Tony-winning scenic designer Brian MacDevitt teaches by bringing his production of Raisin in the Sun into the classroom, where students research and critique his design concepts. Their ideas feed directly into his production meetings, and he holds everyone accountable for every choice, demanding narrative justification instead of surface-level cool factor.
Chapters
Teachers will tell you this. You know, there's that bad saying that if you can't do it, you teach. You know, those who can't do, teach. And that's terrible. I think that's total bullshit. Because what I get from my students— we work on my plays in class. So like, I don't know if we did Betrayal, but we're doing— the show I'm doing in the spring is Raisin in the Sun. We've started working on it in class. I want to know their ideas. The advantage being it feeds me. I go to my meetings more prepared after having meetings like that with my students. They get to have their ideas. They will see in paper form that set, and they're gonna start designing a paper project of that, and then they'll come and see the show in New York, and they'll be like, "Huh, I was thinking about doing this, and Brian did that. I think my idea's better." You know, like, things like that. So there's like a whole pile of research that they bring too, and they bring ideas to things that I didn't have before we met, before our classes. And I hope that they learn, you know, the exchange is an equal exchange for them. It just gets you on your game because you can't— I'm teaching them to talk the talk and walk the walk, and I can't come into a show and have them ask me like, "Oh, what was your concept? Like, what was your idea for the show?" And if I don't have one, I'm, you know, I've been found out, you know, it's like I have to be able to— I ask them to be responsible for their choices. And I'm like, I want that to be like a real rigorous part of the study. Like, don't put something on stage if you don't believe in it 100% and can't back it up. So if somebody asks you like, why do you have that light through the window? Then there needs to be a reason for that. As opposed to like, there's a big thing called the cool factor. It's like, I don't know, this, oh, that's so cool. That's a cool effect. It's like, well, what is that? What is that telling you? What's that story telling? And I still catch myself in it all the time, but because I want them accountable for what they do, I have to be accountable when I do it in my practice because they're coming and they're asking, you know, and they give me really good notes. And they— I don't know, it's just, it's a really good kind of exchange.
