Spectrum Hawaii; 309; Mary Pritchard/Samoan Crafts Fair, R. Mason, Ecumenical Chorale

Oh. Nice. The following program is a production of key HEG in what a little public the public television. The following program has been funded in part by grants from the Hawaii State foundation on culture and the arts and the people who Chevron in Hawaii. The the an. Today on the spectrum we visit with a theatrical set designer who talks about creativity. We join a rehearsal and performance of the whole ecumenical carouse as they prepare for a Bach Festival. But first we join Mary Pritchard and discover what forms may take in the Samoan culture

is an art form made from trees nuts and roots. These enduring materials have provided Polynesian cultures with a fabric that has been stretched rubbed the painted worn mounted and given as a medium of exchange. Once common to all of Polynesia Until recently this ancestral tradition of dark cloth art has only been maintained in Fiji Tanga and summer. I load load load to blow the load was through someone influence the top of making was revived in Hawaii as one of the

oldest art forms in the Samoan culture are examples of their top of code Seattle will present at a Samoan festival in Honolulu. Hear music dance and culture were brought from across the mind several citizens of American Samoa arrive to display their region's arts and crafts someone's living in Hawaii were present to share in the day reminiscent of their origin. Coming up with the money. Also present was someone was leading lady in the art of top making

merry Prichard most people think that the word topper is Psalm 1 or rather the name for the article but it does not say Apple is this how long would a top. As I have learned it is more or less a Kaizen word. The bark cloth of Seattle comes from the paper mulberry plant but supply is scarce. There is not enough people to do that out there. They're cloth now. It's only over in Weston's I'm on so right where that block is being prepared then that's where I go to buy all my materials. This material consists of the inner bark or bast of the tree which is processed and beaten into a cloth. The oldest method of decoration is called siapa Tessina.

Using a design tablet of carved wood soaked in brown stain the bark cloth is stretched upon it and rubbed until the design has soaked through bark cloth tears easily along its length. Therefore it is wrapped up on the tablet both lengthwise and widthwise for a bonded string. Young bark cloth has two sides. The suicide goes on the bottom directly touching the stain and the carving. You always have to look for the right on the wrong side as the right side is on the other side has filed. But when it gets cold then the spicey of both sides red clay is grated over the cloth and rubbed in to further highlight the design of the natural brown dye. This die also made from tree bark.

Give siapa a rare longevity. I have peace if that I I'm not you know after anthropologist so someone that you know or dissect would have microscopes you know to look into the fiber or the material. But I have pieces that I see a lot or there are well over 100 years old maybe 200 years old no nos and it still shows the diversity of the brown die which is our most important one for taphonomy is still shiny. Ever read starch and naturally he's even used to see men together in layers of cloth as well as to patch whole mess. My first one that I attended of you know when I said I'm going to make me a top so I go and

I put it on you know and I use this starts where. But I had to use a ruler lineup and so they yeah everything just right. HOLLIDAY so I was like I started to peel it off but I couldn't I couldn't do it and I don't want to grow or funny I had to you know I was torn off really alive and he called me stupid. I said the air but you didn't down me that see because when they come start coming in to do their work together at his house you see their boards already covered I never saw water being covered and I never didn't think to ask you well how do you put it on the board. Freehand see awful art is very satisfying to one's design instincts. Cold see up to the money. It allows dyes to be painted directly on to the bark cloth.

The color photos of the day off today. The idea was born out of the ladies looking up at the beautiful stained glass windows and the circles and the squares and the divisions within the broad division lines inspired by stained glass windows. Early summer in Seattle makers experimented with patterns derived from truckers shells points of the Pendennis and the Pandanus leaves as well as the leaf from the breadfruit tree within a single panel design may go through gradual steps of elaborate complexity. Mary Pritchard learned the finer points of this art from the old and experienced Samoan villages and that was when my companions you know were the old people I didn't go out with young people because I was asking

questions. I was interested in many things trees the ocean fish and that's how I learned and that's how I feel. I get to meet all these people that come to study things as outlaw. With the prison crowd I'm not riding on long enough but I get more comfortable when company comes to visit. Mary Pritchard at her home in Bungalow bungalow. They might find her hard at work on a piece of siapa such as this one and posed as a legacy for her grandchildren. This she up old was your gift to the governor of American someone. But Mary Pritchard worried that Samoan interest in native siapa is likely to be honest.

