Latest / Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt / Paul Tate dePoo III, Set and Production Designer

Transcript

Paul Tate dePoo III, Set and Production Designer · Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt

• 0:08
  Hey everyone. Welcome back to CI to Eye. This is Monica Holt.
• 0:13
  Some of my favorite moments with art in the past decade have happened in the
• 0:17
  early hours in a rehearsal room or laughing together after 12 hours in a dark
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  theater during tech,
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  or watching the creative minds behind the onstage magic figure out how to make
• 0:29
  the impossible work. My guest today, Paul Tate dePoo III,
• 0:34
  has been present for some of my favorite memories. His work spans Broadway,
• 0:39
  Las Vegas, and opera stages around the world to name just a few.
• 0:44
  But what I really wanted to talk about with him today is him.
• 0:49
  Where this all started, how he thinks about his craft,
• 0:52
  and what it really means to spend your life building worlds for other people to
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  inhabit. Paul is the architect, the interior designer,
• 1:00
  and the personal shopper for everything you see on stage. In our episode today,
• 1:05
  I wanted to pull back the curtain on some of my favorite projects of his to give
• 1:09
  you a real glimpse into how those worlds actually get made. From the first wild,
• 1:13
  impossible idea in a director's head,
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  all the way to the show that has to load in, fully assembled, in 12 hours flat.
• 1:22
  This one is for anyone who's ever sat in a darkened theater and wondered,
• 1:26
  how did they think of that? Let's get into it.
• 1:35
  Paul Tate dePoo III, welcome to CI to Eye. Thank you so much for being here.
• 1:40
  Thank you, Monica. It is such an honor. Thank you very much.
• 1:43
  I haven't talked to you in a little while, so this is fun.
• 1:46
  Before we start talking through some of my favorite projects of yours,
• 1:50
  can we start at the beginning?
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  Where did you grow up and what are some of your earliest memories of the
• 1:56
  theater?
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  I am from Key West, Florida,
• 1:59
  which is a two-by-four mile island right next to Cuba.
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  And so my dad's whole side is Cuban,
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  and my mom came from Kansas and her family immigrated
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  from Germany, but my mom had come to Key West.
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  She'd been there for 35 years by the time that I graduated high school.
• 2:19
  Wow.
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  And it takes about three and a half hours to drive to Miami. And that's over...
• 2:24
  I don't know how many -- over 50 some bridges. So needless to say,
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  art and live entertainment was not readily
• 2:34
  available to the scale of what I knew existed back when I was five.
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  And when I was five, the first thing was Michael Jackson's halftime show.
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  And after, I guess I was tapping the screen and I said,
• 2:47
  "Who made that?" And someone said, "Oh,
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  the football people made that." And I said,
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  "The football people did not make that." And I had
• 2:56
  become more and more aware...
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  There was the Athens Olympic Opening Ceremonies on TV,
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  and I started to watch more award shows.
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  I started to realize that something existed of,
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  what does stage entertainment mean beyond a television?
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  My birthday is in January,
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  and [the] Ringling Brothers circuit was always coming to the Miami arena and
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  always hopping over when David Copperfield was basically across the street at
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  the Jackie Gleason Center.
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  So it was either David Copperfield or Ringling Brothers.
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  And that was my gift every year that my parents would take me to go see
• 3:32
  one or the other. And it started with Ringling Brothers.
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  And my parents would always say -- there would be the act,
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  but then I would always be staring to the ring that wasn't lit because they were
• 3:42
  setting up the trapeze cables and all the netting. And they were like,
• 3:46
  "But what about the tigers?" And I'm like, "The tigers are already set up.
• 3:49
  They're fine." But watching this whole rig being set up...
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  And in addition to David Copperfield and Ringling Brothers,
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  my great-grandfather would take me to the fairgrounds because we would have this
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  small little fair that would come to the island.
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  And he would take me when the trucks arrived and when the trucks were packing
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  up. So I didn't really care about the ride in action. It was about,
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  how do they all get put onto a truck?
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  So you like -- destiny. You knew from the beginning:
• 4:17
  what happens on stage is great, but I want to know how did it happen?
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  What made it? How did it get there? I will say,
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  "The football people didn't make that" might be
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  an all-time quote of understanding yourself at the age of five.
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  And my parents being like, "Well, just the way God made
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  him." Because they didn't really know what to do with it.
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  And then as school went on,
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  I would enter the talent show and I would start with these
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  illusions.
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  And I even had my mom locked in a box for some time with the neighbors coming
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  home and they had to help get her out of the box because I somehow locked the
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  door.
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  And it became bigger and bigger and bigger until I got into high school and we
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  started making a full-blown magic show where airplanes appear on stage.
