Thoughts on Gays
posted by Redboy at 6:31 PM
1 comments
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Friday, June 23, 2006
Theatre with Soul
At a time when science, technology and virtual reality exist alongside meditation, yoga and oxygen bars, Joshua Dachs (theatre designer for the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, the COC’s new home) has struck a fine balance when it comes to designing theatres. This renowned partner of the acclaimed New York firm Fisher Dachs Associates, not only incorporates the tangible necessities in theatre layout but is also compelled and fascinated by the intangible – the soul of a theatre.
He played violin as a child and went to the High School of Music and Art in New York (the film Fame took place in that school). “I somehow got it into my head that I wanted to go into architecture,” Dachs says. “I went to Cornell University and while there I decided to take an elective course, which involved assisting the theatre department in building scenery for class credit. I thought I would try building instead of just drawing all the time. It was tremendously satisfying and I found myself designing lighting and scenery. During that time I took a course in which the lecturer—who happened to be Jules Fisher – talked a lot about architectural lighting design and showed slides of Broadway shows and Rolling Stones tours, etc. as well as some theatres that his firm had been associated with.
“After the lecture I asked if he had any summer work and I spent the summer working for Jules Fisher Lighting (now Fisher Dachs Associates). I worked on the revival of Hair on Broadway, Pippin in Chicago and Beatlemania, but also the lighting of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and the Boettcher Concert Hall in Denver. When I graduated I came back to work at the firm and I have been there ever since.” The company now has three components: Fisher Marantz Stone only designs architectural lighting; Fisher Dachs only designs theatres; Dachs’ partner, Jules Fisher, who has won seven Tony Awards, continues to light shows on Broadway and rock and roll tours with co-designer Peggy Eisenhauer under the name Third Eye.
Dachs has thought a lot about opera during his 25 years as a theatre designer. “Opera houses, as a building type, have a very long and rich tradition originating in the early days of the Italian renaissance, as early as about 1608,” says Dachs. “There were rooms in Italy that were horseshoe-shaped and had picture frame openings that we would recognize today as a precursor to opera halls. Opera houses essentially developed side by side with the art form of opera, and over the centuries those rooms developed into the grand theatres that we all know and love today—like La Fenice in Venice and La Scala in Milan. They spread around the world quite quickly and by the middle of the 19th century they were everywhere.
“Some of the auditoriums that we looked at together with Richard (Bradshaw) were those that I mentioned, La Fenice and La Scala, but also Munich which has a long, rich tradition to draw upon. In designing our opera house, we are looking for something that is completely contemporary but at the same time shares the most important qualities of the great opera houses of the world.
“What is it that people love? Certainly we want wonderful acoustics but we want a lot more than that. We want to create a room that is a marvellous place in which to share a live performance. Architecture, the geometry that you choose, the colours, the materials; everything about it can either make people feel like they are together in a small room sharing an event, or the opposite, where they feel a great chasm between themselves and the performers.
“Peter Brook, a famous British director who is also one of the few theatre people who have written eloquently about creating theatre spaces, once said, ‘the science of theatre building must come from studying what it is that brings about the most vivid relationship between people.’ That is really foremost in our minds. Every choice that we make in creating a room has to support this idea of bringing people closer together and making their experience in the theatre vivid and alive.”
Several things must be accomplished in order to bring the audience as close as possible to the performance. “That’s one of the reasons why we’ve got a vertically organized room in the same way that you do at La Scala or Munich,” says Dachs. “We have several layers, or ‘rings,’ of seating. By organizing people vertically, we bring them closer.
“The second thing that we need to do is to ‘wallpaper’ the room with faces. If you look at traditional opera house models, the audience is not sitting as they are in a movie theatre with everybody on one or two levels, facing front between two blank sidewalls. Rather, the audience wraps around in that wonderful horseshoe-shape and comes right up to the stage. As you sit in the house looking at the stage there are always people in your peripheral vision. You never forget that this is a completely live experience—these moments will never happen again. The wonderful thing about an opera house is that it reflects fundamental human impulses. We always gather around a storyteller or a juggler on the street and the live theatres that we create need to allow us to do that as well.
“The other thing that the geometry does is cause the audience to literally embrace the singer. When performers stands on stage and that wonderful audience rings around them, they feel totally encompassed and it changes how they perform. It truly is a living thing.”
Dachs goes on to say that the room needs to look and feel as small as possible. There are a certain number of seats that have to be accommodated and each one needs to have good sightlines. The room needs to feel a third or a half of the actual size. “One of the ways that we do that,” says Dachs, “ is by architecturally emphasizing the idea that the space contained by those rings of balconies is the actual size of the room. Although all four walls stretch to the front, back and sides, we want everybody to feel that the theatre space is only as big as the space embraced by the balconies.
“We are reinforcing that idea in the way the ceiling is designed. It is not a dome, it is actually an inverted dome, but there is a circular gesture in the ceiling that corresponds to the rings of the balconies. There is even a gesture made on the main floor level, which we call the ‘parterre,’ where a railing wraps around and follows the line of the balconies above. By repeating this horseshoe-shape on the floor and on the ceiling, and by making the outer walls relatively darker and the balcony fronts brighter, we were able to emphasize the intimacy of the room.
“We learned in the ‘bad days’ of the 1950s and '60s that when you put large, blank surfaces around a stage, the stage seems very small and the performer on the stage even smaller. But if you break down the scale of all of the surfaces surrounding the stage, then the stage seems large—it seems like the largest thing in the room. The architectural game that we are playing is to try to do everything possible to make it clear that the stage is the most significant part of the room and that the singers can fill that room with their presence. They are in no way diminished by the architecture, but the architecture enhances their scale. In the end, every plane, every surface, has something that breaks it down in some way closer to the scale of the human face, the human form.
“In the geometry of the room, the materials we choose, the colours, and in the way that we light the room, we’re trying to accomplish the same thing—make the performer seem big, make the stage seem big, make the room seem small, make the audience feel close. I view that as the most important task for the theatre consultant.”
Beyond that, Dachs is also responsible for the seating layouts and the sightlines so that this carefully contrived geometric machine provides extraordinary sightlines. “We have proprietary software that we have developed in our office that enables us to study many alternatives with the design team. We had meetings with Robert Essert (acoustician) and Jack Diamond (architect), his staff and the COC staff and box office personnel. We sat ‘virtually’ in each seat of the auditorium so we could note at what point the seats were not providing the best view and eliminate or correct them. There is no seat in this room that has not been carefully reviewed by us, previewed with the box office personnel and approved as being appropriate to include. We have worked very hard to ensure this.”
Dachs and his staff are also responsible for the efficiency of the production “engine.” Along with the artists, there are a myriad of staff backstage—wardrobe, wigs, stagehands, and production staff. Meticulous thought has to be given to storage, truck loading and unloading, backstage circulation, and dressing room layouts, not only for comfort, but also for maximum space and ease of movement. “For instance,” Dachs says, “the backstage corridors must have extra width because, at times, they will be lined with wardrobe racks. At the same time we are dealing with how the audience amenities are accommodated – how to deal with catering, what happens with the food garbage that shouldn’t clutter up the backstage entrance. You don’t want the corps de ballet in their tutus to be crossing past drippy spaghetti trash in a garbage bag. Careful thought has to be given to the logistics backstage.
“We deal with the rigging system and the stage lighting system—the design of those systems, as well as stage machinery that lifts the orchestra pit and moves the variable acoustical draperies. We have got our finger, one way or another, in a lot of different areas in this building.
“There is a side to what we do which is logistical and functional as well as a side that is all about technology and the integration of technology into the building. Then there is a side which is really more spiritual—making this room feel right. Robert is interested in ensuring that it sounds right and I am interested in how it feels. The entire team is working to ensure that the audience and the performer have the best theatrical experience possible.”
By Suzanne Vanstone, Editor of Publications at the COC.
He played violin as a child and went to the High School of Music and Art in New York (the film Fame took place in that school). “I somehow got it into my head that I wanted to go into architecture,” Dachs says. “I went to Cornell University and while there I decided to take an elective course, which involved assisting the theatre department in building scenery for class credit. I thought I would try building instead of just drawing all the time. It was tremendously satisfying and I found myself designing lighting and scenery. During that time I took a course in which the lecturer—who happened to be Jules Fisher – talked a lot about architectural lighting design and showed slides of Broadway shows and Rolling Stones tours, etc. as well as some theatres that his firm had been associated with.
“After the lecture I asked if he had any summer work and I spent the summer working for Jules Fisher Lighting (now Fisher Dachs Associates). I worked on the revival of Hair on Broadway, Pippin in Chicago and Beatlemania, but also the lighting of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and the Boettcher Concert Hall in Denver. When I graduated I came back to work at the firm and I have been there ever since.” The company now has three components: Fisher Marantz Stone only designs architectural lighting; Fisher Dachs only designs theatres; Dachs’ partner, Jules Fisher, who has won seven Tony Awards, continues to light shows on Broadway and rock and roll tours with co-designer Peggy Eisenhauer under the name Third Eye.
Dachs has thought a lot about opera during his 25 years as a theatre designer. “Opera houses, as a building type, have a very long and rich tradition originating in the early days of the Italian renaissance, as early as about 1608,” says Dachs. “There were rooms in Italy that were horseshoe-shaped and had picture frame openings that we would recognize today as a precursor to opera halls. Opera houses essentially developed side by side with the art form of opera, and over the centuries those rooms developed into the grand theatres that we all know and love today—like La Fenice in Venice and La Scala in Milan. They spread around the world quite quickly and by the middle of the 19th century they were everywhere.
“Some of the auditoriums that we looked at together with Richard (Bradshaw) were those that I mentioned, La Fenice and La Scala, but also Munich which has a long, rich tradition to draw upon. In designing our opera house, we are looking for something that is completely contemporary but at the same time shares the most important qualities of the great opera houses of the world.
“What is it that people love? Certainly we want wonderful acoustics but we want a lot more than that. We want to create a room that is a marvellous place in which to share a live performance. Architecture, the geometry that you choose, the colours, the materials; everything about it can either make people feel like they are together in a small room sharing an event, or the opposite, where they feel a great chasm between themselves and the performers.
“Peter Brook, a famous British director who is also one of the few theatre people who have written eloquently about creating theatre spaces, once said, ‘the science of theatre building must come from studying what it is that brings about the most vivid relationship between people.’ That is really foremost in our minds. Every choice that we make in creating a room has to support this idea of bringing people closer together and making their experience in the theatre vivid and alive.”
Several things must be accomplished in order to bring the audience as close as possible to the performance. “That’s one of the reasons why we’ve got a vertically organized room in the same way that you do at La Scala or Munich,” says Dachs. “We have several layers, or ‘rings,’ of seating. By organizing people vertically, we bring them closer.
“The second thing that we need to do is to ‘wallpaper’ the room with faces. If you look at traditional opera house models, the audience is not sitting as they are in a movie theatre with everybody on one or two levels, facing front between two blank sidewalls. Rather, the audience wraps around in that wonderful horseshoe-shape and comes right up to the stage. As you sit in the house looking at the stage there are always people in your peripheral vision. You never forget that this is a completely live experience—these moments will never happen again. The wonderful thing about an opera house is that it reflects fundamental human impulses. We always gather around a storyteller or a juggler on the street and the live theatres that we create need to allow us to do that as well.
“The other thing that the geometry does is cause the audience to literally embrace the singer. When performers stands on stage and that wonderful audience rings around them, they feel totally encompassed and it changes how they perform. It truly is a living thing.”
Dachs goes on to say that the room needs to look and feel as small as possible. There are a certain number of seats that have to be accommodated and each one needs to have good sightlines. The room needs to feel a third or a half of the actual size. “One of the ways that we do that,” says Dachs, “ is by architecturally emphasizing the idea that the space contained by those rings of balconies is the actual size of the room. Although all four walls stretch to the front, back and sides, we want everybody to feel that the theatre space is only as big as the space embraced by the balconies.
“We are reinforcing that idea in the way the ceiling is designed. It is not a dome, it is actually an inverted dome, but there is a circular gesture in the ceiling that corresponds to the rings of the balconies. There is even a gesture made on the main floor level, which we call the ‘parterre,’ where a railing wraps around and follows the line of the balconies above. By repeating this horseshoe-shape on the floor and on the ceiling, and by making the outer walls relatively darker and the balcony fronts brighter, we were able to emphasize the intimacy of the room.
“We learned in the ‘bad days’ of the 1950s and '60s that when you put large, blank surfaces around a stage, the stage seems very small and the performer on the stage even smaller. But if you break down the scale of all of the surfaces surrounding the stage, then the stage seems large—it seems like the largest thing in the room. The architectural game that we are playing is to try to do everything possible to make it clear that the stage is the most significant part of the room and that the singers can fill that room with their presence. They are in no way diminished by the architecture, but the architecture enhances their scale. In the end, every plane, every surface, has something that breaks it down in some way closer to the scale of the human face, the human form.
“In the geometry of the room, the materials we choose, the colours, and in the way that we light the room, we’re trying to accomplish the same thing—make the performer seem big, make the stage seem big, make the room seem small, make the audience feel close. I view that as the most important task for the theatre consultant.”
Beyond that, Dachs is also responsible for the seating layouts and the sightlines so that this carefully contrived geometric machine provides extraordinary sightlines. “We have proprietary software that we have developed in our office that enables us to study many alternatives with the design team. We had meetings with Robert Essert (acoustician) and Jack Diamond (architect), his staff and the COC staff and box office personnel. We sat ‘virtually’ in each seat of the auditorium so we could note at what point the seats were not providing the best view and eliminate or correct them. There is no seat in this room that has not been carefully reviewed by us, previewed with the box office personnel and approved as being appropriate to include. We have worked very hard to ensure this.”
Dachs and his staff are also responsible for the efficiency of the production “engine.” Along with the artists, there are a myriad of staff backstage—wardrobe, wigs, stagehands, and production staff. Meticulous thought has to be given to storage, truck loading and unloading, backstage circulation, and dressing room layouts, not only for comfort, but also for maximum space and ease of movement. “For instance,” Dachs says, “the backstage corridors must have extra width because, at times, they will be lined with wardrobe racks. At the same time we are dealing with how the audience amenities are accommodated – how to deal with catering, what happens with the food garbage that shouldn’t clutter up the backstage entrance. You don’t want the corps de ballet in their tutus to be crossing past drippy spaghetti trash in a garbage bag. Careful thought has to be given to the logistics backstage.
“We deal with the rigging system and the stage lighting system—the design of those systems, as well as stage machinery that lifts the orchestra pit and moves the variable acoustical draperies. We have got our finger, one way or another, in a lot of different areas in this building.
“There is a side to what we do which is logistical and functional as well as a side that is all about technology and the integration of technology into the building. Then there is a side which is really more spiritual—making this room feel right. Robert is interested in ensuring that it sounds right and I am interested in how it feels. The entire team is working to ensure that the audience and the performer have the best theatrical experience possible.”
By Suzanne Vanstone, Editor of Publications at the COC.
posted by Redboy at 10:11 AM
0 comments
Thursday, June 22, 2006
The Urban Etiquette Handbook Part 7
Friends
When can you send a thank-you via e-mail?
A mass e-mail is actually preferable when thanking people who combined to put together a work project or totally rockin’ party, as it emphasizes the communal nature of the achievement and offers the opportunity for public praise. Everything else (e.g., weddings, gifts, anniversaries, job promotions or interviews, etc.) still goes on nice, high-fiber stationery or a store-bought card.
How do you handle it when you, in full party panic, can’t remember the name of someone you know?
Blame the panic! In fact, don’t just blame the panic, inflate it. Begin talking about how flustered you are: You thought it was Thursday for a second, you put your drink down five minutes ago and can’t find it, you are so out of it that you’ve forgotten the name . . . of someone across the room whose name, in reality, you do remember! Then, conspiratorially ask the person whose name you can’t recall to introduce herself to the third party—as you laugh all the way to the First National Bank of Knowing Everybody’s Name.
How do you bring up the subject of a friend’s serious medical problem?
The simple answer is, you don’t. If someone has a medical condition that’s serious but not visually detectable, and he hasn’t broached the subject with you, chances are it’s because he doesn’t want it broached at all. People have all sorts of legitimate reasons for wanting to keep health issues private. You can let your friend know you’re concerned—without embarrassing him—with an earnest gaze and a sincere “So, how are you doing?” which communicates empathy without raising the subject out loud if he really doesn’t feel like talking.
How do you acknowledge obvious plastic surgery?
If the intentions were subtle, pretend you don’t know exactly what change your friend has undergone, even if she looks like a convenience-store thief masked in Saran Wrap. Something like, “Oh, wow . . . you look great. I can’t put my finger on what’s different, but you look years younger.” If the operation was done expressly to garner attention—say the former B-cup is now a DD with the top three buttons undone—well, then just let it rip: “Wow! Those hooters are like big twin Hindenburgs!”
What’s the best response to a racist remark at a dinner party?
Nervous laughter is the inevitable reflex. But the failure to respond will certainly add to your hangover, no matter how much gin has been consumed. The first line of defense against bigotry is to assume that it’s a joke, and say so. “You must be joking . . . though it’s not really that funny.” Try to smile as little as possible while holding out the possibility of forgiveness. You could also accuse the person of being drunk, which is almost always the case. But if someone is offering an entire line of argument that is clearly bigoted or otherwise beyond the bounds of civilized discourse (“I don’t want them in my neighborhood”), someone is honor-bound to make an Atticus Finch–like declaration of belief.
Should the wealthier half of a friendship be expected to give more-expensive gifts?
In an ideal world, no. But in the real world, yeah, pretty much. A rule of thumb: Give according to your means, not the recipient’s. If you’re the richer friend, your impoverished friends will appreciate your generosity infinitely more than a cheap trinket you purchased so as not to embarrass them. If you’re the poorer friend—and you’re worried about being outclassed—get together with other friends of lesser means to pool resources on an item of greater value. Better still, spend extra effort on a thoughtful but nevertheless affordable gift that shows you’ve actually paid attention to your friends’ most obscure tastes and interests.
What’s the best way to avoid awkward crossed-signals handshake-meets-cheek-kiss encounters?
Remember: You can usually get away with unwarranted familiarity if your intended recipient sees it coming. Strike early:
• If you or the person you’re greeting is a woman, start telegraphing your intentions before you make eye contact, either extending your hand or opening your arms according to whim. (Under no circumstances should you give a woman a fist pound.)
• If it’s a masculine pairing, make eye contact and form your hand into the appropriate shake/fist pound/gangster-style-clasp shape before raising your arm. (And never give an elaborate handshake to the uninitiated.)
What do “I’ll call you” or “Let’s have lunch” mean?
In a non-dating situation, these hollow parting comments often translate roughly to “In all likelihood, I won’t call you” and “Let’s not have lunch, though I have generally positive feelings about you.” (Though the recipient has no choice but to be agreeable in the moment and assume the phone won’t ring.) If you’re prone to such phrases, consider deploying “It was good to see you,” which, while perfectly pleasant, won’t confuse anyone.
Can you reject a Friendster, Facebook, or MySpace friend request from someone you know?
No. It’s not as though adding someone to your online social network costs anything: The only potential damage is to the perceived quality of your accumulated friends. And if you know someone who judges you based on your Friendster network, then, well, like Mom said, he’s not your real Internet friend anyway.
How do you end an exchange of witty, flirtatious e-mail banter?
The exchange of witty, flirtatious banter is admittedly the e-mail quagmire with the fewest number of obvious exit strategies. Nonetheless, it should be resolved like real-time witty, flirtatious banter: with one party either summoning the courage to ask for a date or ending the quasi relationship by means of unexplained unresponsiveness.
What do you do when you’ve attended a performance by your aspiring actor/singer/comic friend—and you were driven to tears by its utter banality?
Always lie, but try to do it in ways that aren’t so liar-y. Gush about aspects of the show that weren’t horrid (“Such exquisite costuming!”), compliment the very particular elements of his performance that were adequate, or say something not-technically-false like “That’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from you!” Long-term encouragement of delusional artistic aspirations, though, is impolite: If the invites are repeated, let your nonattendance send a message.
If you accept a dinner invitation and have a miserable time, must you reciprocate?
If someone treats you to dinner at a restaurant or in their home, you owe them the same honor. But if you really can’t stand the inviting individual/couple, a good compromise is to invite them to your next big party. This sends the message that you are thinking about them while minimizing the probability of actual contact.
How far are you obligated to go to accommodate vegetarians and vegans in your home?
If it’s a dinner party, you should have at least one option for each course that suits everyone’s dietary needs, though restricted eaters have the responsibility of letting you know what they can and can’t eat. If you’re the guest, you should politely inform the host of your regimen by way of offering to bring a dish that suits your needs that everyone will “enjoy.” (The less appetizing it sounds—e.g., seaweed dogs—the more likely your horrified host will come up with something better.)
