Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Are You Pinterested, Yet?


I was clicking around the Broadway Green Alliance website – you know, my usual source of entertainment, sometimes augmented by Buffy the Vampire Slayer binge sessions – and I discovered they had a Pinterest account. For those of you who don’t know what Pinterest is, the site describes itself as “a tool for collecting and organizing the things you love;” you grab your favorite links and photos from the internet and “pin” them to a “board,” creating a kind of virtual rock collection or (for the less-organized among us) e-junk drawer of cool, often-creative ideas. Take a look.

But back to BGA. I was intrigued by the idea that such a well-known and respected group would publicize that they have an account on a site I normally associate with collages of cupcake recipes, so I took a look. There’s some cool stuff on there – as the name “BGA Crafts” implies, Broadway Green Alliance’s board is full of little projects you can do out of recyclable materials. Items like a tie wreath or a pop tab bracelet encourage the reuse of scraps that would otherwise end up in a landfill. 

Stylin'.

That’s pretty cool. But as I browsed further, I discovered a wide range of Pinterest boards devoted to landscape design - ideas that might be easily and/or creatively adapted to an ecofriendly stage to great effect.

There’s something very theatrical about landscape design. You’re creating a space with certain potential: a flower garden with a bench where one might sit on a sunny day; a kid’s playhouse twined with ivy to soften the harsh lines of a suburban backyard. A designed space - say a tree, front and center - evokes a scene, whether it’s a 2007 interpretation of the opera Falstaff in Metz, France (below) or someone’s backyard “sanctuary” (also below). The essential difference is that a landscape designer sets a scene for real people, and a scene designer creates it for characters.

Oh, sure, the guy with the antlers is a bit of a tipoff, but don't they both have a little theater magic?

So there’s a lot of overlap, particularly for plays set in the outdoors, or, dare I say it, outdoor theater (a personal fascination of mine). This is what makes Pinterest an interesting tool for theater artists. Pinterest may not be the go-to spot for set designers or any professional artist with stakes in keeping their creativity a sellable commodity. However, it and other social-media-based sites like it (cough Tumblr cough) are full of amateurs excited to share their landscaping ideas. Often, we can take lessons in resourcefulness and sustainability from the designs of these non-designers. We might even be able to use them onstage.

Take a look at these ideas I found uploaded widely across Pinterest, and contemplate the awe-inspiring creative power of thousands of landscape artists, homeowners, and art enthusiasts, armed with cameras and internet access, contributing their creativity to the world at large, and incidentally creating tools for sustainable stage designs. Whether you’re more into the small projects “BGA Crafts” provides, or are the type to contemplate the crossovers between real and “dramatic” scenebuilding, Pinterest users offer ways to make the creation more environmentally-friendly - one pin at a time.

(A Selection of) Green Design Ideas from Pinterest



An old bodice and hoop skirt adapted to be a “garden” – wouldn’t it be interesting to see it onstage in a production of The Magic Tower by Tennessee Williams, a play about a couple with dreams of making a hovel a lovers’ paradise? (http://pinterest.com/pin/65372632063568450/)




Path stones painted with glow-in-the-dark paint – pavers by day, yellow brick road in a trippy staging of The Wizard of Oz by night? (http://pinterest.com/pin/353532639468973455/)




 A little pergola with living vines “nice with a Tudor home” – think it might also be a nice, romantic, outdoor backdrop for a summer production of Anne of the Thousand Days by Maxwell Anderson? (http://pinterest.com/pin/26880928998019790/)



They say French-inspired garden, so why do an upcycled barn door and trees in pots say to me Man of La Mancha? (Honestly, tell me, I have no idea.)


If you have any ideas to add, I’m the proud repinner of the glowing rocks above. Add me. Either way, happy designing!

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