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  I made six people selected randomly from the audience
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  disappear on stage. I mean,
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  it was all very much in parallel and could be now classified as
• 5:16
  copyright on what David Copperfield was doing on stage, but...
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  It was inspired by.
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  It was totally inspired by.
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  And we would just make our own versions.
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  And also homecoming floats were the one big outlet for
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  the most classic thing I knew of what stage design was,
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  that was the homecoming float outlet.
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  So you immediately went from seeing this growing up,
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  trying your hand at the life of an illusionist,
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  and then working on building things. Did you ever -- Yourself,
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  were you ever on stage in high school in any shows or...?
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  Yes, I was King in King and I, and I was the Prince in Cinderella.
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  Oh, I'm sorry.
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  So he was the onstage man who decided to leave the
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  footlights to create backstage. Is that the story we're telling here?
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  Yeah.
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  So we had these huge musicals with orchestras and then we would rent the
• 6:14
  sets from Las Vegas. So we did Peter Pan, Cinderella...
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  I don't even know what set rental place that would've been from,
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  but I would also show up for the load-ins and then make sure that all the drops
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  would be put in place because I always thought that they were lazy,
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  the people that were unloading it,
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  as in the people that worked at the high school.
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  So I knew what drop package was coming. And then they would say, "Oh,
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  we don't have enough people to be able to pull that in time of the show." So
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  then as the king, I would get off the set throne, go backstage,
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  pull a new backdrop in,
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  and then go back and sit on stage because it says that we went to a different
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  part of the palace, so I wanted...
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  You were following the stage directions.
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  Yeah. And the director sort of was like, "Oh,
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  whatever," because they just knew that I sort of dabbled both on and off and I
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  loved it. I just wanted to give the biggest version possible.
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  This has added so much depth to [the] Paul that I know,
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  and it all makes so much sense.
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  And it's also so interesting to me because a lot of what comes up in these
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  conversations is folks who weren't really thinking about the backstage or behind
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  the scenes when they were growing up. And so they came to them a bit later.
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  An adult told them about it. But for you,
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  you kind of got it early that there was a there there.
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  But I didn't know that this existed.
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  I didn't know until Hurricane Wilma came and flooded
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  the magic show,
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  which we were at the Tennessee Williams Performing Arts Center teching it.
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  And it was like an Annie Livabitz photo with all the magic tricks that I had
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  built over the years, all underwater.
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  Oh my God.
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  And my parents just didn't know what the hell to do with me because there was no
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  stopping this magician on this island,
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  and they looked to me. I remember it being the biggest relief of,
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  I knew the show that was in my mind was too big.
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  It was too, too big and it wouldn't have been what I wanted it to be.
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  And I was starting to realize that.
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  So I quickly realized I was about the creation of it all versus
• 8:14
  performing something every night over and over and over.
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  How did you then decide -- From there,
• 8:21
  you ended up in Boston for school. Yeah. How did that all happen?
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  There was a classmate of mine that I was close to, Kaylee Bird,
• 8:31
  and she had a whole NYU portfolio put together for Tisch
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  Film and she was ready to go. And I was like, "Uh-oh, wait,
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  do they have a theater program?" Literally this is how this went. I was like,
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  "Well, I guess I should apply to Tisch." And so I made this portfolio of all the
• 8:48
  designs that I had done, the magic shows, and I still have it.
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  And I took it to NYU and they closed it and they said,
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  "We don't do magic shows." And I was like,
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  "I'm not here to do magic shows." And a parent of another
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  student had overheard that comment and they pulled my mom and dad aside and they
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  said, "Look,
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  we just got done with Boston University and their opera program is...
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  We just saw the scale of what they were doing and it's worth looking at." And I
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  took it to BU and the head of the department, Roger Meeker,
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  and James Noone looked at each other and said,
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  "We couldn't be more excited to have you" on the spot.
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  Oh my gosh.
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  So that's how we get to Boston.
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  That's how we get to Boston.
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  When you were moving through BU and then coming out of college,
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  I know that you worked with a number of set designers. Learning,
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  apprenticing, mentorship I think is probably a key role in your journey.
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  As you think about mentorship and you think about what you were looking for
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  coming out of school,
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  what advice do you have about building those types of relationships?
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  How do you navigate that?
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  I mean,
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  the first job that I got outside of school was because I called
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  the production designer to Michael Jackson, Michael Cotten,
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  as he was designing This Is It at the O2 Arena in London.
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  And I remember somehow I was in the city. I pulled over to a Starbucks and said,
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  "Okay, this is quiet.