How do you pick restaurants and other social activities in circles that involve widely varying incomes?
Inviting the whole gang over for dinner solves some problems—the poor people won’t have to choose between missing a credit card payment or being treated, and the richer folk get a nice meal if you’re a generally decent cook. Of course, it creates an altogether new problem: In your sensitivity to everyone’s income issues, you alone wind up underwriting the entire evening. That’s fine some of the time, but for another alternative, choose an under-the-radar, inexpensive restaurant where everyone will feel cutting-edge— self-congratulatory hipsterdom knows no class boundaries.
What’s the best way to split the check in a group?
At a group meal, an equal split should be the baseline expectation: It falls to those who ordered more-expensive dishes to offer to pay more, not to others to pay less. Failure to partake in the appetizers or the wine can be cited as a reason to cut one’s contribution only if there was some socially sanctioned reason for declining (veganism, Islam, pregnancy). If you just got the soup and you don’t think that’s fair, well, think about whether it’s “fair” to make your friends eat dinner with a buzz-killing cheapskate.
WHEN IS IT ACCEPTABLE TO BLACKBERRY DURING A CONVERSATION?
When it’s a “conversation” in the sense of “The New School Presents a Conversation With Harold Bloom” and you’re there. Otherwise, never. This remains one of society’s most frequent breaches of basic human decency. Seriously, what is wrong with those people?!?
HOW DO YOU TELL SOMEONE HE’S BEEN MISPRONOUNCING YOUR NAME FOR THREE MONTHS?
Tell him a story in which you use your own name, clearly enunciating where he’s got it wrong. For example, if you were Ralph Fiennes, you’d say, “I called him and said, ‘Hi, this is Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafe Fines.’ ”
IS IT EVER OKAY TO DRIVE A HUMMER?
Yes! If you’re leading a nighttime raid in Tikrit. Otherwise, Hummers have returned to their rightful place as a semi-obnoxious, semi-absurd rarity. Accepting a ride is different: In New York, being a passenger in any vehicle, matter how gauche or fuel-inefficient, is a rare treat.
VIA NEW YORK MAGAZINE
When can you send a thank-you via e-mail?
A mass e-mail is actually preferable when thanking people who combined to put together a work project or totally rockin’ party, as it emphasizes the communal nature of the achievement and offers the opportunity for public praise. Everything else (e.g., weddings, gifts, anniversaries, job promotions or interviews, etc.) still goes on nice, high-fiber stationery or a store-bought card.
How do you handle it when you, in full party panic, can’t remember the name of someone you know?
Blame the panic! In fact, don’t just blame the panic, inflate it. Begin talking about how flustered you are: You thought it was Thursday for a second, you put your drink down five minutes ago and can’t find it, you are so out of it that you’ve forgotten the name . . . of someone across the room whose name, in reality, you do remember! Then, conspiratorially ask the person whose name you can’t recall to introduce herself to the third party—as you laugh all the way to the First National Bank of Knowing Everybody’s Name.
How do you bring up the subject of a friend’s serious medical problem?
The simple answer is, you don’t. If someone has a medical condition that’s serious but not visually detectable, and he hasn’t broached the subject with you, chances are it’s because he doesn’t want it broached at all. People have all sorts of legitimate reasons for wanting to keep health issues private. You can let your friend know you’re concerned—without embarrassing him—with an earnest gaze and a sincere “So, how are you doing?” which communicates empathy without raising the subject out loud if he really doesn’t feel like talking.
How do you acknowledge obvious plastic surgery?
If the intentions were subtle, pretend you don’t know exactly what change your friend has undergone, even if she looks like a convenience-store thief masked in Saran Wrap. Something like, “Oh, wow . . . you look great. I can’t put my finger on what’s different, but you look years younger.” If the operation was done expressly to garner attention—say the former B-cup is now a DD with the top three buttons undone—well, then just let it rip: “Wow! Those hooters are like big twin Hindenburgs!”
What’s the best response to a racist remark at a dinner party?
Nervous laughter is the inevitable reflex. But the failure to respond will certainly add to your hangover, no matter how much gin has been consumed. The first line of defense against bigotry is to assume that it’s a joke, and say so. “You must be joking . . . though it’s not really that funny.” Try to smile as little as possible while holding out the possibility of forgiveness. You could also accuse the person of being drunk, which is almost always the case. But if someone is offering an entire line of argument that is clearly bigoted or otherwise beyond the bounds of civilized discourse (“I don’t want them in my neighborhood”), someone is honor-bound to make an Atticus Finch–like declaration of belief.
Should the wealthier half of a friendship be expected to give more-expensive gifts?
In an ideal world, no. But in the real world, yeah, pretty much. A rule of thumb: Give according to your means, not the recipient’s. If you’re the richer friend, your impoverished friends will appreciate your generosity infinitely more than a cheap trinket you purchased so as not to embarrass them. If you’re the poorer friend—and you’re worried about being outclassed—get together with other friends of lesser means to pool resources on an item of greater value. Better still, spend extra effort on a thoughtful but nevertheless affordable gift that shows you’ve actually paid attention to your friends’ most obscure tastes and interests.
What’s the best way to avoid awkward crossed-signals handshake-meets-cheek-kiss encounters?
Remember: You can usually get away with unwarranted familiarity if your intended recipient sees it coming. Strike early:
• If you or the person you’re greeting is a woman, start telegraphing your intentions before you make eye contact, either extending your hand or opening your arms according to whim. (Under no circumstances should you give a woman a fist pound.)
• If it’s a masculine pairing, make eye contact and form your hand into the appropriate shake/fist pound/gangster-style-clasp shape before raising your arm. (And never give an elaborate handshake to the uninitiated.)
What do “I’ll call you” or “Let’s have lunch” mean?
In a non-dating situation, these hollow parting comments often translate roughly to “In all likelihood, I won’t call you” and “Let’s not have lunch, though I have generally positive feelings about you.” (Though the recipient has no choice but to be agreeable in the moment and assume the phone won’t ring.) If you’re prone to such phrases, consider deploying “It was good to see you,” which, while perfectly pleasant, won’t confuse anyone.
Can you reject a Friendster, Facebook, or MySpace friend request from someone you know?
No. It’s not as though adding someone to your online social network costs anything: The only potential damage is to the perceived quality of your accumulated friends. And if you know someone who judges you based on your Friendster network, then, well, like Mom said, he’s not your real Internet friend anyway.
How do you end an exchange of witty, flirtatious e-mail banter?
The exchange of witty, flirtatious banter is admittedly the e-mail quagmire with the fewest number of obvious exit strategies. Nonetheless, it should be resolved like real-time witty, flirtatious banter: with one party either summoning the courage to ask for a date or ending the quasi relationship by means of unexplained unresponsiveness.
What do you do when you’ve attended a performance by your aspiring actor/singer/comic friend—and you were driven to tears by its utter banality?
Always lie, but try to do it in ways that aren’t so liar-y. Gush about aspects of the show that weren’t horrid (“Such exquisite costuming!”), compliment the very particular elements of his performance that were adequate, or say something not-technically-false like “That’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from you!” Long-term encouragement of delusional artistic aspirations, though, is impolite: If the invites are repeated, let your nonattendance send a message.
If you accept a dinner invitation and have a miserable time, must you reciprocate?
If someone treats you to dinner at a restaurant or in their home, you owe them the same honor. But if you really can’t stand the inviting individual/couple, a good compromise is to invite them to your next big party. This sends the message that you are thinking about them while minimizing the probability of actual contact.
How far are you obligated to go to accommodate vegetarians and vegans in your home?
If it’s a dinner party, you should have at least one option for each course that suits everyone’s dietary needs, though restricted eaters have the responsibility of letting you know what they can and can’t eat. If you’re the guest, you should politely inform the host of your regimen by way of offering to bring a dish that suits your needs that everyone will “enjoy.” (The less appetizing it sounds—e.g., seaweed dogs—the more likely your horrified host will come up with something better.)
How do you pick restaurants and other social activities in circles that involve widely varying incomes?
Inviting the whole gang over for dinner solves some problems—the poor people won’t have to choose between missing a credit card payment or being treated, and the richer folk get a nice meal if you’re a generally decent cook. Of course, it creates an altogether new problem: In your sensitivity to everyone’s income issues, you alone wind up underwriting the entire evening. That’s fine some of the time, but for another alternative, choose an under-the-radar, inexpensive restaurant where everyone will feel cutting-edge— self-congratulatory hipsterdom knows no class boundaries.
What’s the best way to split the check in a group?
At a group meal, an equal split should be the baseline expectation: It falls to those who ordered more-expensive dishes to offer to pay more, not to others to pay less. Failure to partake in the appetizers or the wine can be cited as a reason to cut one’s contribution only if there was some socially sanctioned reason for declining (veganism, Islam, pregnancy). If you just got the soup and you don’t think that’s fair, well, think about whether it’s “fair” to make your friends eat dinner with a buzz-killing cheapskate.
WHEN IS IT ACCEPTABLE TO BLACKBERRY DURING A CONVERSATION?
When it’s a “conversation” in the sense of “The New School Presents a Conversation With Harold Bloom” and you’re there. Otherwise, never. This remains one of society’s most frequent breaches of basic human decency. Seriously, what is wrong with those people?!?
HOW DO YOU TELL SOMEONE HE’S BEEN MISPRONOUNCING YOUR NAME FOR THREE MONTHS?
Tell him a story in which you use your own name, clearly enunciating where he’s got it wrong. For example, if you were Ralph Fiennes, you’d say, “I called him and said, ‘Hi, this is Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafe Fines.’ ”
IS IT EVER OKAY TO DRIVE A HUMMER?
Yes! If you’re leading a nighttime raid in Tikrit. Otherwise, Hummers have returned to their rightful place as a semi-obnoxious, semi-absurd rarity. Accepting a ride is different: In New York, being a passenger in any vehicle, matter how gauche or fuel-inefficient, is a rare treat.
VIA NEW YORK MAGAZINE
posted by Redboy at 5:43 PM
0 comments
The Urban Etiquette Handbook Part 6
What the Waiter Wants
How to give orders the nice way.
Only four Manhattan restaurants still require jackets—but good manners are de rigueur everywhere. During a noon round table at Pravda, our six food-and-drink-service vets drew up a list of dos and don’ts for restaurant dining.
Kathleen Flanagan, waitress, the Mermaid Inn; 12 years’ experience
Troy Daigle, beverage director, Le Bernardin; 20 years
“Chops,” bartender and owner, King’s County Bar; 10 years
Jim Hutchinson, wine director, Centovini; 23 years
Adrian Murcia, waiter, Chanterelle; 18 years
Daryl Dismond, maître d’, Pravda; 18 years
Is there a best way to order?
Dismond: Acknowledge the server and look at him. You don’t have to make eye contact the whole time, but it’s very offensive to give your order and never even look up. Flanagan: I am a big fan of “May I?” “I’d like to . . . ” “Could you please?” I don’t need to be bowed down to, but I don’t like “I’m gonna take the . . . ,” “Could you get me the . . . ” Murcia: I don’t need “please” and “thank you”; just don’t be rude.
Is it okay to send back a bottle of wine?
Flanagan: When you order a wine you are not that familiar with, you’re taking a risk. If you don’t love it, you don’t get to send it back. But if I suggest something and you don’t like it, then that’s my fault. Daigle: Because we have over 800 labels on our list, we have to guide people and allow them to try something different. If they’re not ecstatic about it, I’m taking it away and bringing something else.
What about food?
Daigle: Do it politely, but let them know how it’s different from what you expected. Flanagan: It’s not that big a deal to send something back. It’s not offensive. Dismond: Remember your server didn’t cook it.
How can I signal that I don’t want to be hurried through my meal?
Murcia: Put a fork on the left-hand side of your plate and the knife on the right, leaving them half on the plate, half on the table. To show that you are done, put the fork along with the knife parallel, bottom right to top left. When you want your wine glass cleared, put it in the center of the table.
Is it ever appropriate to tip less than 20 percent?
Flanagan: Not unless something goes terribly wrong. Daigle: A bad tip is counterproductive for everyone. There’s no excuse. Chops: Say yes to 20 percent tipping. We remember good tippers. Dismond: Fifteen percent is not a shabby tip. Anything less—especially under 10 percent—should happen only if your server continues mixing up orders, bringing out the wrong food, and is generally rude and inattentive. But if the food comes out prepared incorrectly, that’s the chef’s fault.
How should I calculate the tip when an expensive bottle of wine or caviar radically pumps up the price without requiring extra service?
Hutchinson: If you spend that much money, the restaurant probably merits that gratuity. If you’re just eating a sandwich and opt for the $200 bottle of wine, then you might not leave the full 20 percent. Tips depend on context.
How do you tip when you are treated to something on the house?
Murcia: Add the amount of the free food or drink as if you paid for it, and calculate the tip based on that. If you get a full comp, tip based on the full amount. Chops: What I do is send a cocktail to the whole kitchen.
Is there anything else one can do to express appreciation?
Murcia: Send a card. It’s such a nice gesture: Letters are read aloud at staff meetings—the good ones and bad—and nothing feels better. Flanagan: Next time you’ll be recognized and treated even better.
VIA NEW YORK MAGAZINE
How to give orders the nice way.
Only four Manhattan restaurants still require jackets—but good manners are de rigueur everywhere. During a noon round table at Pravda, our six food-and-drink-service vets drew up a list of dos and don’ts for restaurant dining.
Kathleen Flanagan, waitress, the Mermaid Inn; 12 years’ experience
Troy Daigle, beverage director, Le Bernardin; 20 years
“Chops,” bartender and owner, King’s County Bar; 10 years
Jim Hutchinson, wine director, Centovini; 23 years
Adrian Murcia, waiter, Chanterelle; 18 years
Daryl Dismond, maître d’, Pravda; 18 years
Is there a best way to order?
Dismond: Acknowledge the server and look at him. You don’t have to make eye contact the whole time, but it’s very offensive to give your order and never even look up. Flanagan: I am a big fan of “May I?” “I’d like to . . . ” “Could you please?” I don’t need to be bowed down to, but I don’t like “I’m gonna take the . . . ,” “Could you get me the . . . ” Murcia: I don’t need “please” and “thank you”; just don’t be rude.
Is it okay to send back a bottle of wine?
Flanagan: When you order a wine you are not that familiar with, you’re taking a risk. If you don’t love it, you don’t get to send it back. But if I suggest something and you don’t like it, then that’s my fault. Daigle: Because we have over 800 labels on our list, we have to guide people and allow them to try something different. If they’re not ecstatic about it, I’m taking it away and bringing something else.
What about food?
Daigle: Do it politely, but let them know how it’s different from what you expected. Flanagan: It’s not that big a deal to send something back. It’s not offensive. Dismond: Remember your server didn’t cook it.
How can I signal that I don’t want to be hurried through my meal?
Murcia: Put a fork on the left-hand side of your plate and the knife on the right, leaving them half on the plate, half on the table. To show that you are done, put the fork along with the knife parallel, bottom right to top left. When you want your wine glass cleared, put it in the center of the table.
Is it ever appropriate to tip less than 20 percent?
Flanagan: Not unless something goes terribly wrong. Daigle: A bad tip is counterproductive for everyone. There’s no excuse. Chops: Say yes to 20 percent tipping. We remember good tippers. Dismond: Fifteen percent is not a shabby tip. Anything less—especially under 10 percent—should happen only if your server continues mixing up orders, bringing out the wrong food, and is generally rude and inattentive. But if the food comes out prepared incorrectly, that’s the chef’s fault.
How should I calculate the tip when an expensive bottle of wine or caviar radically pumps up the price without requiring extra service?
Hutchinson: If you spend that much money, the restaurant probably merits that gratuity. If you’re just eating a sandwich and opt for the $200 bottle of wine, then you might not leave the full 20 percent. Tips depend on context.
How do you tip when you are treated to something on the house?
Murcia: Add the amount of the free food or drink as if you paid for it, and calculate the tip based on that. If you get a full comp, tip based on the full amount. Chops: What I do is send a cocktail to the whole kitchen.
Is there anything else one can do to express appreciation?
Murcia: Send a card. It’s such a nice gesture: Letters are read aloud at staff meetings—the good ones and bad—and nothing feels better. Flanagan: Next time you’ll be recognized and treated even better.
VIA NEW YORK MAGAZINE
posted by Redboy at 5:42 PM
0 comments
The Urban Etiquette Handbook Part 5
Breaching Subway Decorum
When it’s okay to annoy strangers on a train.
By Adam Sternbergh
THE SEAT HOG
Crime: Not offering one’s seat to an obviously pregnant woman or obviously elderly person.
Rudeness Factor (out of 10): 10
Why It’s Inappropriate: If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s the continued propagation of the species (within reason). And if you don’t give your seat to an elderly person, when you grow old you can expect to be cast out and set upon by wild dogs. It’s called karma.
When It’s Appropriate: Maybe if you have a serious, demonstrable impediment. Such as a wooden leg. Although even then—she’s pregnant! On your feet, pirate.
THE GAWKER
Crime: Staring.
Rudeness Factor: 7
Why It’s Inappropriate: It’s a subway, not a bar.
When It’s Appropriate: Let’s face it—this is a city full of beautiful people who sometimes wear noticeably revealing clothing. But always observe the two-second rule: Never let your eyes linger longer than a two-count. It’s a fine line between flirt and perv.
THE DOORMAN
Crime: Holding the closing doors.
Rudeness Factor: 2
Why It’s Inappropriate: It’s the perfect illustration of Spock’s famous tenet: Sometimes the needs of the many (people already on the subway) outweigh the needs of the few (person rushing to catch the subway).
When It’s Appropriate: When you’re the person rushing to catch the train. Hold that door!
THE GROOMER
Crime: Plucking eyebrows, curling eyelashes, flossing teeth (!), or clipping fingernails (!!) on the subway.
Rudeness Factor: 8
Why It’s Inappropriate: Because a civilized society is measured by the delineations between its public-transit vehicles and its bathrooms.
When It’s Appropriate: If it’s your absolute last chance to freshen up before a job interview, funeral, or proposal of marriage.
THE GOBBLER
Crime: Eating messy food or consuming a perilously sloshing drink.
Rudeness Factor: 9
Why It’s Inappropriate: Because subways were practically invented to send your sloppy foodstuffs onto the shirts and laps of the people around you.
When It’s Appropriate: Only if your drink container has a cap and you’re eating a type of food—say, the vacuum-packed chicken NASA prepares for astronauts—that, in the event of a sudden subway lurch, won’t leave a splatter pattern on the people around you.
THE SHERPA
Crime: Riding with a large, space-consuming backpack or suitcase or stroller.
Rudeness Factor: 4
Why It’s Inappropriate: The smooth operation of the subway requires that people be able to (a) board the car, (b) disembark the car, and (c) ride and not get smacked in the face by the travel mug lashed to the back of your pack as you traverse the continent.
When It’s Appropriate: Packs should be kept on the floor between the legs. Strollers are granted extra leeway, though people with extra-large models that include cup holders should consider a more crowd-friendly mode of transporting their young.
THE TURNSTILE HOPPER
Crime: Turnstile hopping
Rudeness Factor: 6
Why It’s Inappropriate: If you need to ask, we’ve already lost you.
When It’s Appropriate: Hopping, never. Ducking under the turnstile if you are short enough and under 5 years of age, all right. But we’re watching you, junior.
VIA NEW YORK MAGAZINE
When it’s okay to annoy strangers on a train.
By Adam Sternbergh
THE SEAT HOG
Crime: Not offering one’s seat to an obviously pregnant woman or obviously elderly person.
Rudeness Factor (out of 10): 10
Why It’s Inappropriate: If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s the continued propagation of the species (within reason). And if you don’t give your seat to an elderly person, when you grow old you can expect to be cast out and set upon by wild dogs. It’s called karma.
When It’s Appropriate: Maybe if you have a serious, demonstrable impediment. Such as a wooden leg. Although even then—she’s pregnant! On your feet, pirate.
THE GAWKER
Crime: Staring.
Rudeness Factor: 7
Why It’s Inappropriate: It’s a subway, not a bar.
When It’s Appropriate: Let’s face it—this is a city full of beautiful people who sometimes wear noticeably revealing clothing. But always observe the two-second rule: Never let your eyes linger longer than a two-count. It’s a fine line between flirt and perv.
THE DOORMAN
Crime: Holding the closing doors.
Rudeness Factor: 2
Why It’s Inappropriate: It’s the perfect illustration of Spock’s famous tenet: Sometimes the needs of the many (people already on the subway) outweigh the needs of the few (person rushing to catch the subway).
