Previously in this column: The members of Bright Alchemy Theatre, a very young devised theatre company based in Washington, DC, have spent the last nine months working on its new project which began with the question: Why do we as a species feel the need to tell stories about our own destruction? This weekend, for three PWYC performances, the company will test-drive its new play in front of an audience.

The beginning of production is when devised theatre starts to get weird. For me, at least. It’s like changing gears. In different cars. While juggling. A group of theatre artists who had, until now, simply been friends chatting in somebody’s living room congeal into more traditional roles. Actors are learning lines for roles they helped create. One deviser who has been with us from the start of the conversation takes on the role as director. Another becomes assistant director/stage manager. And the playwright starts letting the text go and takes on the role of producer. There is a brief amount of awkward negotiation that ensues as we all settle into the mechanics of rehearsal.

There are also the usual roadbumps. One actor has an unavoidable conflict arise and has to drop out, and we have to bring in someone who wasn’t there for the devising process, but who is enthusiastic and a great fit. The composer who has worked with us since the first show we did gets a job in Austin, but leaves us in the hands of another composer who is doing incredible work. We have to scramble to find a lighting designer, but acquire a fantastic one, who happens to have a day job at NASA (really appropriate considering the content of the play).

And a reading at the Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival goes over great and a review of it sparks a debate about the role of critics in developing work.

All this in preparation for a three-performance workshop production. Think of it as a rough-draft production of the play. We test drive it (fully teched, everyone off-book), and elicit frank, honest feedback from the audience. That feedback will be taken into account, along with everything else we learned in the production process, when revising the show for a full run next year.

Yes, it’s a lot of work. And, yes, it is worth it. In my experience, having time in the space to experiment with design elements, and then seeing those elements in production can add whole new layers of understanding. Also, audiences can see things in your play that not only didn’t you see, but are incapable of seeing, with the entire company being close to the material.

It helps that this time we have funding and a really wonderful space. Around this time last year, I applied for a residency at the Mead Theatre Lab at Flashpoint and an attached grant from the Cultural Development Corporation’s Creative Communities Fund, both of which I was awarded. Basically, we get two weeks in a small but well-stocked black box near Chinatown in DC and a healthy chunk of change that will allow us to pay all the artists involved.

This was back when we were calling it “The Apocalypse Project” and all we had was a central question: Why do we as a species feel compelled to tell stories of our own annihilation?

That question is still somewhere at the heart of this play, now titled When The Stars Go Out. But it’s a much different piece than what I expected—more intimate, more about one woman’s anxiety than about the collective conscious of the human race.  Oh, we’ve still got some big bad weird. Like zombies and the afterlife and a giant wolf eating the stars. But the horror of all that seems to pale in comparison to one character’s battle with cancer and another who doesn’t know if she’s ready for motherhood.

One of the joys of devised theatre is that, even though I’m in the room from day one, and I’m the one creating most of the written text, the heart of the story is never what I think it’s going to be.

A side note: Sometime early in rehearsal, an actress who is new(ish) to Bright Alchemy tells me how she was explaining our process to another actress who works in devised theatre. The other actress was surprised that there was a playwright attached to this project and asked if that didn’t cause problems as the piece evolved. Our actress said that it wasn’t a problem at all, and that the playwright (me) seemed more than able to get his ego out of the way of the art. This makes me happy and suggests that I’m doing something right. Even if that something right is totally faking being ego-free.

Because this surely isn’t an entirely ego-free process. I mean, come on—it’s theatre. Everyone’s worked hard on this and, in a few day’s time, we’ll get to show it off. So, if you’re in the DC area and want to help shape a new work in process, consider yourself invited. You can find all the info here.

And, if you’re looking for a teaser, here’s the first minute and a half of the play.

Here in Vancouver, as a theatre producer, one of your greatest challenges is simply finding space. We have two major theatre companies, The Vancouver Playhouse and the Arts Club, that own their own theatres, but other than that, the 100-or-so independent theatre companies in the city all are fighting for a piece of the half-dozen theatre spaces in town.

So many have started to think outside the black box. As a publicist, I have been working for a young company, Itsazoo Productions, who specializes in site-specific, promenade-style theatre, mostly in parks, but they have done two productions in parking garages as well.

This summer, I was contracted by The Only Animal, a local indie company, to do publicity for Sea of Sand: A Play on the Beach.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Only Animal is well-known for their site-specific work here in Vancouver. Their last production, Nix: The Theatre of Snow and Ice, which took place during the Cultural Olympiad in Whistler, featured a set made of ice and snow, and the actors entering the stage via slides made of ice.

Tired of freezing their butts off, Co-Artistic Directors Eric Rhys Miller and Kendra Fanconi started dreaming of doing a play in the summer… when it was warm… at the beach. Vancouver is blessed with plentiful and beautiful beaches, so they approached the City and got permission. The play, which is inspired by the concept of memory, has been in development for several years, and has gone through a few incarnations before this final production.

Part radio-play, part film-noir mystery, Sea of Sand follows a trio of characters: a man recovering from amnesia, the wife who doesn’t want him to remember, and a woman who washes up out of the sea, a shadowy figure from their past. Memory and desire are the twin rip tides at work in this lost-and-found story. The play asks the question: what if forgetting is safer than remembering? 

There are certainly unique challenges with producing a play on the beach. They have solar-powered generators to run the computers, big tents for tiring-houses, and there was a lot of experimenting with different kinds of sunscreen. Each of the actors wears a wetsuit under their “costume”, as they spend time in the water as well as on the beach.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Previous versions of the play had the actors mic’ed, but that turned out to be a logistical nightmare. So, to deal with that, Rhys Miller recorded the entire play, in the studio, like a radio play. The actors then speak their lines in sync with, and sometimes out of sync with, the playback, which is underscored by music. This makes it possible for the actors to be very far away (as they sometimes were) or even in the water without missing dialogue.

Add to that the amazing setting, and you have a very unique and highly enjoyable piece of theatre.

Rachel Chavkin, founding artistic director of the TEAM, a devising ensemble, wrote an article on TCG’s blog that asks the question, “What if devised theatre moved from the margins to the mainstream of theatre making?” She makes the case that the slower, cooperative methods involved in a lot of devised work could make for a richer process and a richer end product. At the very least, it would make practitioners realize that there are ways to create other than the traditional 6-week rehearsal process.

I read this about an hour ago. She was the preacher, I was the choir. Hallelujah.

She also talked about the differences between “mainstream” work and devised work, as she sees it. She mentioned how devised work generally does not have a strong central action; design elements carry equal weight with performers; and story sometimes takes a backseat to pure experience.

If you’ve followed my off-and-on blogging of Bright Alchemy Theatre’s current project, you know that our process doesn’t really fit that description. It’s very story-driven; there is a playwright working on crafting most of the text; and we’re always searching for strong central actions, though we don’t always stick to just one.

Because we have a playwright who is (at least so far) only a playwright, and because we have a specific director for each show, does that mean we’re not making devised work?

I’m guessing a few purists would answer, “Yes, that’s exactly what it means.” But most of you would answer, “No, don’t be silly. It’s just a different devising process.”

However, I think my answer would be this: “There’s no such thing as devised work.”

Let me explain, and let me use an odd analogy to do so. Maybe the process of creating a new work is like autism (told you it was odd.). I’ve been thinking a lot about autism recently. I just finished the first draft of a play where one of the two characters has Aspergers. Aspergers is characterized by significant problems socializing, along with repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. These are the same symptoms seen in autistic children, but are much milder. Aspergers was first described in 1944, but it wasn’t standardized as a diagnosis until 50 years later.

What happened in that interim is that physicians realized that autism exists on a spectrum. On one end were the children that most people think of when they hear the word “autistic”—children with severe problems communicating and interacting with the world around them. And on the other end were people with Aspergers, whom some physicians describe as “high-functioning autistic.”

Because these two diagnoses looked so different, nobody thought they existed on a single spectrum until science had better mapped the pathophysiology of the syndrome.

What if new play creation exists on a spectrum? On one end, you have the lone playwright locking her/himself in a room, pounding out a script, and handing it to a theatre that spends 6 weeks rehearsing before opening night. And, on the other, you have ensemble companies like TEAM or the Rude Mechs.

Elsewhere on that spectrum are more playwright-heavy processes like Bright Alchemy’s; interview-style theatre like Laramie Project; and the highly free form work of Charles Mee.

Even near the “traditional” end of the spectrum there are significant differences. There are playwrights who are meticulous in their first drafts and who eschew readings and workshops. And there are playwrights who speed through drafts to get them in the hands of dramaturgs and actors who they use as sounding boards to improve the play.

Just like there are some people pushing for the medical community to do away with the term Aspergers, maybe there should be a similar push to do away with the term “devised.” Maybe thinking of things in terms of “devised” and “traditional”—as if these are two separate, unconnected ideas—actually impedes the conversation about new work creation. And perhaps the goal shouldn’t be simply to get mainstream theatre and audiences to embrace devised work, but to better map the spectrum of the new work creation process. And by doing so demonstrate to everyone that there are not just two ways to make new theatre, but as many processes as there are artists actively creating it.