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  I'm going to call him." I called and I thought it was going to be like,
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  "Thank you for calling the offices of Michael Cotten." No,
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  it was him picking up his cell phone on the side with ambulances going by
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  and him staying on the phone and me being like, "Oh,
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  I think that voice is who I know from watching interviews." And he's like,
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  "Yeah, send me your stuff and I'll take a look and I'll call you back." And I,
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  right there, sent him my stuff, he called me right back and he said, "Great,
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  can't wait to work with you. Come by the studio." And I was like, "Hmm.
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  That's it, huh?" So first thing is:
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  the worst that anyone ever can tell you is no.
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  And also really if you're wanting to get in and you
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  don't have an established relationship, it's like,
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  try to find out as much as possible about what are they doing?
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  What is the program that so-and-so is working with to be able to create a
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  product?
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  Also their personality on any sort of previous recordings or interviews,
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  just to get a really big,
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  thorough FBI investigation behind them.
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  Just so that you're not spinning their wheels.
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  At least you have an idea and a sense of like, great,
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  I want to work with this person. My first mentor was my professor, Jim Noone,
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  followed by Michael Cotten and David Zinn [who] I interned with.
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  And then the longest relationship and still one of the strongest is Derek
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  McLane. I was with him as an associate for four years.
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  And so many different mentalities and ways of approaching a project or multiple
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  projects and what is management within all of that,
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  conception to completion to opening night,
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  and things that you just don't learn by...
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  Right. You can't learn in school, you can't learn from a textbook.
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  You have to actually start watching it happen.
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  Yeah.
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  So you go to school, you go through this mentorship,
• 12:02
  you founded your own design group. So the Tate Design Group founded in 2012.
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  But if someone asked you, 'What do you do,' what would you say?
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  The answer that I'm telling someone sitting next to me on an airplane that has
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  no idea what I do is I say,
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  'When you're watching a show or a concert or any production,
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  whatever's physical that's on stage minus the costumes and the actual beams in
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  the air that are creating the lighting,
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  I've been the architect and the interior designer and personal shopper for
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  everything you're seeing on stage.'.
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  Yeah. You set the world of the story.
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  Yeah. If I am the architect and interior designer [and] personal shopper,
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  there's also the general contractor that is building it outside of our scope.
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  So we're not ever building it,
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  but there's a whole 'nother world that makes it a reality.
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  I like that. Architecture for storytelling on stage. If someone hired you,
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  if they were hiring a set designer and they said,
• 13:02
  "We gotta have Paul," how do you start that process with someone?
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  Walk me through how you get from someone asking you to become
• 13:11
  involved in a project to opening night, really.
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  What is that process like from your perspective?
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  I mean, a lot of the times the intro begins with, "Okay,
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  this is a really crazy idea and it may be impossible." And that's the most
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  exciting part of a process is that introduction conversation,
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  because there's different types of directors and producers where some absolutely
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  know how to even do the scribble that says, "What if it's just this?
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  " Some do that and some do not. Some bring images, some do not.
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  So there's always this litmus test of like, "You like it? No. Yes. No.
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  No." And taking 1400 research images and literally whittling them down to
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  let's say 16...
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  that's a whole process in itself and it starts usually there unless there
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  is a very strong sense that I can see that they are having an opinion about
• 14:02
  what the space should be.
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  So it starts with, we know what show we're doing. There's a script.
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  And the producer and the director bring you into that. You do your research,
• 14:12
  your photo processing, inspiration, your discussions with them.
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  Then you have, let's say,
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  at that point you have a vision with the director and the creative team of what
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  the show wants to be.
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  You are sometimes not just leading the charge for what the physical
• 14:29
  set design is. You are also looking at the props.
• 14:34
  You are also looking at projections and video a lot of the time.
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  How do you honor the vision of the director,
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  the input of your creative collaborators,
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  but also your own expertise and vision for how it comes
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  together? How do you balance all that?
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  I think my job is to make any idea work. I mean, Josh Rhodes,
• 14:57
  he directed and choreographed this Evita that still to this day is another one
• 15:02
  of the most breathtaking -- where he's like,
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  "I just imagine her coming from above and she's just blowing like this
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  bird that is just falling from the sky in slow motion." I'm like,
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  "What the hell does that mean?" And we did it. Do you know what I mean?
• 15:17
  Yeah.
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  You figure it out, but there's those harnessing statements that --
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  those are not to be disregarded.
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  Those are the key pieces of the puzzle to make a world happen.
• 15:25
  Well,
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  I think this is what I appreciate about you so much is you can work with big
• 15:29
  vision, but you also are just not afraid of the brass tacks.
• 15:33
  Yeah, that's correct.
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  You can take a vision at face value and then say, "Great,
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  now let's actually come up with literally what we mean when we say this so that
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  I can understand if you want six steps on that staircase or eight.".
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  There's like a, "Great. We'll make that epic thing happen,
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  but now let's get into logistics to actually make it happen.".
