Whether you attended Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour or took a trip to a Disney park this summer, you may not realize there is an Oregon connection between the two. Michael Curry Design is a creative studio in Scappoose that has crafted puppets, stage pieces and more for a variety of venues. From artist tours to theatrical productions, the creatives at MCD have left their mark on stages and performances not just across the country, but around the world. Michael Curry is the founder, president and owner of MCD. Charles Babbage is the lead art director. They join us to share more on their work.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. There is a workshop in Scappoose that’s had a hand in many of the most watched live spectacles worldwide over the last 30 years. They’ve done Olympic opening and closing ceremonies and Super Bowl halftime shows. They’ve contributed to Vegas extravaganzas, Disney and Universal theme parks, and Taylor Swift’s earthshaking Eras Tour. They’re called Michael Curry Design (MCD). They specialize in huge puppets and evocative stage sets.
Michael Curry is the founder and president of MCD. Charles Babbage is the lead art director. We talked yesterday. I started by asking Michael what he envisioned his art career would be like when he was just starting out.
Michael Curry: I really admired classical fine art. I wanted to be Michelangelo when I was 18. And then when I started studying art, long story short, I wanted to be a painter and a sculptor in galleries and museums. I gave up Michelangelo a few years after I discovered Picasso and then I wanted to become him. So I went to New York in the ‘80s to be a fine artist and to show in galleries – which I did. But by weird circumstance, I discovered and fell into the theater, and it grabbed me for all it’s worth. And I still do fine art, but I am really locked into the practice of live entertainment theater design.
Miller: The story of your big break, which many of our listeners may be familiar with, but probably many don’t know, it’s actually tied to the Halloween Parade. Can you, first of all, just describe what this event is like? And am I wrong … this was in the late ‘80s when this happened for you?
Curry: Yes, ‘86.
Miller: So what was the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village like?
Curry: Well, it’s still amazing. It’s one of the most outward displays of creativity in New York, in the country. And it’s 35,000 people in costume. Very alternative. This was really in its early days, members of Bread and Puppet Theater, a lot of theatrical groups were presenting. I saw it as a non-participant in 1985 and I knew I had to be part of it. I tend to be an overachiever. So I made a very good pterodactyl costume, over the whole year. And it aesthetically still holds up as a piece that I would be proud of today. I entered that parade and I wore that costume for 13 hours – all night long – and had a lot of interest in it. And one of those people who saw it was John Napier, then the world’s leading scenic designer who was doing the Siegfried and Roy magical spectacle in Las Vegas. And he, this dignified British guy, came up to me and stuffed a business card through my little vision screen. The next day, he called me. Long story short, I went there and became involved in three major pieces for that, what was then the country’s probably biggest spectacle. So I went from zero to 60 pretty fast and really succeeded with that show, loved the experience, and formed a company made up of a bunch of other fine artists who weren’t in theater, who weren’t involved in entertainment. And that’s how we formed the company. Really high level sculpture and art aesthetically – we like to think that we’re at the top of the game. But then what the big difference was in theater is the story that was told. The structure of storytelling was really good for me as an artist. Whereas, a fine artist, I was all over the place. So the discipline of theater, storytelling and connecting to an audience in words and music was really important to me. And my visual design really blossomed under those conditions.
Miller: Charles, what about you? What was your path to making art primarily for live experiences of various kinds? Concerts, Olympics shows, amusement parks – a lot of different venues for real people to see real stuff. How did you arrive there?
Charles Babbage: Well, my path was a little different than Michael’s in that I never imagined myself a fine artist and I was always more of just a general maker. I grew up in a very creative but technical household, with a nurse for a mom and an engineer for a dad. But they were always very supportive of art, and I liked sculpting and painting. So as I went, I thought I was going to work in the film industry. I did, right out of high school, for 15 years, prop making, graphic design and things for movies. So I never even considered live entertainment until one day work was a little slow. There was an opening here at MCD and I thought I was going to come in for three months. That turned into almost 17 years and live entertainment turned out to be the thing that I really was looking for.
Miller: Why?