John Lahr, New Yorker theater critic, wrote a piece on Julie Taymor’s frustration with the process of creating a new theatrical work in the era of instant feedback, Twitter, and focus groups. It’s a great piece, full of historical perspective on the role of audience (that is to say, amateur) criticisms of theater. He rubbed me the wrong way, however, when he generalized his annoyance with those who tweet their opinions. He asserts Twitter users are “crickets, not critics,” spewing a “cultural gas of opinion and vitriol.” And, per Lahr, “the Tweetosphere [sic] has no interest in ambiguity, irony, or careful distinction.” So, I proved him right and vented my spleen in this tweet.

A few people must’ve enjoyed this, because they retweeted it, in the process boosting my Klout score 1 point. And I know why. Snark sells. Especially on Twitter. Or in Lahr’s words, “the glibbest and loudest rule.” This may be why Twitter was the perfect medium for Dan Sinker‘s brilliant, satirical @MayorEmanuel saga. With 140 character limits, Twitter encourages the sort of reductionist, over-confident, unambiguous sound-bite phraseology that I so lament in “serious” public discourse.

I suppose, therefore, Lahr has a point in his critique. But he makes the mistake of conflating the limitations of the medium with the limitations of the users. That’s like blaming Peter Parker for not being able to execute aerial acrobatics without visible guide wires in the theater like he does in the movies. As David Loehr and Brandon Moore said, many who tweet are also long form bloggers, informed content matter experts, well versed in subtlety and irony and all that nonsense.

That doesn’t automatically make us Lahr’s scholarly nor critical peers. I’ll be the first to admit nobody would ever give me a theater critic job at The New Yorker. But we also know that there are far fewer such jobs then there are gifted critics. Many are simply toiling away on blogs and on Twitter, because that’s the outlet available to them, and are frankly not deserving of Lahr’s ignorant judgment.

But I’m not really writing this in defense of amateur critics. The good ones can write better than me and defend themselves. I’m writing this because Lahr’s vision of theater as essentially a one-way communication form (with an indulged peanut gallery giving feedback only through gasps, laughter, jeers or applause) may still be dominant, but is by no means unchallenged.

Devised work is showing that you can, in fact, create art by committee. Though, theater artists have been collaboratively creating art for so long that we shouldn’t be surprised. Lahr writes, ”the essence of great theatre is an expression of the individual voice of the makers,” but he doesn’t acknowledge the oxymoron in his own sentence. What, exactly, is the individual voice of a (plural) group of makers? Scripting and otherwise building a show through ensemble improv is certainly nothing new. Conference panel discussions, which are sort of a less entertaining form of theater, can be shifted and enriched mid-course by a gutsy provocateur. If art can be created by committee, how can we so glibly rule out focus groups? I’m serious.

Why not include and build on the audience’ input, either in development of a piece or during a performance? And I’m not just talking about the mad-lib type suggestions that you might throw out at a Second City review. I’m talking about making the art more relevant to the audience by including them in the creative process. Directly, transparently, without defensiveness or arrogant posturing about the false superiority of the story-teller over the story-tellee.

What could be more hyper-local and intensely relevant to new audiences? What could engender deeper communication and relationship between artist and community? In what better way could theater artists learn more about diverse audiences that we so desperately claim to want to serve? How else can we better hold up a mirror to society?

I’m bone-tired of theater artists and institutions that seem to think they have a monopoly on illuminating the human condition. When we treat theater as one-way communication, why are we surprised when the stories we’re telling don’t lead to a flood of new audience members banging down our doors? Instead of thinking of ourselves as uniquely qualified to tell stories, let’s realize that our unique qualifications are really just to tell stories in a certain WAY, with actors and a live audience. Everybody has stories they want to tell, including (and maybe especially) our potential but untapped audiences. Let’s use our skills to first learn and then share their stories, using our artistic forms. Let’s include them in the process, all but guaranteeing that they will become our collaborator-audience. In the process, we will broaden our own understanding of the humanity around us, which might even make us better artists.

NOTE: There are a few Chicago groups I know who are already doing this, in very different ways. I’d bet there are groups doing this all over the country, though they’re probably not on John Lahr’s radar. And even though these examples are in Chicago, I’ve a feeling even Scott Walters would approve. Further, I’d bet these models are sustainable in ways that some of our traditional theater companies can only dream of.

Barrel of Monkeys produces the hilarious and ever-changing That’s Weird, Grandma! from the texts that come from from writing workshops they run in Chicago Public Schools.

Albany Park Theater Project is an excellent multi-ethnic youth theater ensemble that builds their scripts from the life experiences of residents of Chicago’s diverse Albany Park neighborhood. The actors write and perform stories from their communities, while developing their talents as artists and performers.

Among other initiatives, Storycatchers sends theater and musical artists into a juvenile women’s correctional facility to help the young women perform their stories through scene work, poems, and song.

Companies like these give me great hope for the future of theater in an increasingly multicultural, networked society.

This Saturday, we’re hosting a convening on artistic excellence at FoolsFURY.

This convening arises from a belief that, as a field, we have serious difficulty having useful (and sometimes hard) conversations about the quality/excellence of each other’s work. We do this fine, at the bar, without the artists present. But how can we have more useful and constructive conversations?

We need to improve the quality of our work. We make constant demands of audiences, of funders, and more. To have strong arguments for the worthiness of the time and money of these various constituencies, we need to raise the bar. And to do so, we need as a first step to be able to talk about quality: What is excellence? And how can we strive for it? How can we have better conversations to encourage and inspire one another to aim higher?

You can join this conversation by watching the convening live, embedded here or directly at the New Play TV page at Livestream, and by following the hashtag #furyfest and our Twitter account, @FoolsFURY.

We’ll be taking questions from Twitter and asking the conference participants to address them. If you’re in the Bay Area, buy a ticket and join us in person! Expected speakers include:

Teresa Eyring, executive director, Theatre Communications Group
Morgan Jenness, agent/dramaturg, Abrams Artists Agency
Diane Rodriguez, dir. new play development, Center Theater Group
Lisa Steindler, artistic director, Z Space
Paul Walsh, professor of dramaturgy, Yale University
Kim Whitener, producing director, HERE

The conference will have three sessions for discussion and exploration:

1. Why do we have trouble with discussing quality? And what is the value of talking about it?

There are certainly many reasons as to why we have trouble. Some of those that have come up repeatedly are:

-Lack of consensus on criteria by which to evaluate or assess the quality.
-Question as to whether the artists actually want honest critical feedback.
-Funding and psychological realities – not wanting to cut off relationships with potential collaborators or funders. (Not wanting to get a reputation as a nay-sayer)

Some (possible) historical perspective about criteria: since the advent of Modernism, there has been a lack of criteria or standards with which to judge quality. What are, or might be those standards? To be groundbreaking – to test the boundaries of art, became a criterion in the 60s and 70s. Every thing is subjective now, permeated back from the edges back into the mainstream.

We want to be judged by the criterion we’ve set up within the work. But if the work isn’t very good, often those criterion are not clearly defined.

Are pre-existing criteria necessary? Are they possible? Maybe the call for excellence is the call for a new toolkit of criteria.

If something is truly groundbreaking, (Godot) is it because it allows us to reformulate our criteria? And/or, in the world of contemporary theater, is the fact that it reframes or reshapes our understanding of the theater one of the criteria of excellence?

If work outside that mainstream is going to be judged on its own terms, then we have to get better at articulating the terms. (For example, how do we take in the Growtoski work– which falls short in many ways if we applying “mainstream” expectations to it – and apply a different definition of excellence to it, that accords with what, in fact, they are trying to do?)

2. How to do Better – or What might a better conversation look like?

Perhaps much of the problem lies in the structures we use to discuss and critique – both among artists, and with audiences and works in development.

Let’s not ask the critics to be the sole voices of criticism. Not that they do a good or bad job – but in order to look at a different perspective, let’s ask the practitioners to take on the responsibility of offering criticism. What happens when the responsibility is shifted to the practitioners?

A thought: One of the most common modes of getting feedback is the post-show discussion. But this is not always helpful. All one receives are first perceptions, and this is not always what is useful. The analysis has
not yet taken place. This is often more valuable for the audience – as it gives them a feeling of engagement in the process.

3. The Tension Between Process and Product in Ensemble Theater

What is the experience we are providing for the audience – vs. what is the experience we create for ourselves? Where is there the combination between excellent process and excellent product. There are many angles:– excellence from audience pov – societal pov – makers pov – excellence in terms of the art form (pushing against the boundaries).

What are the criteria here? What are we offering the audience? What are we engaging in ourselves? What are the goals of production here?

Difference between therapy and theater is the outward looking project.

What does that collaborative mode of company-created work add? How is company- created work different from playwright-then-director dominated work (the more traditional/mainstream mode)? How is it differently excellent? How can the conversation around them improve? To some extent this is a question of the value of theorizing a practice. Or least increasing communication and thought around these issues.