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  And I so appreciate that in you!
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  And it goes into a blender and then it becomes something.
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  Well,
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  we've talked a little bit about how your work involves all of these different
• 16:01
  onstage elements,
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  but I'd love to tell this story about how you first got into projection and
• 16:07
  video design because one of my favorite shows that we worked together on at the
• 16:12
  Kennedy Center was The Music Man starring Norm Lewis and Jessie Mueller,
• 16:15
  and it was directed by the absolutely wonderful Marc Bruni.
• 16:19
  And it was the first time you had designed for the series and you were
• 16:24
  brought in as a set designer. And then I believe Jeffrey Finn,
• 16:28
  the executive producer,
• 16:30
  called and asked you if you could also do the projection and video design for
• 16:34
  the show. Can you tell us what happened on your side of that phone call?
• 16:40
  So I was with Cory Pattak, lighting designer, frequent collaborator,
• 16:44
  and we've done a bunch of shows together. I mean,
• 16:47
  we're basically like a brother duo, and we're doing this production in Miami.
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  We were working with a video team that consisted of multiple people from all
• 16:54
  different parts of the US and people were being flown in and out.
• 16:58
  It was so complicated. And I go, the next time someone calls and says,
• 17:01
  "Do you do video set design?" I'm just saying yes and I'll figure it out on
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  YouTube.
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  We get in the car and my phone is synced to the rental car and it
• 17:10
  pops up and it says "maybe Jeffrey Finn." And Cory just looks at me in the
• 17:15
  passenger seat and gestures his hands out like, "Come on, big boy.
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  Tell him you do both video and projection." Because he knew that this was
• 17:22
  coming. And then he's like, "Hello,
• 17:23
  this is Jeffrey Finn with the Kennedy Center," which --
• 17:26
  the words "from the Kennedy Center," I remember that moment on the Miami
• 17:30
  Interstate like, "Oh my God,
• 17:33
  the Kennedy Center is calling to do a production and I am about to lie,
• 17:39
  but I said I was going to do it." And he said,
• 17:41
  "Do you do video and set design?" And I was like, "I do." And he's like, "Great,
• 17:45
  you know Marc Bruni." And I had only worked with Marc one-on-one that summer
• 17:50
  previously and several times as an associate and
• 17:55
  I was like, "We're going to make it work." I didn't tell anyone.
• 17:58
  Marc didn't even know. And we did all the video design
• 18:04
  and it seemed like people were happy with it once we completed it at the Kennedy
• 18:08
  Center, and that's me faking until you make it.
• 18:12
  Because what I had realized was I had rendered everything and I realized that
• 18:16
  sometimes video design was taking on what we had done and then just animating it
• 18:20
  to create quote another layer. And by no means was I
• 18:25
  trying to create this graphic new voice of video design.
• 18:30
  What I was doing was I knew what Jeffrey had wanted was an extension of
• 18:35
  scenery to be video. And so if there was going to be that connection,
• 18:40
  that's where I wanted to have a chance at trying it. But then Jeffrey was like,
• 18:44
  "Hey, do you want to do the next one? It's Tommy." And I was like,
• 18:47
  "I just gotta be honest with you, this is the first time we've done that.
• 18:50
  Tommy's a totally different beast.".
• 18:52
  Yeah. Well,
• 18:53
  and I should pause and say that's because what you created for Music Man was
• 18:57
  gorgeous.
• 18:58
  And if you YouTube "The Music Man Broadway Center Stage," you'll see these
• 19:02
  projections in the background that are exactly as you talk about.
• 19:04
  They're an extension of the scenery,
• 19:06
  but it is what I think brought Broadway Center Stage to the next level was that
• 19:11
  show and the care put into both the set and the video. But yeah,
• 19:16
  then Tommy, which was next,
• 19:18
  which was so much more intricate,
• 19:21
  all of that was built out to a click track so that everything was synced up
• 19:26
  perfectly,
• 19:26
  but that created a very different scale in terms of what you were delivering
• 19:31
  for that show.
• 19:33
  Absolutely. I mean, it was like 26 different music videos,
• 19:36
  like what I remember saying.
• 19:38
  I remember being up all night for Music Man,
• 19:41
  finishing it while listening to Tommy, thinking,
• 19:43
  "You're absolutely out of your mind if you say yes to it." Thinking,
• 19:46
  "This music is epic." And... another favorite.
• 19:50
  Another favorite.
• 19:51
  Your work extends well beyond musicals and plays and
• 19:56
  operas. You also did the production design for Usher's Las Vegas residency.
• 20:00
  How do you decide to take that work on?
• 20:04
  Usher was in April of 2021.