Babbage: Well, there’s some immediacy to it, in a sense. You can do something for a movie. It might be on screen for a second or it might get cut out. And [it] goes by in a flash and nobody maybe pays attention to it, but you create something for live entertainment. It’s there to make a statement. It’s there to spend time with the audience. And I think that’s where I found the most creativity.
Miller: Can you tell us about the first project you worked on at MCD?
Babbage: Yeah, I was used to working on fairly small objects. I came in here and this company is known for very large pieces. And one of the very first things I was tasked with doing was trying to figure out how to mount this 8-ft carbon fiber sphere on top of a parade float. I had never ever even approached anything like that. But I get thrown to the wolves and I just figure out how to solve it. And I did. But yeah, it was very intimidating the first couple of weeks I was here.
Miller: What was the story? Why did you need to put an 8-ft carbon fiber sphere onto a float?
Babbage: Well, we were working on a parade for Disney that was based around the Pixar movies. And there’s a character in one of the “Incredibles” movies. At the end of the first “Incredibles,” [there’s] this omni droid, this big robot that’s a ball for a body with tentacled legs. And the parade float design was really fun. It was an omni droid standing on top of a parade float that looked reminiscent of a city, sort of in an abstract way. This ball is floating up in the air on top of this post, its legs coming down grabbing onto the city. And the engineering of that is something that I’ve never approached before.
Miller: Michael, it reminds me that a lot of what you all do is various kinds of problem-solving, with a story as the ultimate reason for doing it. But there are technical problems that need to be figured out along the way. You make a lion for Katy Perry to ride on in the Super Bowl that’s big enough to make a statement, but small enough to fit into the arena. How do you design sets for Taylor Swift, or whoever, that can be assembled quickly and then disassembled, and put into small packages to go to the next football stadium? What’s a problem that you’re trying to solve right now?
Curry: I must say that we are known for taking risks and never wanting to repeat what we’ve done or others have done. So this is why you have to solve problems because you’re inventing those problems for yourself. I will say fine artists or people that went the path that we did create so many problems for themselves, they’re very good at solving them. What’s really important isn’t to not let the physical engineering and realities get in the way of the story and the concept that was your starting point. So what’s really important to say is that throughout all the engineering and technical challenges, you can’t lose sight of the seed of the idea and make sure that every decision has that. What we often do is we’re working with architects, engineers, people who are extremely technical and empirical. And we have to use language that keeps them understanding the gesture, the emotion, the heart of the story. It’s sometimes very awkward for them and us, but we’ve learned to bridge that gap – and it is a very wide gap.
Miller: Well, what’s an example of that, where there are technical issues that have to be figured out, and there’s a danger that the technical solution could somehow get in the way of the overall project which is telling a particular story?
Curry: A major example of that would be the creation of what we call the Lake of Dreams in Las Vegas at the Wynn Resorts. It’s a very big, multimedia, outdoor environmental show. But we needed to sequester it, control the light and get rid of the visual noise of Las Vegas. So we suggested building a mountain that we do a cove in, and it blocks out the rest of Las Vegas – a very preposterous idea, very large. We did it and it worked perfectly. It was the politics of getting that done, literally changing the landscape and building a mountain covered with pine trees, which do not exist in Nevada, was very challenging. But the reward has been running 17 years. So things like that give you the encouragement to make strong gestures and moves, and make suggestions. Half of our work is actually not in drawing pictures and doing creative things. It is talking groups into funding and allowing us to try an idea, try it out in real time on the public. And we’ve been lucky to be part of many of those advancements in theater and technology – which Charles is the master of. [That’s] the key to most of our innovations today. [It’s] a very fun time to be an artist because we both have our classical techniques. But we also have the innovation, material science, engineering and computer power that we now have. If Michelangelo were alive today, he would be rocking computer-assisted drawing and everything digital.
Miller: Charles, what role does something like 3D printing play in your work process?
Babbage: Well, it used to be a tool … Especially at the very beginning, it was just to be able to visualize in 3D, or in a physical form, an idea that was in the computer, and be able to hold it in your hands and say, “Yeah, that might work.” It might get fabricated in a completely different way, but now 3D printing is the end result. The item with character, the part, is designed in the computer and the 3D-printed piece is the finished puppet. It is not going through an additional molding or casting process, or translation into another material. It is now just going right into a show or into a theme park. And that is a big change. It really creates a lot of efficiencies in going from your concept to a finished product.
