[SML] Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival Fwd: Campus Closed This Weekend

[William Knapp]

Like everyone, I was shocked and saddened by what happened last week at The
Pillow. I once served as Production Manager of the Doris Duke Theater
myself. Another year I even met my wife there — she held that same position
while I was the PM in the other space.

I’m sad, frustrated, even angry about what happened. But I’m also
frustrated by the nature of some of the outrage I’ve seen in the production
community.

*First, about the accident itself.*
There seems to be a belief that the task being performed was *obviously* unsafe
and that it was negligent to attempt it at all. Well — the way it was done
that day may indeed have been unsafe. But I can tell you that that dance
floor — and I’m not sure whether we’re talking about marley, platforms, or
sprung-deck panels — has been carted around the property, almost daily,
without incident, for more than 70 years. It *can* be done safely.

I think there’s a tendency to express outrage in an “It’d never have
happened to me” way. That impulse can come from many places, but at its
root is a desire to comfort ourselves with the idea that it *couldn’t* happen
to us. Or, if it did, it would be someone else’s — usually the boss’s —
fault. But reacting with knee-jerk hot takes risks impugning Kat’s good
judgment. This event needs to be studied and lessons learned. But we don’t
know yet — the number of people and the methods used *might* have been
appropriate for the job. It just went wrong. I’d like to give Kat the
benefit of that doubt.

And if you believe that every human activity must be made absolutely
accident-proof, then, of course, you never get into an automobile.

*About intern staff.*
As I understand it, interns are meant to work *alongside* professional
staff, not replace them. I’m not a labor lawyer, and I haven’t read the law
directly, but that’s my understanding. As we all know, the practice in
summer theaters is that interns work right next to professionals.

I know Jacob’s Pillow has changed a lot in recent years to comply with
evolving labor laws. But when I was there in the 1990s, there was a
supervising staff — and *all* crew positions were filled by interns. Those
were gentler times, mostly "lights and tights" production. Many interns
were dancers who had realized, through injury or other circumstances, that
they would never dance professionally but still wanted to be in the dance
world.

We’d have about a dozen interns. During the initial setup period, we’d
train them in stagecraft. Over the season, they’d rotate through all the
production positions — board ops, wardrobe, APMs, flys. It was on-the-job
training, and if you paid attention, you left with a marketable skill set.
Many connected with companies that came through and went straight from The
Pillow to touring work.

It was, a bit, like a theater program at a school with an associated
professional theater, learning meant doing — except at The Pillow you got a
stipend and worked with your heroes. Experiences varied, of course, but the
vast majority of people I’ve met who spent time there remember it
fondly, hard as the work was.

That model doesn’t align with today’s legal definitions of internships; the
staff situation at The Pillow has professionalized considerably since.  But
to suggest that this nonprofit dance festival is just another example of a
craven capitalist producer cutting corners to save a buck isn’t accurate
either.

Peace everybody — and be safe.

Will
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