• 20:08
  My husband and I, Will,
• 20:10
  we were going to go on some getaways and we were packing the car and I
• 20:15
  got a phone call, two of them back to back, and thought, "Well,
• 20:19
  maybe I'll answer it. " And, "Hi, this is Andrew.
• 20:23
  We were interested if you would be interested in designing Usher's Las Vegas
• 20:27
  residency." And I was like, "What?" And I was like,
• 20:31
  "When is this opening?" And he said, "July of 2021." And I said,
• 20:35
  "Where?" And he said, "Caesars Palace Colosseum." And he's like,
• 20:39
  "Usher's flying to Vegas and will be there tomorrow. Can you make it?
• 20:42
  " And I think this was at one o'clock and me thinking, "Well,
• 20:45
  I bet I can get on a five o'clock flight and get there tonight." So I hang up
• 20:48
  the phone and I tell Will,
• 20:50
  and Will's literally out in the street and he's packing the car. And Will's
• 20:54
  number one fun fact about him is that he is an
• 20:58
  R&B encyclopedia of lyrics.
• 21:03
  It is mind-blowing.
• 21:04
  And you would never expect it coming out of this very tall Southern gentleman.
• 21:07
  And he's like, "Babe,
• 21:08
  you'd be an idiot if you didn't go work with Usher." He's like,
• 21:11
  "Just go to Vegas." I flew to Vegas. And first off, the Colosseum,
• 21:16
  there's a whole chapter where in my life when I was younger,
• 21:18
  being in Vegas with my great-grandparents,
• 21:20
  I remember seeing the Colosseum being built and me thinking,
• 21:24
  "What show could possibly fit something that is that scale?" And to
• 21:29
  walk into that theater [with an] empty stage and have Usher just standing there
• 21:34
  and being the coolest, one of the best collaborators in the world.
• 21:38
  I remember that was one of the most profound moments.
• 21:41
  Did it end up feeling very different than working on Broadway or was there a
• 21:46
  lot that was the same? Is it -- as you think about audience,
• 21:50
  as you think about spectacle, how do those things overlap or not?
• 21:54
  Was it different? I mean, yeah, I mean, we're not working with a script.
• 21:57
  One of the biggest things that I felt I could contribute was to not make it look
• 22:01
  like a hodgepodge traditional concert. I wanted it to feel,
• 22:05
  whether the audience appreciated it or not,
• 22:07
  that it had this journey and this arc to it.
• 22:10
  One of the best exercises to get mood boards done was we literally chopped up
• 22:15
  thousands of images,
• 22:17
  put boards out all across this very long table we had in our previous studio,
• 22:22
  and everyone just literally making their own little collage of like,
• 22:26
  "If you didn't like the photo and it didn't respond to you,
• 22:29
  put it in the trash." That's how we started,
• 22:31
  because there was also a lot of opinions of people that had been with his core
• 22:34
  team since the beginning. So Aakomon Jones, his creative director,
• 22:39
  had been with him from -- like, his right-hand best friend. Rio,
• 22:44
  his choreographer. Amy, Rio's associate.
• 22:46
  They had all worked together forever. We were the new family within
• 22:51
  this.
• 22:52
  So to respect what they had been envisioning for probably two
• 22:56
  years now in their minds before something had happened on stage,
• 23:00
  that's how we got to get into their minds. But man,
• 23:05
  they were -- they are -- the best.
• 23:07
  Well, and I think it's what you're saying,
• 23:09
  and we see this more and more in some of the big arena tours,
• 23:12
  is taking a lot of what we conceptually think of as that
• 23:16
  theater-kid-telling-a-story energy and creating large
• 23:20
  spectacle shows with artists of our generation, like Usher.
• 23:24
  I'm thinking of the Cowboy Carter Tour too, where it's --
• 23:27
  you are telling one story,
• 23:28
  you can tell a cohesive story while still having all those treats and treasures
• 23:31
  that you expect when your favorite artist is on stage. But of course for you,
• 23:36
  I'm thinking of you working in a tiny theater [and] doing production design for
• 23:40
  that, [then] going to Vegas [and] working on this enormous residency...
• 23:44
  because all of these processes, as I'm hearing you talk,
• 23:47
  they sound connected and similar. You start with the art,
• 23:50
  you start with the artist, and then you work with collaborators,
• 23:53
  you tease out a vision,
• 23:56
  you then go and bring that vision to life in a very physical way.
• 24:01
  All of that, you can kind of assume, has similar parameters. Different scales,
• 24:06
  but similar parameters when you're working indoors.
• 24:09
  But then I think about what happens when you take all of that and you go outside
• 24:14
  because you also worked on Turandot at the largest outdoor opera venue
• 24:19
  in the world in Austria, right?
• 24:21
  Yeah. Outside of Vienna, Austria is an old stone quarry.
