As a faculty member whose courses require students to build and make (scale models of) sets, you're among the most 'hands-on' instructors at Trinity -- how has COVID forced you to reexamine your courses in design and creativity?

Over the summer, I considered revising my Scene Design course projects to be 100% digital through the use of 3D visualization software. But at the end of the day, I decided against that. A purely digital creative world can be exhausting. I felt it was important for my students, especially those learning remotely, to be able to explore stage design with physical materials and tools in their hands rather than trying to absorb three-dimensional ideas through a two-dimensional screen. In class, we are building very crude scale models of our stage designs out of cardboard and paper so that we can objectively observe our ideas in tangible space and then allow them to evolve through revisions and refinements. So I shipped each student a kit containing the model building tools and materials needed for the entire semester. What we typically do in our design studio classroom is now being accomplished in a bunch of mini, personal design studios spread from San Antonio all the way to Hanoi.

Thanks to the even more digital world we currently live in, you have been able to invite major set designers—like Tony Award winner Beowulf Boritt—to speak to your Scene Design class. What are the benefits of reaching beyond the walls of the classroom to your wider contacts in the professional community?

Theatre is one of the most collaborative art forms in existence. In terms of design, it’s less about developing a signature aesthetic and more about discovering a creative process that you can bring to the table with a different group of collaborators for every show. There are benchmarks in the scene design process that can be taught. But ultimately the students have to discover their own creative process. Bringing in other professional designers exposes students to a variety of approaches and backgrounds which, in turn, broadens their scope of thinking. Not to mention, it’s very inspiring to students to hear Broadway designers talk about how they too were once students just like them. While we study some of the late masters, having face to face discussions with living masters is a priceless experience.

You have recently signed up for the Collaborative’s Maker Institute, which will teach instructors to use some of the machines in the Makerspace in hopes that they will incorporate the skills they learned into their curricula. Do you already have some assignments in mind for your students to use the Makerspace? What do you hope to teach your students through our Institute?

Each of the design areas I teach (Scenic Design, Exhibit Design, and Themed Entertainment) revolve around the human experience of being in or interacting with 3-dimensional ideas. Understanding how to visualize an idea in 3D is an imperative step in designing a human experience. While I consider computer visualization software a very powerful tool, ideas viewed on a flat computer screen can never truly be 3-Dimensional. Nothing beats being able to touch, mark up, point to, add pieces to a tangible physical model when it comes to developing an idea. I have many projects in mind, but my main goal is to arm my students with the powerful tools that are available to us in the Makerspace so that they can break away from the computer screen and enter into the physical realm with their creative ideas. One example would be to have them build a shadow box that acts as the physical embodiment of a poem such as the epitaphs in Edgar Lee Masters Spoon River Anthology.

How do your two professions, professor and scene designer, inform one another?

Becoming a professor at Trinity has challenged me to articulate and verbalize concepts that have been intuitive to me for so many years as a freelance designer. In doing so, I have discovered new ways of thinking and talking about my creative process that I may have previously disregarded. My professional design work has benefited immensely because of these further developed articulation skills. In turn, when I am working on a professional project, I now find myself constantly looking for ways to incorporate the project into my classroom as a learning example and potentially even providing students with the opportunity to work on the project first hand. Recently, I implemented a new blog accessible to Trinity students enrolled in my classes titled What’s Professor Neale Up to Now? This is a place where I post updates of my professional work so that students can follow along, providing them an inside look to the step by step design process that is often off limits to the public.