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Response to Peter Brooks and Elinor Fuchs

It's the first time in ITP that I have felt so invested in my thoughts while reading the assigned articles. It took me three days to read brooks.

I had to repeat some lines over and over to find representation for the ideas described. Brooks presents in his Book four possible theaters: The deadly Theater, Holly Theater, Raugh Theater, and The Immediate Theater.


In the deadly Theater, A play will be doom to deadliness mainly because of expectations. Such expectations, often go hand in hand with commercial theater, (the expectations) creates a stage where the actors get bored from the play itself. Usually, they wouldn't have enough time to rehearse, and quite often, they will follow the pre-written convention of "how to play" or "how it should look like."


The popular audience will feel the opposite. The audience will be thrilled from the performance; this is how we educate about theater. They (The audience) would applaud loudly and be grateful for being able to see such a play. The feeling of not wanting to applaud at the end of performance happened to me a few times in my life. while everyone was standing and cheering, I felt the need not.


When this moment happen to me, I remember initially turning to the rest of the audience, watching other people experiencing happiness (it made me happy, now, this is a performance) and then, asking myself: "why aren't you clapping?", "What is wrong with you?"


Do I have to clap for everything everyone else finds appealing? I wouldn't want to think like that. Brooks implies that every performance should change our experience or our lives; this suggests, a craftmanship that relates to elitism and intellectualism. I find these two states of being very hard to grasp but also, very hard to communicate to everyone, isn't theater is for everyone? Why doom it to the deadliness of intellectualism and elitism? For me, some of the reading of Brooks was, in fact, dealy. The expectations from this Book as a first article to read in this class has doomed it to be THE BOOK THAT WILL TEACH ME ALL ABOUT THEATER. This the idea that I had for a long time of how academia should teach me. This Book didn't change my life; it made me reflect. I could find similarities to Ideas that I've been carrying in my thought about graphic design. While trying to understand His take on the theater world, I felt closer and far from it as I ever been.


As a graphic designer, I see myself as a director. My work in the last few years was to design books and catalogs for Exhibition (Usually related to a museum or a gallery). A book, for some people, seems to be an ancient medium, deadly. But since I got my first Book, I felt home. I was up for the fight. I saw the potential "planets" each Book can contain as Fuchs describes. Later, as a designer, I learn that I need to come up with a proper explanation for each Book I create. If not for everyone, At list to myself.


My stage is the Book. I have actors: Typography, Grid, and Layout, I have content: Artists works and their writings about it, sometimes others writing about it. So many people and objects to carry and direct. One can suggest that every time I made a book, I created my own company.


As I continued to read Brooks, I felt more comfortable with his ideas about the Immediate theater. I think I see myself more like an Immediate designer. To get there, I practiced so much; I repeated so many things I learned from my masters; I spent hours making what I think is good design.


I mainly found similarities in the process of the creation: At the first stages of a project, I like to open the computer together with the artist and feel his reactions to the decision I am making, its a conversation. The artist response is my oxygen to continue and create the Book.


Some designer will argue that it is hard to work when someone is "breathing on your neck." I see it as another heart making the beat stronger. He (the artist) was the one painting or taking pictures; he must have a truth that I want to hear, reflect, debate, or at list have a conversation. The more time we will spend together, the Book will be less deadly.


There are so many deadly books out there; there are so many traps for the designer to fall. I often ask my self if there is such a thing a good book? When I find them, I know that their power is that they will never be able to tell me why they are so good, this is the power of the excellent Book, its the sums of many decisions that we can't articulate to a list.


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