• 24:25
  And so let's say that The Muny is a hundred feet wide, I believe,
• 24:29
  that we know in St. Louis.
• 24:30
  Oh, that's right because you'd worked at The Muny.
• 24:32
  You had done outdoor work at The Muny before. Okay, that's a good reminder.
• 24:35
  And that's an audience of 11,000. When you overlaid the ground plan,
• 24:39
  this is twice the width of that.
• 24:42
  Wow.
• 24:43
  And then you're like, oh, we're not messing around. Okay.
• 24:48
  That was approximately, I think, a three-year process,
• 24:52
  including COVID. It was really supposed to only be a nine-month process,
• 24:56
  which was pretty crazy for an opera of that scale.
• 25:00
  But with that director who was Thaddeus Strassberger,
• 25:05
  he's also designed his own sets for his productions,
• 25:08
  his own video for his productions, while directing it.
• 25:11
  He knows the scale of it and is not afraid of the scale,
• 25:14
  and really lent into trusting us to create this in the timeline that we
• 25:19
  originally thought we were fitting it with him.
• 25:21
  And he had ideas at the beginning,
• 25:23
  but it obviously is an ever-evolving thing of realizing that this set is sitting
• 25:27
  outside and it has to go with summer storms and rain and wind,
• 25:32
  and it's in a quarry so the science of wind and --
• 25:35
  You have to be accommodating for all of this.
• 25:37
  And it sounds like you're learning new skills along the way.
• 25:41
  Are you primarily thinking that that is impacting different materials on stage?
• 25:45
  Or does that also bring into the whole design and visual
• 25:51
  element because you know that... I'm just trying to picture,
• 25:54
  the natural elements are then part of the story too.
• 25:58
  Right. Well, that's what we started with.
• 26:00
  It started with building a geographical model of what the landscape was because
• 26:04
  that is the sentiment. You start there. That is your empty box.
• 26:07
  But thankfully it's this beautiful stone quarry and Thaddeus' original
• 26:12
  words that we held onto were these beautiful Chinese ivory carvings
• 26:17
  and cork carvings.
• 26:19
  So all those intricate little dioramas you may see in museums or on
• 26:23
  shelf decor,
• 26:26
  the history of them is that they are these little intricate landscapes carved
• 26:29
  from stone and from cork.
• 26:31
  So we just leaned into that as being that this world was growing out of the
• 26:36
  natural surrounding. So as far as materials and what that was,
• 26:40
  they had worked at the shop that was phenomenal. It's also -- In Europe,
• 26:45
  there's a certain level of, "Here's the artistic idea,
• 26:48
  and then the engineers and craftsmen sort of make that come to life," where it's
• 26:52
  a little bit less ground plan and sections and draftings and all that stuff. But
• 26:57
  we basically showed up with seven suitcases of this model to then
• 27:02
  talk through with the shop.
• 27:03
  And then the shop really was hand in hand with us figuring out how to make that
• 27:07
  work. And they would have all these automated,
• 27:10
  basically robots that were originated for automobiles,
• 27:14
  carving out -- the technical term is CNCing -- giant flowers at scale.
• 27:18
  But that was a moment when you showed up and you said, "Oh my God,
• 27:22
  you actually built it." And it was astronomically
• 27:27
  ginormous and beautiful of what they accomplished and the time and especially
• 27:31
  over COVID because the whole country had shut down there and here.
• 27:35
  But what a beautiful thing to be working on an outdoor project in that time that
• 27:39
  could then flourish even more.
• 27:41
  And the hardest thing was that there's no IMAG.
• 27:43
  There's no zoom-in to an outdoor... There's no amplification of visuals.
• 27:48
  You had to really think about,
• 27:49
  how are that many people appreciating someone on stage
• 27:54
  singing Nessun Dorma?
• 27:57
  You just have to always go back so that you're telling a story. Yeah.
• 28:00
  Right. Nessun Dorma
• 28:02
  on a natural stage that's been embellished in this beautiful way.
• 28:05
  And then I'm looking at that side by side with Usher in Vegas,
• 28:09
  side by side with, right now, The Great Gatsby on Broadway.
• 28:14
  These are all these different containers that you're creating worlds in.
• 28:19
  And it's fascinating for me to get a chance to actually hear you talk a little
• 28:22
  bit more about the technical side of it because sometimes I'm used to getting,
• 28:26
  "Okay,
• 28:26
  here's the concept and then here's the final product." And a lot of us don't get
• 28:29
  to understand all of the different mechanics of what happens between the two.
• 28:35
  Great Gatsby on Broadway, if you haven't seen it, that Marc Bruni directed --
• 28:39
  spectacle in every sense of the word.
