although it houses three thousand people,
does not need as many toilets per occupant as a theatre, where every-
body is trying to get in during one fifteen-minute intermission. As for
lighting, most architects think about their buildings and not about the
uses made of these buildings by people. Although they consult with
specialists in various fields, they hate to pay attention to them.
 For theatres, I really did work out a kind of standard approach. I
would say to the architects, let's forget that this building is for the arts.
Let's consider it as a factory in which certain things must be produced
-- in this case, plays. Then, of course, the height of the stagehouse
must be sufficient for scenery to fly out. The steel in the grid must be
able to carry so much live weight. The loading door must be designed
to let scenery of a certain size through. Once the romance was out of
it, the job was easier to do. And an exciting new architectural concept

It is hectic and dangerous to lead the
life of a consultant.... I think I can
divide the groups concerned with a the-
atre building into the client, the archi-
tect and the vendor. These forces are
all applied to the consultant, and if he
or she has humor, judgment, and the
ability to sort out the essential aims of
each of the people involved, then I think
the consultant serves a proper purpose.
Most of us operating as consultants are
really not so in the architectural use of
the word at all. We are advisors. We
are experts because of our passion for
the theatre, and in terms of our experi-
ence. And we will do anything to com-
municate this information to anybody
who asks us for it.
-- From a speech by J.R.

could be treated as a practical challenge rather than an innovation for
its own sake.
 I do like working with architects. I love buildings and I do know
about stresses and materials and all that, so I can talk their language.
Also an architect's blueprint is as clear and beautifully readable to me
as the pages of a primer. Although I cannot draw and have often been
bored with the inevitable "chalk-talks" architects give, I am happy
conferring over blueprints.
  I think perhaps the most successful and practical building on which
 have collaborated and in which I take pride is the Los Angeles Music
Center. For the Chandler Pavilion they wanted to hire a man com-
mitted to a laboratory grid system which had not yet been solved. I
persuaded them to hire Willy Nolan. The big pavilion is currently per-
haps the only modern theatre that works equally well for the modern
things and for all the old-fashioned things.
 When I was hired as a consultant I had what the word implies: a
body of experience in my field and a recognized authority on my sub-
ject. Entering the academic world as a consultant, as an expert on
theatre lighting, I found my experience invalidated to some extent be-
cause it had been on Broadway. In the universities Broadway was held
in strong contempt. At first I thought this might be the business of
people who wanted to be on Broadway and could not make it. I think
this is not very important. What is important is why they are in the
university theatres and not on Broadway.
 People in universities really aren't very knowledgeable about the
theatre in New York. They regard it as a sort of total Establishment,
without regard to the brevity of its history in this condition. I con-
cluded, trying to figure it out, that their reactions were really based on
the problem of being academicians in the first place.
 Whether he is an instructor, full professor or whatever, your acade-
mician really functions on only two levels: either he is teaching or he is
being taught. He is hostile toward the people he is willing to learn
from, although he concedes enormous respect to another academic
degree, which certifies in his terms that someone knows more about a
subject than he does. He has no means of identifying with the expert
who comes from the workaday world or with the attitude of those
whose working experience has taught them that a discourse or discus-
sion is not a teacher-student relationship but is a sharing of ideas in the
hope that two ideas are better than one.

 I began with Martha Graham, whose idea of "the happy creative
whole" was the standard she set and I adopted. That basic idea, that
kind of collaboration, has been part of the condition in which I have
been able -- much of the time -- to live. The fine disciplines and
longer associations of repertory theatre provided the best possible
schooling for the improvised disciplines of commercial theatre. You
can nearly always recognize the quality of artists trained through reper-
tory or alternating in repertory. (That may account for the higher
standard of acting among the British.) There is more willingness to
subordinate the individual performance for the sake of the whole.
There is no loss in this of ego or identity.
 Lighting, my primary concern, must be subordinated. It is only
valuable to the extent to which it contributes to and never dominates
any scene. Yet it has its separate identity and its vital contributory
importance.
 In the effort to formulate what I think I am about as a producing craft
artist, I find I have not emitted many wisdoms nor dropped many
pearls. I am rather a dull girl, with a natural response based on im-
ages.Ifi I read history I absorb no facts, but I see what I am reading
about. (The battle is plain.) Music creates visual images for me, and
that glade, or house, or abstraction, or cloud is perfectly clear. In leav-
ing the subject of the craftsman to talk about the craft, I feel more at
ease.
 Light is quite tactile to me. It has shape and dimension. It has an
edge. It has quality and it is an entity. It is the one miracle of creation
without which, to me, the others would be meaningless.
 I have always objected to the usual reading of the great line from
Genesis, especially from the pulpit. It is read: "God said, let there be
light, and there was light." It should be read: "God said, let there be
light, and there was LIGHT!"