That is the one part that I am very sad about because from my own heart I really believe my people. Perhaps there might be a few right as far as up to now I see no interest as prize American style laws guns or has none then not made clear that we're the only ones. Not even the preparation of the body nothing more. But many foreign students have come from afar to learn the art of see awful for Mary Pritchard nearly all of whom receive what she teaches. I had one faith this lady came up you know

they wanted what she wanted to learn on top of the only thing she did was to be able to cover her boards. Then comes time to invite. He comes out with the others and everybody's busy and I keep watch on Julie. It was the lady you write letters. There's no middle and when it's time for all of them to go home. He didn't even put it up and then they come back again. Yeah and he comes and again she goes home knowing what's the matter. Just drool. Why when are you going to begin. Just so I don't know you're not going to ruin it if you're on it will we cover it.

No problem there. Then I go about you know I go home he doing his work and I felt myself just you know but I didn't say anything and I don't want to home. Then he ended up. He didn't come up again but she sent me a check for $15 and she didn't even put a dot in the paper. Is there one might want to take this. I used another word. No wonder say I just take this back and say thank you very much. As this is the first time I've had a failure in anybody not even scratching the board so that was I was thinking of him and while I'm talking to you I know I said hey wait anyway so there you go. The artistic quickness of children

is a treat. Mary Pritchard particularly when she sees it in her own family. This is my great grandson he designed all that he did all of black in one evening. And then either he let it go. And I think I was there when I said when are you going to call your board back. I do it now I said OK and he did it that evening. One can do it all in two or three hours on the first lesson. Anyone can hear me it's the most wonderful kind of vocation because so much of it is like an

avocation. So much of it is simply fun doing things puttering improvising playing and that's really what theater is about it is players after all. In his 22 years as the resident scene designer for the University of Hawaii Drama Department Richard Mason abhors the routine the repetitive and the cliches. I've always found found it fascinating to investigate not to be satisfied with with justice of the humdrum routine and. A rut but to move outward to sight see on your own to go off into the byways and alleys off the side off the main drag to see what you can discover. The very nature of theatre demands curiosity creativity and flexibility.

The theater is it's to a great extent a sort of collection of one shot possibility. You don't do the same thing every time you work on shows in a career in the theatre. The same designer creates the environment in which a play is presented. The designer uses a language of colors textures materials shapes and lines to set the mood even to establish a metaphor for the production. Using the model of the 1983 production of Romeo and Juliet Mason describes the design elements employed to create a metaphor of conflict. Terry Knapp who directed it wanted large spaces for people to rush in to fight to to dance the big ballroom scene took up practically the whole stage and you have a lot of strong long diagonals that make a lot of activity possible and of course the

activity is a metaphor. For the. Feeling rebellious of the society and of the characters. In the play. Yeah I'm here as a professor of drama Mason has taught his students not only the craft of scene design but the concept of the creative process. So I think it is a white horse like this my black box number one. Allison. Well this is out of the long run she's Alice in 20 seasons total 20 different sets it's all basically vignettes so seats in this configuration about a hundred in the Round House and seats on the center just because section over here these vomitorium are closed off. And. This is the ground level. So the rest is all below us. People would come in so it isn't really that largest it's mostly underground.

Superstructures the I think I have educated my students in standards of presentation in ways of thinking about design is No. Well it's in elements of creativity. I have always stressed the need for curiosity to investigate everything to ask questions to look at everything to keep files to develop a library to use the library to stimulate you to get into thinking into discoveries. Out of the cliches. It was hard. You know there's a there's a checkerboard rug or something like that there or the green grass is done and squares of sod or. So I think you have to get your students the people who who are listening to you to become enthusiastic about. Doing something once experimenting

and. Perhaps taking on board the techniques that they've learned but not simply repeating the procedure repeating the. Format repeating the forms that they've created that each time you do something so there will be a new experience for you and it will be a new experience for the audience. His office in the drama department has been an example of The Wealth of Nations own imagination. Among the hundreds of books and the sort of the paraphernalia is the most unusual. Many years ago our own 30 35 years ago when I was first interested in design I started to. I found some of these. Wires some of them are champagne corks and some are packaged and some are coils of wires that have become unglued or all of them have been shaped by nature by accident by events by cars rolling over them