More often that not, good theater verifies something it’s audience already knows, rather than bringing out new ideas. Is this preaching to the choir a problem? Or does it have value in creating community, and validating
people’s beliefs.

A performance can be the performance of a process – which could provide audience with the value of a process – interwoven with the aesthetic value of the play.

Finally, these are all just thoughts. Please feel free to disagree, and bring other perspectives to what, I’m sure, will be a series of compelling and fruitful conversations.

Previously in this column:

Bright Alchemy Theatre, a very young company devoted to the creation of devised work, decides to begin work on a narrative and thematic sequel to A Cre@tion Story for Naomi, which explored the world’s creation myths. We began this new process with a question: Why do we feel the need to tell stories of our own destruction? Over the last few months we have explored various apocalypse stories, blue skied ways to create zombies, and planned our own funeral. And I’ve blogged the whole process here on 2amtheatre.

So by now some of you might be thinking, “Yes, this devising process is all well and good, but when do we get around to the theatre part?”

Soon. Much sooner than I thought, actually. And if that sentence sounds ominous, I don’t really mean it to be so. It’s my deadline-fear showing. Back in October, before we had meeting one on this project—before we’d even begun rehearsals for our previous production—I applied for Bright Alchemy to be a participant in the Mead Theatre Lab Program. The program provides four or five residencies per year to theatre artists, providing access to artistic advisors and two-to-five weeks in their small black box theatre near Washington, DC’s Chinatown. Along with that program, I also submitted an application for an attached Creative Communities Fund Grant.

I was told last month that we had been accepted for both. I think I actually did a two-arms-in-the-air-for-victory move in the middle of 14^th Street when I got the call.

And so Bright Alchemy will present the workshop production—the rough, fully staged, PWYC, soliciting input from the audience production—of its newest piece at the Mead Theatre at Flashpoint Sept 23-25. And we’ll have the two weeks prior to rehearse in the space. And we’ll have the funding to bring in the designers we want to work with and ensure that we can pay all our artists.

That the committee chose this project over several dozen others, makes me a little giddy. I had never written a grant before (and now that I’m batting a thousand, I may never again). And it was a proposal for a piece that, at the time, consisted only of a process and a question “Why do we as a species feel the need to tell stories of our own destruction?” But they must have seen something worth investing in, which means I feel just a smidge of pressure to live up to that expectation. Thus the deadline anxiety.

Our latest meeting is filled with practicalities. We discuss a timeline: when rehearsals would probably start, the likelihood of a reading at the Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival, etc.

I try to pin down artists. While we’ve had about a dozen regular collaborators, not all of them will be available come September. However, many are able and willing, and having a budget means being able to successfully compete for their time.

And I introduce text. The first four pages of…something. How did I get these pages? There’s an article in the latest issue of Theatre Forum that profiles DAH, an experimental Serbian theatre group. DAH takes pieces of existing text and turns them into heavily movement based, abstract narratives. The article talks about how, after the group has created all of this material, one of the directors in the group will take it and arrange it into a finished composition. Like a piece of music, but with movement and a story, though not always one that resembles the original source material.

I guess my role has been to do the same. I take what we’ve been talking about: the themes, the stories, the topics that have provoked interest, even the mood of the conversation, and translate it into a theatrical text. That text may tell a wholly new and original story, but hopefully it does so in a way that incorporates many of the ideas we’ve been discussing.

Also, hopefully, it will not suck.

As a playwright, I hate showing unfinished rough drafts. Hate it. Working with Bright Alchemy, I have had to get over that. Or at least hide the anxiety manageably well. So, in the spirit of transparency, and with the idea that as soon as people began providing feedback online about the process they became collaborators themselves, I’ve posted those pages online…here. If you have questions, thoughts, creative expletives–please spew them below.

Subscribe to the 2amt podcast in iTunes.

There’s an aggressive sort of experimental theatre that longs to prove not just how smart it is, but how much smarter it is than you. Or how much more grad school it went to.

Rubber Repertory is not that theatre.

Rubber Rep, made up of Matt Hislope and Josh Meyer, isn’t about telling you how it is, it’s all about sitting in the room with you and asking, “what if we…”? And you let them. The tiny riots mentioned above are the intimate moments of theatre that they long to create with you out of something as simple as a shell soaked in saltwater.

Their current project is Biography of Physical Sensations in a return engagement for Fusebox Festival in Austin, Texas. Biography of Physical Sensations is a life told through the decontextualized sensations that are its building blocks and its residue; performed on the audience every night.

For more about Biography of Physical Sensations in its initial run, check out Katherine Catmull in the Austin Chronicle. If you’re curious about the reviews, then read Avimann Syam of the Austin Chronicle, Cate Blouke of the Austin American Statesman and Georgia Young & Bastion Carboni from Austinist.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

BONUS Video of Rubber Reps last new production, Casket of Passing Fancy

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some Offers you missed from Casket of Passing Fancy:
Offer #1
Treasure!
Untaken Offers 1
Untaken Offers 2
A Sample Night at Casket of Passing Fancy

Previously in this column:

Bright Alchemy Theatre, a very young company devoted to the creation of devised work, decides to begin work on a narrative and thematic sequel to A Cre@tion Story for Naomi, which explored the world’s creation myths.

We began this new process with a question: Why do we feel the need to tell stories of our own destruction?

We explored that question by looking at various apocalypse stories, from grand narratives like the Pawnee apocalypse myth and Ragnarok to zombies and DC comics. But discussion kept returning to more personal ideas of apocalypse, which we focused solely on last week.

Not surprisingly, many of those stories dealt with death. So for our most recent workshop, I gave homework: Plan your own funeral.

This week:

Funerals are rituals. A really obvious statement, I know. But I wonder if we forget sometimes. That we start to think of them as capstones; monuments; dry and sober epilogues to the deceased. When really, they aren’t for the dead at all. They’re for the living.

Asking a group of highly theatrical people to plan their own funeral, I was prepared for grandeur and a little bit of irreverence. But they still manage to surprise me.

One actress is fascinated with the simple physicality of grieving. “I love the idea of a party funeral,” she says. “An Irish wake. You can celebrate or mourn. This great drunken catharsis.”

Another actress has an idea so lovely, that I want to steal it. “When I’m cremated, everyone who wants a vial of my ashes can get one. And they can keep it or sprinkle it somewhere. Whatever they want. Everyone who wants me can take me in that form.”

And one actor admits that he’s given very little thought to his own funeral or his own death. He’s always thought that he’d go out in some vast disaster that would negate the whole idea of separate funerals.

But he also speaks about how a viewing is very important to some people. To see the body and know that the person is gone, that their death is real.

One actress who can’t make the meeting sends me an e-mail ahead of time. “A Jazz funeral procession, possibly playing “Spirit in the Sky” at one point,” she writes. “Then a Viking funeral, where you put me in a ship, set it on fire, and send me out to sea. You may get arrested, but that is a risk I am willing to take.”

I am considering stealing this, as well. And, as I know she will read this: Megan, I promise to set you on fire if and when the time comes.

But maybe we’ll have discovered the secret of immortality by then. Our species has spent a good chunk of its evolution discovering ways to live on. There are the myriad afterlife myths, of course. But even the act of writing is itself a form of immortality. We keep breathing in stories long after we stop in real life.

And now there’s the Internet. That’s something we talk about at length—the idea of data ghosts. Many of us are Facebook friends with someone who’s dead. Some of those sites have been turned into memorials—digital tombstones that still fire off random postings written by loved ones.

And now, one actor reveals, you can hire someone to manage your data after death—all your social networking sites, your passwords, your blogs. Divvied up or deconstructed after you die. The idea of living part of your life online was a big theme in A Cre@tion Story for Naomi. And I suspect that dying online will play a part in this next piece.

I said at the beginning that funerals are rituals for the living, and I think the answers people bring support that. They foster grief; they bring catharsis and resolution; they act as epilogues, or prologues to some new chapter.

And they are the most symbolic of our rituals. The deceased is not really there. Just their body, or ashes, or maybe a photo. Their presence exists only in the stories people tell about them. Just like theatre. Chekhov’s characters don’t care what happens to the cherry orchard. They don’t exist. Only the audience has any stake in it. They’re who the ritual is for.

And with that thought, we decide to take a break. There are shows that need to be closed, one of which is mine, and people are scattering for Easter—a holiday centered around death and resurrection, and don’t think we don’t find this perfectly appropriate.

The next update will deal with topics far more frightening and serious than Death: Space and Money. And the first actual (potential) text of the play.

Week 6: This is the first week where there was homework. For the last two months, we’ve been talking about Apocalypse on the grand scale. Lots of great thoughts circling vast concepts of evolution and society. I thought it might be useful to start thinking on the micro scale. Throughout the process, we have briefly touched on the idea of personal destruction stories—moments that were apocalyptic (physically, emotionally, spiritually) to a single life.  And by apocalyptic, I don’t necessarily mean violent. I mean that something changed. Something was destroyed, and something else grew out of the ashes.