When It’s Appropriate: When you’re the person rushing to catch the train. Hold that door!
THE GROOMER
Crime: Plucking eyebrows, curling eyelashes, flossing teeth (!), or clipping fingernails (!!) on the subway.
Rudeness Factor: 8
Why It’s Inappropriate: Because a civilized society is measured by the delineations between its public-transit vehicles and its bathrooms.
When It’s Appropriate: If it’s your absolute last chance to freshen up before a job interview, funeral, or proposal of marriage.
THE GOBBLER
Crime: Eating messy food or consuming a perilously sloshing drink.
Rudeness Factor: 9
Why It’s Inappropriate: Because subways were practically invented to send your sloppy foodstuffs onto the shirts and laps of the people around you.
When It’s Appropriate: Only if your drink container has a cap and you’re eating a type of food—say, the vacuum-packed chicken NASA prepares for astronauts—that, in the event of a sudden subway lurch, won’t leave a splatter pattern on the people around you.
THE SHERPA
Crime: Riding with a large, space-consuming backpack or suitcase or stroller.
Rudeness Factor: 4
Why It’s Inappropriate: The smooth operation of the subway requires that people be able to (a) board the car, (b) disembark the car, and (c) ride and not get smacked in the face by the travel mug lashed to the back of your pack as you traverse the continent.
When It’s Appropriate: Packs should be kept on the floor between the legs. Strollers are granted extra leeway, though people with extra-large models that include cup holders should consider a more crowd-friendly mode of transporting their young.
THE TURNSTILE HOPPER
Crime: Turnstile hopping
Rudeness Factor: 6
Why It’s Inappropriate: If you need to ask, we’ve already lost you.
When It’s Appropriate: Hopping, never. Ducking under the turnstile if you are short enough and under 5 years of age, all right. But we’re watching you, junior.
VIA NEW YORK MAGAZINE
posted by Redboy at 5:41 PM
0 comments
The Urban Etiquette Handbook Part 4
City Living
How do you walk into your apartment building behind a woman while letting her know you’re not a mugger/rapist?
First, know what you’re dealing with: She fears getting into the elevator with you, she fears your walking up the stairs on her tail, and she fears appearing like she’s rattled by either. The gentlemanly thing to do, then, is to make a concerted effort to avoid all of the above. In an elevator building, find a reason to hang back and let the doors close on her alone. In a walk-up building, however, fiddling at your mailbox will just force her to adopt a more panicked pace. Consider answering a pretend cell-phone call: “Hi, Mom!”
If mentioning your connection to a famous person is relevant in a conversation, how do you do it without being a jerk?
Don’t mention it at all, of course, unless it’s necessary to preempt a question about how you got a piece of information you otherwise wouldn’t have known, and acknowledge the details of your connection immediately after the drop. As in, “I actually heard from Steven Spielberg—I met him at a Tribeca screening last year that my friend was doing publicity for—that Munich was originally conceived as a farce . . . ” Never first-name-drop (“I heard that from Dave . . . what? Oh, David Letterman”), a reprehensible behavior whose legality is one of the few universally acknowledged downsides of the First Amendment.
Is it okay to smoke pot at a party?
Marijuana is considered by most New Yorkers under a certain age (and over a certain age) to be harmless at the least, and at the most a public good that belongs equally to all people, like radio airwaves and the national parks. Nonetheless, it is always imperative to ask the host before lighting up any sort of THC delivery system, and consumption is always forbidden if there are children or teenagers present, or if anyone in the room is 30 years older than someone else in the room. An exception to the latter rule exists, however, if the elder reveler is overheard discussing a “gig” or relating an anecdote involving Janis Joplin.
What’s the best way to hush someone in a movie theater?
Before actually speaking, you’re obligated to make two meaningful glances or clearly intentioned throat clearings, the second directed at the disruptive viewer’s embarrassed cohorts, if that’s physically possible (and they actually seem embarrassed). Then you can ask, politely, once. After that, if you haven’t received a groundswell of support from surrounding patrons, you really have no choice but to just move, because an argument is only going to inflict the disruption on everyone else. Or, to ensure that you can avoid the situation completely, limit your moviegoing to midday, midweek screenings at the UA Battery Park City 16 cinema.
How should you indicate to a cabdriver/person sitting next to you on a bus that you don’t want to chat?
Give a few polite yet terse one-word answers delivered with a tooth-free smile. If that doesn’t work, try—again with a demure smile—inserting your iPod earphones and then staring somberly out the window, or closing your eyes and rubbing your temples as if you have a migraine. Consider telling a little white lie: You’re sorry, but you’re coming up on an important test/presentation/audition that you need to think about. If all else fails, pretend you have fallen asleep or died.
What do you do when you find money/a purse/a phone in a cab?
Return the purse or phone yourself. If you find loose bills, leave them for the cabdriver, who probably needs the cash more than you. Unless you’re the star of a blockbuster thriller about an ordinary man forced to take extraordinary action by the hand of fate, you’re not going to find more than $20 in a cab anyway.
Is it okay to use wireless if your neighbors don’t password-protect it?
Yes—free wireless is a karmic gift bestowed by the rental gods to make up for all the times you’ve experienced your neighbors’ sexual encounters, arguments, and guitar practice in startling sonic clarity, gotten roaches because you live in the same building as a restaurant, and sampled the tapestry of malodorousness that is the ethnic-food/cigarette-smoke/pet-by-product–scented apartment hallway. Your only obligation as a wireless sharer is to avoid massive bandwidth-hogging downloads.
How do you break up with your stylist?
The concept of breaking up with a stylist is going the way of breaking up with a casual romance. Nowadays, you don’t. Instead, you do what the best daters do: You don’t break up, you take a break. Just don’t call back for a while. For all your stylist knows, you’re in London or L.A. for a bit.
How do you make appropriate donations when you’ve got 30 friends asking you to buy tickets to their fund-raisers?
Close friends and bosses get yeses no matter what: If that many people are asking, either you can afford it or you’re social-climbing and it’s time to pay the piper. For everyone else, feel free to offer to write a check directly to their charity, which will test whether they are genuinely philanthropic or just looking to ostentatiously fill three tables and move up the fund-raiser-scene totem pole. And if you really can’t afford it, tell them you limit your giving to [insert a group of charities you actually give money to].
What’s the best way to get someone off the treadmill/bike/elliptical when they’ve gone over the 30-minute limit?
Unless it’s a known repeat offender who feels like he owns the gym, face-to-face is the first course of action. Cardio-trainers can enter a trancelike state of intense Just Do It–ness that leaves them unaware of the time, and will be perfectly obliging when snapped out of their cardio-delirium. But if you ask and are rebuffed, it’s perfectly acceptable to notify the front desk, which is usually staffed by someone with intimidatingly large pectoral muscles for this very reason.
How much locker-room nudity is acceptable?
Nudity is allowable, nay, inevitable, while changing and during showers. Otherwise, if you’re holding something that could easily be used to cover your genitals, cover them.
Is it okay to hit on someone at the gym?
Only on men, and only under the following circumstances: if you’re a gay man, and you know he’s gay too, or if you’re a straight woman and he’s a straight man. And never suggestively lick sweat off a treadmill.
When is it okay to ask a stranger about something in the newspaper he’s holding on the train?
Paper-snooping is acceptable in only two situations: (1) if it’s a news story of sufficient importance that the next people you see outside the train will be talking about it, or (2) if it’s sports news with commiseration potential. (“Traded who for hot-dog-concession equipment? Fuckin’ Isiah.”) Even in the random event you see an article mentioning your own name, you probably shouldn’t say anything: Either it’s in a flattering light and you’d be boastfully massaging your own ego, or it’s in a non-flattering light and the person reading the paper probably doesn’t want to know that he’s just met the Park Avenue Pervert.
If you see someone litter on the street, should you let it go because he might be crazy and kill you if you say something?
It depends on where you are—if the surroundings are unfamiliar, keep to yourself. If it’s your neighborhood, say in a forceful, faux-friendly tone, “I’m sorry, sir, you dropped something. Can I get that for you?” In all likelihood, he won’t pick it up, and you probably won’t want to, either, but the proper message has been sent.
How do you ensure the silence of your doorman after he witnesses an indiscretion on your part?
Don’t do anything rash like offering him a bribe the next day. If he’s a gossip or a snitch, you’re toast anyway and a bribery attempt will only worsen matters (“Then he tried to give me 50 bucks . . . ”). But chances are he’s not, and you gain points for exhibiting trust. Simply give him the usual nod when you see him again, and maybe a slightly extended bit of polite eye contact to acknowledge your new familiarity. Then, at the next natural opportunity, reward his loyalty. Maybe the firm’s Yankees tickets are available. Or, if Christmas isn’t too far off, slip him an additional 30 percent in the bonus envelope. Nothing needs to be said—it’s his job.
VIA NEW YORK MAGAZINE
How do you walk into your apartment building behind a woman while letting her know you’re not a mugger/rapist?
First, know what you’re dealing with: She fears getting into the elevator with you, she fears your walking up the stairs on her tail, and she fears appearing like she’s rattled by either. The gentlemanly thing to do, then, is to make a concerted effort to avoid all of the above. In an elevator building, find a reason to hang back and let the doors close on her alone. In a walk-up building, however, fiddling at your mailbox will just force her to adopt a more panicked pace. Consider answering a pretend cell-phone call: “Hi, Mom!”
If mentioning your connection to a famous person is relevant in a conversation, how do you do it without being a jerk?
Don’t mention it at all, of course, unless it’s necessary to preempt a question about how you got a piece of information you otherwise wouldn’t have known, and acknowledge the details of your connection immediately after the drop. As in, “I actually heard from Steven Spielberg—I met him at a Tribeca screening last year that my friend was doing publicity for—that Munich was originally conceived as a farce . . . ” Never first-name-drop (“I heard that from Dave . . . what? Oh, David Letterman”), a reprehensible behavior whose legality is one of the few universally acknowledged downsides of the First Amendment.
Is it okay to smoke pot at a party?
Marijuana is considered by most New Yorkers under a certain age (and over a certain age) to be harmless at the least, and at the most a public good that belongs equally to all people, like radio airwaves and the national parks. Nonetheless, it is always imperative to ask the host before lighting up any sort of THC delivery system, and consumption is always forbidden if there are children or teenagers present, or if anyone in the room is 30 years older than someone else in the room. An exception to the latter rule exists, however, if the elder reveler is overheard discussing a “gig” or relating an anecdote involving Janis Joplin.
What’s the best way to hush someone in a movie theater?
Before actually speaking, you’re obligated to make two meaningful glances or clearly intentioned throat clearings, the second directed at the disruptive viewer’s embarrassed cohorts, if that’s physically possible (and they actually seem embarrassed). Then you can ask, politely, once. After that, if you haven’t received a groundswell of support from surrounding patrons, you really have no choice but to just move, because an argument is only going to inflict the disruption on everyone else. Or, to ensure that you can avoid the situation completely, limit your moviegoing to midday, midweek screenings at the UA Battery Park City 16 cinema.
How should you indicate to a cabdriver/person sitting next to you on a bus that you don’t want to chat?
Give a few polite yet terse one-word answers delivered with a tooth-free smile. If that doesn’t work, try—again with a demure smile—inserting your iPod earphones and then staring somberly out the window, or closing your eyes and rubbing your temples as if you have a migraine. Consider telling a little white lie: You’re sorry, but you’re coming up on an important test/presentation/audition that you need to think about. If all else fails, pretend you have fallen asleep or died.
What do you do when you find money/a purse/a phone in a cab?
Return the purse or phone yourself. If you find loose bills, leave them for the cabdriver, who probably needs the cash more than you. Unless you’re the star of a blockbuster thriller about an ordinary man forced to take extraordinary action by the hand of fate, you’re not going to find more than $20 in a cab anyway.
Is it okay to use wireless if your neighbors don’t password-protect it?
Yes—free wireless is a karmic gift bestowed by the rental gods to make up for all the times you’ve experienced your neighbors’ sexual encounters, arguments, and guitar practice in startling sonic clarity, gotten roaches because you live in the same building as a restaurant, and sampled the tapestry of malodorousness that is the ethnic-food/cigarette-smoke/pet-by-product–scented apartment hallway. Your only obligation as a wireless sharer is to avoid massive bandwidth-hogging downloads.
How do you break up with your stylist?
The concept of breaking up with a stylist is going the way of breaking up with a casual romance. Nowadays, you don’t. Instead, you do what the best daters do: You don’t break up, you take a break. Just don’t call back for a while. For all your stylist knows, you’re in London or L.A. for a bit.
How do you make appropriate donations when you’ve got 30 friends asking you to buy tickets to their fund-raisers?
Close friends and bosses get yeses no matter what: If that many people are asking, either you can afford it or you’re social-climbing and it’s time to pay the piper. For everyone else, feel free to offer to write a check directly to their charity, which will test whether they are genuinely philanthropic or just looking to ostentatiously fill three tables and move up the fund-raiser-scene totem pole. And if you really can’t afford it, tell them you limit your giving to [insert a group of charities you actually give money to].
What’s the best way to get someone off the treadmill/bike/elliptical when they’ve gone over the 30-minute limit?
Unless it’s a known repeat offender who feels like he owns the gym, face-to-face is the first course of action. Cardio-trainers can enter a trancelike state of intense Just Do It–ness that leaves them unaware of the time, and will be perfectly obliging when snapped out of their cardio-delirium. But if you ask and are rebuffed, it’s perfectly acceptable to notify the front desk, which is usually staffed by someone with intimidatingly large pectoral muscles for this very reason.
How much locker-room nudity is acceptable?
Nudity is allowable, nay, inevitable, while changing and during showers. Otherwise, if you’re holding something that could easily be used to cover your genitals, cover them.
Is it okay to hit on someone at the gym?
Only on men, and only under the following circumstances: if you’re a gay man, and you know he’s gay too, or if you’re a straight woman and he’s a straight man. And never suggestively lick sweat off a treadmill.
When is it okay to ask a stranger about something in the newspaper he’s holding on the train?
Paper-snooping is acceptable in only two situations: (1) if it’s a news story of sufficient importance that the next people you see outside the train will be talking about it, or (2) if it’s sports news with commiseration potential. (“Traded who for hot-dog-concession equipment? Fuckin’ Isiah.”) Even in the random event you see an article mentioning your own name, you probably shouldn’t say anything: Either it’s in a flattering light and you’d be boastfully massaging your own ego, or it’s in a non-flattering light and the person reading the paper probably doesn’t want to know that he’s just met the Park Avenue Pervert.
If you see someone litter on the street, should you let it go because he might be crazy and kill you if you say something?
It depends on where you are—if the surroundings are unfamiliar, keep to yourself. If it’s your neighborhood, say in a forceful, faux-friendly tone, “I’m sorry, sir, you dropped something. Can I get that for you?” In all likelihood, he won’t pick it up, and you probably won’t want to, either, but the proper message has been sent.
How do you ensure the silence of your doorman after he witnesses an indiscretion on your part?
Don’t do anything rash like offering him a bribe the next day. If he’s a gossip or a snitch, you’re toast anyway and a bribery attempt will only worsen matters (“Then he tried to give me 50 bucks . . . ”). But chances are he’s not, and you gain points for exhibiting trust. Simply give him the usual nod when you see him again, and maybe a slightly extended bit of polite eye contact to acknowledge your new familiarity. Then, at the next natural opportunity, reward his loyalty. Maybe the firm’s Yankees tickets are available. Or, if Christmas isn’t too far off, slip him an additional 30 percent in the bonus envelope. Nothing needs to be said—it’s his job.
VIA NEW YORK MAGAZINE
posted by Redboy at 5:39 PM
0 comments
The Urban Etiquette Handbook Part 3
The Four Levels of iPod Interaction
Whom you do and don’t have to unplug for.
LEVEL ONE
Continue at full blast. Consider increasing the vigor of your head-nodding and/or humming.
• Guys passing out bargain-electronics-store flyers.
• Idealistic-looking whippersnappers holding clipboards.
• Scientologists.
LEVEL ONE AND A HALF
Subtly turn down volume.
• People in the elevator you don’t know.
• Someone attractive who sits down next to you on the train while you are listening to the Goo Goo Dolls.
LEVEL TWO
Make a big show of pressing PAUSE.
• Anyone who approaches you while you’re working out.
• Non-panhandlers on the subway (may be helpfully pointing out that your bag is open, may be distracting you in a Gangs of New York–style pickpocket ruse).
• Co-workers you hate.
• Friends.
• Your parents, if you’re a teenager.
LEVEL THREE
Remove headphones, toss them jauntily over shoulder.
• People in the elevator you know.
• Anyone taking your money or instructions about how to prepare your food.
• Co-workers you don’t hate.
• Your parents, if you’re an adult.
• Police officers.
LEVEL FOUR
Completely remove and enclose in nearest pocket/bag/ purse.
• Co-workers who could have you fired in less than an hour.
• Anyone who’s crying.
• Police officers standing next to someone who’s pointing at you and saying, “That’s him!”
VIA NEW YORK MAGAZINE
Whom you do and don’t have to unplug for.
LEVEL ONE
Continue at full blast. Consider increasing the vigor of your head-nodding and/or humming.
• Guys passing out bargain-electronics-store flyers.
• Idealistic-looking whippersnappers holding clipboards.
• Scientologists.
LEVEL ONE AND A HALF
Subtly turn down volume.
• People in the elevator you don’t know.
• Someone attractive who sits down next to you on the train while you are listening to the Goo Goo Dolls.
LEVEL TWO
Make a big show of pressing PAUSE.
• Anyone who approaches you while you’re working out.
• Non-panhandlers on the subway (may be helpfully pointing out that your bag is open, may be distracting you in a Gangs of New York–style pickpocket ruse).
• Co-workers you hate.
• Friends.
• Your parents, if you’re a teenager.
LEVEL THREE
Remove headphones, toss them jauntily over shoulder.
• People in the elevator you know.
• Anyone taking your money or instructions about how to prepare your food.
• Co-workers you don’t hate.
• Your parents, if you’re an adult.
• Police officers.
LEVEL FOUR
Completely remove and enclose in nearest pocket/bag/ purse.
• Co-workers who could have you fired in less than an hour.
• Anyone who’s crying.
• Police officers standing next to someone who’s pointing at you and saying, “That’s him!”
VIA NEW YORK MAGAZINE
posted by Redboy at 5:38 PM
0 comments
The Urban Etiquette Handbook Part 2
The Office
What do you do when someone asks you for help getting a job you don’t think he deserves?
If this individual is not a close- enough friend that you can tell him the truth, you may have to resort to one of the following humanely disingenuous approaches: (1) Respond enthusiastically with information of limited value: “Would it help if I gave you the name of the human-resources person? I think I might even have his e-mail!” (2) Issue a self-deprecating disclaimer of helplessness: “I don’t know how much my word counts on this one . . . ” (3) Technically do the favor, but warn off the prospective employer either explicitly or between the lines: “An acquaintance of mine is looking for something. I’ve known him ever since we went to Bennington! He dropped out though.”
What do you say to someone who’s just been fired?
Handle the situation as you would a friend’s breakup: Immediately disparage the ex-job. Remind the firee of his many highly employable talents and cast the job as an anchor keeping him from either success in his field or his true dream of becoming a novelist-restaurateur. Do not allude to unemployment benefits, which conjure up images of Soviets waiting in line for sugar, or the possibility of escaping the careerist New York rat race, which conjures up images of trite cinematic journeys to Middle American hometowns.
Is it ever acceptable to talk to a stranger on an elevator?
If there are six or fewer people on the elevator, no. However, if the group is larger than six, you have achieved an Elevator Humor Quorum and someone must make a remark about the elevator’s lack of size or speed in order to relieve the tension created by standing in a tiny space with six or more strangers. If another member of the group makes the remark first, Elevator Humor Solidarity obligates you to chuckle mildly.
Which officemates are you required to invite to your wedding?
Allot invitations in the following order: (1) officemates you consider close friends and genuinely like and want at your wedding, (2) your direct managers or those one position higher with whom you interact on a daily basis, and (3) people who can fire you. The issues often come from those who straddle those lines, like co-workers you merely deem acquaintances and direct managers you simply don’t like. In the former case, don’t lose sleep over losing their invitations in the mail; if you don’t think they’re worth $150 a plate, consider this a perfect opportunity to establish the parameters of your relationship. In the case of a disliked manager or a boss, it’s actually in your best interest to suck it up and invite them; if you don’t, you’ll have to spend months skulking around and hoping no one mentions the wedding around them, and if you do, the most you’ll have to do is pay a tiny amount of attention to them on the day itself.
What do you do if you see someone crying at work?
