Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1979 - 9

to Ming Cho Lee's house in New York, which they just loved.
They were hungry for any information, ideas, technological
advances, things like that. We went to Rosco and Kliegl and
they loved being there. Rosco and Kliegl gave them catalogs
and information and told them about OISTT, which they
hadn't known about. The avenues for communication are
open; I think they want to have contact. The head politico
came to me with the idea of sending me students, so that
could be very exciting.
In Washington I showed them air casters-I was surprised
they didn't know about them. The whole concept of an air
caster blew them away-the idea that you could move a big
platform. The air casters weren't working in Washington so I
arranged for a demonstration when we were at the Guthrie
where they also saw hydraulic casters. They loved the air
tools. They were all over the Guthrie shop like crazy, they
really let their hair down there. Everybody was wonderful to
them from Rosco, to Kliegl, to the Guthrie, to the Walker Art
Gallery.
The performance was done for PBS in Minneapolis. (It will
be aired March 21 on PBS.) We had five days warning that we
were going to do it on television. The program was changed
from what had been performed pUblicly in Minneapolis so the
poor TV people never knew what was coming up next. We did
two numbers the final night that nobody had seen: White
Haired Girl and Laundry Song. We had done Laundry Song in
New York but not White Haired Girl. No lighting person, no
anything-we just did it. We were going like crazy and the
television people just covered it. Very exciting.
I took them to the Drama Book Shop in New York. The
Chinese told me that they had only six books in Peking on
American theatre. I had been given $200 by the Metropolitan
Opera to buy technical books, so we went to the bookstore
and it was a cabal of sorts. It was wonderful, exciting, and
kind of sad-they're starving for information. Anyway, we
compromised on $235 worth of books. Mr. Liu, the lighting
designer, had been asked to compile a list of all the technical
books because the word is out that they are going to build
about ten theatres in Peking-bring back the arts of the
ancients. He had this list of books, pages and pages, all
translated, and then Arthur, from the bookstore, gave him a
copy of Performing Arts Books in Print. It was like having a
marriage or something!
My previous experiences with the State Department-secret service-have been very formal, but this time the State
Department was fantastically wonderful. They dressed in
jeans, they had mock gun battles with the Chinese-not the
way you would expect a normal State Department to behave.
At Wolf Trap the Chinese discovered the Frisbee. We had a
dress rehearsal come to a complete and utter halt. I was
trying to figure out what was going on because there was
nobody on stage. You had to see it to believe it-the Chinese
were all out there with this Frisbee in the parking lot with the
Wolf Trap crew and the State Department. The Wolf Trap
stage hands went out and bought a lot of Frisbees for them
and they got very good. Backstage it was like taking your life
in your hands.
One day in Minneapolis I had two cars for the day and after
we'd seen the Guthrie I said that if we hurried through lunch
we could all see Star Wars; we just wouldn't ask permission.
Well, Mr. Gin, the designer, didn't even need to have it translated, he started jumping up and down and Wong Lee said we
didn't even have to have lunch. I said we had time for both
and we ate at the top of the Walker Art Gallery. After lunch
there was still fifteen minutes to look through the museum but
USITI/Spring, 1979

in five minutes they were all downstairs ready to go. The
movie theatre had Dolby sound and the scene in the desert
where the sound comes from behind was incredible to them.
It created such a stir that when we got to Berkeley we had to
take a gang of 148 to see Star Wars.
The Chinese were really interested in American life. They
liked American beer but it was hard getting them used to
American food. I took them to Farrell's, near Wolf Trap, one
day and my root beer float failed miserably. After that I
started looking up Chinese restaurants. They had been getting American food mostly buffet style in the hotels. They
have a drink called mai tai and at a Chinese restaurant in
Berkeley I asked for some. We all sat around relaxing on mai
tai-they were obviously enjoying being there. It was our little
side adventures that were very exciting. Sometimes they
would take off their jackets and turn into human beings and
then it was as if they were stage hands and technicians just
like the rest of us. Our people who were in the Met road tour
loved them. There were a lot of tears the last day.

The Cuban Ballet

Cuba has got the secret-they're into good performance.
The Cuban Ballet survived the Revolution because Alicia
Alonso and Castro had been friends. The ballet is a sort of
embassy to the world. They don't have a lot of money for
scenery or anything technical down there so they just dance
better. That's what everybody wants anyway. The Cubans
were a big dance hit and will be coming back to the Metropolitan next year.
They came and did six evenings of ballet. Virtually everything folded up into one four-prop airplane. No one worried
that there was not too much scenery-they had everything.
They did one set that had thirty-five miles of plastic tubing. It
all went into boxes but it made a set over the whole stage.
Their lighting equipment is all imported. I never got to the
theatres but I was told that they haven't had a new instrument
in sixteen years. Their lamps must come from Russia or
probably Canada.
The Cubans came with a list. We had to help them find
wheel rims for '57 Chevrolets, tires, etc. You should have seen
the hotel lobby the day they moved out.
I did Martha Graham at the same time. Martha Graham was
a side contract, I don't understand why. All I know is that I
came to work to do the Cubans and I just went to the theatre
every day and issued schedules, got trucks loaded, went to
the airport and got planes unloaded. I just made it all happen.
Martha Graham overlapped the Cubans. On Monday and
Thursday we were dress rehearsing the Cubans and on Tuesday and Friday we were dress rehearsing Martha. One light
plot, same space for everybody. We were working with the
Chinese before Martha left. That kind of overlap was something I developed with the Bolshoi. It's a lot cheaper if you
work straight time at the Met so when I did the Bolshoi season
in 1975 my idea was to start bringing in the operas during the
ballet season and the Stuttgart during the Bolshoi. Normally
you think about doing one thing at a time but if you are doing
repertory in terms of opera you might as well do repertory in
terms of companies. It was fun doing Martha one day and
Alicia the next. It was also fun dealing with that many national
treasures across America in one week.D
Theatre Design & Technology

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 1979