That was the totally noncompulsory homework: think about apocalypse on a personal level and see what you come up with.

Some of the stories are deceptively simple: one actress speaks about an apple tree in her parent’s backyard that acted as a guidepost for her childhood and a miscommunication with a landscaper that resulted in it being torn down.

Others seem tragically common: family deaths, divorce, loved ones brains being hijacked by Alzheimer’s.

The late, great Paul Danaceau once remarked that he enjoyed coming to our workshops because it was like therapy. And if therapy is talking about things important to you that you don’t feel comfortable telling anyone else, than Paul had a point. We create a safe, creative place to talk about unsafe things. There is also sometimes crying.

And while everyone’s stories are unique, there is a distinct throughline: the death of childhood. The vanishing of touchstones—people, places, things—that once marked the boundaries of our lives. The sense that what seemed so solid in our youth will eventually fade. You can’t go home again, because the home you knew doesn’t exist anymore.

Seems kind of obvious when put down in 12-point Cambria.

Or maybe not so obvious. Maybe that’s something we don’t like to think about. That a story about an apple tree can be shorthand for the fact that life is an engine that turns the joys of today into the memories of tomorrow. That potential turns into present turns into past.

Another topic of discussion is Death with a capital “D”. Someone notes that we are surprisingly shut off from the reality of death. For the first time in human history, we can go from cradle to grave without ever being up-close and personal with a dead human body. One actress talks about how, as a child, she did not want to be in the room when a family member passed away. She did not want to be there when something as powerful as a human life disappeared.

“And if I don’t see the body, then they’re still out there somewhere,” she says.

A director speaks about the first show he directed as an undergrad. During the opening night, one of his lead actors died on stage. For several moments, the audience didn’t know whether the calls for an ambulance were a part of the show or not.

And our resident composer talks about thanatology—the study of death and how to ease people into it—and incorporating music into the process. He also tells a story of a four-day camping trip in northern Minnesota with his now-wife and an acquaintence that took them out onto a frozen lake. When their feet began to plunge through the ice, he realized that he could be a few steps away from a very cold death. That night, they camped a few miles from the highway—and well off the ice—and there is no evidence of any humanity. It was desolate and beautiful.

Loss, death, the passing of childhood. Of course, it’s not like I was expecting an exploration of destruction myths to generate stories about flowers and puppy kisses. And if the discussion is trending in a certain direction, I like to step on the accelerator.

Next week’s homework: planning your own funeral.

On the last day of the new play convening held at Arena Stage this past January, participants (and livestream satellite observers) were asked to come up with goals for the coming year. What could we do to further the state of new play development in our town/city/shire?

One of my resolutions for the coming year was to figure out how to reconcile my work as a devised theatre artist with the fact that I’m a playwright with a pretty strong artistic vision who enjoys creating plays in the traditional manner. Or whether these parts of my creative life need to be reconciled at all.

The question arose in my mind when the panel on devised theatre sparked some pretty heated responses from playwrights in the Twitterverse. A few wondered if devised theatre was a hot topic because it was “sexier than regular playwriting.” There were a lot of very defensive posts from playwrights concerned that their role in the playmaking process was being threatened by artists trumpeting devising processes that did not necessarily require a central author.

There seemed to be a belief that, if people do devised work, then they must believe the other methods are flawed or inferior or outdated. Which isn’t true, at least from my perspective, since I do both.

Yes, all of my posts on 2amt have been on devised theatre, but it really makes up a minority of my work. During the initial stage of idea generating, which Bright Alchemy happens to be in now, it only takes up about 10 hours a month. Most of my days are spent writing plays generated solely out of my own noggin, or in rehearsals. It’s a process I enjoy and a life I like. At least until tech rolls around and I don’t get home until 1:30 a.m. Then I might have second thoughts, but rarely third ones.

So, why do I, as a playwright, do devised theatre?

You see, I have a box. It’s made up of my experience, my preconceived notions, my talent, my skill. It’s made up of my limits. I work in it, I live in it, I think in it. A few years ago, I began to make a concerted effort to expand my box. For my MFA thesis, I wrote a play that included music, dancing, a drag show, and a slew of Erik Ehn-inspired impossible stage directions–all things that I loved seeing on stage, but had never attempted to put there myself. Afterwards, my box was a lot roomier. But like a goldfish, my ambitions grew to fill their environment.

When I began working on my first devised piece, I discovered that everyone works in a box. But those boxes never exist in the same place; they don’t consist of the same experiences, or skills, or point of view. And those boxes can be porous. They can stack and lock together. A group of theatre artists who are comfortable working together, who communicate well and have the requisite artistic openness, can crawl into each other’s heads and play around and see things through the lens of entirely new realms of experience.

And that process can allow me to write a play I never would have if left in my own box. Could I have written an adaptation of Gilgamesh? Sure. Could I have written a play about a star-obsessed girl trying to recreate herself from the confines of her room? Absolutely.

Would they have been half as surprising or unique as what I helped create as part of a group? No. Never. Nein. Nyet. I had so many people tell me that A Cre@tion Story for Naomi was unlike any play they had ever seen. And that’s because, while I was responsible for the most of the text, the story, structure, and thematic/dramatic engine at its core were hand-built in some metaphysical cardboard box fort of artistic vision and talent.

So, would I ever give up writing plays on my own to do devised work full time? Probably not. I have too many stories to tell, and our devising process is a slow burn. But because of working in that process, my box is constantly expanding and the stories I tell are the richer for it.

Week 3. Is it just me, or are destruction stories a lot less interesting—or at least less fantastical—than creation stories? And there are a lot fewer variations on how things end than on how things begin. Maybe because with creation you have to work for it. We can’t imagine how things like worlds and civilizations can be born whole cloth. So we tell amazing stories about giant turtles, or gods sculpting creation out of clay. But a destruction story is a lot easier to tell. Oh, we can still make up a fantastical destruction myth. But who would believe it. When there are so many all-too-common ways to destroy a world.

This week’s workshop comes on the heels of the quake in Japan, and it is hard to talk about the idea of apocalypse in the abstract when we have a very real example of devastation.

Like so many other people on the planet, we are following the events online. Here are people whose world—everything that they had ever known—has been turned upside down in an instant. I learned about it on Twitter; watched the video on news sites; followed various feeds as events continued to unfold.

One of our ensemble members wonders if this instant access to technology, this ability to jump from feed to feed, to have a nation’s suffering compressed into a 45 second video clip of waves sweeping through streets, desensitizes us to the reality of human pain. If these were our neighbors, wouldn’t we rush to help? If these were our family, wouldn’t we cry in horror? Instead, we donate money, or we do not.

It’s a question that’s come up before: Does technology unite us, or isolate us, or both? Also, does this awareness that these terrible events are happening breed empathy or numbness?

I suggest that, either way, it’s better than the alternative.

Go back 100 years, and it would have been months before anyone on this side of the world would have heard about such an event. A little farther back, and we might never have known at all. And we certainly wouldn’t have cared about people of a different race on the other side of the globe.

Someone suggests that everyone on the Internet is responsible for empathizing with the entire world. I don’t know if it’s a responsibility we’ve acknowledged or accepted. But I hope that a collective awareness of the pain of others is better than ignorance of it.

As I’m writing this, there’s a Twitter stream building on #2amt debating the definition of audience. Should we make theatre for the people within driving distance; should we make theatre for ourselves; should we make theatre for anybody and everybody?

I do not know the answer.

I will say this: one thing that dramaturging the creation and destruction myths of disparate cultures has taught us is that, as a species, we share the same needs and the same fears. We tell the same stories again and again, spanning continents and centuries.

Whether this means an all-nude Macbeth is going to play in Poughkeepsie, I have no fucking clue.

But it does mean that a Japanese filmmaker can stuff a nation’s collective fear of nuclear Armageddon into a rubber monster suit and cement one of the most well-known 20^th century destruction myths into the zeitgeist.

Maybe that’s another reason we tell stories of our own destruction. So we can understand it, grasp it, and concoct ways to fight back. Storytelling as a way to short-circuit Armageddon.

So, here we are. Week two and hip-deep in the initial group dramaturgy of Bright Alchemy’s devising process, which started with the question “Why do we as a species feel compelled to tell stories of our own destruction?”

It’s very early, but I’m already beginning to get that familiar feeling of drowning in images and data. It’s a nice feeling. Better than the alternative. And, if it seems overwhelming, I just have to remind myself that it’s the equivalent of turning the puzzle box over and dumping the pieces out on a table. Easier to imagine the shape of things this way.

Eventually out of all this free association, themes will emerge, or loose strands of connected stories and images will eventually become themes. What free association, you ask?

Some of it is simple words or images: survivor stories; cosmic reboot; four horsemen; the final screen of a silent, black and white movie with the simple words “THE END”; 7 seals; 2012; Y2K; asteroids; trinitite, the glass formed at Trinity, New Mexico, where they tested the bomb.

