[Mb-hair] Non-Profit Theatre: An Amazing Donation Story

[Jim Burns]

This is fascinating, particularly the first few paragraphs--for how
inventive certan donations, when coupled with corporate, can be...! 

Jim Burns 
___ 

"In Oregon, Brushing Up Their Shakespeare, Helped Along by Software" 
By KATIE HAFNER 
New York Times, November 8, 2005 


ASHLAND, Ore. - For nearly 30 years, Michael Schroeder, a computer
research scientist, has been a loyal fan of the Oregon Shakespeare
Festival in Ashland. He is so devoted that in July 2001, when he was
interviewing for a job with Microsoft, he flew from Medford, Ore., to
San Francisco one morning and hurried back to Ashland for that evening's
performance of "The Merry Wives of Windsor." 

Mr. Schroeder ended up taking the Microsoft job. A couple of summers
later, when he attended a donors dinner in Ashland, he asked if the
festival would be interested in receiving software along with his usual
cash contribution. 

The response was quick and enthusiastic: absolutely. The result: Ashland
has become the envy of other regional theaters around the country. 

"All of a sudden it was like angels came flying down," Bruce Wand, the
festival's director of information technology services, said of Mr.
Schroeder and two of Mr. Schroeder's longtime colleagues, Andrew Birrell
and Edward Wobber, who also work at Microsoft and were regular
contributors to Ashland. 

The festival's technical staff put together a lengthy wish list of
software, some of it basic operating system software, some of it more
specialized, and far more expensive. Mr. Schroeder investigated
Microsoft's gift-matching policies and found that if the three men each
gave $2,000, the company would match the cash donations with enough
software for the festival to have everything on its wish list. The
retail value was estimated at $150,000. 
By late 2003, the first software donation was in place. New computers
were purchased, and a wireless network was built. A small group of
programmers at the festival was able to write customized software to cue
lights, position scenery, keep track of props and costumes, project
synchronized video, sell tickets and administer the database of members. 

To understand the impact this upgrade has had, consider the daunting
number of particulars that Ashland - among the largest and oldest
regional repertory theaters in the country - must track. During each
season, which runs from February through October, the festival produces
about 775 performances of 11 productions on three stages, with sets
assembled and disassembled dozens of times in the course of a week. For
the 2005 season's 120 performances of "Richard III," for instance, the
set was taken down and rebuilt 125 times. "We're like a touring theater
that doesn't go anywhere, and we're touring 11 shows at once," said
Michael Maag, the festival's master electrician. 
Now costume designers can look at images online rather than rifling
through racks; costume inventories are so precise that if an understudy
jumps into a role at the last minute, the software knows if the correct
size costume is on hand. The amount of time spent in production meetings
poring over minutiae has been dramatically reduced. Drawings of props,
for example, can be sent by e-mail message to a designer with requested
changes, no face-to-face meetings necessary. The automation of the
lights alone has saved the festival hundreds of hours of labor and tens
of thousands of dollars. What was once done with a $55,000 lighting
console can be achieved with a $1,200 desktop computer and some
custom-tailored software. "The trickle effect of this gift, I can't even
get my hands around it," Mr. Wand said. 
During a recent tour of the lighting and sound control booth, Mr. Maag
described the clever use of automated lighting in a sequence of "Richard
III," when Queen Margaret makes a stealthy yet conspicuous entrance.
Libby Appel, who directed the play, and the actress playing Queen
Margaret, Robin Goodrin Nordli, experimented for a while with how she
would enter, then the light cues were programmed to place her in a
dappled pinpoint of light. 
"It took five minutes to place the lights," Mr. Maag said, whereas
before the automation, he would have had to take down instructions
during a technical rehearsal, then have a technician come in before the
performance, crawl along catwalks and perch on ladders to hang the
lights, adjust them and readjust them. 
Stuart Cotts, the festival's principal technology engineer, said that
when his counterparts from other theaters visited, their first reaction
was envy. Then they ask if they can buy the software. "I've been truly
amazed by the uses that Bruce Wand and his band of wizards have come up
with for our software," said Mr. Wobber, who goes to Ashland twice a
year. 
Now, each year, around the middle of the summer, Mr. Wand sends an
e-mail message to Mr. Schroeder with a new wish list. Mr. Schroeder then
sits down with Mr. Wobber and Mr. Birrell, and they divide up the
requests. 
For all the excitement about the technology, Ms. Appel, the artistic
director of the festival, takes care to make sure that it doesn't
eclipse the art, something she said was "overdecorating." "Don't take me
too literally when I say this, but I'm a great believer that it's about
the text and the actor and some lights," she said. William Bloodgood,
the festival's resident scenic designer, said: "The artistic people here
get very nervous about technology because they see it as having a high
failure rate. If a machine breaks down, it does bring the show to a
halt, but the same thing can happen without mechanized scenery. The
machines are no more infallible than an actor or a human stagehand." 
Mr. Bloodgood does freelance work at other theaters and said nothing
approaches the technical efficiency of Ashland. And there is also some
razzle-dazzle. 
A production of "The Comedy of Errors" last season was set in Las Vegas,
replete with glitz. A complex system of a dozen computer-driven motors
pulled sliding panels, rolled stairs and spun an enormous turntable. "It
was hugely popular," Mr. Bloodgood said. Mr. Schroeder, meanwhile, is
still making the six-hour trip from the Bay Area every year. (One
advantage of driving, he said, is that he and his wife can take their
large, heavy espresso machine, set it up in their hotel room and serve
coffee and bagels each morning to a group of friends who make the trek
with them.) 
When he watches the plays in Ashland, technology isn't the first thing
he thinks about. 
"I suppose if some light went bananas in the middle of a performance, it
would take me back to that line of thought," he said. "But a good play
really sucks you in." 


© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company