by weather and so on. The idea is to present something provocative to the students who come into the office and they ask well what are these things I've never seen any up and they say where do you get them. What do you how do you make them. And they're always surprised to find out that they are accidental. They are ubiquitous you can find them out in the parking lot you can find them at construction sites. The point is for them to look for them and to see them and to respond to them. In the 22 years that he has lived and worked in Honolulu Richard Mason has designed more than 100 productions for theatre ballet and opera companies here and on the mainland. He is now retired. His last production for the Kennedy theatre was right you are if you think you are by Louise you Pirandello. It's more or less my valedictory. It's not quite a realistic interior we want to suggest that the

the theatricality and the and big USNS of the theatrical world. Is it real is it not real when is it real. And so we've made I've made a set that is basically transparent. Mason has left behind a legacy of students and productions but he takes with him to his new home in New York. His love for the stage. I think the theater will always play a part in my life certainly vicariously that is to say going to see productions. And I think from time to time I say as a still continuing designer. We shall see. The whole ecumenical corral now in its fifth season gathers together its same Theresa's church to rehearse their performance for a celebration commemorating the three hundredth birthday of composer Johann Sebastian Bach.

Its volunteer members are drawn from the local community. Its stated purpose is to assemble a group of singers who wish to learn and present choral music and a more challenging caliber than the average choir afford us. One of the directors of the whole ecumenical Corral is Eileen Lum. She personally auditions every member of her choir. A lot. I threw a lot of are horrible I want to have someone to hear that whole load. Was loaded. Broad musical background Eileen love first discovered the appeal of song

in her childhood home. I was always singing you know and my father was the one thing just very simple and always on pitch. During a musical retreat in Berkshire Massachusetts. She discovered the conducting abilities of Dr. Richard Weston bird. She invited him to Hawaii to guest conductor choir. When I got my classes I think you know what was I thinking inside and I was biting my tongue I've had three little tongues and never got one of my. Own. Some conductors like to beat up on singers you know that that's their stock in

trade. They they feel that if they have tantrums and if they mean and nasty and point fingers and say you didn't do that you know that is that is what they do. I am just not constituted that way as a person. So I'm not saying that I try to mollify everybody it's that I don't try to do anything except be myself and be as demanding as I can be. And with a choir like this one can be quite demanding. Am. With. Where ever you go live in any of the 50 states or any of the countries of Europe or the orient people singing is the most natural thing that there is to do musically.

Someone said that every instrument makes some nod to imitating the human voice when it is designed. If if you listen to a violin teacher or a flute teacher or a piano teacher anything is telling their students how to play and they have a melody you will hear them say play in a singing way. There is an Italian word which means in a singing way but it's a it's used for instrumental music as well. Dr. Weston Berg especially wishes to clear up Iranian notions of the conductor's rule. Many people think that the job of a conductor is to keep talking. That's very sad. So anybody that may be listening who thinks that can divest themselves of that thought immediately want to conduct a really has to do first and foremost is is have and convey a concept

of the music that is strong. And as I always say to the choir and to the orchestra leaves no doubt as to what are the high points what are the expressive possibilities the peaks the valleys the loud places the soft the fast the slow and so forth and have an understanding which brings these things into a relationship that then will add up to something. What you do in time with music what a painter or a sculptor dies in space with his or her. The evening of the performances devoted to the music of Bach. Leonard Bernstein once remarked that once you have learned to love the music of Bach.

You will love Bach more than any other composer. Oh I love but I was slow. I used to wonder why I was a little 12. One. Little. Thing. Dr. West emerged from the use of the box Magnificat in D Major presents a challenge to any choir. Oh yeah. Yes although you know something it's not so challenging for the listener. It's very direct. It's not on like Handel's Messiah. Man. Oh.

Man. Thank you. The with. With. The room with.

The AS. With. The. Spectrum was funded in part by grants from the people of Chevron in Hawaii and the Hawaii State foundation on culture and the arts.