• 28:41
  You warned me before I saw it that I would see kind of
• 28:46
  all of these different elements appear on stage and that's impressive enough,
• 28:50
  but now it's touring in multiple iterations. So it's touring in the country,
• 28:55
  it's been overseas, it's going overseas again.
• 28:58
  What happens when you take a Broadway show and create it for tour?
• 29:02
  I assume it's not just copy paste,
• 29:05
  but I have no idea how complex that really is.
• 29:08
  Yeah.
• 29:09
  So Gatsby started in the meetings with Marc
• 29:14
  about -- when we were designing Guys and Dolls at the Kennedy Center,
• 29:18
  we completed the design. It was being built. And then once we realized, "Oh,
• 29:21
  we're going on Christmas break, design's done," I told Marc, I was like,
• 29:25
  "What if this is what The Great Gatsby looks like?
• 29:27
  " And I knew that he was talking about it.
• 29:31
  I had a connection with Chunsoo Shin, our producer, from working in Seoul,
• 29:35
  Korea. So there was this big [feeling of] me swimming around The Great Gatsby,
• 29:40
  knowing that it hadn't even really been written yet.
• 29:43
  So we designed pretty quickly for the Paper Mill Playhouse,
• 29:46
  which then the day that that was being loaded out, we were told, "Oh,
• 29:50
  we're actually loading it into ...
• 29:51
  We have a Broadway theater." It was this fast track of, "Oh my God,
• 29:57
  here we go." And we opened it on Broadway and then we
• 30:01
  did it in London, rebuilt it for Korea...
• 30:05
  there's never been downtime up until now that the tour is sailing. But you
• 30:10
  would think that when you're creating a production,
• 30:12
  that you're going to be able to then perfect something or perfect
• 30:18
  how something is done.
• 30:20
  But what I'm getting at is the show is ginormous.
• 30:23
  It's a show that takes approximately four weeks to be loaded into a theater.
• 30:27
  It takes three months to build it. So four weeks to get into --
• 30:31
  just to get it into operation to tech the show.
• 30:35
  What we didn't know is while we were at Paper Mill,
• 30:38
  they knew that it was going to Broadway and its destiny was already being filled
• 30:42
  out of its schedule.
• 30:44
  What we also didn't know is that it was on a schedule, a touring model,
• 30:49
  that on Tuesday morning it shows up at 7:00 AM.
• 30:53
  Tuesday night at 7:00 PM there was a production.
• 30:56
  There was an opening night in a city.
• 30:58
  Right. For tours like that, you have to be loading in a matter of hours.
• 31:02
  This is not a multi-day situation.
• 31:05
  So we have 12 hours to get to that curtain going up.
• 31:07
  It was one time where I thought, I don't know what production...
• 31:11
  I don't know what this is going to look like. Because on paper,
• 31:14
  we can sit here and reinvent it over and over and over.
• 31:18
  And there's no automation on the deck. Famously,
• 31:21
  the set changes 56 times. There's nothing moving furniture on the tour.
• 31:26
  That meant that choreography had to be a big part of everything that we see on
• 31:31
  stage that is doing the visual dance.
• 31:34
  And a lot of trusting,
• 31:37
  what were the essential things that were going to make the most impact for two
• 31:40
  and a half hours to an audience? Always respecting,
• 31:43
  always thinking about the audience member that had seen it and loved it on
• 31:46
  Broadway and probably saw it multiple times.
• 31:49
  What would that person think when they're sitting in the seat?
• 31:52
  I was just worried about always delivering a product that wasn't to the
• 31:56
  grandeur of what they had saw at its full majesty.
• 32:00
  I mean, incredible.
• 32:00
  When you think about the weeks that you have to perfect it on Broadway,
• 32:03
  and then as you say,
• 32:04
  creating something that can be loaded in and created in a matter of hours in any
• 32:08
  city across the country.
• 32:09
  It's all about layering.
• 32:10
  And I think that's sort of maybe an overarching word to
• 32:15
  describe my work is layers. Different smoke and mirrors to make it all look
• 32:20
  like... something. And you don't even need to know what you're looking at.
• 32:24
  So I would say that that all sounds impossible in and of itself,
• 32:27
  taking shows and loading them in on such short notice.
• 32:31
  I know you've said that you get a thrill out of creating the Impossible.
• 32:34
  We've just talked about projects that you've done that run the gamut.
• 32:38
  So at this point in your life, what does impossible look like?
• 32:41
  What is a project that you'd love to work on?
• 32:44
  I think a venue-specific -- where you're creating a venue.
• 32:48
  There's so many new desires for taking something out of the standard
• 32:53
  of a theater.