Rather than approaching your co-worker with concern or consolation (a further imposition) or ignoring the tears entirely (a sign of coldheartedness or contempt), ride the line with a reaction that has become a mark of just this occasion: the Unobtrusive, Empathetic Wince. Cast a second glance toward the weeper (who will be looking at you to gauge the damage). Scrunch your face as follows: Push your bottom lip up toward your upper gums to create a combination smile-frown, add some worry brows while nodding or tilting your head, then glance down and away. That sends the message “I understand, I will not interfere, and your secret is safe with me.”
When does an e-mail exchange end?
At the office, acknowledging receipt of requested work or information is entirely appropriate and necessary, but acknowledging receipt of receipt-acknowledgment is superfluous.
What if you see someone from work in a compromising situation elsewhere?
Immediately remove yourself from the situation and pretend it never happened.
What do you do when someone asks you for help getting a job you don’t think he deserves?
If this individual is not a close- enough friend that you can tell him the truth, you may have to resort to one of the following humanely disingenuous approaches: (1) Respond enthusiastically with information of limited value: “Would it help if I gave you the name of the human-resources person? I think I might even have his e-mail!” (2) Issue a self-deprecating disclaimer of helplessness: “I don’t know how much my word counts on this one . . . ” (3) Technically do the favor, but warn off the prospective employer either explicitly or between the lines: “An acquaintance of mine is looking for something. I’ve known him ever since we went to Bennington! He dropped out though.”
What do you say to someone who’s just been fired?
Handle the situation as you would a friend’s breakup: Immediately disparage the ex-job. Remind the firee of his many highly employable talents and cast the job as an anchor keeping him from either success in his field or his true dream of becoming a novelist-restaurateur. Do not allude to unemployment benefits, which conjure up images of Soviets waiting in line for sugar, or the possibility of escaping the careerist New York rat race, which conjures up images of trite cinematic journeys to Middle American hometowns.
Is it ever acceptable to talk to a stranger on an elevator?
If there are six or fewer people on the elevator, no. However, if the group is larger than six, you have achieved an Elevator Humor Quorum and someone must make a remark about the elevator’s lack of size or speed in order to relieve the tension created by standing in a tiny space with six or more strangers. If another member of the group makes the remark first, Elevator Humor Solidarity obligates you to chuckle mildly.
Which officemates are you required to invite to your wedding?
Allot invitations in the following order: (1) officemates you consider close friends and genuinely like and want at your wedding, (2) your direct managers or those one position higher with whom you interact on a daily basis, and (3) people who can fire you. The issues often come from those who straddle those lines, like co-workers you merely deem acquaintances and direct managers you simply don’t like. In the former case, don’t lose sleep over losing their invitations in the mail; if you don’t think they’re worth $150 a plate, consider this a perfect opportunity to establish the parameters of your relationship. In the case of a disliked manager or a boss, it’s actually in your best interest to suck it up and invite them; if you don’t, you’ll have to spend months skulking around and hoping no one mentions the wedding around them, and if you do, the most you’ll have to do is pay a tiny amount of attention to them on the day itself.
What do you do if you see someone crying at work?
Rather than approaching your co-worker with concern or consolation (a further imposition) or ignoring the tears entirely (a sign of coldheartedness or contempt), ride the line with a reaction that has become a mark of just this occasion: the Unobtrusive, Empathetic Wince. Cast a second glance toward the weeper (who will be looking at you to gauge the damage). Scrunch your face as follows: Push your bottom lip up toward your upper gums to create a combination smile-frown, add some worry brows while nodding or tilting your head, then glance down and away. That sends the message “I understand, I will not interfere, and your secret is safe with me.”
When does an e-mail exchange end?
At the office, acknowledging receipt of requested work or information is entirely appropriate and necessary, but acknowledging receipt of receipt-acknowledgment is superfluous.
What if you see someone from work in a compromising situation elsewhere?
Immediately remove yourself from the situation and pretend it never happened.
posted by Redboy at 5:37 PM
0 comments
The Urban Etiquette Handbook
Love & Sex
What obligations does one have after a one-night stand?
They correlate directly to the expectations raised the night before. If you wooed your one-nighter to bed with promises of Central Park picnics and weekends in the Hamptons, you are obliged to follow through. But if you made no false promises in order to close the deal, then you simply need to be polite. If the liaison takes place in your own apartment, let your new friend stay the night and offer to cook/pay for a quick breakfast, but don’t dilly dally in your effort to get to that place you “need to be” the next day. If the tryst is at the other person’s place and you wish to depart, engage in light caressing and conversation for at least twenty minutes. If you decide to sneak out at 5 A.M. instead, leave a YOU WERE GREAT LAST NIGHT note on a Post-it or napkin. Don’t ask for a phone number if you have no intention of dialing it, and don’t leave yours if you plan on accidentally making the “6” look like a “0.”
How do you politely determine the level of commitment of a gay couple?
One approach, of course, is to do it the same way you would for a straight couple: Ask how long they’ve been together; determine where Party A lives and, later in the conversation, ask Party B if he lives in Chelsea/Park Slope/Hell’s Kitchen, too; ask one of them if he has a dog and listen to see whether the other speaks about it with a tone of ownership. Cohabitation isn’t necessarily a sign of commitment, though: Many gay men have open relationships, so the only surefire way to know the level of commitment is to offer to go home with one of them.
Who pays the bill on a date?
The asker pays, unless the woman does the asking—then the man should pay. If the check’s on the table and her suitor hasn’t moved for it, a woman should allow him a one-bathroom-trip grace period. If it’s still there when she comes back, she should split the bill but is entirely free to silently ruminate about what a cheap jerk he is. (For same-sex couples, the asker really does pay.)
When can you get together with your friend’s ex?
The simple answer is never, for the sake of simplicity, good karma, and world peace. However, if you suspect this could be a case of Romeo-and-Juliet love without the suicide, there are certain requirements that should still be met:
• The statute of limitations has passed on your friend’s right to be possessive (three months for every year they were together). A man should wait longer to do the asking, not out of politeness to his ex but so he doesn’t come off as a dog. A woman can always pretend she needs a shoulder to lean on when what she really needs is a tumble in the hay.
• The uncontrollable feelings have been discussed in a considerate and sensitive conversation with the friend. Initiating said conversation falls to the pursuing friend, not the ex.
• The friend has moved on and is in a wholly satisfying, happy, healthy relationship.
If you start dating someone you met online, at what point should you take down/hide your personal ad?
Taking down your personal ad, like referring to someone as your “boyfriend” or “girlfriend,” is a step that should be taken once you have reached Mutually Acknowledged Monogamy. You can’t make any assumptions until you’ve had The Talk: Until you utter or hear the words “Let’s be exclusive,” you can’t expect your partner’s ad to come down.
How do you respond to an online personal message from someone whose picture you don’t like?
If you’ve established an e-mail connection before seeing the other person’s photo, which then reveals a mullet or other disturbing feature, you must suffer the consequences of jumping the gun. Set up a very brief coffee date and hope that the person doesn’t photograph well.
At what point in a flirtatious conversation should you mention you have a significant other?
If you have a suspicion that your conversation partner would take his clever remarks elsewhere if he knew you were officially off the market, then it’s only fair to release him to said market. Casually mention your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife in passing, but don’t belabor the point: No single person will miss that sign, and if he continues, it probably means he’s actually interested in having a conversation, but not one in which he’s battered over the head with reminders of his partnerlessness. (If you keep chatting for upwards of an hour, it’s well within his rights to forget about your boyfriend/girlfriend—because it appears that you have, too.)
How do you decide who gets what restaurants, bars, and friends post-breakup?
Distinguish between those acquired before and during the relationship. What was yours before remains yours afterward—the same goes for your ex. As for items, book clubs, pets, and dining preferences acquired as a couple, the person being dumped gets first dibs on everything—as a general rule, the one whose heart has been put through the blender claims the social detritus of the relationship. Except for friends, of course—they make their own decisions which side to choose. As for that mythical unicorn, the mutual breakup? Those freaks of nature clearly don’t need any help.
How do you respond if you’re straight and a gay person asks you out?
Laugh and say, “I don’t think my girlfriend/boyfriend would approve.” It won’t become awkward unless you become patronizing. (“Oh, that’s so sweet! I would love to go out with you. It’s so unfortunate that I’m straight. I wish I were gay! I mean, not like that, but . . . ”) If you’re not sure if you’re being asked out, just drop an unmistakable hint into the conversation referring to your heterosexuality.
VIA NEW YORK MAGAZINE
What obligations does one have after a one-night stand?
They correlate directly to the expectations raised the night before. If you wooed your one-nighter to bed with promises of Central Park picnics and weekends in the Hamptons, you are obliged to follow through. But if you made no false promises in order to close the deal, then you simply need to be polite. If the liaison takes place in your own apartment, let your new friend stay the night and offer to cook/pay for a quick breakfast, but don’t dilly dally in your effort to get to that place you “need to be” the next day. If the tryst is at the other person’s place and you wish to depart, engage in light caressing and conversation for at least twenty minutes. If you decide to sneak out at 5 A.M. instead, leave a YOU WERE GREAT LAST NIGHT note on a Post-it or napkin. Don’t ask for a phone number if you have no intention of dialing it, and don’t leave yours if you plan on accidentally making the “6” look like a “0.”
How do you politely determine the level of commitment of a gay couple?
One approach, of course, is to do it the same way you would for a straight couple: Ask how long they’ve been together; determine where Party A lives and, later in the conversation, ask Party B if he lives in Chelsea/Park Slope/Hell’s Kitchen, too; ask one of them if he has a dog and listen to see whether the other speaks about it with a tone of ownership. Cohabitation isn’t necessarily a sign of commitment, though: Many gay men have open relationships, so the only surefire way to know the level of commitment is to offer to go home with one of them.
Who pays the bill on a date?
The asker pays, unless the woman does the asking—then the man should pay. If the check’s on the table and her suitor hasn’t moved for it, a woman should allow him a one-bathroom-trip grace period. If it’s still there when she comes back, she should split the bill but is entirely free to silently ruminate about what a cheap jerk he is. (For same-sex couples, the asker really does pay.)
When can you get together with your friend’s ex?
The simple answer is never, for the sake of simplicity, good karma, and world peace. However, if you suspect this could be a case of Romeo-and-Juliet love without the suicide, there are certain requirements that should still be met:
• The statute of limitations has passed on your friend’s right to be possessive (three months for every year they were together). A man should wait longer to do the asking, not out of politeness to his ex but so he doesn’t come off as a dog. A woman can always pretend she needs a shoulder to lean on when what she really needs is a tumble in the hay.
• The uncontrollable feelings have been discussed in a considerate and sensitive conversation with the friend. Initiating said conversation falls to the pursuing friend, not the ex.
• The friend has moved on and is in a wholly satisfying, happy, healthy relationship.
If you start dating someone you met online, at what point should you take down/hide your personal ad?
Taking down your personal ad, like referring to someone as your “boyfriend” or “girlfriend,” is a step that should be taken once you have reached Mutually Acknowledged Monogamy. You can’t make any assumptions until you’ve had The Talk: Until you utter or hear the words “Let’s be exclusive,” you can’t expect your partner’s ad to come down.
How do you respond to an online personal message from someone whose picture you don’t like?
If you’ve established an e-mail connection before seeing the other person’s photo, which then reveals a mullet or other disturbing feature, you must suffer the consequences of jumping the gun. Set up a very brief coffee date and hope that the person doesn’t photograph well.
At what point in a flirtatious conversation should you mention you have a significant other?
If you have a suspicion that your conversation partner would take his clever remarks elsewhere if he knew you were officially off the market, then it’s only fair to release him to said market. Casually mention your boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife in passing, but don’t belabor the point: No single person will miss that sign, and if he continues, it probably means he’s actually interested in having a conversation, but not one in which he’s battered over the head with reminders of his partnerlessness. (If you keep chatting for upwards of an hour, it’s well within his rights to forget about your boyfriend/girlfriend—because it appears that you have, too.)
How do you decide who gets what restaurants, bars, and friends post-breakup?
Distinguish between those acquired before and during the relationship. What was yours before remains yours afterward—the same goes for your ex. As for items, book clubs, pets, and dining preferences acquired as a couple, the person being dumped gets first dibs on everything—as a general rule, the one whose heart has been put through the blender claims the social detritus of the relationship. Except for friends, of course—they make their own decisions which side to choose. As for that mythical unicorn, the mutual breakup? Those freaks of nature clearly don’t need any help.
How do you respond if you’re straight and a gay person asks you out?
Laugh and say, “I don’t think my girlfriend/boyfriend would approve.” It won’t become awkward unless you become patronizing. (“Oh, that’s so sweet! I would love to go out with you. It’s so unfortunate that I’m straight. I wish I were gay! I mean, not like that, but . . . ”) If you’re not sure if you’re being asked out, just drop an unmistakable hint into the conversation referring to your heterosexuality.
VIA NEW YORK MAGAZINE
posted by Redboy at 5:35 PM
0 comments
Ungainly yet sexy, the new Guthrie Theater
Minneapolis gets a taste of French style
Ungainly yet sexy, the new Guthrie Theater is a singular addition to the city's skyline.
By Christopher Hawthorne
LA Times Staff Writer
June 21, 2006
MINNEAPOLIS — When the Guthrie Theater chose French architect Jean Nouvel to design a new building along the Mississippi River, at least a few Minnesotans probably paused to wonder what the company had gotten itself into.
The Guthrie's old thrust stage, a 1963 design by Ralph Rapson, might have been rickety and cramped, but it was beloved here. And Nouvel, who had never worked in America, was hardly a natural fit for Minneapolis. The city has a vital cultural scene but in general — Prince notwithstanding — doesn't have much use for pretense.
Probably best known for his 1987 Institute of the Arab World in Paris, among the most successful of Francois Mitterrand's Grands Projets for the French capital, Nouvel is given to statements about his work that are opaque and grandiose even by the standards of avant-garde architecture.
"From now on," he declared last year in a manifesto written for the opening of a retrospective of his work at a Danish museum, "let architecture rediscover its aura in the inexpressible, in the cloudy." He added that "architecture has to be impregnated and to impregnate."
By the time the manifesto arrived in print, Nouvel had already informed Joe Dowling, the Guthrie's Irish-born artistic director, and the board of trustees that he wanted to lift all three of the building's new theaters at least four stories into the air. Oh, and cantilever a 175-foot-long "Endless Bridge" out toward the Mississippi. And add gigantic, ghostly portraits of actors and playwrights to the exterior and interior walls. And cover the entire facade with dark-blue panels, to evoke the magic of twilight — or, as Nouvel insisted on calling that time of day, using a French idiom, "entre chien et loup," the moment between the dog and the wolf.
Between the dog and the wolf and the Endless Bridge, the whole budget was pretty much spoken for by that point. Guthrie officials would have been forgiven for worrying that they were the impregnable ones, knocked up by a sweet-talking Frenchman with very expensive taste.
The surprise of the building, which opens to the public Sunday, is therefore not that its architectural symbolism, particularly the actors' portraits, is labored — which it is — or that it proves also to be a practical design, even efficient in its way. The 60-year-old Nouvel, whose firm already has to its credit well-regarded performance venues in Lyon, France, and Lucerne, Switzerland, has a talent for solving knotty architectural problems with cleanly decisive architectural gestures, and for mixing luxe elements with bare-bones spaces.
What is surprising is that the pretension and the practicality merge to create a captivating building that is a singular presence on Nouvel's resume, not to mention on the Minneapolis skyline.
If ever a building deserved to be called sexy-ugly, it's this one. Somehow sleek and ungainly at the same time, a brooding, preening pile of geometric forms that could hardly be less photogenic, particularly on the outside, the design manages to slide naturally into its industrial riverbank context and feel utterly up-to-date. In a manner that is truly French, the fact that the building seems aware of its imperfections doesn't keep it from exuding a palpable vanity.
Its completion caps off a mini-boom for the city's cultural institutions, which began with a remarkable addition to the Walker Art Center by Herzog & de Meuron, which opened in April 2005, and has continued this spring with a pair of disappointing buildings: Cesar Pelli's mall-like central library and an entirely forgettable new wing for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts by Michael Graves.
The Guthrie's three excellent performance spaces — an almost literal re-creation of Rapson's hall that holds 1,100, a 700-seat proscenium theater with blood-red walls, and a black box at the very top of the building — differ not only in size but in character, and give the Guthrie a programming flexibility it has never before enjoyed.
The site for the building is stunning and was clearly a lure, as well as an inspiration, for Nouvel. Built for $125 million, the Guthrie occupies a wide swath of land along the Mississippi, a few blocks northeast of the downtown core and just down-river from the churning St. Anthony Falls.
All around are bridges and hulking industrial buildings. Immediately to the west is an old flour mill, now a museum, that Walter Gropius included in "The Evolution of Modern Industrial Architecture," an essay that helped fire Modern architects' fascination with factories and grain elevators. Along with the river and the bridges behind it, the mill turns the Guthrie site into a perfect backdrop for Nouvel — a kind of stage set for his own stab at theatricality.
The building is wrapped in metal panels that, at certain times of day, read as purple. (Prince again!) It is attached to a parking garage, which was designed by a local firm, by a windowless second-story bridge that is covered in the same panels. As you approach the front doors, you can see the undersides of the curving rows of seats that make up the thrust stage. Directly under that half-bowl are a series of billboards with pictures of famous playwrights and a large glass-walled restaurant.
The main entrance flows into an atrium space that is narrow and deep and rather plain, revealing, at the rear of the building, views of trees and a narrow slice of river. Two very long and very thin escalators lead up to a sky lobby that holds the Endless Bridge, with its remarkable views, along with bars, another restaurant and the entrances to the theaters.
It's on your way up those escalators that the logic of Nouvel's decision to lift the theaters so high in the air begins to make sense, even though it rather absurdly requires that the Guthrie find a way to get its sets and other stage equipment up there too. American theater companies have been trying for more than a decade to make their buildings not only auditoriums but destinations, to lure the public through the doors at times other than 10 minutes to 8 in the evening. In part they've begun to do so by taking a cue from museums and hiring well-known architects to produce iconic buildings. They've also added cafes and gift shops, introduced classes for children that will keep the building busy during the day, and varied their curtain times.
The Guthrie has done all of that in its new home, and indeed the building seems likely to attract plenty of people who come primarily to check out the architecture or meet for dinner in the ground-floor restaurant. But the danger of that arrangement, as Nouvel seems to understand, is that by inviting the city in you lose the sense of escape, of detachment from the everyday, that makes a trip to the theater appealing in the first place. By raising the theaters and connecting them to the lobby by slow-moving escalators, the architect not only preserves that detachment but makes it impressively literal.
And in the end there's something refreshing about Nouvel's insistence that architecture is, in some fundamental way, a poetic exercise. The field has grown not just practical but downright actuarial in the last couple of years, and not only when it comes to corporate projects. Rem Koolhaas still designs with a formally innovative, otherworldly touch, but he's become obsessed with winning jobs by convincing his clients that his work is purely, bloodlessly rational. (Amazingly enough, they seem to be buying it.) Frank Gehry can't have much time for creative contemplation now that he's hashing out FARs and EIRs, and picking out bathroom fixtures, for his mega-projects in Los Angeles and Brooklyn.
Perhaps most disappointing of all, Daniel Libeskind, who won the ground zero master plan competition with rapturous rhetoric about death and rebirth, now spends his time building predictably eccentric condo towers for aspiring Trumps in places like Sacramento and suburban Cincinnati. So as long as Jean Nouvel is producing buildings as compellingly, humanely flawed as the Guthrie, we'll forgive him the manifestos.
Ungainly yet sexy, the new Guthrie Theater is a singular addition to the city's skyline.
By Christopher Hawthorne
LA Times Staff Writer
June 21, 2006
MINNEAPOLIS — When the Guthrie Theater chose French architect Jean Nouvel to design a new building along the Mississippi River, at least a few Minnesotans probably paused to wonder what the company had gotten itself into.
The Guthrie's old thrust stage, a 1963 design by Ralph Rapson, might have been rickety and cramped, but it was beloved here. And Nouvel, who had never worked in America, was hardly a natural fit for Minneapolis. The city has a vital cultural scene but in general — Prince notwithstanding — doesn't have much use for pretense.
Probably best known for his 1987 Institute of the Arab World in Paris, among the most successful of Francois Mitterrand's Grands Projets for the French capital, Nouvel is given to statements about his work that are opaque and grandiose even by the standards of avant-garde architecture.
"From now on," he declared last year in a manifesto written for the opening of a retrospective of his work at a Danish museum, "let architecture rediscover its aura in the inexpressible, in the cloudy." He added that "architecture has to be impregnated and to impregnate."