A composer who saw Naomi, but did not get a chance to work on it, talks about how the play reminded him of the concept of a technological Singularity—the point where we advance technology to the point where it is indistinguishable from human consciousness. This brings up the question of whether we’re proud of our inventive nature or fearful of it, and leads back to a discussion from the previous week about how birth and destruction can go hand-in-hand.

One actress tells us the story of the Pawnee apocalypse myth, which prophesies that when the South Star finally catches up to the North star, the world will end. Which is a nice connection to Naomi, which dealt heavily with astronomy.

Another actress tells a story of riding through the Arizona desert in the backseat of a car while on a family vacation. A rainstorm turned into a sandstorm and the world became an impenetrable blood-red blur as, on the radio, a fire and brimstone preacher prophesied the end of the world.

I mention that one of the big problems I have with certain brands of Christianity is that their adherents seem to be waiting for something better rather than working to make this world a better place to live.

One actor responds to this by noting that some people want a better world and try to make it; some people want to be given a better world and try to make themselves worthy of it; and some people like the world the way it is.

But the one thought that we keep coming back to is the idea of multiple Apocalypses. That world is always going through changes and who’s to say we haven’t experienced any number of Apocalypses?

One of the concepts we touched on while developing Naomi is the difference between static and dynamic societies. Static societies are ones that do not change much from one generation to the next. Consequently, their myths include blueprints for living that a person would have expected to apply to their great-great-great grandchildren as much as it applied to themselves.

However, our society is a dynamic one. We expect the world to change drastically in our own lifetime. And maybe this is why there are so many more stories about the end of the world being written today. Because we can more easily imagine great change occurring.

Not to mention the fact that, as of the mid-20^th century, we finally have the ability to destroy ourselves entirely. That somebody now has the responsibility not to push a button, to wake up everyday and say, “I will not destroy the world today.”

Steve Beal, who got to be the triple-threat of Grandfather, Rabbi, and Voice of Coyote in our last production, says, “The world gets recreated so much during one person’s lifetime. That rate of change leads us to wonder when this is going to end, where this is going to go?”

Maybe an Apocalypse is not about an end to the world, but an end of our world; a shift in the way we see things. After which, there is a new world.. When you strip away the destructive connotation, the word “apocalypse” is Greek for “revelation.” Which means that the line between creation myths and destruction myths becomes incredibly dim.

Which, as dramatic story fodder, has great possibilities.

Also, we talked about zombies.

Wherein I blog Bright Alchemy’s devising process for its newest project.

My living room is full of artists eating baked goods and mainlining coffee. The latter is not surprising, since it’s 10:30 A.M. on a Sunday. What is surprising is that a dozen theatre-makers chose to subject themselves to this sun-drenched world while there was still sleep to be had.

Present are most of the artists that worked on our last project; a few who worked on Gilgamesh, our first project; and several we’ve never worked with before. A lot of people in the room have never met each other. Which is a small miracle, considering the intimacy of the DC theatre community. And it’s probably a good sign. Collaboration needs new perspectives, new talent, fresh brains.

After everyone is settled and at least semi-conscious, I make my pitch, which is this: Our last project, A Cre@tion Story for Naomi, started with a single central question—What is the purpose of creation myths? It ended with a play about Naomi, a brilliant 16-year old girl obsessed with the stars and struggling with how to break out of her self-imposed shell. She and her online friends travel from one creation story to another, searching for one that can help define who she is and what she will become.

I explain how I’d like our next project to be a thematic and narrative sequel to Naomi that we start with the central question: Why do we as a species feel compelled to tell stories of our own destruction? From Revelations to Ragnarok to Michael Bay’s entire canon, we are constantly killing ourselves again and again, at least in our imaginations.

I’d like to explore that question and those stories and whatever else might come up along the way. And then I’d like to take that work and use it to tell the story of Naomi 15 years down the line. I enjoyed telling the story of Naomi and her friends, and I’d like to learn more about them.

Someone talks about what they know of Ragnarok, and how a performance piece they saw dealt with the concept of a World Tree.

Someone mentions the Hindu destruction myth and Shiva the destroyer.

Another person reminds me about the myth of the Flood, which played a part in our adaptation of Gilgamesh and which might be the oldest and most widespread destruction myth.

Eventually someone brings up zombies. And rightfully so, since they are one of our many modern-day destruction myths. Someone mentions an article they saw about research into creating a real-life zombie virus. We ask her what she’s been smoking. Just coffee beans, she says, and promises to find the article for our next meeting.

With our first project, we had the narrative already laid out for us. It was just a matter of exploring what aspects of the Gilgamesh epic excited us and how to adapt it for the stage and the modern age. With Naomi, we started with a single question—one that was so big that we spent a year dramaturging and workshopping. Then I went up on a mountain and came back down with the first ten pages.

With this new project, I’m looking to walk somewhere in the middle. To start with not only a broad central question, but a very loose narrative base as well. So I tell everyone that I think I know three things about our adult Naomi, three things that I believe will help us tell a story about destruction: she’s an astronomer at an observatory; she’s married to an astronaut who is currently in space; and she’s very, very pregnant.

The idea of a pregnant protagonist sparks a discussion about how, in theatre, pregnancy is frequently a destructive force. That it destroys lives. That it can be frightening. And this leads to talk of how children have to sometimes destroy their parents, or the idea of their parents, in order to take their place.

This makes me very happy. Not the destroying parents part. But that the ideas come so freely and with such energy. We end after an hour and a half, with a plan to meet in a week, and for everyone to bring in whatever they think will be helpful to the conversation. Whether it’s an article on zombie viruses or a stolen Gideon Bible. Or an intravenous caffeine drip.

I will make morning people of them yet.

One of the great conversations that has arisen from Arena Stage’s New Play Convening is this discussion about devised theatre: what is it; who does it; why do they bother? As people started trying to answer these questions, there were a lot of passionate responses—some of them knee-jerk, some of them well-reasoned.

“Devised theatre is sexier than regular playwriting and that’s why it’s so in right now.”

“The product that comes out of devised theatre is usually inferior.”

“Devised theatre does not result in ‘plays’.”

“There’s always a random dance number.”

There was an especially large number of reactions from playwrights. Many were genuinely curious. Others reacted viscerally, defensively. The idea of devised theatre—the creation of a play where the text (words or otherwise) is not solely in the playwright’s hands—makes a lot of writers cringe.

I am a playwright. I understand this reaction. I empathize with this reaction. We don’t just tell stories, we create structure. We craft; we shape; we help make sure everything on stage is there with a purpose. This is a bitch to do by committee. If there’s not someone specific in this role, it can result in a lot of muddy, unfocused theatre. And random dance numbers.

As a playwright with a very strong artistic vision, I understand the cringing. But I also understand there are a host of devised theatre companies producing one strong, solid, sharp piece of theatre after another. You know who they are. And if you’ve been lucky enough to see their work, you know that devised theatre can result in wonderful plays.

So, how do they do it?

The problem with trying to describe a devised theatre process is that no two are ever alike. No two companies work alike; and frequently no two projects created by the same company come about in the same manner. So, how do you describe what devised theatre is in a way that is actually informative and useful?

The segue: A few years ago, I helped start a devised theatre company. It was an accident.

I was in the middle of getting my MFA from Catholic University when Ryan Whinnem, an MFA directing student and now-good friend, announced he was interested in creating a theatrical adaptation of the epic of Gilgamesh. He extended an open invitation to actors, directors, writers, and designers to meet weekly and create the adaptation together.

I had no interest in Gilgamesh, but I was working on another project involving Middle Eastern mythology, so I went to the first meeting. I did not plan to go to the second. Which proves I should not try to plan things.

Three months later, Ryan, myself, and a collection of 15 or so actors and designers had our first draft of Gilgamesh, who saw the deep. I’ve written more extensively about its creation at www.brightalchemy.com, but for the sake of this post, all you need to know is that we produced Gilgamesh at the Capital Fringe in 2008. Audiences loved it; reviewers loved it; and we loved doing it.

That fall, we started working on our next project, which would eventually become the play, A Cre@tion Story for Naomi. We spent the next two and a half years on it. Ensemble members came, ensemble members went, and somewhere during the process, Ryan said something like, “We should really give ourselves a name.”

Somebody mentioned the word “Alchemy.” I suggested adding “Bright.” Voila.

Total fucking accident.

And this past January, we produced A Cre@tion Story for Naomi at the DC Arts Center. Again, audiences loved it; reviewers loved it; and we loved doing it.

So we’re doing it again.

We do not have a dedicated space. We do not have non-profit status. We don’t even have a mission statement yet. But we have a collection of passionate theatre-makers and a process that’s worked for us twice before. And I’ve put out an open call to everyone we’ve ever worked with or has ever expressed interesting in working with us to meet and discuss our next project.

And I’m going to blog our process here at 2amtheatre. I’m going to do it for three reasons. One: it will allow artists who may not be able to make all of our workshops to follow along. Two: it will allow our audience to follow along. As I’ll explain later, or you can read about at www.brightalchemy.com, we are very much into audience inclusion. Three: it will provide a detailed, concrete example of one company’s devising process, for which I’m hoping there’s interest.

