Column: Dramatic Impact

When it comes to modern theater, stage directions—the descriptive text that appears within brackets in a script—are an important piece of the puzzle. They speak for the playwright when he is not there. They provide details about how the playwright has imagined the environment and atmosphere. They describe critical physical aspects of the characters and settings. Stage directions can also be critical in dictating the intended tempo and rhythm of the piece. Whether they establish a production’s overall tone or elucidate particular actions of characters, stage directions help tell the complete story that is in the playwright’s mind. Stage directions accomplish all of this, using a simple convention that structurally separates them from the actual story.

Tennessee Williams, the playwright of A Streetcar Named Desire, strives to give a play “the spirit of life” through his stage directions. Read the following snippet from the opening of Scene 1, and you’ll find it’s hard to argue that he doesn’t achieve that goal. Read More

“Good artists copy; great artists steal.”—Pablo Picasso

It is a fact of life that creative people—if they are any good—constantly absorb input and stimuli that influences their own creative output. By nature, they imitate and play with the ideas of other creative people. It’s how they learn and grow. It doesn’t matter whether you call this trait awareness, empathy, or even stealing. No innovative or successful design happens in a vacuum. Regardless of whether you realize it, what you see and interact with around you every day influences your work. Picasso just happened to be a master when it came to using stolen goods for the benefit of his own artistic pursuits.

My knowledge of Picasso has always been a bit limited. Modern art has never been my cup of tea. However, despite this, the Museu Picasso was on my list of things to see while in Barcelona on a recent trip. I’m open minded and willing to learn about new perspectives after all. But true excitement surged through me, when I realized a new exhibit called Picasso Looks at Degas was going to open while I was in town. Degas is one my ultimate favorites, so I figured this was going to be good and impatiently waited an hour in line to get in, capturing the photo shown in Figure 1. I didn’t yet know I was about find out how masterful Picasso truly was at the game of reinterpretation for innovation—or what some may call stealing. Read More

I’m sitting in a conference room with a coworker and two clients. It’s chaotic, hot, and a challenge just to walk around without tripping on the mess surrounding us. We are in the midst of designing and are buried in paper and sharpies and flipcharts. The walls around us are covered with consolidated data from requirements gathering and flipchart pages we’ve filled with our thought processes. Every few minutes, we need to retape some piece of paper that’s in danger of falling into a crumpled heap on the floor. Then, suddenly, I’m gripped with the feeling of déjà vu. It seems like I’m working on the same design I’ve worked on a thousand times before—and I’m getting bogged down in the details to boot! It’s at once disheartening and terrifying. But I’m the lead on this project, so I need to drive the team forward—which presents a challenge at this particular moment.

In that moment, I realized I had to step back and take a new perspective on both my role and the goal of our design. Read More