By the time the manifesto arrived in print, Nouvel had already informed Joe Dowling, the Guthrie's Irish-born artistic director, and the board of trustees that he wanted to lift all three of the building's new theaters at least four stories into the air. Oh, and cantilever a 175-foot-long "Endless Bridge" out toward the Mississippi. And add gigantic, ghostly portraits of actors and playwrights to the exterior and interior walls. And cover the entire facade with dark-blue panels, to evoke the magic of twilight — or, as Nouvel insisted on calling that time of day, using a French idiom, "entre chien et loup," the moment between the dog and the wolf.
Between the dog and the wolf and the Endless Bridge, the whole budget was pretty much spoken for by that point. Guthrie officials would have been forgiven for worrying that they were the impregnable ones, knocked up by a sweet-talking Frenchman with very expensive taste.
The surprise of the building, which opens to the public Sunday, is therefore not that its architectural symbolism, particularly the actors' portraits, is labored — which it is — or that it proves also to be a practical design, even efficient in its way. The 60-year-old Nouvel, whose firm already has to its credit well-regarded performance venues in Lyon, France, and Lucerne, Switzerland, has a talent for solving knotty architectural problems with cleanly decisive architectural gestures, and for mixing luxe elements with bare-bones spaces.
What is surprising is that the pretension and the practicality merge to create a captivating building that is a singular presence on Nouvel's resume, not to mention on the Minneapolis skyline.
If ever a building deserved to be called sexy-ugly, it's this one. Somehow sleek and ungainly at the same time, a brooding, preening pile of geometric forms that could hardly be less photogenic, particularly on the outside, the design manages to slide naturally into its industrial riverbank context and feel utterly up-to-date. In a manner that is truly French, the fact that the building seems aware of its imperfections doesn't keep it from exuding a palpable vanity.
Its completion caps off a mini-boom for the city's cultural institutions, which began with a remarkable addition to the Walker Art Center by Herzog & de Meuron, which opened in April 2005, and has continued this spring with a pair of disappointing buildings: Cesar Pelli's mall-like central library and an entirely forgettable new wing for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts by Michael Graves.
The Guthrie's three excellent performance spaces — an almost literal re-creation of Rapson's hall that holds 1,100, a 700-seat proscenium theater with blood-red walls, and a black box at the very top of the building — differ not only in size but in character, and give the Guthrie a programming flexibility it has never before enjoyed.
The site for the building is stunning and was clearly a lure, as well as an inspiration, for Nouvel. Built for $125 million, the Guthrie occupies a wide swath of land along the Mississippi, a few blocks northeast of the downtown core and just down-river from the churning St. Anthony Falls.
All around are bridges and hulking industrial buildings. Immediately to the west is an old flour mill, now a museum, that Walter Gropius included in "The Evolution of Modern Industrial Architecture," an essay that helped fire Modern architects' fascination with factories and grain elevators. Along with the river and the bridges behind it, the mill turns the Guthrie site into a perfect backdrop for Nouvel — a kind of stage set for his own stab at theatricality.
The building is wrapped in metal panels that, at certain times of day, read as purple. (Prince again!) It is attached to a parking garage, which was designed by a local firm, by a windowless second-story bridge that is covered in the same panels. As you approach the front doors, you can see the undersides of the curving rows of seats that make up the thrust stage. Directly under that half-bowl are a series of billboards with pictures of famous playwrights and a large glass-walled restaurant.
The main entrance flows into an atrium space that is narrow and deep and rather plain, revealing, at the rear of the building, views of trees and a narrow slice of river. Two very long and very thin escalators lead up to a sky lobby that holds the Endless Bridge, with its remarkable views, along with bars, another restaurant and the entrances to the theaters.
It's on your way up those escalators that the logic of Nouvel's decision to lift the theaters so high in the air begins to make sense, even though it rather absurdly requires that the Guthrie find a way to get its sets and other stage equipment up there too. American theater companies have been trying for more than a decade to make their buildings not only auditoriums but destinations, to lure the public through the doors at times other than 10 minutes to 8 in the evening. In part they've begun to do so by taking a cue from museums and hiring well-known architects to produce iconic buildings. They've also added cafes and gift shops, introduced classes for children that will keep the building busy during the day, and varied their curtain times.
The Guthrie has done all of that in its new home, and indeed the building seems likely to attract plenty of people who come primarily to check out the architecture or meet for dinner in the ground-floor restaurant. But the danger of that arrangement, as Nouvel seems to understand, is that by inviting the city in you lose the sense of escape, of detachment from the everyday, that makes a trip to the theater appealing in the first place. By raising the theaters and connecting them to the lobby by slow-moving escalators, the architect not only preserves that detachment but makes it impressively literal.
And in the end there's something refreshing about Nouvel's insistence that architecture is, in some fundamental way, a poetic exercise. The field has grown not just practical but downright actuarial in the last couple of years, and not only when it comes to corporate projects. Rem Koolhaas still designs with a formally innovative, otherworldly touch, but he's become obsessed with winning jobs by convincing his clients that his work is purely, bloodlessly rational. (Amazingly enough, they seem to be buying it.) Frank Gehry can't have much time for creative contemplation now that he's hashing out FARs and EIRs, and picking out bathroom fixtures, for his mega-projects in Los Angeles and Brooklyn.
Perhaps most disappointing of all, Daniel Libeskind, who won the ground zero master plan competition with rapturous rhetoric about death and rebirth, now spends his time building predictably eccentric condo towers for aspiring Trumps in places like Sacramento and suburban Cincinnati. So as long as Jean Nouvel is producing buildings as compellingly, humanely flawed as the Guthrie, we'll forgive him the manifestos.
posted by Redboy at 12:04 PM
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Behind the scenes at the Guthrie
Behind the scenes at the Guthrie
The new Guthrie complex promises not only stunning theatrical playing spaces, but backstage places marked by their efficiency, size and general ergonomic improvement. This is where stage magic is made.
Graydon Royce, Star Tribune
Frank Butler, the Guthrie's production manager, was walking through the new theater's public lobby recently and came up to a large wall of dark-blue glass. If you squint, you can see through the glass and make out the large skyway where sets are rolled up to the backs of the thrust and proscenium stages.
"I wish this was a little darker," Butler said. "I don't want the audience thinking about how the magic is done."
The public spaces and theaters are what most of us will see at the new building, but backstage, the transformation is arguably more profound. This is where the illusions are created, and the Guthrie offers a marked contrast from its previous digs on Vineland Place.
Costumers accustomed to working on several different levels including the basement are collected in a bright, airy room. Set construction actually happens on site, in a space that looks big enough to hold a Roman Coliseum. There's a kitchen where food is prepared for on-stage use, a state-of-the-art sound system and an expanded prop shop.
Butler walked through the building the other day and showed us some of the places we rarely get to see.
Standing on the thrust stage, he pointed to a maze of overhead catwalks, where lighting designers work to shade mood and drama. The old Guthrie was built for 200 lighting units in 1963. This space has capacity for double that number. Walking over to the first row, he pointed below the seats at small heating and cooling vents. This new system, he said, should be far quieter than the old ceiling blowers and compete less with the voices of actors.
Below the stage, Butler pointed up and noted that the stage floor can accommodate a trap door at any spot (remember Marley's Ghost arising in "A Christmas Carol"?). All the aluminum I-beams and framing are constructed so they can be removed.
Huge space for building sets
The scene shop might be the crown jewel in Butler's empire. It has 24-foot ceilings and one section entirely for painting. (If the theater needs money, it might consider auto-body work). This huge space is 30 percent larger than the old shop -- which was across town from the theater -- and raw materials can be shipped in through a 10-by-24-foot freight elevator. The Guthrie had to get a variance from the city to build the large skyway across 2nd Street and for the air rights above the municipal parking ramp.
The costume shop has a wall of windows looking out on what will be a 7-acre park. "It's great to have windows for the staff," said Butler. "We didn't see the light of day for many years."
Here, on large draping tables, costumers cut and sew and tailor all the elegant fashions, the smart uniforms, beggars' rags, period dress, armor and robes. The real beauty of this new building is that everything is in one place. It used to be that the costume shop and the fitting rooms were on different floors. Here, the fitting room is right next door, and the costumes are kept in a wardrobe when they're finished.
Nearby are the wig shops, where those glorious stands of hair are built. There are two dye rooms where, Butler said, an enormous amount of electrical energy is spent on vats, plumbing, two kinds of lights (one to approximate stage lighting so colors look true) and special ventilation for dry pigment. One dye room is just for costumes, another for large fabrics.
The craft shop is an interesting collection of boxes and plastic tubs, each labeled to a humorous level of specificity: "belt buckles, western,"belt buckles, military,"feathers, military,"feathers, turkey,"feathers, black." These pieces are stacked floor-to-ceiling and meticulously catalogued.
In the prop shop, furniture, hand props and set decorations are designed and created. The Guthrie does not haunt rummage sales or secondhand stores for pieces that might fit. They're made fresh or recycled from a previous production. For example, Butler pointed out a chandelier that was used in "Hamlet," sitting in the prop shop and awaiting a slight retooling so it can adorn the set of "The Great Gatsby." The work can be as small-scale as a jewelry box or as large-scale as the full-size 1925 Rolls Royce that is being made for "Gatsby."
In another room, soft goods are made, such as pillow cases, curtains and other props made from fabrics.
The magic factory extends not only to the nuts and bolts, but to people places, too. For example, Butler walked us through three rehearsal rooms, one for each of the upstairs stages. All three have mirrored walls and are wired for sound.
Lastly, the new building has its own recording studio, where atmospheric musicscapes, voice-overs and sound effects can be tailored specifically for productions.
When it all works, an audience shouldn't even be aware of it. That's what makes it magic.
Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299
©2006 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
The new Guthrie complex promises not only stunning theatrical playing spaces, but backstage places marked by their efficiency, size and general ergonomic improvement. This is where stage magic is made.
Graydon Royce, Star Tribune
Frank Butler, the Guthrie's production manager, was walking through the new theater's public lobby recently and came up to a large wall of dark-blue glass. If you squint, you can see through the glass and make out the large skyway where sets are rolled up to the backs of the thrust and proscenium stages.
"I wish this was a little darker," Butler said. "I don't want the audience thinking about how the magic is done."
The public spaces and theaters are what most of us will see at the new building, but backstage, the transformation is arguably more profound. This is where the illusions are created, and the Guthrie offers a marked contrast from its previous digs on Vineland Place.
Costumers accustomed to working on several different levels including the basement are collected in a bright, airy room. Set construction actually happens on site, in a space that looks big enough to hold a Roman Coliseum. There's a kitchen where food is prepared for on-stage use, a state-of-the-art sound system and an expanded prop shop.
Butler walked through the building the other day and showed us some of the places we rarely get to see.
Standing on the thrust stage, he pointed to a maze of overhead catwalks, where lighting designers work to shade mood and drama. The old Guthrie was built for 200 lighting units in 1963. This space has capacity for double that number. Walking over to the first row, he pointed below the seats at small heating and cooling vents. This new system, he said, should be far quieter than the old ceiling blowers and compete less with the voices of actors.
Below the stage, Butler pointed up and noted that the stage floor can accommodate a trap door at any spot (remember Marley's Ghost arising in "A Christmas Carol"?). All the aluminum I-beams and framing are constructed so they can be removed.
Huge space for building sets
The scene shop might be the crown jewel in Butler's empire. It has 24-foot ceilings and one section entirely for painting. (If the theater needs money, it might consider auto-body work). This huge space is 30 percent larger than the old shop -- which was across town from the theater -- and raw materials can be shipped in through a 10-by-24-foot freight elevator. The Guthrie had to get a variance from the city to build the large skyway across 2nd Street and for the air rights above the municipal parking ramp.
The costume shop has a wall of windows looking out on what will be a 7-acre park. "It's great to have windows for the staff," said Butler. "We didn't see the light of day for many years."
Here, on large draping tables, costumers cut and sew and tailor all the elegant fashions, the smart uniforms, beggars' rags, period dress, armor and robes. The real beauty of this new building is that everything is in one place. It used to be that the costume shop and the fitting rooms were on different floors. Here, the fitting room is right next door, and the costumes are kept in a wardrobe when they're finished.
Nearby are the wig shops, where those glorious stands of hair are built. There are two dye rooms where, Butler said, an enormous amount of electrical energy is spent on vats, plumbing, two kinds of lights (one to approximate stage lighting so colors look true) and special ventilation for dry pigment. One dye room is just for costumes, another for large fabrics.
The craft shop is an interesting collection of boxes and plastic tubs, each labeled to a humorous level of specificity: "belt buckles, western,"belt buckles, military,"feathers, military,"feathers, turkey,"feathers, black." These pieces are stacked floor-to-ceiling and meticulously catalogued.
In the prop shop, furniture, hand props and set decorations are designed and created. The Guthrie does not haunt rummage sales or secondhand stores for pieces that might fit. They're made fresh or recycled from a previous production. For example, Butler pointed out a chandelier that was used in "Hamlet," sitting in the prop shop and awaiting a slight retooling so it can adorn the set of "The Great Gatsby." The work can be as small-scale as a jewelry box or as large-scale as the full-size 1925 Rolls Royce that is being made for "Gatsby."
In another room, soft goods are made, such as pillow cases, curtains and other props made from fabrics.
The magic factory extends not only to the nuts and bolts, but to people places, too. For example, Butler walked us through three rehearsal rooms, one for each of the upstairs stages. All three have mirrored walls and are wired for sound.
Lastly, the new building has its own recording studio, where atmospheric musicscapes, voice-overs and sound effects can be tailored specifically for productions.
When it all works, an audience shouldn't even be aware of it. That's what makes it magic.
Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299
©2006 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
posted by Redboy at 12:03 PM
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New Guthrie is industrial
Commentary: New Guthrie is industrial on the outside, dazzling on the inside
In his Guthrie Theater on the Minneapolis riverfront, architect Jean Nouvel has created a powerful play of illusion and reality. The design pays homage to its industrial neighbors while capturing the magic of theater.
By Linda Mack
One building can define a generation's legacy.
For the last generation, it was the Guthrie Theater on Vineland Place. Ralph Rapson's facade of rhythmic openings framed people moving inside the theater lobby and created a surge of anticipation.
For this generation, it will once again be the Guthrie Theater, the new one opening next weekend. The powerful building establishes a cultural anchor on the formerly blighted Minneapolis riverfront. In homage to its environs, French architect Jean Nouvel's monumental blue box looks industrial on the outside. Inside, it's dazzling.
Blue and yellow windows color reality. Faint images of Guthrie actors cover lobby walls and ceilings. More actors appear in holograms recessed into walls and lurk in mirrors. Framed views recast the Mississippi riverfront. These optical effects create a cinematic experience -- before the plays have even begun.
"We're going to have to match it, play by play," said Guthrie artistic director Joe Dowling one day as he waited for Nouvel to meet him on the already famous cantilevered bridge, the epicenter of jaw-dropping experiences.
The new Guthrie, 10 stories at its tallest, is more than imposing. Seen from the Stone Arch Bridge, its scale matches that of its once-industrial neighbors. Stand close and it's huge. In an age of architectural highjinks -- roof forms that slide over each other, eccentric angles and curves, odd materials -- the exterior is surprisingly straightforward, except for that half-block cantilevered bridge jutting toward the river, of course. The powerful geometric forms wrapped in blue metal panels recall the shapes of the nearby historic mills and grain elevators.
"A building is always an echo -- it's always part of a long story," Nouvel said on a recent tour of the building.
The midnight blue color is part of another story. After a false start in yellow, Nouvel searched more than a year for just the right color to convey the mystery of theater.
"I looked at cars all day and finally found one," he said. "To find the right color is very, very important."
The theatrical activity inside is hinted at by intriguing exterior elements: the semi-circular form of the thrust stage, which softens the building on the corner facing downtown; the orange glass box perched high on the tower, which locates the third or black-box stage; the ghostly images of Guthrie productions glistening in the blue walls; the scrolling LED roof towers and the supersized faces of playwrights, including George Bernard Shaw, Tennessee Williams and August Wilson, on the restaurant terrace.
A heart-throbbing interior
The pow-bang comes inside, but not right away, when you walk into the two-story ground-floor lobby that cuts through to the equally big doors on the Mississippi side. The space is a palate-cleanser for what's to come: a long, claustrophobic escalator ride that disgorges you on the fourth-floor lobby, right in front of a huge window highlighting a riverfront view.
"You go from one world to another world," Nouvel said.
There in the dark, seemingly low-ceilinged lobby, faint images of Guthrie actors loom overhead and on the walls. The sound of people in the fifth-floor lobby floats down through two backlit semicircles cut in the ceiling.
"You feel the other people above, and the warm color," Nouvel said. "You feel the magic of the theater."
Instinct draws you to the bridge, which functions as an elaborate extension of the lobby. Like an architectural scissors, the ramp up from the fourth floor meets the ramp down from the fifth floor toward the end of the bridge. Odd-shaped windows with deep, mirrored sides reflect and literally turn riverfront views upside-down. A 10-foot high window opens to capture the sound and sight of St. Anthony Falls.
Then the blue glass doors and panels at the end of the bridge draw your attention.
"The color flattens the view, makes it abstract," Nouvel said. "You want to go through and see the next adventure."
And, when you do, the whole riverfront is laid before you. Broad steps invite you to sit and soak it up. You're suspended four stories in the air.
"This is the fourth stage," Nouvel said, as he soaked up the sun.
Captivating stages
The other three stages are equally captivating. The 1,100-seat thrust stage, the old Guthrie's signature, feels like a crisp, warmer version of the familiar Vineland Place stage. Rapson's groundbreaking layout and vibrant scheme of 10 seat colors have been kept, but details have been tweaked for better sightlines, comfort and acoustics. (Leg room, for one thing, has been increased.)
The 700-seat proscenium stage -- this theater's signature -- is lipstick red with velvet seats, sensuous chain-mail curtains cascading down the walls and two narrow balconies perched above the raked floor. If color can whet the theatrical appetite, patrons will be ravenous.
The flexible black-box theater on the ninth floor is actually deep charcoal gray. Its cantilevered orange-glass lobby, which sports both a glass ceiling and a glass floor, is another optical game.
"It's like a projector on the landscape. It's always sunny," said Nouvel.
Visual play before the plays
Will all this visual play compete with the theatrical experience itself? Will the plays seem dull in comparison? Will patrons eating in the fifth-floor restaurant feel they're being watched by Guthrie actors in the mirrored walls? We'll only know when people begin to fill the lobbies and theaters.
But it seems that Nouvel has succeeded where so many avant-garde architects fail.
He's transformed the way we see the city's iconic natural asset -- the Mississippi River. And he welcomes us to share the fun he had doing so.
He's masterfully manipulated our experience of the building. But he's done so by inviting us through it rather than forcing us.
Like the old Guthrie, the new one beckons us to the theater. That invitation, even more than the resurrected thrust stage, continues a compelling cultural legacy.
Linda Mack • 612-673-7124 lmack@startribune.com
©2006 Star Tribune.
In his Guthrie Theater on the Minneapolis riverfront, architect Jean Nouvel has created a powerful play of illusion and reality. The design pays homage to its industrial neighbors while capturing the magic of theater.
By Linda Mack
One building can define a generation's legacy.
For the last generation, it was the Guthrie Theater on Vineland Place. Ralph Rapson's facade of rhythmic openings framed people moving inside the theater lobby and created a surge of anticipation.
For this generation, it will once again be the Guthrie Theater, the new one opening next weekend. The powerful building establishes a cultural anchor on the formerly blighted Minneapolis riverfront. In homage to its environs, French architect Jean Nouvel's monumental blue box looks industrial on the outside. Inside, it's dazzling.
Blue and yellow windows color reality. Faint images of Guthrie actors cover lobby walls and ceilings. More actors appear in holograms recessed into walls and lurk in mirrors. Framed views recast the Mississippi riverfront. These optical effects create a cinematic experience -- before the plays have even begun.
"We're going to have to match it, play by play," said Guthrie artistic director Joe Dowling one day as he waited for Nouvel to meet him on the already famous cantilevered bridge, the epicenter of jaw-dropping experiences.
The new Guthrie, 10 stories at its tallest, is more than imposing. Seen from the Stone Arch Bridge, its scale matches that of its once-industrial neighbors. Stand close and it's huge. In an age of architectural highjinks -- roof forms that slide over each other, eccentric angles and curves, odd materials -- the exterior is surprisingly straightforward, except for that half-block cantilevered bridge jutting toward the river, of course. The powerful geometric forms wrapped in blue metal panels recall the shapes of the nearby historic mills and grain elevators.