And so next time someone asks, “What the f@#ck is devised theatre?”, I’ll have an answer.

Your real job is relationships. No new surprise there.

You build relationships through shared meaning and narrative. Still, no great revelation.

Meaning is through shared language.

What are you creating to bring new language to the collective discussion?

Dr. Seuss (a master in the use of language) put it best when he wrote the book On Beyond Zebra. He challenged his readers to break out of the confines of the ordinary alphabet, to see what new things are out beyond what we already know.

What new words are you creating to build relationships?

2AMT is a good example. A year ago, this term had no meaning, heck it did not even exist. Now it gives people context to share ideas and build relationships. If the timing is right, a term can spread, build momentum and enter the fabric of the culture. Companies do this all the time. The word ”facebook” did not have meaning until context and activity was created behind it. But there is a potential problem when a new word is integrated in to the culture, it can become old or loose its meaning.

So, another question, what are you doing, that no one else is doing, to connect? How are you keeping it new?

@BostonCourt brought up a good point on the #LAThtr (Los Angeles Theater hash tag) when Brian tweeted:

Our tendency is to use the new with the same methods we are using the old. The easiest way to use twitter is another tool for your press releases, but that does not create relationships. The new must be used in ever changing new ways. If relationships is not the focus for people using twitter, it will soon become that thing that every one is using to promote that thing they are trying to sell, or get you to come see. Facebook invites have already become that.

Here is the catch; it takes relationships to help create new ways of using things to build more and deeper relationships. Through the #LAThtr discussion that started with @BostonCourt’s tweet, there was a kernal of an idea.

The goals in the rehearsal room for a new play is based on relationship through narrative; relationships between artists, relationships between characters, relationships between artists and audience. What happens if the marketing is run like the rehearsal process for a new play?

I worked as a teaching artist for The New Victory Theater. The education department creates pre- and post-show workshops for the touring shows that are being performed on The New Vic stage. The education staff and team of teaching artists create the lesson plans in house for each of the shows. Realizing that most of the staff and teaching artist ensemble were trained as theater professionals, they looked for ways in which the teaching artists could use their theater background in the creation of the lesson plans. They decided to model their curriculum development based on the rehearsal process of creating a new play. They created the following steps:

1. Dramaturgical Background: Research and Discovery

2. Devising and Improvisation: Brainstorm & Playful Experimentation

3. Rehearsal: Preparation

4. Tech Rehearsal: Run Through

5. Dress Rehearsal: Refinement

6. Final Dress: Activation

This curriculum rehearsal process has the overall goal of connecting with the students through a narrative journey, as a new play’s rehearsal goals are to tell a good story through the connections made on stage and to the audience. How could a marketing department go through these steps with every project they produce? Some steps might fit better than others, but here is a rough estimate of what this process might look like.

1. Dramaturgical Background: Research and Discovery – This seems to be a lot of the work Devon V. Smith is sharing over at 24 Usable Hours. In starting any marketing project, one must research how previous efforts worked (or did not work) and then look to similar companies and organizations to see if their outcomes can bring any discovery to how to set up the current project.

2. Devising and Improvisation: Brainstorm & Playful Experimentation – The story I like to tell is when I was in college I watched a video about an artist who was a former Disney Imagineer. He said at the beginning of any project, the team would sit in a room that was filled, floor to ceiling, with whiteboards. Their job was to fill them with any and every idea, and could not move on until all the whiteboards were covered. No idea was bad, and it all had to be written down. Does your devising start with every possible idea under the sun? How many whiteboards can you fill at the start of each of your projects?

3. Rehearsal: Preparation – The techy term is alpha testing. It is so rough it is not even beta yet. This is where you might start connecting what seems to be tagent ideas on the whiteboards. What connects and what doesn’t fit? Once the beginning connections are being made, this is where you come up with every scenario of how this project might or might not work to meet the end goal of sharing a narrative to build relationships. What are the outliers? What are the expectations and how are they projected to be met? What are the potential obstacles that need to be overcome?

4. Tech Rehearsal: Run Through – Now beta testing begins. Who are your audience members that you already have deep relationships who would volunteer to try this plan out? Deep enough relationships, that there is plenty of forgiveness when the mistakes happen, because they will happen. The ones that won’t talk bad if the plan never gets off the ground and are the first ones to praise it to everyone they know when it works.

5. Dress Rehearsal: Refinement – After getting feedback from those deep, loving patrons, this is where you can make the necessary edits and maybe broaden out the circle of trust. Try the newest version on a little more people, maybe not the newest patron in the organization’s family, but you get the idea.

6. Final Dress: Activation – This is the final beta step before going live to the general public. One more chance to get feedback and make edits. By this time, the project is ready to lift off the ground and buzz is already starting to leak out about this mysterious new thing the organization is about ready to do.

Dennis Baker lives the ultimate freelance life as an actor, teaching artist, fight director and also working in web design, web development and search engine optimization. You can follow him at @dennisbaker

Quick: how many theatre pieces have you seen with the word Project in the title?

Quite a few, right?  Maybe you’ve been involved in one.  I have.  And almost everyone knows about The Laramie Project.

The word Project is often an indicator of devised work–pieces created by an ensemble rather than via a traditional script by a single playwright.  A fast and utterly unscientific Google search suggests that these Projects tend to be focused on raising awareness of social issues (violence against gays, disease epidemics, the aftermath of wars and natural disasters, and urban issues crop up repeatedly).  Another common theme is tribute to an artist–either very famous or unfairly obscure in the eyes of the Project originators–though this is more common to musical acts than straight theatre pieces.  Project means that the piece is experimental, perhaps presented in a deliberately unfinished state.  Project means that the focus is intended to be on the subject rather than on the performers.

All of this is just fine.  All of this is perfectly legitimate as grounds for performance pieces, and quite a bit of it is profoundly admirable in its intent.

I just want to talk about the titles.  Project.  The ______ Project.  Again, and again, and again.

Can’t we do better than this?

All of our work as theatre artists should be focused on the subject, not the performers.  I hope that all of our work is done with a degree of social consciousness.  We shouldn’t need to depend on a particular indicator word to communicate these qualities.

One of the things that ties theatre artists together is a passion for words.  We like to play with them, to arrange them, to experiment with the way emphasis on a single one can change the weight of an entire speech.  Not just writers and actors and directors–designers, too, will sit in meetings and debate over just the right way to describe the responses we want to evoke.  Why then, when putting together a particular type of work, choke up and rely on a formulaic title?

If we’re devising work, let’s delve into that work, mix it up and engage our personal word-lust and our creativity as ensembles to give it a real name.

In the fairly recent past, an active subject of conversation that kept resurfacing was the content of current shows in the commercial sector. Namely, the fact that a majority of new productions on Broadway are based on pre-extant Intellectual Property. Of course many artists aren’t too thrilled about this when there’s so much great ORIGINAL work out there. However, the Box Office benefits of a beloved IP are hard to deny. There’s security in a Brand that comes with a giftwrapped audience. The stronger the IP, the more buzz before you even begin rehearsals. The better early the box office number, the better your growth from local word-of-mouth. Let’s be honest, we know this: success breeds success.

I propose you harness that same Box Office power. I’m not saying it’ll be easy. I’m not saying it’ll be quick. I’m not saying that I’ve done this yet. But right now, it’s what I’m working on with my meager resources, and you don’t need much to get started.

And no, I’m not saying go out and drop a bunch on money on popular IP and create a derivative play. Most of us can’t afford that and aren’t interested even if we could. This is good. This is where we start.

We start with a blank slate.

I’m talking about new work here. Let’s create a world. From Scratch. Let the play be one piece of the world you develop. Let your imagination run wild and take your time. Our goal is to build a world. As you’re developing the characters, the world and the plot. Experiment with small self contained snippets of content. Polish things that work during play development and put the output on a schedule. Start telling the story. You don’t need money. You aren’t mounting a full production. Not yet. You’re creating the small pieces of the puzzle that will become the world your play inhabits. Now share those pieces. Post your short stories on a blog. Create short character sketches in video form. Start sharing them on YouTube. TELL A STORY. Tell it as you create it. Share your passion for the work you’re making. And of course, target that content, get it out to as many people as possible.

Once you’ve got an online audience base and you’re getting close to actual rehearsal and production time, maybe you want to run an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) to get those interested really invested. Get them invested and make them your advocates. Those who are invested in your world will crave deeper immersion, and now your show is the ultimate pay-off to the journey you’ve been taking them on already.

By intelligently, and creatively sharing your process, you’ve now created a good piece of IP. There is now an audience out there who will talk about the opportunity to reach out and touch your world, to share a space with you and your actors. Yeah, maybe your brand recognition’s no Spider-Man, but your piece is no longer just another play. There’s some name recognition. And better yet, this process means you’ve fleshed out a full, immersive world and set your new play up for success. Not only locally, but potentially globally. (You’re getting 1000s of hits from Paris, Texas or Limerick, Ireland? Maybe it’s worth a trip!)