Miller: Michael, you said 10 years ago at a TED talk, that we still need to be the pilot when we’re using digital tools and let technology be the passenger. That was before some mind-boggling leaps in computer learning and algorithms. How do you feel about the way that generative AI is already being used by people who make all kinds of stuff and how it’s talked about being used in the future?
Curry: You can imagine how contentious that issue is with humans who do creative things for a living. I’m a big fan. Like I said 10 years ago, we needed to be pilots. I want technology in the hands of the best artists. What often happens with technology, it becomes a novelty much like what Charles was describing about early 3D printing. I want it in the hands of real practitioners with the best ideas, and AI is confusing to the world right now. When I went to painting school in 1976, a very serious painting school, I brought an airbrush with me. The instructor said I was going to ruin painting with that tool. And now it’s just an old ancient tool in the bottom of our tool kit. Things always evolve and are incorporated, in the same way that painters used to grind vegetable matter to make their own paint and their assistants do. And now we have scientific processes of synthetic paints, and it is a growing evolution. The ideas, however, and the artistry, are always the same. We do use AI somewhat for ideation. I don’t trust it yet because it’s early days, but I’m also not afraid that it is going to outmode humans in the creative field. In fact, it’ll be a long time before AI can keep up with Charles Babbage in terms of ideation and thought process that is actually applied to practical thinking. And it’s quite superfluous and colorful. I can spot it in a second. I do challenge some of my colleagues who are generating all of their idea-making on AI only, because it’s generic, and vapid, and very vanilla in terms of idea-making.
Miller: What happens if it gets better? What happens if you can’t tell the difference? The leaps that it’s made just in recent years doesn’t make that question far-fetched.
Curry: What will happen? Well, once again, it’ll be good ideas and there’ll be ideas that aren’t so good. AI will be piloted, as you said earlier, by humans for some time. I’m very curious [about] the day where, automatically, idea-making is generated based on a need. And I can see a scenario where that can be useful. It is really hard to fool me at this point. I do all those studies about what’s a deep fake, what’s not and I can always spot it. I think you learn intuitively to feel that. So it’s not a great answer to your question, but I’m not as worried as some artists who feel that not only are they putting creative people out of work, but it’s adjusting the very psyche of human creativity. And creativity is the factor in human development that allowed us to survive and succeed. So I think it’s a tool that will be an assistant to us but not a replacement.
Miller: Charles, let’s turn to some recent work that the team has done. The company put up a video on Instagram recently about your collaboration with the robotics company Boston Dynamics. Can you describe that project?
Babbage: Sure. That particular one was interesting. It was Boston Dynamics looking for an opportunity to create some fun around their dog-like robot and create a character, a costume, for their robot that they can present to an educational environment, and things like that, to really highlight a positive, “look at what these robots can be.” There’s often very negative views of these robots, and the combination of AI and things like that. But in my view and in Boston Dynamics view, they’re not something to fear. They can be fun, entertaining and helpful. So that costume was really just to try to have fun with the robot platform.
Miller: So, a kind of metal and plastic, robotic quadruped turns into this fluffy, shaggy blue-haired dog.
Babbage: Exactly.
Miller: Is it challenging to create a costume for a robot?
Babbage: As a matter of fact, it’s extraordinarily challenging. It’s as challenging as it is for a human. With a human, you have to be aware of comfort and ergonomics. And things like weight and breathability are all very important for a human costume. It’s equally as important for a robot. Robots need ventilation. You have to be conscious of the weight requirement that that robot can carry. Then, on top of everything else, just the movement with a human, you have to be careful not to restrict movement to get great performance. And with the robot, you have to do the exact same thing. So it’s a lot of the same tool sets that we’ve already been well practiced in and just applying it to a different breed of performer.
Miller: Michael, speaking of performers, a lot of your puppets are designed in a way that intentionally does not hide the humans behind the puppeteers. The audience can see them working. That’s part of the show. What do you think that adds to the experience?
