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

Fri Aug 8 20:53:42 UTC 2025

Well said,  Will.

Thank you

Bill S.

bill at sapsis-rigging.com<mailto:bill at sapsis-rigging.com>
267.278.4561 mobile

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From: Stagecraft <stagecraft-bounces at theatrical.net> on behalf of "stagecraft at theatrical.net" <stagecraft at theatrical.net>
Reply-To: "stagecraft at theatrical.net" <stagecraft at theatrical.net>
Date: Friday, August 8, 2025 at 4:35 PM
To: "stagecraft at theatrical.net" <stagecraft at theatrical.net>
Cc: William Knapp <will at parkplaceprojects.com>
Subject: Re: [SML] Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival Fwd: Campus Closed This Weekend

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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