So here’s my proposal. Don’t just write/produce/devise a new play. Build a new world and loose it upon ours. Do it incrementally and make the live performance your premium content. Build a world and invite others in. I don’t have the hard proof yet, but I guarantee it.

Build It, and They WILL Come.

It should be clear that we at 2amt like Twitter just fine. But where do you draw the line? After this story about how some theatres in Australia are using Twitter during performances, an idea that some theatres are trying in the U.S., the question started flying around the #2amt hashtag. Here are a couple of opinions on where–or if–we should draw the line.

Feel free to chime in with comments and join the conversation.

GWYDION SUILEBHAN

Let me say off the bat: as a general rule, I don’t think audience members should be Tweeting during most performances, at least not until some new technology would let them do so without affecting the experience of non-Tweeting theatergoers. (Those bright cell phone screens in a dark house? Wretched.) A good production of a good play will reward focused attention every time, and Tweeting undoubtedly diminishes one’s attention for what’s on stage.

But…

It’s a fallacy to assume that theatergoers are entirely passive/receptive when they’re sitting in their seats. Our attention ebbs and flows throughout a performance. We start composing the things we want to say to our fellow patrons during intermission half an hour beforehand, for example, or a particular line of dialogue sends us spinning off into thoughts about Aunt DeeDee’s health struggles, or somebody’s performance makes us cringe and regret coming. Until now, we haven’t had a way to channel those thoughts into public expressions. We set them aside in our minds, as much as possible, and refocus on the story (although to be fair, many theatrical traditions allow audience members to shout, comment on the action, boo, hiss, and so on). Now, however, we have Twitter… and perhaps a safe place for those random thoughts to go.

Assume for a moment that we could overcome the problem of cell phone screens distracting other theatergoers and decomposing the sacred space. Would it still be problematic for audience members to Tweet what they were thinking? One might argue that they’d be better off not Tweeting and just paying more attention… but if they were only hurting themselves, should we stop them? And is it not possible – possible, anyway – that by Tweeting those thoughts, we’d be getting them out of our heads and making focused attention MORE achievable?

Let’s imagine a different scenario: a play that was devised to incorporate audience Tweets into its storytelling. The model here was established by (I think) Tim O’Reilly, noted Web 2.0 guru; at his conferences, attendees Tweet like mad… and a feed of their Tweets is projected behind the speaker at the podium for everyone to read and follow (and for non-attendees to follow as well). The experience – I’m speaking personally here – is demanding, but effective. It is definitely possible – especially for those of us who’ve lived in the Web 2.0 generation for several years now – to understand both the speaker and the Twitter feed. Nothing is lost; the speech is enhanced by the ambient intimacy and hive mind of one’s fellow attendees. Social norms generally prevent bad behavior – nobody wants to look like an ass by Tweeting anything adolescent – and rarely are thoughts on-screen duplicative: once someone has Tweeted what you’re thinking, you don’t need to.

Clearly the repercussions of this scenario need to be more fully understood… but what if they were tried, if only as a test, in the theater? Not as part of a production of Death of a Salesman, mind you – though that might be interesting, too – but as part of a play particularly written to incorporate the device. I recently learned of at least one playwright who has tried it (Max Sparber’s NSFW), and if others haven’t already, they certainly will soon. I’ve been thinking about incorporating a Twitter feed into a devised piece myself; just give me time.

Again, all of this isn’t to say that in-show Tweeting should become the dominant mode, but that there’s room to experiment… and that in doing so we might attract a younger generation of theatergoers who are accustomed to multi-tasking and (more importantly) who don’t assume their voices should be silenced as soon as they walk into a theater. As long as it isn’t a gimmick, but an inherent part of the story being told, why wouldn’t it work? And might we not discover an entirely new art form – Twee-ater – in the process? That would be grand.

Gwydion Suilebhan is a playwright and a member of the board of the Taffety Punk Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter: @Gwydions

KATE POWERS

To tweet or not to tweet seems like the merest birth pang of a question that opens onto several more, like so many threads in the Twitterstream: when to tweet, with whom, while perched where? Should theatres invite their audiences to tweet during performances? Should theatres tweet at their audiences in flagrante delicto? I offer a resounding “maybe.”

If we are aiming to transform our audiences, to move them, to challenge them to consider some aspect of their emotional lives, the political situation or the world afresh, mightn’t we want to strive for conditions slightly better than trying to watch YouTube while inputting data into Excel? If one is tweeting, which is right up there with texting, how fully can one devote one’s self to the journey of the play? The studies about the dangers of attempting to drive and text proliferate. I am not suggesting that tweeting and watching theatre are on a par with driving and texting; I am suggesting that tweeting takes one’s attention away from whatever the second activity is, to some degree. Sure, there are plays that don’t require full activation of the brain pan or one’s emotional core and, alas, some that don’t deserve it, but we don’t want to start with that proposition; we only resignedly discover that along the way. I cannot tweet and carry on a conversation with a live person in the same room without missing a little something or feeling as if I have taken a small detour from completing my thought. Many of my colleagues say that they can happily tweet without being distracted, without limiting their availability to being swept along by the story, and if that is true for them, I am impressed. Skeptical but impressed.

So what are we talking about? Are we talking about allowing / inviting individual spectators to live tweet a performance event? Are we talking about the theatre offering would-be tweeters a special seating section where the blue glow of their devices will distract the rest of the audience less, but possibly mar the effect of a well-considered black out? Are venues going to release a stream of tweets throughout the performance to enlighten, clarify and enrich the performance? Are auditors going to tweet and are the actors going to respond?

Wolftrap, amongst others, has had success creating a ‘keep your device on’ section of the lawn and tweeting a virtual pop-up video of information as varied as biographical details of the composer and analysis of particular measures or the significance of the arrival of the horn section into the piece. As someone who is not particularly literate in symphonic music, I can see the value of this, particularly at an outdoor venue, where the lighting is not a component of the storytelling. Yet even while I see the utility of it, and might enjoy the info, my experience of the concert would be altered by it. I might benefit from the deeper understanding of the horn section, but I am less likely to engage emotionally with the music while I am busy reading my tweets. As Stoppard helpfully says, “If the answers are at the back of the book, I can wait.”

I love Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: when I am in the pit, I want to get swept up into the tent revival euphoria that Bruce creates; I don’t want a tweet explaining the derivation of a Tenth Avenue freezeout (Bruce made it up; even he doesn’t know what the hell it is.)

I can imagine a similar set-up at an outdoor Shakespeare festival (indeed, I just received an invitation to ‘tweet from my seat’ at Richmond Shakespeare’s Antony & Cleopatra, using the regrettable but perhaps inevitable hashtag #TonyandCleo10), where arcane words, historical references and allusions might be tweeted during the performance. Sort of pre-show discussion in progress. Again, if you are reading a tweet about the director’s concept, about the meaning of squeaking Cleopatras, or the anachronism implicit in “cut my lace, Charmian,” can you possibly be available to get swept along on the breathless journey of the play? I want to be engaged, I want to be moved, at the very least, I want to be told a good story. In the theatre, we struggle as it is to accomplish these aims. Is tweeting helping to tell the story or is it diluting the auditor’s attention? The jury is too busy tweeting about the deliberations to let us know the verdict thus far.

If we are talking about engaging the audience anew with Twitter, I am all for it. As long as it is in service to the storytelling. I know there are plays in development as I type that were written with a Twittered audience in mind, and if it supports or enriches the storytelling in a new play, then I say, “go play, boy, play.” I am urging thoughtful consideration, though; if we throw devices at our stages without care, we are creating gimmickry and not better storytelling. If we don’t weight the gains tweeting might provide against the losses it may inflict; if we don’t think through what live tweeting means to that portion of the audience that doesn’t particularly want to listen to little tiny keys clicking, doesn’t want to see a hundred glowing squares afloat in the house, we are sacrificing our sacred space to a trend.

Kate Powers is a New York based director and a volunteer facilitator with Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Follow her on Twitter: @DirectorKate

TRAVIS BEDARD

Kate Foy of Groundling stirred the pot on an otherwise slow Monday by asking around for thoughts on livetweeting in the theatre. An undistracted stream of theatre Twitter-ers chimed in. The arguments quickly broke down over poor audience members not having the silence and blackness they require, or the text not being honored. Lord that’s a boring conversation. If I have to hear one more person whine about candy unwrapping…

The conversation I want to have isn’t about how to shoehorn new technology into the theatre we already make. I have seen zero examples to date of instance of non-disruptive livetweeting. Existing plays weren’t created to be seen while commenting or participating, so adding on (or stapling on as I pejoratively phrased it on Twitter) is counter to the reasoning for presenting the show anyway.

But what can this technology enable for a playwright or deviser creating NEW work?

This is another possible tool on the utility belt for writers. It is indeed another entire plane of existence for characters.

Can extra-stage characters exist only in the Twitter-verse? Can the audience team up with one another for or against the stage characters?