Curry: Today’s audience is very good at multitasking and actually having different levels of techniques used, layered on each other. An audience 40 years ago would probably have been confused by visible puppeteers. I consider puppeteering a performance art and craft. I do believe the audiences enjoy seeing that level of performance as a technique of performance. I also am kind of lazy. I don’t like hiding things in boxes – the days of putting puppeteers out of sight. So as a result, I don’t use puppeteers so much. We use dancers and actors and we train them how to puppeteer. And we do that because they are often the voice of the story. And the audience, because they are seeing these human bodies as sort of shadows manipulating the primary principle, they have to look good, they have to move gracefully. So dancers count music. They already work in tandem. They are very good at working in ensembles. And I find that the audience loves the magic trick of being fooled to look at the mouth of the puppet. An animal puppet, for instance, I can have three bodies around it. But everybody can manage to throw the attention of the audience to the object and forget the puppeteers. And it’s a wonderful, kind of delicious moment where you, as an audience – and this happens multiple times when you’re seeing one of our shows – you sort of fall into the trance of the magic trick. Then you get out of it, you’re objective, and you say, “oh, these manipulators are there visibly,” but then you’re sucked back into that beautiful magic of believing and participating. So you hear a lot about interactive experiential art and immersive pieces. I believe that work like this is rather immersive because it gets you to engage in the little imaginative trick that you’re playing on the audience. And so it’s a wonderful duality. It’s almost like a childlike belief of a story that I can put on adults.
Miller: Charles, what do you see as the emotional difference, broadly, between the kinds of physical work – that you, Michael and the team are creating for live performances – and digital stuff, [like] screens, led screens, projections, that are very common at performances these days?
Babbage: Well, I think if you have a physical object in front of you, and not just an object, but a character moving in front of you coming to life and conveying the emotion of the story, it can never be beat by just something on the screen. And certainly, I love movies. You can be emotionally affected by performance, but it’s performance and having it live in front of you – I actually think there’s sometimes a stronger reaction to it. I certainly have it for myself when I go to a live theater event to see a theatrical play versus a movie. Sometimes the emotion that I’m feeling off that stage is much stronger than you can get through a screen. And it’s just because there’s a live entity in front of you conveying that. I think everybody feels that.
Miller: Michael, as you were talking earlier about your career, you grew up here, you went to New York to make it. That actually happened and you did spend more time in New York. But then you and your family decided to come back to Oregon. Your studio is in Scappoose. You’re a Portlander, you’re an Oregonian. How do you think Portland and Oregon, or Scappoose for that matter, has infiltrated its way into your art?
Curry: Well, the quality of life and the characteristics of Oregon are deeply ingrained in me. We even make decisions that would kind of be based on the environment out here. I did it for quality of life and to raise a family. I found, as opposed to New York and LA where I’ve had studios [where] there’s a more revolving door of staff, here in Oregon, our average employee stays with us for decades and we developed this very unique family kind of formula. We’re considered sort of an old-world business model in a very modernistic technological world.
Here’s the thing about Portland and Oregon – the rest of the world thinks we’re a highly creative, innovative society. I don’t know how they think this, but we have this reputation as being creative. Frankly, I don’t know that we did much to deserve it, but we have it. And I love that. My fancy New York clients think I have nothing else to do out here in Oregon but work on their projects. And when they come out here, they’re in a heightened state of … they just think this is very special. I do too, of course. But with LAIKA and the stop motion industry out here, all of it sort of points back to the early days of Will Vinton and Gus Van Sant. I was here during those Bohemian days of Portland. And I can see it really resurrecting itself as a creative city now. Really, in terms of design advertising agencies like Nike, it’s an amazing community now. I’m glad I came back. And we’re really proud to be a kind of pivotal player in the creative scene out here, and somewhat a spokesperson for live theater. Who would have thought you could be doing what is arguably the world’s best puppets in Scappoose, Oregon?
Miller: Michael Curry and Charles Babbage, thanks very much.
Curry: Thank you.
Miller: Michael Curry is the founder and president of MCD. Charles Babbage is the lead art director.
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