Disclaimer: I had intended for this next entry to be a reflection on my feelings involving A Chorus Line and my nostalgia and insights regarding that subject. But this morning something else came across my mind and I find myself having it take precedence...
I spent a fair part of yesterday working with newsprint and fabricating pseudo-bundles of newspapers for use in Guys And Dolls, which is the next show on the schedule here at the Summer stock where I am working. I applied newspapers to dance/rehearsal cubes that are enhanced by some cut up foam from 'pool noodles', to give the bundles some visual variation and roundness, using wallpaper paste to adhere the foam. Then when it dried I applied some lines between the curves, so that it would (hopefully) provide the appearance of stacked papers. While they are still in process (the units need a seal coat, to have binding twine attached, etc) I looked at them last night and thought "Man...those lines could be straighter...". That was, I think, my perfectionism talking.
This morning I came in and didn't pay much attention to them at first, since I wanted to get things organized for the days projects, etc. I looked up from the list(s) I was working on and the units just happened to catch my eye. And they really didn't look bad at all. They looked, even in their partly completed state, like a couple of piles of newspapers. I found myself reflecting on the fact that in honesty had the lines been 'straighter' the illusion might not have worked as well. Which got me thinking about why...
[Granted, I currently have no research to support this hypothesis....]
Audience members have, in general, been out 'in the world' for all of their lives. And so they have developed all sorts of mental standards regarding the visual cues which confront them on a daily basis. And when things break from those standards, the audience's attention/focus is disrupted. In the world of robotics and/or computer animation this sort of thing is referred to as 'the uncanny valley'- that is (to quote from Wikipedia):
"... The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of human
aesthetics which holds that when human features look and move almost,
but not exactly, like natural human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among some human observers. ..."
[Full article found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley ]
So when an artist/designer finds themselves working to make a piece 'perfect' they may, inadvertently, be taking their audience out of 'the world of the performance'.
We talked a bit about this sort of thing during both my Directing For The Theatre class and my Collaborative Process class at UAF, so I am really not breaking any new ground here. But as one who faces certain perfectionistic impulses having this potential insight may well aid me in dealing with the related inertia/delays that often come with perfectionism. And since I know that there are others out there who can also face such things, I thought it might be worth sharing.
It is also always good to recall something that one of my art teachers pointed out: generally, your work isn't viewed at 8 inches away, but rather 36 inches (or more). Which in the theatre is something that I have taken to calling 'the 12 foot rule' - most front row seats will be, at minimum, 12 feet or more away from any scenic piece at any given time. So if you add all sorts of uber-detailing, it will potentially vanish and become a single massed image. We used a similar rule back at Waukegan West High as regarding make-up applications and, especially for those of us who played many old man roles and thus needed lots of wrinkles, bold lining always sold the effect better than more realistic work. I had somewhat forgotten that. But it makes so much sense in so many other applications as well.
So I will now be making a more concerted effort to remind myself to follow the classic suggestion found in a line from the musical The Fantasticks - paraphrasing, Henry (the old actor) says to El Gallo "Oh please...don't judge this too harshly. You need to see it under light."
A fine truth, that all of us perfectionistically prone individuals might do well to remember.
More later.
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