Conrad Bender

By Deni Kasrel

Conrad Bender has been involved in dance and theater programs throughout the city, in places such as the Arts Bank, Painted Bride Art Center and Movement Theatre International. Yet odds are his name hardly rings a bell with those who frequent this circuit. That's because Bender is a behind-the-scenes guy — working as technical director and lighting designer. As such, he prefers to throw the spotlight on others rather than cast it on himself.

His talents have been called upon by numerous local choreographers and dance ensembles, including Steve Kriekhaus, Karen Bamonte, Terry Beck, Asimina Chremos, Elizabeth Smullens and Group Motion.

This Thursday through Saturday, November 16-18, at the Arts Bank, Conrad's work is seen in conjunction with the premier of SCRAP Performance Group, a collaborative comprised of dance theater creators Eric Schoefer, Myra Bazell, Alya Howe, Kathryn Livingston and Darla Stanley. The show couples bold, physical movement with surreal images — of manic chain saws, Celtic sword jigs, and an angel obsessed with doing the laundry. Bender says this project is his most memorable to date.

My personal recollection of tech crew is from high school. They were always guys with dirty hair who wore ratty jeans, tye-dye t-shirts and who made out with girls backstage. Is that part of your background?

I think that's somewhat typical of those who get involved in tech crew in high school, but I wasn't involved in it then. I was more interested in being on stage at that time in my life. I was in a lot of productions as an actor. My experience with technical design started in college, and the people who got into it then weren't the dirty-hair, kissing-behind-the-scenes types. We were all self-motivated people who wanted to work with our hands to create things.

Your college degree is in language and linguistics. How did you get from that to a career in theater and lighting design?

I was always interested in pursuing a career in the theater but I wasn't interested in getting a degree in theater from Swarthmore. I had some disagreements with the program.

Getting into set design was just something that happened. I had worked a lot in carpentry so I had those skills, and when I got to Swarthmore, I hooked up with people who were interested in staging student productions. I found I enjoyed the technical aspects as well as doing the construction and I just ended up getting into lighting.

How do you connect with an artist's vision?

It varies. A lot of choreographers have very specific ideas and others are vague. The way I always approach it is to come to a couple rehearsals ahead of time and then discuss with them what their goals are with the visual element of the piece — what they're striving for emotionally, thematically, and if that wants to be accentuated with the lighting, or not. My expression is always a reflection of their goals.

Of all the jobs you've done which was the most fun?

In recent memory it was the Asimina Chremos and Liz Smullens concert at the Arts Bank this past spring. The quality of their work is very tongue-in-cheek and the presentation was kind of cynical. It was fun to be more creative since the lighting for that was sort of off-the-wall. You could play things up in different ways and take it beyond where you would usually go.

Let's discuss the upcoming SCRAP show. I hear the set is going to be unusual.

In dance it's not as common to have large physical structures as part of your space. Usually you dance on the floor and little else. In this instance the scope of the space is rather large so it was necessary to add more elements.

Can you elaborate?

One section of the piece originated with Myra... She said, "I want something that we can climb on and run and splat up against and do partnering and lifts on." We talked about the physical nature of it, she gave me an idea of the kind of material they needed for it to work, and I drew up a plan based on that. The way the pipes are organized into a grid pattern is me just playing around with the computer.

One of Eric's ideas is there would be sense of cubicles where people could have contained space and individual sections. That was the inspiration for the scaffolding and the fact that it's on different levels creates a lot of possibilities for where the focus can be. It's an idea of containment and jail cell imagery.

How is SCRAP's philosophical intent reflected in the stage set?

The whole piece is centered around dreamscape images. There's also a lot of raw urban energy as well as the physicality. The choice of scaffolding to create the cubicles as well as the choice of steel to make the wall grid reflects that kind of energy. And in the idiosyncrasy of the dream state there's these surreal random objects, like a suspended washing machine. There's an ornate pillar that Kat does a solo on and other non-sequitur pieces that bring the dream quality into it, and those qualities will be accentuated by the way it's lit.

What kind of reaction are you hoping to get from the audience? A big "wow" or what?

I've struggled with that. A lot of what's going on in this could border on a kind of circus oriented reaction. Eric and Darla were talking about her maybe dancing on the ceiling. Eric was saying, "Wouldn't it be great if you didn't see how she was attached?"

My reaction to that is I don't think this concert is about spectacle. I don't think it's about making people wonder "Wow! How did they do that?" For me, at this point, it's about finding different ways to use physical space. And if Darla's on the ceiling I think everybody ought to know how she's up there... We'll have to see how it works out. That's yet to be decided.