• 32:54
  What does that mean to be able to build temporary architecture to support
• 32:57
  something? Temporary architecture meaning a lot of what the Olympics are doing,
• 33:02
  of some of the stadiums where they're not just building infrastructure for
• 33:05
  something to last forever and just decay over time because that tight size
• 33:09
  audience isn't going to always be there. That's of interest.
• 33:12
  I don't even know what that is within it.
• 33:14
  But the more classic answer of what does exist that I hope is not impossible
• 33:19
  are the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the Oscars.
• 33:22
  I think it's storytelling to millions of people. That's what excites me.
• 33:27
  Storytelling to millions of people. That's a good ambition. Well,
• 33:31
  we have reached our quickfire culture section.
• 33:33
  What is one piece of culture right now that you are currently obsessed with?
• 33:36
  Punch the monkey. Really concerned about him, but he seems like he's doing okay.
• 33:40
  And just finished -- I'm not a big series person, but just finish Pluribus.
• 33:45
  I sort of am obsessed with it.
• 33:48
  Okay. I haven't started yet. I've heard great things.
• 33:51
  Oh, yeah. And I don't even know why, but I love it. It's not impossible!
• 33:58
  Terrifying. If you could go back in time,
• 34:00
  what's one live performance or event you would've loved to be at?
• 34:04
  Anything at the Colosseum in Rome.
• 34:06
  They built a theater that also had a retractable ceiling and flooded and had
• 34:09
  lifts. What were they doing with that back in the day?
• 34:13
  You're the first person with that answer and I love it.
• 34:17
  What were they doing back in the day? A question.
• 34:20
  What is one free resource in any field that everyone should check out?
• 34:24
  The Performing Arts Library here in New York is the best,
• 34:29
  as well as the New York Public Library's picture collection where you literally
• 34:32
  have access to things that you will never find online.
• 34:36
  And they don't even have everything they have online,
• 34:38
  but you just go and give them a subject of interest and they'll curate and pull
• 34:44
  some incredible finds that...
• 34:47
  Things still in books and magazines.
• 34:49
  They're not online and a lot of people still don't just open up [a] book.
• 34:54
  Well said. And finally,
• 34:57
  if you could broadcast one message to executive directors, leaders,
• 35:01
  staff members, artists at thousands of arts organizations across the world,
• 35:05
  what would that message today be?
• 35:08
  It's not about a message to them.
• 35:09
  It's a message for people coming into those organizations of familiarizing
• 35:14
  yourself with, who is the organization? I mean,
• 35:17
  I remember the very first second of walking into the Kennedy Center and [Vice
• 35:20
  President, Production Operations] Glenn Turner put out his hand and he said,
• 35:23
  "Welcome to the Kennedy Center,
• 35:24
  Mr. dePoo." That was this electrifying beginning of my life
• 35:29
  of figuring out what his history was with this organization,
• 35:32
  being able to meet you in the rows of the seats and realizing actually what you
• 35:37
  did and what you had become to take on that organization, that family...
• 35:42
  It's really getting to know what organization you're walking into and
• 35:46
  understanding who's running it.
• 35:48
  Having the conversations on the side of the aisle that say,
• 35:50
  "How do you make the next thing better?".
• 35:53
  I'm really grateful to hear you say that because I think one thing I think about
• 35:56
  a lot are the artists who walk in the door who are excited about the project
• 35:59
  they're working on --
• 36:01
  and I say the artists inclusive of designers and company teams,
• 36:04
  but who are excited about the show they're working on. They are there,
• 36:07
  they're committed, but then they ask, "What else is happening here?
• 36:10
  What else is going on?" And I mean, for us,
• 36:12
  that also meant you collaborating on other projects across the building and
• 36:16
  hopefully more projects in the future across the country.
• 36:19
  Guaranteed.
• 36:20
  Guaranteed. Paul, seeing your face makes my day.
• 36:24
  Thank you for sharing all of this. Love you.
• 36:26
  I think this is so interesting for folks who might not have any exposure to what
• 36:31
  the world behind the scenes really looks like when you're in the mix of it.
• 36:35
  So thank you. Thanks for spending the time.
• 36:37
  Thank you.
• 36:48
  Thank you for listening to CI to Eye. If you enjoy today's conversation,
• 36:53
  please take a moment to rate us or leave a review.
• 36:56
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• 37:00
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• 37:01
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• 37:04
  We've got some great episodes coming your way and I wouldn't want you to miss
• 37:08
  them. A huge thanks to our team behind the scenes, including Karen McConarty,
• 37:13
  Yeaye Stemn, Stephanie Medina, Jess Berube,
• 37:17
  and Rachel Purcell Fountain.
• 37:19
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• 37:33
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• 37:38
  And I hope you'll reach out to us to let us know who you'd like to hear from
• 37:42
  next on CI to Eye. I'm Monica Holt. Thanks for listening.