BY ANNA STALTARI ’28
Brian Scott is a lighting designer who is currently working as the interim Technical Director for
Skidmore Theater. This semester, he has played a large role in specifically, the production of Minor Character: Six Translations of Uncle Vanya at the Same Time. Skidmore Theater Living Newsletter staff writer Anna Staltari ’28 had the pleasure of sitting down with Brian to discuss his work on this show in an interview featured below.
Anna Staltari (AS): To start, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your background?
Brian Scott (BS): I don’t know how I got into theater, I think I always was. I had walk-on parts as a kid, and things that my mother was working on, and it just kind of stuck. It’s been the thing I’ve done my
whole life and while I’ve done other things in between, that was the consistent. I’ve been doing this for 45 years professionally. I’ve done shows in European opera houses and dinner theaters in Florida, I’ve done concerts, operas, ballets, and all kinds of different theater. I have a theater company in Austin Texas called the Rude Mechs that I’ve been with for 25 years and I was with SITI Company (New York, NY) for almost 30 years, and before that, was at Actors Theatre of Louisville, where I’d light shop and design occasionally. In terms of education, I was in my final collegiate year when I decided to move back to Florida and work at Disney. I did that and then I ended up doing dinner theater at this horse show in Orlando where the horses would jump and do cabrioles, and you could order prime rib. And then that kind of just led to a journey across the U.S., and the world, and led me to some work with Laurie Anderson and now also with Kronos Quartet—I’m touring with them—so it’s a mixed bag!
AS: For those who don’t know, what are you currently working on here at Skidmore?
BS: I’m currently working on Minor Character and just making sure everybody has what they
need. I just came off a non-Skidmore project (an opening of Carousel with Anne Bogart in
Boston), so I’m just kind of jumping back in and making sure we get set, lights, sound
everything up and ready to go for Sunday.
AS: What has your creative and collaborative process been like as a part of the production team
of Minor Character?
BS: Well, because I’m not designing, my direct part of the collaboration is really just making
sure we’re all on the same page in terms of what is possible. I don’t know enough about the show
yet because I’ve been focused on the nuts-and-bolts part of it and starting Sunday, that’s when I
get to learn. I’ll kind of be the first audience in the room. But it’s a project I’ve heard about
before and I have done a lot of Chekhov in the 40+ years, so I’m excited what their process is
going to be like as a collective.
AS: What has been your favorite part about working here at Skidmore and the Minor Character
process?
BS: Well, I have a long history here with SITI—almost 30 summers of coming here and working with Special Program students so a lot of my interest in being here was that history and missing it since SITI closed or sort of “sunsetted” itself on its 30th year. I haven’t been up here [since then], and it was a lot of years, and a lot of my daughter’s life spent here during the summers. Skidmore is interesting, it’s a great program. I spend a lot of time in college settings and it’s definitely one of the programs that I’ve come across in all that time that is much more integrative in terms of the students and how they’re taught to think. I designed a show here years ago with Carolyn Anderson and it was this show where all the freshman of all fields studied a specific thing and the piece that we did was also a topic of conversation in the sciences and in the art building and music and everywhere. That kind of holistic view of everything is something I think is spectacular, and it should be that math is taught with poetry in mind and music in mind as it was 150 years ago. Scientists who are the muse of arts, and the arts who are the muse of scientists—I think they should be in conversation because they’re dreaming up what starts as fiction and often becomes a reality. I think that element of the system here at Skidmore makes for deeper thinking, stronger decision making, and clarity. A lot of the programs I spend time in don’t do that and everything is very siloed and so there is little conversation outside of the theater building. I think that all the things I have learned since I left college, I have learned because of conversations that have been from a theatrical need or need for understanding and it went to a neurosurgeon, or it went to a scientist in a field that was impactful in terms of process. I think Skidmore got that right and I hope it still continues to do that.
AS: Do you have any advice for aspiring “makers of theater”?
BS: Make theater bigger than it is.
Thank you so much to Brian for his time speaking with the newsletter about his collaboration on
Minor Character: Six Translations of Uncle Vanya at the Same Time!
Photos provided by Brian Scott
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Anna Staltari ’28 is a staff writer for the Skidmore Theater Living Newsletter