WEEK 7- Jackie Gonzalez-ALL THAT GLISTENS IS NOT GOLD, Y'ALL!

This week's post might be a little all over the place, please bare with me as I delve into my weird relationship with Shakespeare as well as what I think it means to be a designer, sort of. 

I cannot check off the "Obsessed with Shakespeare" box on my theatre kid card, in fact I like to stay away from Shakespeare all together. I have grown a bit tired of hearing the same things over and over to the point that it has become an echo chamber before you finish saying the playwright's name. The closest "Shakespearean" photo I have is of myself and my theatre buddies at my last community college, trying on costumes in the costume closet on the last day of instruction. It was really fun, and my friend Deisy, tried on a very cool Shakespearean coat/top costume piece. 

On the contrary to the photos above, I have never worked on a Shakespeare production, so I do not have any photos of anything related to this topic. Although, I can point you to one of the most interesting productions of Twelfth Night which is the one that the National Theatre in the UK put on. The National Theatre used post a new play every Tuesday during the first part of quarantine which was amazing! I only got to see an hour of this play before I had to go on and work on an essay that took me a heck of a long time to write. The designers went bezerk with the design of this play and I think it all looks so cool! The stage rotated clockwise and the set was a cross section of a pyramid. There was also a small pool hidden beneath the floor boards. The scenic designer in me is flabbergasted, and the second photo revealing the very high and angled, lighting positions above astounds me. Here are some quick photos I got on the internet. 

Now, back to the main event of this post. I recently found out that one of my favorite quotes actually comes from a line in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. That being said, I then realized that this play is one of Shakespeare's problematic works, which is not great, and I wanted to recognize that. 

The quote "All that glistens is not gold", also known as the classic version of "All that glitters is not gold" is one that is important to me. It reminds us that something that looks to be perfect, and makes our eyes glitter so much to the point where we want it, is not always what turns out to be. There have been a numerous amount of times where I thought that once I had something that I really wanted did not end up fixing all of my problems. Everything stayed the same or got hilariously worse. It's false gold, don't be fooled. As a design student who has never been a lead design position, I hold it against myself as well as my abilities. It disappoints my ticking time bomb of a career timeline in my head. I guess, in my mind, that having a fancy job title is something that I think will be a chance to prove that I belong and that I am not a phony who merely thinks that she knows design. When I talk about this with my family, they bring up that I have to stop with this weird, stressful timeline I have engrained in my head, and that I have to take a step back and really think about what will make me happy and allow me to feel successful/that I have made it. 

When I break down this expectation to its simple terms, the thought that all will be fixed if I got a lead position, does not make sense. It brings me back to, "All that glistens is not gold" and it is selfish to only think about myself while in a lead design position because design is such a collaborative process and true designers cannot think about JUST themselves and/or their plans only. In reality, everything is alright and I am happy to help out with production in any way. When we take away these titles, it is all comes down to the exchange and execution of ideas that ends up getting warped and put in a hierarchy. The title is not gold, the real 24 karat magic that I want is working in design in any way that I can whether that be just helping out with painting, swapping out gels, shopping for props, or being a second pair of eyes to catch something the designer did not see, etc. 

This blog is a wild ride, but I hope it makes sense.