"A building is always an echo -- it's always part of a long story," Nouvel said on a recent tour of the building.
The midnight blue color is part of another story. After a false start in yellow, Nouvel searched more than a year for just the right color to convey the mystery of theater.
"I looked at cars all day and finally found one," he said. "To find the right color is very, very important."
The theatrical activity inside is hinted at by intriguing exterior elements: the semi-circular form of the thrust stage, which softens the building on the corner facing downtown; the orange glass box perched high on the tower, which locates the third or black-box stage; the ghostly images of Guthrie productions glistening in the blue walls; the scrolling LED roof towers and the supersized faces of playwrights, including George Bernard Shaw, Tennessee Williams and August Wilson, on the restaurant terrace.
A heart-throbbing interior
The pow-bang comes inside, but not right away, when you walk into the two-story ground-floor lobby that cuts through to the equally big doors on the Mississippi side. The space is a palate-cleanser for what's to come: a long, claustrophobic escalator ride that disgorges you on the fourth-floor lobby, right in front of a huge window highlighting a riverfront view.
"You go from one world to another world," Nouvel said.
There in the dark, seemingly low-ceilinged lobby, faint images of Guthrie actors loom overhead and on the walls. The sound of people in the fifth-floor lobby floats down through two backlit semicircles cut in the ceiling.
"You feel the other people above, and the warm color," Nouvel said. "You feel the magic of the theater."
Instinct draws you to the bridge, which functions as an elaborate extension of the lobby. Like an architectural scissors, the ramp up from the fourth floor meets the ramp down from the fifth floor toward the end of the bridge. Odd-shaped windows with deep, mirrored sides reflect and literally turn riverfront views upside-down. A 10-foot high window opens to capture the sound and sight of St. Anthony Falls.
Then the blue glass doors and panels at the end of the bridge draw your attention.
"The color flattens the view, makes it abstract," Nouvel said. "You want to go through and see the next adventure."
And, when you do, the whole riverfront is laid before you. Broad steps invite you to sit and soak it up. You're suspended four stories in the air.
"This is the fourth stage," Nouvel said, as he soaked up the sun.
Captivating stages
The other three stages are equally captivating. The 1,100-seat thrust stage, the old Guthrie's signature, feels like a crisp, warmer version of the familiar Vineland Place stage. Rapson's groundbreaking layout and vibrant scheme of 10 seat colors have been kept, but details have been tweaked for better sightlines, comfort and acoustics. (Leg room, for one thing, has been increased.)
The 700-seat proscenium stage -- this theater's signature -- is lipstick red with velvet seats, sensuous chain-mail curtains cascading down the walls and two narrow balconies perched above the raked floor. If color can whet the theatrical appetite, patrons will be ravenous.
The flexible black-box theater on the ninth floor is actually deep charcoal gray. Its cantilevered orange-glass lobby, which sports both a glass ceiling and a glass floor, is another optical game.
"It's like a projector on the landscape. It's always sunny," said Nouvel.
Visual play before the plays
Will all this visual play compete with the theatrical experience itself? Will the plays seem dull in comparison? Will patrons eating in the fifth-floor restaurant feel they're being watched by Guthrie actors in the mirrored walls? We'll only know when people begin to fill the lobbies and theaters.
But it seems that Nouvel has succeeded where so many avant-garde architects fail.
He's transformed the way we see the city's iconic natural asset -- the Mississippi River. And he welcomes us to share the fun he had doing so.
He's masterfully manipulated our experience of the building. But he's done so by inviting us through it rather than forcing us.
Like the old Guthrie, the new one beckons us to the theater. That invitation, even more than the resurrected thrust stage, continues a compelling cultural legacy.
Linda Mack • 612-673-7124 lmack@startribune.com
©2006 Star Tribune.
posted by Redboy at 12:00 PM
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Dream Factory for Guthrie Theater
Architect Nouvel Conjures a Dream Factory for Guthrie Theater
June 20 (Bloomberg)
When the light is just right on the midnight-blue panels of the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, a ghostly image of Shakespeare's Henry V fades into Othello carrying his doomed bride Desdemona. More actors' faces gaze out from overscale billboards and appear as wispy LED images that electronically climb zipper-sign towers rising like high-tech smokestacks.
Paris architect Jean Nouvel, 60, uses architecture -- the most enduring artistic medium -- as a scrim to project the essence of that most ephemeral of arts, theater. Nouvel succeeds in this subtle endeavor while creating a spectacular civic landmark.
The Guthrie has long enjoyed an enviable reputation by focusing on inventive interpretations of Shakespeare and other stage classics. This eye-popping, $125 million, three-venue building reflects the health of live theater, according to Guthrie Artistic Director Joe Dowling, 57, as well as the growing artistic impact of cities outside New York.
After a fund-raising gala and public opening June 25, the Guthrie will stage premieres of Simon Levy's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's ``The Great Gatsby'' and ``The Falls,'' a new play by Jeffery Hatcher, as part of the 2006-07 season that begins July 15.
On the banks of the Mississippi, Nouvel (with Architectural Alliance, a local firm) has erected a blocky mass that resembles a humming factory, a sensible choice when neighbors include 12- story grain elevators and massive stone mills. Once derelict, these have been brilliantly revamped as a museum, condominiums and a Mississippi riverfront park in which industrial ruins resemble ancient Roman ones.
Suspended Spaces
To take full advantage of the riverside setting, Nouvel placed the two main stages 50 feet above the street. The idea seems perverse, but the payoff for patrons, after an escalator ride up a dark, shaftlike space, is a lobby bridge that projects 178 feet out of the building to hang in the air high above the riverbanks.
Like a crafty stage director, Nouvel discloses the glory of the bridge a bit at a time, through strips of tiny windows lined by mirrorlike panels. They pick up fragments of the Saint Anthony Falls with snatches of clouds drifting overhead, or an oblong of lawn below. It's just a visual trick, but Nouvel understands that these collage views raise the audience's sensory antennae -- a nice warm-up for a performance.
The bridge ends in space with a plane of blue glass that opens onto a tiny, stepped amphitheater perched high above the river's swirling waters. Nouvel has built in many such effects; the bridge is only the most spectacular. As patrons wander the lobbies, for example, they encounter more ghostly stage scenes on ceilings and walls.
Setting the Stages
So much architectural bravura has the potential to overwhelm what's on stage. Instead, Nouvel unveils the theaters in a dreamlike way that feels attuned to theatrical experience.
In the 1,100-seat Wurtele theater, Nouvel replicates (while subtly enhancing) the thrust stage that has defined the organization since its 1963 founding. Lacking a proscenium, the asymmetrical stage penetrates deeply into the audience, which forms an excitingly intimate semicircle around the actors.
It's a stage type that legendary founder Tyrone Guthrie pioneered and refined in the Guthrie's original hall. The new version retains the original's autumn-leaf colors but feels closer to the action. (It's 198 seats smaller, with better sightlines.)
The Guthrie now has its first conventional auditorium in the 700-seat McGuire proscenium stage, and Nouvel takes the audience back to the theatrical womb by bathing the room in red light. Veils of shining, stainless-steel mesh read as the thickest, most luxurious velvet. The mesh has an un-velvet translucence, though, as if the room were mysteriously borderless. Nouvel has the heart of a production designer.
Traditional Addition
The Guthrie added the proscenium because, as Dowling explained, ``we needed to get beyond the limitations of the thrust stage'' -- which include props that can block views and actors who must constantly move around so that no one misses what's going on.
So Dowling and Nouvel built the thrust's antithesis. All the seats are lined up in straight rows perpendicular to the stage, not in the usual amphitheater-bowl shape. Though the rows look regimented, it's what Dowling wanted. ``The great 20th- century works of psychological realism,'' he said, ``like those of Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill, demand to be seen by everyone as if no other audience members are present.''
In the thrust arrangement, by contrast, viewers are always aware of the audience beyond the stage
.
Audiences First
The 200-seat Dowling Studio Theater is the kind of flexible black box that's intended to develop new work and hone actors' skills. Nouvel put it on display by hanging it on the outside of the ninth floor and wrapping the lobby in floor-to-ceiling yellow glass (echoing a vintage neon sign atop a neighboring grain elevator). It offers patrons awesome but vertigo-inducing panoramas.
Though such gestures are self-dramatizing in the manner of much architecture these days, Nouvel never loses sight of the audiences he's serving. The recurring images of actors and the architectural devices that tingle the senses dissolve the physical reality of the building into sensation, memory, dreams: the world playwrights and actors conjure from the stages within.
(James S. Russell is Bloomberg's U.S. architecture critic. The opinions expressed are his own.)
June 20 (Bloomberg)
When the light is just right on the midnight-blue panels of the new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, a ghostly image of Shakespeare's Henry V fades into Othello carrying his doomed bride Desdemona. More actors' faces gaze out from overscale billboards and appear as wispy LED images that electronically climb zipper-sign towers rising like high-tech smokestacks.
Paris architect Jean Nouvel, 60, uses architecture -- the most enduring artistic medium -- as a scrim to project the essence of that most ephemeral of arts, theater. Nouvel succeeds in this subtle endeavor while creating a spectacular civic landmark.
The Guthrie has long enjoyed an enviable reputation by focusing on inventive interpretations of Shakespeare and other stage classics. This eye-popping, $125 million, three-venue building reflects the health of live theater, according to Guthrie Artistic Director Joe Dowling, 57, as well as the growing artistic impact of cities outside New York.
After a fund-raising gala and public opening June 25, the Guthrie will stage premieres of Simon Levy's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's ``The Great Gatsby'' and ``The Falls,'' a new play by Jeffery Hatcher, as part of the 2006-07 season that begins July 15.
On the banks of the Mississippi, Nouvel (with Architectural Alliance, a local firm) has erected a blocky mass that resembles a humming factory, a sensible choice when neighbors include 12- story grain elevators and massive stone mills. Once derelict, these have been brilliantly revamped as a museum, condominiums and a Mississippi riverfront park in which industrial ruins resemble ancient Roman ones.
Suspended Spaces
To take full advantage of the riverside setting, Nouvel placed the two main stages 50 feet above the street. The idea seems perverse, but the payoff for patrons, after an escalator ride up a dark, shaftlike space, is a lobby bridge that projects 178 feet out of the building to hang in the air high above the riverbanks.
Like a crafty stage director, Nouvel discloses the glory of the bridge a bit at a time, through strips of tiny windows lined by mirrorlike panels. They pick up fragments of the Saint Anthony Falls with snatches of clouds drifting overhead, or an oblong of lawn below. It's just a visual trick, but Nouvel understands that these collage views raise the audience's sensory antennae -- a nice warm-up for a performance.
The bridge ends in space with a plane of blue glass that opens onto a tiny, stepped amphitheater perched high above the river's swirling waters. Nouvel has built in many such effects; the bridge is only the most spectacular. As patrons wander the lobbies, for example, they encounter more ghostly stage scenes on ceilings and walls.
Setting the Stages
So much architectural bravura has the potential to overwhelm what's on stage. Instead, Nouvel unveils the theaters in a dreamlike way that feels attuned to theatrical experience.
In the 1,100-seat Wurtele theater, Nouvel replicates (while subtly enhancing) the thrust stage that has defined the organization since its 1963 founding. Lacking a proscenium, the asymmetrical stage penetrates deeply into the audience, which forms an excitingly intimate semicircle around the actors.
It's a stage type that legendary founder Tyrone Guthrie pioneered and refined in the Guthrie's original hall. The new version retains the original's autumn-leaf colors but feels closer to the action. (It's 198 seats smaller, with better sightlines.)
The Guthrie now has its first conventional auditorium in the 700-seat McGuire proscenium stage, and Nouvel takes the audience back to the theatrical womb by bathing the room in red light. Veils of shining, stainless-steel mesh read as the thickest, most luxurious velvet. The mesh has an un-velvet translucence, though, as if the room were mysteriously borderless. Nouvel has the heart of a production designer.
Traditional Addition
The Guthrie added the proscenium because, as Dowling explained, ``we needed to get beyond the limitations of the thrust stage'' -- which include props that can block views and actors who must constantly move around so that no one misses what's going on.
So Dowling and Nouvel built the thrust's antithesis. All the seats are lined up in straight rows perpendicular to the stage, not in the usual amphitheater-bowl shape. Though the rows look regimented, it's what Dowling wanted. ``The great 20th- century works of psychological realism,'' he said, ``like those of Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill, demand to be seen by everyone as if no other audience members are present.''
In the thrust arrangement, by contrast, viewers are always aware of the audience beyond the stage
.
Audiences First
The 200-seat Dowling Studio Theater is the kind of flexible black box that's intended to develop new work and hone actors' skills. Nouvel put it on display by hanging it on the outside of the ninth floor and wrapping the lobby in floor-to-ceiling yellow glass (echoing a vintage neon sign atop a neighboring grain elevator). It offers patrons awesome but vertigo-inducing panoramas.
Though such gestures are self-dramatizing in the manner of much architecture these days, Nouvel never loses sight of the audiences he's serving. The recurring images of actors and the architectural devices that tingle the senses dissolve the physical reality of the building into sensation, memory, dreams: the world playwrights and actors conjure from the stages within.
(James S. Russell is Bloomberg's U.S. architecture critic. The opinions expressed are his own.)
posted by Redboy at 11:59 AM
0 comments
Building makes a dramatic impact
Building makes a dramatic impact on the riverfront
LARRY MILLETT
French architect Jean Nouvel's large, dark and rather mysterious new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis is certainly not your old Guthrie.
Yes, the thrust stage theater within is closely modeled (albeit with wider seats) on Ralph Rapson's acclaimed 1963 original, but that's pretty much where the resemblances end.
Rapson's soon-to-be-demolished theater was small, funky and rather cheaply built — not exactly a flower child of the 1960s but definitely possessing some of that old hippie spirit.
The new Guthrie, by contrast, conveys a sense of power and mass, and, despite the inevitable IKEA jokes, its midnight blue exterior makes the theater a striking presence along the Minneapolis riverfront.
It's a building that some people will undoubtedly like a great deal but that others may find, well, a bit strange.
The building's deep blue exterior, which features scenes from old Guthrie plays screen-printed on more than 500 steel panels, has already provoked much discussion. It's certainly not a color you see every day, and it conveys a dusky, noirish quality, which presumably is what Nouvel was after. In fact, the building as a whole, with its dark metal skin forming a background for carefully staged lighting effects, seems designed to celebrate the night, which is when most theatrical performances will take place.
The building's rather hard, industrial look is also appropriate, despite "power plant" comparisons.
"This building is part of an environment," notes Bertram Beissel, project architect for Nouvel's firm, which affiliated with the Architectural Alliance of Minneapolis in designing the $125 million theater.
The new Guthrie stands next to the old Washburn-Crosby A Mill (now home to a museum as well as new housing) in the heart of what was once the greatest flour-milling complex in human history. A "pretty" new building here would have seemed out of place, as would one that tried to imitate old-style stone and timber mill construction. Nouvel and his team avoided these pitfalls by creating a building that's undeniably modern but that, by virtue of its size and massing, complements the historic structures around it.
LOBBY FAILS TO IMPRESS
Inside, of course, is where all the action will take place, and it's also where Nouvel's design becomes especially interesting — and, in places, disappointing. Perhaps the least satisfactory aspect of the theater is its ground-floor lobby, next to a sleek restaurant space on Second Street.
The lobby can only be described as underwhelming. Although it extends all the way through the building (so as to provide river views as well as access to the box office), it's a low, hall-like room with a blandly utilitarian feel. To put it another way, it lacks drama and excitement, two qualities you'd expect to find upon entering a theater building.
To reach the two main theaters (the 1,110-seat thrust and 700-seat proscenium-arch stages), most people will take an escalator ride to the fourth floor. The escalators, placed between two solid walls to either side of the entrance lobby, are undoubtedly the lengthiest in Minnesota, and as you proceed up them, it's like being in a very long and narrow hallway. Some may find this to be a dramatic experience; for others it may induce claustrophobia.
At the top of the escalators, you'll arrive at a great internal intersection formed by four hallways. This is truly the heart of the building, its center of circulation.
Go left, and you'll reach what's called an ante-lobby for the 1,100-seat thrust-stage theater, which promises to provide the same intimate experience as the original Guthrie, only without being quite so jammed in by narrow aisles and small seats.
Go to your right, and you'll arrive at an ante-lobby for the 700-seat proscenium arch theater, a very nice auditorium with red draped walls and red velvet seats.
Turn around past the escalators, and you'll be in what's called the "orchestra level" lobby, off which are located large men's and women's restrooms (which will come as a great relief, so to speak, for theatergoers accustomed to a shortage of such facilities at other venues).
Your fourth choice is to go forward and, if you have the time, you should do so immediately. This will lead you to another of the building's much talked- (and joked-) about features — the so-called "endless bridge" that thrusts out toward the Mississippi in a most spectacular fashion. At the end of this mighty cantilever is an open balcony offering a vista of St. Anthony Falls and the Stone Arch Bridge so utterly fabulous that you may be tempted to skip whatever play you've come to see and simply soak in the view.
ROOM WITH A VIEW
Nouvel, in fact, has cunningly placed windows throughout the building to exploit river views. The best vantage point of all may be from what's called the "amber box," a small glass enclosure that juts out from the top of the building and serves as part of the lobby for a 200-seat studio theater.
Despite inconvenient sloping floors, the "endless bridge," like almost every other corridor in the building, is designed to do double-duty as a lobby. How this will all work out as a practical matter may prove interesting. In any event, the lack of what might be called a "great lobby" is one of the new Guthrie's most unusual features. It means theatergoers will have a variety of places to idle between acts, but it may also prove confusing until people have "learned" the building.
Aside from the "endless bridge," most of the lobby spaces aren't particularly memorable. One exception is a snazzy lobby on the fifth floor with food and drink service. It features plenty of mirrors and long upholstered benches along the walls. If you've ever been in a wise guy's cocktail lounge on Long Island, say, you'll feel right at home here.
All buildings have secrets, and perhaps the Guthrie's is that, for all of its modern gestures, it in many ways adheres to classic French notions of design. The Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris was, in the 19th century, the most renowned school of architecture in the world. It taught a way of design that called for architects to plan on a large scale, to express a building's inner workings on its exterior and to arrange the parts of a building in a clear, rational manner. The Guthrie does all of this (so that, for example, the thrust theater's curves are expressed on the outside).
Still, it's a large and complex work of architecture, and it's difficult to know exactly how it will work once it formally opens next Sunday. The three theaters themselves should be fine, but figuring out how everyone will circulate through the building is another matter. It won't be perfect — buildings never are — and you have to believe there will be some surprises, both good and bad, when the crowds arrive and the drama begins.
Larry Millett is a retired architecture critic for the Pioneer Press.
LARRY MILLETT
French architect Jean Nouvel's large, dark and rather mysterious new Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis is certainly not your old Guthrie.
Yes, the thrust stage theater within is closely modeled (albeit with wider seats) on Ralph Rapson's acclaimed 1963 original, but that's pretty much where the resemblances end.
Rapson's soon-to-be-demolished theater was small, funky and rather cheaply built — not exactly a flower child of the 1960s but definitely possessing some of that old hippie spirit.
The new Guthrie, by contrast, conveys a sense of power and mass, and, despite the inevitable IKEA jokes, its midnight blue exterior makes the theater a striking presence along the Minneapolis riverfront.
It's a building that some people will undoubtedly like a great deal but that others may find, well, a bit strange.
The building's deep blue exterior, which features scenes from old Guthrie plays screen-printed on more than 500 steel panels, has already provoked much discussion. It's certainly not a color you see every day, and it conveys a dusky, noirish quality, which presumably is what Nouvel was after. In fact, the building as a whole, with its dark metal skin forming a background for carefully staged lighting effects, seems designed to celebrate the night, which is when most theatrical performances will take place.
The building's rather hard, industrial look is also appropriate, despite "power plant" comparisons.
"This building is part of an environment," notes Bertram Beissel, project architect for Nouvel's firm, which affiliated with the Architectural Alliance of Minneapolis in designing the $125 million theater.
The new Guthrie stands next to the old Washburn-Crosby A Mill (now home to a museum as well as new housing) in the heart of what was once the greatest flour-milling complex in human history. A "pretty" new building here would have seemed out of place, as would one that tried to imitate old-style stone and timber mill construction. Nouvel and his team avoided these pitfalls by creating a building that's undeniably modern but that, by virtue of its size and massing, complements the historic structures around it.
LOBBY FAILS TO IMPRESS
Inside, of course, is where all the action will take place, and it's also where Nouvel's design becomes especially interesting — and, in places, disappointing. Perhaps the least satisfactory aspect of the theater is its ground-floor lobby, next to a sleek restaurant space on Second Street.