What does the interaction between the sequestered, in-space audience and the free range Twitter audience look like?

How well can the playwright and director control that?

It’s hard to separate the personal from the hypothetical. It’s not easy to remove yourself from an equation when the whole point (really) is to figure out how you specifically can benefit from an innovation. The answer is, let’s figure out what we can do with that innovation first The stance that “I hate livetweeting the way it exists right now so I won’t even discuss what might be possible with it” is destructive to the conversation. This (or any) line of innovation might not be for you or even your brand of theatremaking, but that doesn’t render the conversation unworthy of having.

Travis Bedard is the artistic director of Cambiare Productions. He usually likes using the caps lock button. Follow him on Twitter: @travisbedard.

Not just any bookstore, but specifically this bookstore: Montague Bookmill in Montague, Massachusetts. Seth Godin sums it up well when he stated:

This is the bookstore of the future, because it’s not a business trying to maximize growth and ROI. No, it’s a place, an attitude, an approach to an afternoon. They don’t sell every book, they don’t even pretend to. Just as vinyl records persist, an object of joy for some listeners and a profitable cottage business for some sellers, bookstores are going to become like gift stores. The goal isn’t a commodity transaction with maximum selection at minimum price, the goal is an experience worth seeking out and paying for.

One look at the photo tour and it is easy to see that this place has charm, personality and gives everyone an experience that is not like any other bookstore. This bookstore shares the space with a café, a restaurant, an artist’s studio, and an antiques store. This creates a community of experience for tourists, and through the bringing in of guest artists, something the local community can return to frequently. This business becomes integrated into people’s lifestyle because it is based on experience.

In the April 2010 issue of American Theatre magazine, Michael Rohd, Artistic Director of Sojourn Theatre, encourages us to rethink the relationship of theater and community, “One thing that gets said a lot about theatre is that a bunch of people come into a room and they laugh and they cry together in the dark, and that builds community. But I’m starting to think that’s bullshit: People crave something that involves more than sitting and watching.”

Theater can no longer have people sit in their seats for two hours and then call it community if they hope to have the yonder generations as audience members. Much like Montague Bookmill has the other venues on the premises, a theater organization, that has multiple spaces, can provide opportunities for performances by the other theater companies in the area, especially theater companies that are not doing the work that is being done by the larger organization. People crave an experience where they can participate and be in the mix. Granted, for some people participation means sitting and watching, and space should be given for that, but for others, sitting in a dark theater for two hours does not define connecting with people. How can a theater make room for both these experiences? What new models can be explored to begin to ask how audience members can be involved more than simply sitting and watching? How can we break down the fourth wall that has been built under the mantle of American realism?

Dennis Baker lives the ultimate freelance life as an actor, teaching artist, fight director and also working in web design, web development and search engine optimization. You can follow him on Twitter: @dennisbaker

Odds are the first four words ever spoken were “tell me a story.” And the next four? “Once upon a time…” It’s why we have cave paintings, sculpture, theatre, film, television both scripted and “real.” Everything in our world is crafted to communicate something, whether memory or information, association or emotion. Everything–and everyone–has a story.

As theatre artists, no matter our discipline or technique, we find, create and tell stories to our audiences. What if we let them have a turn? Would that lead to a stronger bond, a better appreciation of what we all do? Could it let them get a glimpse behind the curtain, a look at the “process” to see how it’s done?

That’s the idea–and the meta-idea–behind 360.

What is 360?

A gathering, much like this, but without computers, iPhones, what-have-you. And you all tell stories. It’s just that simple, really.

Why 360?

Your story can start anywhere, go anywhere. It may be a memory, something you’ve done, someplace you’ve gone. You have six minutes–or 360 seconds–to bring your story full circle. The time limit helps to keep you focused, and also helps to keep the event moving.

All you need is a space and a timer.

Let the people know, see who shows up. We’ll even provide the logo and other images you might need for signage, mailing lists, posters, etc. The license is free–all we ask is that you credit it back to us here at 2amtheatre.com.

Unlike the Moth and other storytelling concepts, this can be as formal or informal as you like. It can be made up of invited storytellers or open to anyone in the crowd. If you want to guarantee a theme, you might invite a few people and give them a prompt beforehand, but then open it up and see what their stories inspire from the crowd. You want to stand, sit, doesn’t matter, whatever feels right.

What kind of space?

Any space will do. Any theatre at any size can set up a 360. If you’re Actors Theatre of Louisville, do it in the mezzanine. If you’re Riverrun Theatre, you do it in a bookstore that’s one of your sponsors.

You could move from sponsor to sponsor, bringing people into a coffee shop one month, a winery the next, a bookstore or library the next. Now, you’re doing something even more concrete than advertising their business, you’re bringing actual people into that business.

Was it difficult to set up?

Not at all. The idea’s been percolating for some time, but once we decided to do it, I just walked in to our bookstore sponsor, asked if we could do it. Then, a Facebook event page. A word on Twitter, a note here and there. I did not send a mailing, I did not go to the radio or the newspaper, I didn’t even put it up on our website. This was as under-the-radar as it gets. And then, one week later, I walked in the store with fifteen minutes to spare and we did this thing.

You can do it that quickly and easily, too. I know you can.

The idea is not the polished, practiced story.

That’s for the Moth and others. This is not a competition, this is not a show. If the stories are polished and practiced, that’s icing on the cake. This is mainly to engage your audience, your community. It’s a way to share with them the joy of crafting and telling a clear and entertaining story. And it really works.

The possibilities are endless.

Maybe you archive stories, record them, share them on your website. You become a de facto Story Corps for your neighborhood, city, etc. Maybe you craft a larger work–I’m sorry, maybe you “devise” a work–based on some stories for a wider audience. Maybe you host poetry editions in April for National Poetry Month.

Eric Ziegenhagen posted a link over on Twitter the other day, which was an idea every independent bookstore should steal. (He’s right, by the way, in case any independent bookstores are reading this.) 360 is very much the same idea, only with your own stories instead of books.

I hosted the very first 360 this past weekend as a Riverrun Theatre event at the Village Lights Bookstore in Madison, Indiana. We kept it low-key, wanted to see who would show up. I compared it to a restaurant having a soft opening. (Eric Z. ought to like that analogy.) What amazed me was not that it worked–though it did–or that people came–though they did–but how the evening played out…

Lightning in a bottle.

We had a small group, quiet at first, waiting and wondering how the concept worked. (This was all right, the bookstore is small, very intimate.) I started the evening off with a story to show how it was done, finished with seconds to spare.

Once the ice was broken, the stories flowed.

As the timekeeper and host, I would wave at the speaker at the three minute mark and then again at the one minute mark.

For a timer, I used my iPhone. When it counted down to zero, it would play Take Five by Dave Brubeck. The bookstore owner loved that; Brubeck’s on their speakers most of the time. You could use a stopwatch and a bell. Anything will work.

No one ran overtime, although we do plan for that–if you’re in the middle of a thought, finish the thought. If you’re nowhere near finishing your story, if there’s time, we’d have an “overtime” list for people to come back up and finish in three minutes. But that wasn’t an issue this time around.

What did surprise me, and what’s perfectly logical in retrospect, is that one story triggered another and on through the event. The connections weren’t so obvious as if it were a planned, themed set of stories, but there were clear themes and through-lines from one story to the next. None of us really knew one another, we’ve all led very different lives, but all of the stories connected and resonated. And that resonance was exciting, because it wasn’t scripted, it wasn’t proscribed or planned. It just happened.

It was the joy of creating a larger patchwork of stories, shared with everyone in the room.

By the end of the event, everyone was wired, buzzing, talking, chatting, sharing more and more. They had seen what we do, if only on a small scale. It wasn’t like watching a lecture or an open rehearsal, it was participation.

They didn’t get a look at the process. They were the process.

They had seen how exciting it is to be in the room with the story being told. They had seen how different it was from the fourth wall of television or film. And those who had never come to a Riverrun show–those who only came because they’re bookstore patrons or happened upon the listing and were curious–they’re coming to our next show. Some didn’t even know we were doing live theatre in town–now they’re on our mailing list.

Some had never been to live theatre. Now, they want to come.

So what have we learned?

This is a fun, easy way to connect with and develop your audience.

It’s a great way to support and engage your sponsors and bring some of your magic–and patrons–through their doors.

You can set it up and produce it at the drop of hat. The only real cost to you is the hat.

All you need is a space, a sign, a timer and someone to act as a host.

Want to do it? Go right ahead.

Very soon, we’ll be setting up a separate section of the site to host 360 information, news, stories, etc. If you want to record any stories either as audio or video and upload them to YouTube, Vimeo or another video site, we’ll happily embed them here as part of the 360 website.

This will also be where you can go for promotional language, logos, images and more for mailings and PR purposes.

As I said, the license is free–see the Creative Commons license below for details.

And you know, this would be an excellent instant event to produce for World Theatre Day on March 27th…

360 Storytelling by David J. Loehr for 2amtheatre.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by contacting David J. Loehr via the 2amtheatre.com website.