ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609160004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 14 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: WHAT IS ART?
SOURCE: ALMENA HUGHES STAFF WRITER
Set designer Allison Campbell first reads a script to understand its technical aspects. She discusses its goals with the play's director and does extensive research, seeking visual authenticity. She develops planning tools, including a portfolio of photographs and graphics, a paper scale "white model" of the set and a ground plan, mapping where actors will be during key scenes. She culls her innate sense of theatre for how to best use colors, lines, movement and space, then blueprints and builds a theatrical set.
The uninitiated are usually surprised by her job's complexity - amazed that set design is so structured and technical, its ideas not just pulled from thin air. But Campbell, 38, is hardly uninitiated, having first been smitten with theatre while in junior high school.
"I just immediately liked it; I found it energizing and exciting," said Campbell, the topic of theatre still back lighting her green eyes with enthusiasm.
Campbell said that, like most theatrical noviates, she started out trying to act. But once she accepted that her talent in that area was unlikely to ever earn a Tony, she turned to her sewing skills and started making costumes, which put her more in touch with theatre's visual side. From there, she grew increasingly interested and expert in various aspects of theatre design, eventually earning bachelors and masters degrees in the discipline. She taught theatre arts at Mississippi University for Women; worked in New York with the prestigious Paper Bag Players' children's theatre and as a freelance set designer; then in 1995 joined Hollins College's faculty as a theatre arts instructor, where she teaches stage craft, lighting design, introduction to theatre, theatre history and set design.
"Theatre is the ideal liberal arts degree," Campbell said. "It draws on physics, geometry, mathematics, psychology, history, literature - it is for, by and about people. In this field, it's inappropriate to be narrow."
She paused a long time to ponder whether or not designing theatrical sets is art.
"I can't really separate the disciplines," Campbell said. "The designer creates a world for action to occur in, from a bare stage with a single light to a spectacular musical production. It is artful and artistic to create a set, and sometimes they are certainly objects of beauty, but theatre is a mode of communication in which the set visually enhances the idea of the play. Theatre is a collaborative art with someone overseeing procedures, but all the artists working together toward one end. The goal is to create a part of a whole."
Campbell said she defines art for her students as "an individual's concept of reality; it has form and is not randomly created."
She said she also likes a definition she recently read in Suzi Gablik's book "Conversations Before the End of Time," which was "making something special."
"I don't know if I can actually define art," Campbell said. "But I know what I like about it: that which gives me a new idea, a new angle, a fresh way to look at something. When it makes me smile or laugh because it is so right on the button."
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Philip Holman. Allison Campbell teaches a variety ofby CNBtheater courses at Hollins College. color.