The Stage as a Dangerous Machine

This reading chronicles the work of George Tsypin, and talks about how steel is his favorite material to use.
The reason why his designs are known as dangerous, is because people can fall through gaps and openings, or fall off of platforms. Also, his designs have no sense of scale, so the like or dislike of the design is up to the viewer. Tsypin received his MFA for Design from New York University in 1984 at the age of 30. Tsypin came up with the idea of a Highway going nowhere suspended above the thrust stage inside of the Guthrie theatre. He made it appear to come from a blazing sunset. I was curious to see what that looked like, so I did some surfing and found the work he did on the Flying Dutchman. Even from a distant photo, it looks dangerous. I would not like to fall off of one of these things. Another question that keeps coming up is how did the actor on the top platform get up there?Another thing that stood out in the reading is on page 213 where with Tsypin immigrated to the country. The idea is that his view of America is separate than people who are natives, and only tourists can truly experience a place. I disagree because I think that if you are a native, you may take all of the things you have for granted, but you get a clear view of how much you do have, when you see what people do not have. For example, every time I watch a documentary of children starving in Africa, or of sweatshops where people work for beans every day, I am grateful that I do not have to live that lifestyle. To them, the trials and tribulations that they deal with on a daily is normal life. They see it as work harder to support their families. Worldwide view, not challenging view just because you immigrated to America. There is no difference, land is land, and we make the biggest deal over race, a social construct that should not even exist in our society anymore. Most of the people that live in America are immigrants anyway. Tsypin creates monuments in plays and musicals that he works on to evoke memory in the viewer. This sets him apart from other designers because he takes time to make and record his work, unlike most others. This man did work on more than just the theater, he did operas, ballet sculptures and he was even on MTV for his work on operas. I like when he made an identification with the elements, with steel being the earth, and glass representing the air. I found these exciting, because the average person would not make the same representations. To me, it seemed the same as looking at a picture of an elephant and showing it to someone else, and asking them what it is. They will say it’s an elephant. Not true, the picture is a representation. The photograph is used to represent the elephant, instead of having a natural elephant.