[OAS NODE #1]: [TONIGHT!][Jeff Sugg: "Digitizing Theater"]

Jeff SuggOccupational Art School Node 1 at Bat Haus is honored to present Jeff Sugg: artist, theatrical projectionist, designer [+] on the topic of "Digitizing Theater," Wednesday, August 22 from 7-9PM. Tonight's discussion is the first OASN1@BH class session in our Fall 2012 course. 

[JEFF SUGG'S BIO]:

Jeff Sugg is a New York based artist, designer, and technical advisor. He is a co-founding member of the performance group, Accinosco, with Cynthia Hopkins and Jim Findlay and has co-designed their two critically acclaimed pieces, Accidental Nostalgia and Must Don't Whip 'Um. Other theater designs include: 33 Variations (projections: Arena Stage, La Jolla Playhouse), The Slugbearers of Kayrol Island (co-set & projections: The Vineyard Theater),¡El Conquistador! (lights: New York Theater Workshop), The Thomashefsky Project & Let Them Eat Cake/Of Thee I Sing (projections: San Francisco Symphony), Trece Días (sets & projections: San Francisco Mime Troupe) He has also worked as designer for multiple works with theater companies including: The Colllapsable Giraffe, Pig Iron Theater Company, DASS Dance, Transmission Projects. Music design: Natalie Cole (lights), and Natalie Merchant (lights).

In addition to his work as a designer, Mr. Sugg is regarded as a premiere technical consultant and system designer. Some credits include: The Wooster Group (technical artist), Laurie Anderson (video system design), Richard Foreman (video system design), Mikel Rouse (video system design), GAle GAtes et al. (effects designer/engineer), and The Baseball Music Project (video system design). Mr. Sugg has also taught Media and Technology at Swarthmore College. He has led several workshop/intensive courses in media technology at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), Rude Mechanicals Theater Company, and others.

For his work on Must Don’t Whip ‘Um, Mr. Sugg received a 2007 Bessie Award and was nominated for a 2007 Hewes Design Award. He was also nominated for a 2007 Hewes Design Award for his work on ¡El Conquistador!.

For his work on The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, he received a 2008 Henry Hewes Award, 2008 Obie, and a 2008 Lucille Lortel Award.

A Jeff's-eye view of the stage.

[PROPOSITIONS]:

1. If drama is the lens through which humanity views itself, how will we see ourselves when that vision is mediated via networked computer arrays? Will theater inevitably become mechanized? 
2. How can or will acting, directing, scripting, blocking, audience interactivity and experience, etc., be affected by new media's intervention in the dramatic sphere?
3. Is there an emergent theater appearing or promised, driven, by the intervention of digital tools and techniques?
4. What does this phenomenon, the digital theater, mean for the economics of theatrical production?
5. How is movement on stage, and the dramatic imagination, adapting to 01 conditions?

One of the shows Jeff worked on.We'll be continuing a discussion started earlier this summer when OAS Co-organizer Paul McLean visited Jeff at St. James Theater to view a tech rehearsal for Bring It On - The Musical, while Jeff was working. We'll be talking about how the computer has shaped new theater practices and hierarchies.