The lobby can only be described as underwhelming. Although it extends all the way through the building (so as to provide river views as well as access to the box office), it's a low, hall-like room with a blandly utilitarian feel. To put it another way, it lacks drama and excitement, two qualities you'd expect to find upon entering a theater building.
To reach the two main theaters (the 1,110-seat thrust and 700-seat proscenium-arch stages), most people will take an escalator ride to the fourth floor. The escalators, placed between two solid walls to either side of the entrance lobby, are undoubtedly the lengthiest in Minnesota, and as you proceed up them, it's like being in a very long and narrow hallway. Some may find this to be a dramatic experience; for others it may induce claustrophobia.
At the top of the escalators, you'll arrive at a great internal intersection formed by four hallways. This is truly the heart of the building, its center of circulation.
Go left, and you'll reach what's called an ante-lobby for the 1,100-seat thrust-stage theater, which promises to provide the same intimate experience as the original Guthrie, only without being quite so jammed in by narrow aisles and small seats.
Go to your right, and you'll arrive at an ante-lobby for the 700-seat proscenium arch theater, a very nice auditorium with red draped walls and red velvet seats.
Turn around past the escalators, and you'll be in what's called the "orchestra level" lobby, off which are located large men's and women's restrooms (which will come as a great relief, so to speak, for theatergoers accustomed to a shortage of such facilities at other venues).
Your fourth choice is to go forward and, if you have the time, you should do so immediately. This will lead you to another of the building's much talked- (and joked-) about features — the so-called "endless bridge" that thrusts out toward the Mississippi in a most spectacular fashion. At the end of this mighty cantilever is an open balcony offering a vista of St. Anthony Falls and the Stone Arch Bridge so utterly fabulous that you may be tempted to skip whatever play you've come to see and simply soak in the view.
ROOM WITH A VIEW
Nouvel, in fact, has cunningly placed windows throughout the building to exploit river views. The best vantage point of all may be from what's called the "amber box," a small glass enclosure that juts out from the top of the building and serves as part of the lobby for a 200-seat studio theater.
Despite inconvenient sloping floors, the "endless bridge," like almost every other corridor in the building, is designed to do double-duty as a lobby. How this will all work out as a practical matter may prove interesting. In any event, the lack of what might be called a "great lobby" is one of the new Guthrie's most unusual features. It means theatergoers will have a variety of places to idle between acts, but it may also prove confusing until people have "learned" the building.
Aside from the "endless bridge," most of the lobby spaces aren't particularly memorable. One exception is a snazzy lobby on the fifth floor with food and drink service. It features plenty of mirrors and long upholstered benches along the walls. If you've ever been in a wise guy's cocktail lounge on Long Island, say, you'll feel right at home here.
All buildings have secrets, and perhaps the Guthrie's is that, for all of its modern gestures, it in many ways adheres to classic French notions of design. The Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris was, in the 19th century, the most renowned school of architecture in the world. It taught a way of design that called for architects to plan on a large scale, to express a building's inner workings on its exterior and to arrange the parts of a building in a clear, rational manner. The Guthrie does all of this (so that, for example, the thrust theater's curves are expressed on the outside).
Still, it's a large and complex work of architecture, and it's difficult to know exactly how it will work once it formally opens next Sunday. The three theaters themselves should be fine, but figuring out how everyone will circulate through the building is another matter. It won't be perfect — buildings never are — and you have to believe there will be some surprises, both good and bad, when the crowds arrive and the drama begins.
Larry Millett is a retired architecture critic for the Pioneer Press.
posted by Redboy at 11:57 AM
0 comments
Guthrie Q&A
Q. How many theaters are in the new Guthrie?
A. Three. The Wurtele Thrust Stage is essentially a recreation of the old Guthrie at Vineland Place and seats about 1,100. The McGuire Proscenium Stage is configured more like a conventional theater and seats 700. The Dowling Studio, an experimental theater at the top of the building, seats as many as 200.
Q. It looks quite a bit bigger than the old place …
A. It is. The Vineland place facility was about 87,000 square feet. The new Guthrie is 285,000 square feet — more than three times the size.
Q. What takes up all the room?
A. There are two more theaters, of course, as well as more room for rehearsal, a state-of-the-art sound studio and more classrooms. There's also space for building sets and administration. Before the move, the Guthrie development department and scene shops were off-site.
Q. How much did it cost, and is it paid for?
A. The complex cost $125 million. The Guthrie received $25 million in bonding money from the state, planned to raise $85 million and intended to borrow the remaining $15 million. Guthrie officials will announce progress on the fund-raising campaign on opening weekend.
Q. Will tickets to plays be more expensive?
A. By a couple of bucks. Tickets to most productions on the two main stages will be $52 to $22. For "1776," "A Christmas Carol" and "The Great Gatsby," single tickets will be $57-$27. Last season, the top ticket for most shows was $50; "Christmas Carol" was $55.
Q. What about parking?
A. There's a 1,000-space parking ramp just across the street. It'll cost $8 to park in the city-owned ramp for Guthrie shows. (The light rail Metrodome stop is five blocks to the south if you want to pass on the parking.)
Q. It's cool that there's a skyway between the ramp and the theater.
A. Um … that's not a skyway. It's a link to the scene shop, which is built into the ramp, and it's not public. You'll have to go outside to get from your car to the ramp, but the link should be wide enough overhead to shield you from all but the most ferocious blizzards.
Q. And bathrooms? The bathrooms at the old Guthrie were terrible.
A. There were 15 public "fixtures" for men and 29 for women at the old Guthrie. In the new place, there are 33 men's fixtures, 59 for women and two "family" restrooms.
Q. Can I get something to eat?
A. Cue is a full-service, white-tablecloth restaurant on the street level, and there's a cafeteria on level 5, both headed by renowned local chef Lenny Russo.
Q. What about a drink?
A. No problem. There are 11 full-service bar stations in the building. Hiccup!
Q. What can you tell me about that funny appendage sticking out of the building toward the river?
A. Architect Jean Nouvel calls it "the endless bridge." It's 178 feet long (about the height of a 14-story office building), it uses enough steel to construct two Eiffel Towers and it offers some pretty spectacular views of the Mississippi River and the Stone Arch Bridge. It's enclosed except for the very tip, which is open to the elements.
Q. I get woozy looking at it.
A. Don't worry: The bridge — which can accommodate as many as 1,600 people — can support a weight of some 2,000 tons. But if you want a real vertigo experience, go up to level 9, where that big amber box hangs off the top of the building. There's a large transparent panel on the floor that looks alllll the way down to the roof of level 5. Brrrr!
— Dominic P. Papatola, Theater Critic
A. Three. The Wurtele Thrust Stage is essentially a recreation of the old Guthrie at Vineland Place and seats about 1,100. The McGuire Proscenium Stage is configured more like a conventional theater and seats 700. The Dowling Studio, an experimental theater at the top of the building, seats as many as 200.
Q. It looks quite a bit bigger than the old place …
A. It is. The Vineland place facility was about 87,000 square feet. The new Guthrie is 285,000 square feet — more than three times the size.
Q. What takes up all the room?
A. There are two more theaters, of course, as well as more room for rehearsal, a state-of-the-art sound studio and more classrooms. There's also space for building sets and administration. Before the move, the Guthrie development department and scene shops were off-site.
Q. How much did it cost, and is it paid for?
A. The complex cost $125 million. The Guthrie received $25 million in bonding money from the state, planned to raise $85 million and intended to borrow the remaining $15 million. Guthrie officials will announce progress on the fund-raising campaign on opening weekend.
Q. Will tickets to plays be more expensive?
A. By a couple of bucks. Tickets to most productions on the two main stages will be $52 to $22. For "1776," "A Christmas Carol" and "The Great Gatsby," single tickets will be $57-$27. Last season, the top ticket for most shows was $50; "Christmas Carol" was $55.
Q. What about parking?
A. There's a 1,000-space parking ramp just across the street. It'll cost $8 to park in the city-owned ramp for Guthrie shows. (The light rail Metrodome stop is five blocks to the south if you want to pass on the parking.)
Q. It's cool that there's a skyway between the ramp and the theater.
A. Um … that's not a skyway. It's a link to the scene shop, which is built into the ramp, and it's not public. You'll have to go outside to get from your car to the ramp, but the link should be wide enough overhead to shield you from all but the most ferocious blizzards.
Q. And bathrooms? The bathrooms at the old Guthrie were terrible.
A. There were 15 public "fixtures" for men and 29 for women at the old Guthrie. In the new place, there are 33 men's fixtures, 59 for women and two "family" restrooms.
Q. Can I get something to eat?
A. Cue is a full-service, white-tablecloth restaurant on the street level, and there's a cafeteria on level 5, both headed by renowned local chef Lenny Russo.
Q. What about a drink?
A. No problem. There are 11 full-service bar stations in the building. Hiccup!
Q. What can you tell me about that funny appendage sticking out of the building toward the river?
A. Architect Jean Nouvel calls it "the endless bridge." It's 178 feet long (about the height of a 14-story office building), it uses enough steel to construct two Eiffel Towers and it offers some pretty spectacular views of the Mississippi River and the Stone Arch Bridge. It's enclosed except for the very tip, which is open to the elements.
Q. I get woozy looking at it.
A. Don't worry: The bridge — which can accommodate as many as 1,600 people — can support a weight of some 2,000 tons. But if you want a real vertigo experience, go up to level 9, where that big amber box hangs off the top of the building. There's a large transparent panel on the floor that looks alllll the way down to the roof of level 5. Brrrr!
— Dominic P. Papatola, Theater Critic
posted by Redboy at 11:56 AM
0 comments
MINNEAPOLIS: DESIGN CITY
Newsweek
June 26, 2006 issue
MINNEAPOLIS: DESIGN CITY
Minneapolis took root on the Mississippi where St. Anthony's Falls powered the city's early industries. A French missionary had named the falls after his favorite saint—and now another Frenchman has laid claim to the riverbank with the spectacular Guthrie Theater. Thanks to that and other stunning new buildings, the city's become a design boomtown.
THE GUTHRIE THEATER: French architect Jean Nouvel was so excited by the Guthrie site—"The Mississippi is mythic in France," he says—he insisted the theater be built 50 feet off the ground, for clear views of the river and those falls. His clients thought the idea was crazy. When Nouvel wouldn't give in, they rented a crane. Up swooped the Guthrie's director, Joe Dowling, in a cherry picker with the architect to check out the vistas. "I was quivering," recalls Dowling, while Nouvel, a bear of a man, puffed a cigar and sang "Old Man River"—in French. "Jean was absolutely right," says the director. "It was extraordinary." Nouvel got his way, but his daring didn't end with the theater's levitation. He designed a huge drum shape to house the main arena stage, an "endless bridge" that cantilevers 175 feet toward the river and an elevated passageway that connects to the scenery shop built atop a nearby garage. Then he wrapped it all in midnight-blue steel. The result is brazen, outrageous and wonderful—a building as drama queen.
Founded in 1963 by the great British director Sir Tyrone Guthrie, the original theater was famous for its asymmetrical thrust stage, re-created here in the 1,100-seat main theater. Nouvel added an elegant proscenium theater—in luscious reds—and a "black box" space for experimental work. "For the artistic community," said actor Sally Wingert, arriving at the Guthrie one recent day on her bike, "it's a giant, gorgeous playground." For the public, too, it's as inventive inside as out. Whether you're cruising up the escalators, strolling the lobby bar and cafés or wandering along that "endless bridge" with a glass of wine, you'll glimpse surprising reflections and views of the city and the river. Nouvel plays with color—one vast window is tinted ski-goggle yellow—and with illusion. At the end of the cantilevered "bridge," you encounter a big glass rectangle in the floor where, far below, you see the ground. It's a heart-stopping moment: at the new Guthrie, theatrical experiences won't be confined to the stage.
Nouvel's big blue monolith sits easily among its old industrial neighbors, its curved shape echoing the grain silos. The building evokes the Guthrie's history, too. "I proposed putting ghosts on the walls," says Nouvel—and there they are: huge wispy images of past productions screened onto the exterior steel. Hokey? A little. But like much in this amazing building, the images are subtle and unexpected. Monsieur Nouvel, please take a bow.
June 26, 2006 issue
MINNEAPOLIS: DESIGN CITY
Minneapolis took root on the Mississippi where St. Anthony's Falls powered the city's early industries. A French missionary had named the falls after his favorite saint—and now another Frenchman has laid claim to the riverbank with the spectacular Guthrie Theater. Thanks to that and other stunning new buildings, the city's become a design boomtown.
THE GUTHRIE THEATER: French architect Jean Nouvel was so excited by the Guthrie site—"The Mississippi is mythic in France," he says—he insisted the theater be built 50 feet off the ground, for clear views of the river and those falls. His clients thought the idea was crazy. When Nouvel wouldn't give in, they rented a crane. Up swooped the Guthrie's director, Joe Dowling, in a cherry picker with the architect to check out the vistas. "I was quivering," recalls Dowling, while Nouvel, a bear of a man, puffed a cigar and sang "Old Man River"—in French. "Jean was absolutely right," says the director. "It was extraordinary." Nouvel got his way, but his daring didn't end with the theater's levitation. He designed a huge drum shape to house the main arena stage, an "endless bridge" that cantilevers 175 feet toward the river and an elevated passageway that connects to the scenery shop built atop a nearby garage. Then he wrapped it all in midnight-blue steel. The result is brazen, outrageous and wonderful—a building as drama queen.
Founded in 1963 by the great British director Sir Tyrone Guthrie, the original theater was famous for its asymmetrical thrust stage, re-created here in the 1,100-seat main theater. Nouvel added an elegant proscenium theater—in luscious reds—and a "black box" space for experimental work. "For the artistic community," said actor Sally Wingert, arriving at the Guthrie one recent day on her bike, "it's a giant, gorgeous playground." For the public, too, it's as inventive inside as out. Whether you're cruising up the escalators, strolling the lobby bar and cafés or wandering along that "endless bridge" with a glass of wine, you'll glimpse surprising reflections and views of the city and the river. Nouvel plays with color—one vast window is tinted ski-goggle yellow—and with illusion. At the end of the cantilevered "bridge," you encounter a big glass rectangle in the floor where, far below, you see the ground. It's a heart-stopping moment: at the new Guthrie, theatrical experiences won't be confined to the stage.
Nouvel's big blue monolith sits easily among its old industrial neighbors, its curved shape echoing the grain silos. The building evokes the Guthrie's history, too. "I proposed putting ghosts on the walls," says Nouvel—and there they are: huge wispy images of past productions screened onto the exterior steel. Hokey? A little. But like much in this amazing building, the images are subtle and unexpected. Monsieur Nouvel, please take a bow.
posted by Redboy at 11:55 AM
0 comments
French 'starchitect's' debutante
French 'starchitect's' debutante is a Minneapolis knockout
By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published June 18, 2006
MINNEAPOLIS -- He's big. He's bald. He wears black. And he's brilliant, a four-star impresario of space and light.
Neither a hard-core modernist nor a soft-minded postmodernist, Paris architect Jean Nouvel has long been willing to use traditional forms. The results have been beguiling, from the jewel-like Arab World Institute in Paris to his unbuilt Endless Tower, a competition-winning design for a glassy, cylinder-shaped Paris skyscraper that was meant to fade into the sky. The tower looked so good (and so real) in photomontages that bewildered tourists would call Nouvel's office, asking where it was.
Now Nouvel has come up with another stunner, but this one's no mirage. It's the new home of the Guthrie Theater, the renowned resident theater company, set to open Saturday. Soaring above the banks of the Mississippi River, the $125 million building is vintage Nouvel, echoing the muscularity of nearby grain elevators and flour mills while delivering a jolt of modernity with its sleek blue and yellow walls.
The project, Nouvel's first in the United States, is by far the best of three new buildings here, including a downtown library by Cesar Pelli and an art museum addition by Michael Graves. Coming on top of last year's adventurous addition to the Walker Art Center by Pritzker Architecture Prize winners Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, they give this city, best known for its frigid winters and chronic niceness, a $370 million burst of construction devoted to culture and the arts.
While the Guthrie may disappoint those who think every project should possess the edginess and technological inventiveness of Frank Gehry's exuberant jumbles of metal, it compensates with spectacular features of its own, including (shades of the Endless Tower) a raised lobby called the Endless Bridge. Like an outstretched finger, the bridge cantilevers the equivalent of 12 stories toward the Mississippi, offering drop-dead views of the river valley.
Engaging the past
Only time and audiences will tell how the Guthrie's three theaters, including a new version of its signature thrust stage, fare as performance spaces. But the project already stands as one of the finest marriages of building and site since Gehry's Guggenheim Museum revitalized the waterfront of the old Spanish shipbuilding city of Bilbao nine years ago. The Guthrie seems both utterly new and as if it was always there. This is the essence of Nouvel's refreshingly thoughtful stance -- which is not about novelty for novelty's sake but about newness made newer by a complex, rather than saccharine, engagement of the past.
"Modernism is a friend of history," Nouvel said during a recent tour, "because history is a succession of modernities."
The theater's surroundings, a short cab ride from the glistening skyscrapers of downtown Minneapolis, form a scene that could be called "post-industrial picturesque:" tumbling waterfalls, an arched stone bridge, and massive grain elevators and flour mills topped by industrial signs bearing storied names such as Gold Medal Flour and Pillsbury. They recall the days, from 1880 to 1930, when Minneapolis was the nation's flour-milling capital, processing heaps of grain brought by rail from the Dakotas and Canada.
Today, the shutdown mills are grist themselves -- for loft conversions that stand alongside new apartments and the usual signs of gentrification, such as yuppies walking their pampered pooches. The smell in the air is of money, not flour. And the risk is that the new gentry will grind down and Martha Stewart-ize the area's toughness.
Nouvel, thankfully, is having none of it.
His steel-frame building, completed with the Minneapolis firm Architectural Alliance, is imaginatively based on the idea that theater itself is a kind of production, a manufactured spectacle of rigging and stage sets and scripts. Throughout, the building expresses the spectacle of theater and creates its own spectacle.
To catch the best views, Nouvel makes the unusual move of lifting the three theaters -- a 1,110-seat thrust stage and a 700-seat proscenium theater entered on the 4th floor and a 250-seat black box entered on the 9th floor -- into the air. Public lobbies, back-of-house facilities and theater equipment occupy the other floors. Across the street is a 1,000-car parking garage topped by the Guthrie's setmaking shop. Sets will roll across the bridge like widgets on a factory's assembly line. Nouvel makes the process visible to theater-goers in the 4th-floor lobby with a wall of shockingly bluish glass.
"It's like a good restaurant," he quipped. "You can look into the kitchen."
He shapes these functions with appropriate directness, simultaneously communicating the building's uses and relating to its surroundings but never with that tricked-up Ralph Lauren retro look of the New Urbanists.
On the one hand, the Guthrie suggests the massive scale and brute shapes of the old industrial landscape with the expressed curve of the thrust stage and the blocky rectangular structure that houses its proscenium and black-box theaters. On the other hand, the building deftly separates itself from the past with such elements as three LED-equipped sign masts and its tough but elegant dark blue steel cladding. Nouvel calls the color "twilight blue," saying it represents "l'heure entre chiens et loups," the hour that separates the dogs from the wolves. (Ah, the French. You don't hear that kind of talk in Chicago.)
Coming alive
The outcome is immensely captivating. The Guthrie manages to be tough and welcoming, its sense of mystery and anticipation accented by eight large-scale images from previous Guthrie productions screen-printed in pale white on the building's blue facade. By day, in truth, the images are dull. By night, according to the media kit, they're supposed to float "like ghosts in the dark." However they come off, the building is an instant landmark, one where the drama starts long before the show begins.
Nouvel being Nouvel -- an architect whose work has been called cinematic because of its ever-shifting effects of space and light -- the drama continues inside, sometimes coming close to being purely theatrical.
Still, a theater is not a church, nor is it a Miesian temple of less-is-more. It's supposed to be festive and dramatic, and Nouvel certainly delivers those qualities without lapsing into old-fashioned movie palace fantasy.
From a spare, well-proportioned lobby, visitors ascend a pair of steeply pitched, tightly framed escalators to the 4th-floor lobby, the walls around them bathed in dancing colored lights. Another lobby, with seating for preshow dining, is directly above on five.
The lobbies, which serve both the thrust and proscenium theaters, are low-ceilinged and feel compressed. Nouvel relieves them by punching a sleek semi-circular opening between them and by teasing you out onto the Endless Bridge. More about that experience in a moment.
The theaters themselves are strikingly beautiful, though they do not quite match the curvaceous, wood-paneled auditorium of Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, which is among the finest rooms in America.
