Directors and the Pope

My recent experience with Geoff (pronounced Jeff but I call him Gee-off except to his face) has allowed me to come to the conclusion that I never want to design sets again. I was asked to design the set for 'Almost, Maine;' it is the spring show directed by an outside director this year. I thought that this would be a blast to do, my family has a summer cottage on the coast of maine, the director would love that kind of input. As it turns out, the director wouldn't like that kind of input. Gee-off, from what I tell is a capricious bastard. Right from the get-go Gee-off was on my shit list, he introduced himself, 'is from Maine, the real Maine, not the one that everyone pictures on the coast with the lobsterman, that Maine has been taken over by New Englanders that want summer homes.' For those of you that don't know, my family has a house on the coast of Maine and is originally from the Boston area. Anyways, Jimmy (the shop director and all around sweet guy) and I came up with a set design together for the second production meeting. We were told that he would with what we gave him only to have it summarily rejected. Gee-off as it turns out has directed the show before and 'was thinking' of a bare stage set, but likes what we did with the backdrop. This would be like if when designing St. Peter's Basilica the Pope agreed to Michelangelo's demand to have total artistic freedom only to have the pope say "I've built cathedrals before; I was thinking of a bare unobstructed floor, get rid of the pillars. Though I do like your choice of marble." Obviously I am not Michelangelo but neither is a director the pope (though on a side not if the pope had said he didnt like the pillars, too bad ninja turtle you are changing the design. He is the pope). I think that my experience with Gee-off underlines a fundamental problem in some working relationships. When the boss of a project has no personal investment in the time consumption of the workers, the boss has no incentive to be clear about goals or desires. The burden of completing the project falls on the people under the boss and not on the boss, at least in the boss' mind. When I did not produce a set design that Gee-off liked it was my fault, because he did not provide any direction as to what he wanted. Perhaps, if Gee-off had been paying me out of pocket (I was doing the work on a volunteer basis) he might have spent more time in the initial production meeting being clear about what he wanted from Jimmy and me. But, because he essentially has an unlimited budget and there is no connection between our time spent designing and him, he has no incentive to be helpful. Another good example is, over the summer I was working at BAH and someone asked me to make a graph for him. He explained the general idea and off I went to make his graph look the way he said he wanted it. As it turns out there was actual data for this graph to be had, he knew who had the data, and the data would never make sense on a single graph. These were all things that he knew and knew I would need to know but didn't share them with me until after several iterations of the graph(s) and a couple hundred billable hours. The two graphs became a single page in an 80 page document. This person had no incentive to be clear about his directions nor what he needed. In his eyes, my time and billing had no relation to him so he could afford to be withholding and, what seemed to be purposeful, unhelpful. During the process of creating the graphs each failed iteration was my fault because I did not get it right. I argue that both management and workers share an equal responsibility in the completion of work in a satisfactory manner. There is a fine line between being clear on direction and micro-managing. That line is where managers and, in my opinion, directors need to be. A set designer is there to provide artistic creativity in places the director may not have thought of, not to be a sketch artist merely drawing what the director wants. In summation, I am done designing shows, not because I don't enjoy it but because I don't enjoy working for people that think they are the pope, and a lot of directors think they are.