Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2020 - 34

Dominique Morriseau and Larry Powell in Actors Theatre of Louisville's The Mountaintop, 2014, directed by Giovanna Sardelli. Media Design by Philip Allgeier. | Photo by Philip
Allgeier, courtesy of Actors Theatre of Louisville.

integrated into a production well after
contracts for the design team would
normally be negotiated. As quickly as
projections can be cut from a show, they
can also be added. This is a great time
to bring in the theatre's resident media
technologist, instead of having to scramble to find out whether or not that idea
can be supported by the organization.
Media
design
is
deceptive.
Compared to sets or costumes, it is a design field that can seem on the surface
abstract or immaterial. All of that media
content has to come from somewhere,
however, and oftentimes the way media images are shown can require just
as much physical reality as the onstage
performance itself. Allgeier approaches
media design as a maker. Rather than
defaulting to stock image websites, he
spends much of his time experimenting with different shots, testing new
approaches to images he visualizes onstage and teaching himself new skills.
His preference is "always to make it
myself. Being called a designer, there's
something much more genuine about
creating your own media."
In his 2010 design for The Mystery
of Irma Vep by Charles Ludlam, directed by Sean Daniels, Allgeier wanted to
make the walls of the set look like they
were bleeding. Rather than use a stock
footage website, he set up a camera,
white poster board, and stage blood

in his media studio and recorded himself squirting some blood on the top of
the posterboard, filming it as it slowly
crawled down the sheet.
In 2016, Allgeier designed The 39
Steps, and in addition to two off-site
filming sessions for the prologue and
epilogue of the piece, he also wanted to
project video of a plane flying into the
audience in classic Hitchcock style. To
achieve the effect, Allgeier purchased a
model diecast airplane, and a colleague,
Jessica Collins, used a can of compressed air to make the propeller spin
while he ran towards the plane with a
camera. Allgeier's designs have included
forays into stop motion animation, green
screens, and site-specific filming (the latter two often requiring the collaboration
of all the production departments, especially if the shots included actors in costume, live captured sound, etc.). Allgeier
admits that, of course, there's nothing
wrong with using stock image and video
websites to obtain media in certain instances ("I can't tell you how many New
York streets I've had to project"), but his
artistry stems from a desire to create
and share, rather than copy and paste.
Over 11 seasons at ATL, the shows
that seem to stand out to Allgeier are
the ones where media design was not
an add-on, but was integral to the storytelling of the show. Allgeier recalled
his 2013 design of Katori Hall's The

34 | THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY | WINTER 2020

Mountaintop, directed by Giovanna
Sardelli, as an exceptional experience.
"Not only is the subject matter so important, and the play so excellent, but that
show is a great example of one that has
a built-in huge video moment," he says.
"For that show, I had to condense 50
years of civil rights history into about
four minutes of show." The Mountaintop
also represented a rare moment in his
career in media design where the lighting designer, Lap Chi Chu, turned off all
the lights and Allgeier illuminated the
set with only his three projectors and a
1960s television. "That never happens,"
Allgeier smiles, "That has not happened
before or since."
Another show that tested Allgeier's
abilities as a designer in the best possible way was the 2012 ATL production of
The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by
Kristoffer Diaz, directed by KJ Sanchez.
Rather than a singular moment where
media design shone on its own, what
seemed to excite Allgeier in recalling
the experience of working on Deity was
how fully the media design was incorporated into the show as a whole and how
many different aspects of video production were utilized. "[Allgeier and Media
Intern Chris Owens] did so many crazy
things for that show that we wouldn't
have done for any other project. We did
outside shoots at a local wrestling venue.
We did green screen shoots. We had a

Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2020

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