In the asymmetrical, two-level thrust theater, a dazzling range of autumn colors brightens both the seats and the hovering acoustical panels. The theater is surprisingly intimate for its considerable size. Best of all, it maintains the democratic attitude of architect Ralph Rapson's original Guthrie Theater at the Walker Art Center, which is scheduled to be demolished this summer despite objections from preservationists. A tier of "alpine slope" seats smashes the hierarchical distinction between orchestra and balcony.
Nouvel sets up a deliberate contrast in the proscenium theater, which is as rectilinear and frontal as the thrust theater is organic and almost-in-the-round. Its hot-red velvet seats and mesh side walls manage to be both spare and rich. Red, a traditional theater color, communicates intensity as opposed to the soothing "green rooms" where performers relax before going on stage.
While the nicely -proportioned black box black-box theater near the Guthrie's summit is nothing to write home about, the lobbies leading to the three theaters are showstoppers.
The Endless Bridge is anything but an "on-steroids" version of Minneapolis skywalks, those glass-enclosed steel tubes that protect office workers from the ferocious winter cold. From the 4th-floor lobby, Nouvel leads you up a ramp whose walls are punctuated by narrow windows. Then -- boom! -- you arrive at a large picture window on the side of the bridge that will open (in warm weather, at least) like a jet door.
As a result, you not only see the great river valley panorama, you sense it, feeling the freshness of the waterfront air. Outside, there's a steeply pitched balcony from which you can take in the view.
The cantilevered 9th-floor lobby presents its own eye-popping drama: You emerge from the elevator and are temporarily stunned by the hyperbright yellow light created by floor-to-ceiling, amber-colored glass walls. The effect seems potentially tiresome. But as Nouvel intends, it freeze-frames views of both the riverfront and the skyline, elevating the experience beyond a conventional glass-walled office building. And it is by no means coincidental that the bright-yellow color matches the yellow hues of the "Gold Medal Flour" sign next door. Even as he's bringing you to Future World, Nouvel isn't entirely letting go of the past.
The new Guthrie is all about these balances of old and new, yet it never descends to the level of limp compromise. Instead, old and new energize each other. And so do form and function. The fit between the two is remarkably tight here, though the Endless Bridge is something of an over-the-top appendage -- the wow-inducing folly that just about every cultural project must have today. Still, on the whole, this is what Louis Sullivan called organic architecture: an expressive interpretation of modern realities. For France's architectural impresario, it's a most impressive American debut.
----------
bkamin@tribune.com
By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published June 18, 2006
MINNEAPOLIS -- He's big. He's bald. He wears black. And he's brilliant, a four-star impresario of space and light.
Neither a hard-core modernist nor a soft-minded postmodernist, Paris architect Jean Nouvel has long been willing to use traditional forms. The results have been beguiling, from the jewel-like Arab World Institute in Paris to his unbuilt Endless Tower, a competition-winning design for a glassy, cylinder-shaped Paris skyscraper that was meant to fade into the sky. The tower looked so good (and so real) in photomontages that bewildered tourists would call Nouvel's office, asking where it was.
Now Nouvel has come up with another stunner, but this one's no mirage. It's the new home of the Guthrie Theater, the renowned resident theater company, set to open Saturday. Soaring above the banks of the Mississippi River, the $125 million building is vintage Nouvel, echoing the muscularity of nearby grain elevators and flour mills while delivering a jolt of modernity with its sleek blue and yellow walls.
The project, Nouvel's first in the United States, is by far the best of three new buildings here, including a downtown library by Cesar Pelli and an art museum addition by Michael Graves. Coming on top of last year's adventurous addition to the Walker Art Center by Pritzker Architecture Prize winners Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, they give this city, best known for its frigid winters and chronic niceness, a $370 million burst of construction devoted to culture and the arts.
While the Guthrie may disappoint those who think every project should possess the edginess and technological inventiveness of Frank Gehry's exuberant jumbles of metal, it compensates with spectacular features of its own, including (shades of the Endless Tower) a raised lobby called the Endless Bridge. Like an outstretched finger, the bridge cantilevers the equivalent of 12 stories toward the Mississippi, offering drop-dead views of the river valley.
Engaging the past
Only time and audiences will tell how the Guthrie's three theaters, including a new version of its signature thrust stage, fare as performance spaces. But the project already stands as one of the finest marriages of building and site since Gehry's Guggenheim Museum revitalized the waterfront of the old Spanish shipbuilding city of Bilbao nine years ago. The Guthrie seems both utterly new and as if it was always there. This is the essence of Nouvel's refreshingly thoughtful stance -- which is not about novelty for novelty's sake but about newness made newer by a complex, rather than saccharine, engagement of the past.
"Modernism is a friend of history," Nouvel said during a recent tour, "because history is a succession of modernities."
The theater's surroundings, a short cab ride from the glistening skyscrapers of downtown Minneapolis, form a scene that could be called "post-industrial picturesque:" tumbling waterfalls, an arched stone bridge, and massive grain elevators and flour mills topped by industrial signs bearing storied names such as Gold Medal Flour and Pillsbury. They recall the days, from 1880 to 1930, when Minneapolis was the nation's flour-milling capital, processing heaps of grain brought by rail from the Dakotas and Canada.
Today, the shutdown mills are grist themselves -- for loft conversions that stand alongside new apartments and the usual signs of gentrification, such as yuppies walking their pampered pooches. The smell in the air is of money, not flour. And the risk is that the new gentry will grind down and Martha Stewart-ize the area's toughness.
Nouvel, thankfully, is having none of it.
His steel-frame building, completed with the Minneapolis firm Architectural Alliance, is imaginatively based on the idea that theater itself is a kind of production, a manufactured spectacle of rigging and stage sets and scripts. Throughout, the building expresses the spectacle of theater and creates its own spectacle.
To catch the best views, Nouvel makes the unusual move of lifting the three theaters -- a 1,110-seat thrust stage and a 700-seat proscenium theater entered on the 4th floor and a 250-seat black box entered on the 9th floor -- into the air. Public lobbies, back-of-house facilities and theater equipment occupy the other floors. Across the street is a 1,000-car parking garage topped by the Guthrie's setmaking shop. Sets will roll across the bridge like widgets on a factory's assembly line. Nouvel makes the process visible to theater-goers in the 4th-floor lobby with a wall of shockingly bluish glass.
"It's like a good restaurant," he quipped. "You can look into the kitchen."
He shapes these functions with appropriate directness, simultaneously communicating the building's uses and relating to its surroundings but never with that tricked-up Ralph Lauren retro look of the New Urbanists.
On the one hand, the Guthrie suggests the massive scale and brute shapes of the old industrial landscape with the expressed curve of the thrust stage and the blocky rectangular structure that houses its proscenium and black-box theaters. On the other hand, the building deftly separates itself from the past with such elements as three LED-equipped sign masts and its tough but elegant dark blue steel cladding. Nouvel calls the color "twilight blue," saying it represents "l'heure entre chiens et loups," the hour that separates the dogs from the wolves. (Ah, the French. You don't hear that kind of talk in Chicago.)
Coming alive
The outcome is immensely captivating. The Guthrie manages to be tough and welcoming, its sense of mystery and anticipation accented by eight large-scale images from previous Guthrie productions screen-printed in pale white on the building's blue facade. By day, in truth, the images are dull. By night, according to the media kit, they're supposed to float "like ghosts in the dark." However they come off, the building is an instant landmark, one where the drama starts long before the show begins.
Nouvel being Nouvel -- an architect whose work has been called cinematic because of its ever-shifting effects of space and light -- the drama continues inside, sometimes coming close to being purely theatrical.
Still, a theater is not a church, nor is it a Miesian temple of less-is-more. It's supposed to be festive and dramatic, and Nouvel certainly delivers those qualities without lapsing into old-fashioned movie palace fantasy.
From a spare, well-proportioned lobby, visitors ascend a pair of steeply pitched, tightly framed escalators to the 4th-floor lobby, the walls around them bathed in dancing colored lights. Another lobby, with seating for preshow dining, is directly above on five.
The lobbies, which serve both the thrust and proscenium theaters, are low-ceilinged and feel compressed. Nouvel relieves them by punching a sleek semi-circular opening between them and by teasing you out onto the Endless Bridge. More about that experience in a moment.
The theaters themselves are strikingly beautiful, though they do not quite match the curvaceous, wood-paneled auditorium of Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, which is among the finest rooms in America.
In the asymmetrical, two-level thrust theater, a dazzling range of autumn colors brightens both the seats and the hovering acoustical panels. The theater is surprisingly intimate for its considerable size. Best of all, it maintains the democratic attitude of architect Ralph Rapson's original Guthrie Theater at the Walker Art Center, which is scheduled to be demolished this summer despite objections from preservationists. A tier of "alpine slope" seats smashes the hierarchical distinction between orchestra and balcony.
Nouvel sets up a deliberate contrast in the proscenium theater, which is as rectilinear and frontal as the thrust theater is organic and almost-in-the-round. Its hot-red velvet seats and mesh side walls manage to be both spare and rich. Red, a traditional theater color, communicates intensity as opposed to the soothing "green rooms" where performers relax before going on stage.
While the nicely -proportioned black box black-box theater near the Guthrie's summit is nothing to write home about, the lobbies leading to the three theaters are showstoppers.
The Endless Bridge is anything but an "on-steroids" version of Minneapolis skywalks, those glass-enclosed steel tubes that protect office workers from the ferocious winter cold. From the 4th-floor lobby, Nouvel leads you up a ramp whose walls are punctuated by narrow windows. Then -- boom! -- you arrive at a large picture window on the side of the bridge that will open (in warm weather, at least) like a jet door.
As a result, you not only see the great river valley panorama, you sense it, feeling the freshness of the waterfront air. Outside, there's a steeply pitched balcony from which you can take in the view.
The cantilevered 9th-floor lobby presents its own eye-popping drama: You emerge from the elevator and are temporarily stunned by the hyperbright yellow light created by floor-to-ceiling, amber-colored glass walls. The effect seems potentially tiresome. But as Nouvel intends, it freeze-frames views of both the riverfront and the skyline, elevating the experience beyond a conventional glass-walled office building. And it is by no means coincidental that the bright-yellow color matches the yellow hues of the "Gold Medal Flour" sign next door. Even as he's bringing you to Future World, Nouvel isn't entirely letting go of the past.
The new Guthrie is all about these balances of old and new, yet it never descends to the level of limp compromise. Instead, old and new energize each other. And so do form and function. The fit between the two is remarkably tight here, though the Endless Bridge is something of an over-the-top appendage -- the wow-inducing folly that just about every cultural project must have today. Still, on the whole, this is what Louis Sullivan called organic architecture: an expressive interpretation of modern realities. For France's architectural impresario, it's a most impressive American debut.
----------
bkamin@tribune.com
posted by Redboy at 11:54 AM
0 comments
Opening bow
Looking out from the new proscenium stage as workers attend to last-minute details before the Guthrie's opening.
By Michael Metzger
Guthrie Theater set to debut with celebration and plays
The new cultural constellation is complete. Minneapolis has been reconfigured, broadened and brightened with a generation's gifts to the future: the expanded Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Children's Theatre, as well as a new Central Library, and now, the star beside the river, the new twilight-blue Guthrie Theater.
The $125 million, three-theater complex is already one of the most remarkable landmarks in the city; that's as clear as a view of the Guthrie itself from across the Mississippi River Downtown.
Up around the bend
The celebration of the opening of the new Guthrie, 818 S. 2nd St., is Sunday, June 25 beginning at noon and lasting until 2 in the morning. The gala features a dedication by Guthrie artistic director Joe Dowling at 1 p.m., and performances by musician Peter Himmelman, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, and South Minneapolis punk/hip hop artist P.O.S., among others, scattered throughout the afternoon and evening. (See “Guthrie Festivities” sidebar for complete schedule.)
The artists and dignitaries will gather around and inside the striking addition to the city's arts scene designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. His big, blue bend of steel is nestled among the old concrete grain silos and new condos sitting in the shadow of the neon Gold Medal Flour sign in the Mills District on the west bank of the river.
Construction of the 285,000-square-foot theater center began in September 2003 and has been brought in on time and on budget, said Director of Communications Melodie Bahan.
The new Guthrie features a 1,100-seat thrust stage with seating on three sides - it's a slightly smaller recreation of the theater at the old Guthrie. Its seats echo the autumnal colors of the original theater's seats, while curved acoustic panels above allow the unamplified stage voices to carry to the back of the intimate, steep space.
Named after Margaret and Angus Wurtele, the thrust has wider seats than the original, more legroom and better sightlines and acoustics. There's also a 700-seat Proscenium Theater with seats covered in a vibrant, deep red, and a 200-capacity studio with flexible seating. The two main theaters are both on the fourth floor, while the studio is up on the ninth floor. The old Guthrie, which sat next to the Walker on Hennepin Ave., had a single 1,400-seat theater.
Bahan said when Nouvel saw the site for the new Guthrie along the Mississippi, he said, “I'm going to put the theaters and the lobbies 50 feet in the air.” She said there was immediate opposition to the idea. “It's like, ‘Oh, that makes no sense at all. How do you get materials and scenery up?' But he insisted and we trusted and he brilliantly designed our scene shop across Second Street on top of the parking ramp.
“The sets get built over there, rolled across, and they're right on the stage floors for the Thrust and Proscenium.”
The Guthrie folks' trust in Nouvel has paid off with an astonishing array of grand architectural gestures, including the cantilevered bridge reaching out the equivalent of 12 stories to the river.
The inside of the “Endless Bridge” serves as a lobby for the two main theaters, while the outside far end of it serves as a midair balcony with stunning views of the river and city. Bahan said, as far as they know, it's the largest occupied cantilever in the world, held up by two Eiffel Towers' worth of steel connecting it to the rest of the building as well as the planet (tons of steel were driven deep into the bedrock below).
As you walk along the inside of the bridge, your eyes are repeatedly lured from the quiet gray of the walls decorated with ghostly images of past Guthrie productions to the living paintings of Minneapolis along the walls. These paintings are thoughtfully positioned windows framing the silos, Stone Arch Bridge and other elements of the outside world.
Nouvel clambered up on a crane before he began his planning, Bahan said, to scope out the views and figure out just which outlooks he wanted to capture.
The Guthrie also has two restaurants, Cue, the main eatery, has a street entrance on the ground level and will be accessible to diners regardless of whether a play is in production or not. There's a lobby restaurant as well, offering preshow eats and light lunches.
Other amenities include bar service at 11 - yes, that's eleven - locations throughout the building, as well as a 1,000-car city-owned parking garage (done up in deep blue glass and bright aluminum), a street-level gift shop, four classrooms, costume and scenery shops, and an audio recording studio.
It's a startling upgrade from the old place; with nearly three times as much space, twice as many public bathrooms, a third more dressing rooms, and a building that will serve as a visual exclamation mark for generations.
Backward, forward
The original Guthrie opened in May of 1963 with a production of “Hamlet” - the same play it closed with earlier this year. The new Guthrie's season features 11 - yes, that's 11 - plays, including the world premiere of Simon Levy's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Great Gatsby” on the Wurtele Thrust Stage. (Fitzgerald was, of course, a native of St. Paul.) The McGuire Proscenium Stage (named after UnitedHealth Group CEO William McGuire and his Powerball-sized paycheck) opens with Tom Stoppard's “The Real Thing,” and the Dowling Studio (named for the Guthrie's artistic director, Joe) debuts “The Falls,” by Jeffrey Hatcher.
Later in the season, the thrust features Shakespeare's “The Merchant of Venice,” and the musical ᅓ,” while the proscenium stage is home to productions of George Bernard Shaw's “Major Barbara” and Tennessee Williams' “The Glass Menagerie.”
The Studio is scheduled to feature “Boats on a River” by Julie Marie Myatt in its inaugural season.
By Michael Metzger
Guthrie Theater set to debut with celebration and plays
The new cultural constellation is complete. Minneapolis has been reconfigured, broadened and brightened with a generation's gifts to the future: the expanded Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Children's Theatre, as well as a new Central Library, and now, the star beside the river, the new twilight-blue Guthrie Theater.
The $125 million, three-theater complex is already one of the most remarkable landmarks in the city; that's as clear as a view of the Guthrie itself from across the Mississippi River Downtown.
Up around the bend
The celebration of the opening of the new Guthrie, 818 S. 2nd St., is Sunday, June 25 beginning at noon and lasting until 2 in the morning. The gala features a dedication by Guthrie artistic director Joe Dowling at 1 p.m., and performances by musician Peter Himmelman, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, and South Minneapolis punk/hip hop artist P.O.S., among others, scattered throughout the afternoon and evening. (See “Guthrie Festivities” sidebar for complete schedule.)
The artists and dignitaries will gather around and inside the striking addition to the city's arts scene designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. His big, blue bend of steel is nestled among the old concrete grain silos and new condos sitting in the shadow of the neon Gold Medal Flour sign in the Mills District on the west bank of the river.
Construction of the 285,000-square-foot theater center began in September 2003 and has been brought in on time and on budget, said Director of Communications Melodie Bahan.
The new Guthrie features a 1,100-seat thrust stage with seating on three sides - it's a slightly smaller recreation of the theater at the old Guthrie. Its seats echo the autumnal colors of the original theater's seats, while curved acoustic panels above allow the unamplified stage voices to carry to the back of the intimate, steep space.
Named after Margaret and Angus Wurtele, the thrust has wider seats than the original, more legroom and better sightlines and acoustics. There's also a 700-seat Proscenium Theater with seats covered in a vibrant, deep red, and a 200-capacity studio with flexible seating. The two main theaters are both on the fourth floor, while the studio is up on the ninth floor. The old Guthrie, which sat next to the Walker on Hennepin Ave., had a single 1,400-seat theater.
Bahan said when Nouvel saw the site for the new Guthrie along the Mississippi, he said, “I'm going to put the theaters and the lobbies 50 feet in the air.” She said there was immediate opposition to the idea. “It's like, ‘Oh, that makes no sense at all. How do you get materials and scenery up?' But he insisted and we trusted and he brilliantly designed our scene shop across Second Street on top of the parking ramp.
“The sets get built over there, rolled across, and they're right on the stage floors for the Thrust and Proscenium.”
The Guthrie folks' trust in Nouvel has paid off with an astonishing array of grand architectural gestures, including the cantilevered bridge reaching out the equivalent of 12 stories to the river.
The inside of the “Endless Bridge” serves as a lobby for the two main theaters, while the outside far end of it serves as a midair balcony with stunning views of the river and city. Bahan said, as far as they know, it's the largest occupied cantilever in the world, held up by two Eiffel Towers' worth of steel connecting it to the rest of the building as well as the planet (tons of steel were driven deep into the bedrock below).
As you walk along the inside of the bridge, your eyes are repeatedly lured from the quiet gray of the walls decorated with ghostly images of past Guthrie productions to the living paintings of Minneapolis along the walls. These paintings are thoughtfully positioned windows framing the silos, Stone Arch Bridge and other elements of the outside world.
Nouvel clambered up on a crane before he began his planning, Bahan said, to scope out the views and figure out just which outlooks he wanted to capture.
The Guthrie also has two restaurants, Cue, the main eatery, has a street entrance on the ground level and will be accessible to diners regardless of whether a play is in production or not. There's a lobby restaurant as well, offering preshow eats and light lunches.
Other amenities include bar service at 11 - yes, that's eleven - locations throughout the building, as well as a 1,000-car city-owned parking garage (done up in deep blue glass and bright aluminum), a street-level gift shop, four classrooms, costume and scenery shops, and an audio recording studio.
It's a startling upgrade from the old place; with nearly three times as much space, twice as many public bathrooms, a third more dressing rooms, and a building that will serve as a visual exclamation mark for generations.
Backward, forward
The original Guthrie opened in May of 1963 with a production of “Hamlet” - the same play it closed with earlier this year. The new Guthrie's season features 11 - yes, that's 11 - plays, including the world premiere of Simon Levy's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Great Gatsby” on the Wurtele Thrust Stage. (Fitzgerald was, of course, a native of St. Paul.) The McGuire Proscenium Stage (named after UnitedHealth Group CEO William McGuire and his Powerball-sized paycheck) opens with Tom Stoppard's “The Real Thing,” and the Dowling Studio (named for the Guthrie's artistic director, Joe) debuts “The Falls,” by Jeffrey Hatcher.
Later in the season, the thrust features Shakespeare's “The Merchant of Venice,” and the musical ᅓ,” while the proscenium stage is home to productions of George Bernard Shaw's “Major Barbara” and Tennessee Williams' “The Glass Menagerie.”
The Studio is scheduled to feature “Boats on a River” by Julie Marie Myatt in its inaugural season.
posted by Redboy at 11:50 AM
0 comments
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