I’ve written a lot about theater (including one blog post here!) and I’ve spent a lot of time “doing” theater (arguably time better spent doing schoolwork). Theater and videogames have a lot in common — a fact show by how each member of my final project group has a credit in one of this quarter’s UT shows — from the similarities that any narrative art form have to the specific collaborative nature of creation.
In our last class, one of the things we discussed was the final project and how it functioned/compared to other group projects. Someone mentioned how everyone’s talents came together in a way that forced the final to truly be a group project because they could not do some of the project’s part, and that struck me.
Theater combines so many different elements beyond just the rehearsal room work of director and actors. Design elements include sound effects, costume accessories, and the color of the floor, and that’s not even mentioning all the management that goes on behind the scene. The amount of paperwork for even student theater shows (in my experience) is massive, with daily rehearsal reports and tracking sheets for everything on stage and then all the pre-prod paperwork of scenic breakdowns and budgets by departments. Even beyond the artistic collaboration of designers and managers and actors coming together, the amount of bodies moving in perfect coordination that a full-blown mainstage performance can require is wild.
Which is frustrating. While working on a show, I’m regularly faced with my own limits. I cannot just do everything — partially due to the fact that I’m one person with two hands and a finite amount of time. I’m “forced” to delegate and rely on other people for tasks like communicating something or drawing up a document or handling some prop. The other limit I confront is my lack of actual “talent” (used loosely and not in a negative/derogatory way towards myself). I am not a sound designer: I have no idea how the soundboard works and no clue about the art of sound design and even no opinions beyond “sounds off” or “too loud”. I’m forced to rely on the sound designer because they’re doing something I can’t. (Just another note about the language — I’m against the idea of a fixed mindset. That’s not a productive way of looking at the world. I’m sure I could learn sound design, and if need be, I’m sure I could delete a cue or something by following a tutorial, but for all intents and purposes, I’m not a sound designer.)
If something is wrong with a prop, sure, as the stage manager, I can do some quick problem-solving with gaff tape or I could work with the actors to remove the blocking of that prop, but I couldn’t do anything a props designer could. Same thing with working on a videogame. As the writer, I couldn’t do anything with the programming or the art or other design elements. I physically can’t just fix anything, and my limits force me to rely on people.
The nature of theater and videogame design is collaboration — because that’s the only way to do it. Obviously, there are multi-talented people (artist-programmers, actor-light designers, etc), but more often, you’re working with a group of people with specific and varied skill sets, which is the beauty of collaborative arts: all these different people coming together to make one thing.
