a living-room shot would look like: “The
guy said, ‘Great,’ and that was pretty much
it.” (Room Rater score: a coveted 10.)
Richard Stengel, an MSNBC contrib-
utor who was an Under-Secretary of
State for Barack Obama, said that he re-
ceived no advice “other than a producer
telling me to have my computer higher.”
(Low angles lead to shots that are dom-
inated by ceilings, nostrils, and saggy
chins, as any Zoom-conference partici-
pant will attest.) Stengel’s main concerns:
“What books are showing? Where’s the
dog at?” (Room Rater score: 9.) Anne-
Marie Green, an anchor for “CBS Morn-
ing News” and CBSN, set up her home
studio in a bland spare bedroom. The
one eccentric note is a lamp she bought
on Etsy, the base of which looks like a
stack of teapots; if you wanted to be nice,
you might say it has an “Alice in Won-
derland” vibe. Green left it in her shot
as “a little indication that I’m more than
just a talking head.” (Room Rater, please
weigh in here.)
Brangham has experienced the highs
and the lows of viewer intimacy. Two of
his three cats, an orange tabby named
Pepper and a tan-and-black tabby named
Tiki, have become Internet celebrities,
thanks to their appearances napping on
the couch. His curtains are another story.
A Times piece on “décor peeping” quoted
an interior designer named Elaine Griffin
berating them. Why, she asked, “does he
have the $19.99 panels from Bed, Bath &
Beyond? Grommet curtains are the drap-
ery equivalent of a No. 1 with fries.”
Brangham stood his ground, noting that
grommet curtains are especially func-
tional when quick lighting adjustments
are needed on camera. “I didn’t design
my home to be on air,” he added. “But
then a pandemic happened.”
—Bruce Handy
1
SKETCHPAD
NOTPLAYING
1
MOTHEROFINVENTIONDEPT.
GIGECONOMY
O
n a recent sunny afternoon, the
experimental playwright Sibyl
Kempson was on a porch in Margaret-
ville, New York, in the Catskills, work-
ing a new gig: teaching, via FaceTime, a
course called “Foraging for Edible & Me-
dicinal Plants.” Kempson was framed by
puffy clouds, blue sky, and a bit of wooden
rocking chair. She wore a fuzzy green hat.
“It’s a great time to learn something!” she
said. Her foraging course is available on
HireArtists.org, a site created to help art-
ists weather the financial upheaval of
COVID-19. There, one can hire artists for
lessons in, say, the ukulele, Korean, cre-
ative coding, or the use of epoxy resin.
“We’re all giggers and freelancers,” Kemp-
son said. “Stuff got cancelled, and it’s,
like, tough cookies.” Cancellation had
happened to her—in German, no less. “I
was supposed to be in Austria right now,
directing an Ibsen adaptation that I
wrote,” she said. She stood up. “Do you
want to look at some plants?”
A wild area behind the house was
coming into spring—green shoots pok-
ing through dead leaves. “I’m going to
start with one very familiar friend that
is all over New York: the white pine,”
she said, in the focussed tone of a pro-
fessor. (Kempson also teaches theatre at
Sarah Lawrence.) She propped up her
phone and presented a cluster of dried
needles to the camera. “These are good
for right now: they’ve got a ton of vita-
min C, many times higher than citrus
fruits,” she said. “Just take the leaves right
off and boil them, for a tea.” She found
some wood-ear mushrooms—gelatinous,
good for the immune system, and tasty
when thrown into a soba-noodle soup—
and then came across some tufts of wild
garlic mustard. She breathed in, appre-
ciatively. “I wish you were here to smell
it,” she told her pupil. “You’ll find this
everywhere—it grows out of the side-
walks in Manhattan, and in Tompkins
Square Park.” She had once livened up
an Easter turkey breast with wild garlic
mustard and oniongrass: “Everybody
went crazy.” She held up a small sprig
of cleavers, “a little charmer,” good for
allergy symptoms, and “in the mint fam-
ily, I think.” (It’s in the coffee family.)
Kempson, who runs a theatre com-
pany she founded, called 7 Daughters
of Eve, lived in New York City for many
years and now lives in Newburgh; the
Catskills house belongs to a friend. “Na-
ture is nonnegotiable for me,” Kempson
said. She learned foraging a few years
ago, at a wilderness-survival-skills course
at the Tracker School, in the New Jer-
sey Pine Barrens. “It changed my whole
