posted by Trisha Mead, reporting from the "From Scarcity to Abundance" Convening
"Until we can then talk about ourselves in ways that animate class, geography, gender, age, we are confining ourselves in the box of race." - Neil Barclay
"There's a tension between acknowledging that this is an idiosyncratic art and we have idiosyncratic processes, and how that aligns with a “model” and how we define what we do." - Ed Sobel
"The challenge is where theater sits in our culture. Only a very very small percentage of our culture has an understanding or appreciation of what we do. Every conversation about new models has to account for that fact." - Ed Sobel
"Dare we be the change we are looking for?" - Todd London
Saturday. Last day of the convening. A scant few hours for some participants after they left the drinking and the dancing of the previous evening's party. So the conversation about next steps launched with hoarse voices, winking references to hangovers and sore dancing feet. Still, we were in our seats and ready for this most critical session: the moment when we translate ideas and issues into templates for action.
Todd London refused to apologize for the previous evening's festivities (and its impact on the morning). "Every time we get together as theater people, we MUST dance."
What are we energized about this morning, here, at the end of all things?
We talked about tackling the conversation about diversity in new and innovative ways.
About balancing the tension between the vital idiosyncracies of our art (and the processes with which we make it) against the need to avoid duplicating effort and create useful "models" that can be cloned.
And finally, we talked about bringing the audience back into the conversation; recommitting to transparency across all our spectrums of communication- with the audience, with the artists we work with (or would like to), with our boards and communities.
On process, and the tension between celebrating idiosyncracy and developing replicatible models, a series of questions:
How can we be, not only pro-active about developing co-producing relationships, but reactive- responding to a magic moment as it occurs and seeking ways to give it a longer life through touring, presenting, etc?
How we can use resources to create longer rehearsal periods, deeper collaborations, to get outside the box of how we operate and target money to places that are exploratory… rather than perfecting what we’re doing in the box we’re already in?
How can we create space... metaphorical and physical... for the conversations that need to happen? Particularly that most critical conversation that happens in the moment when art meets audience.
Sandra Gibson from Arts Presenters quotes Pete Miller that we should be "interrogating the rough magic of theater," changing the conversation from one about perfection to one about possibility. Which ties into the issues of diversity- she asks, "How can we get beyond issues of race and just put up things that are unusual in some way?"
Speaking of diversity:
Sandra from Arts Presenters reminds us that we are not separate from the country we are critiquing: "This is a struggle we’re having as a country. We like to separate ourselves out from the country and look at it and talk about it, but we are part of it."
We were enjoined, when we thought about the relative abundance in the room, to remember the people who are NOT at the table in this conversation.
Diane Ragsdale remarks, "Being self congratulatory- we do that so beautifully in our field." She contines by expressing a desire for a more "genuine kind of inclusivity- you can’t be open to otherness if you don’t change who’s at the table."
Neil Barclay reminds us: "There is so much abundance. But if we had a different group at the table we’d get a very different answer- about scarcity, who’s allowed to play and who isn’t allowed to play." At the same time, he exhorts us to look within our specific communities to find the more subtle imbedded issues of class, age, geography, gender. Is it time for artists of color to frame their work in terms other than race?
It's an idiosyncratic art form, and we have spent much of the weekend talking about ways to get beyond the boxes... to make space for unique artists, unique processes, unique journeys to production.
Celebrating idiosyncracy can be a challenge, however, when you are working in a field where, as Lydia Diamond explains, "only one story gets told, and... the stories are located with a very homogenous audience."
The audience (or more specifically, the absence of the role of the audience from our conversations at this convening) was another "hot thread" (to use David Dower's term) that many conveners were wrestling with.
On the audience:
Barclay again: "It's not often that we are able to just do work because we love the artist… it has to resonate with our particular community."
Eric Ting concurs, "Missing from this conversation has been the question of audience- I didn’t hear it the way its become part of my life... What is the relevance of the work?... For example, how do we acknowledge what’s happening in Egypt right now?"
The audience is particularly critical to the conversation about the way a work moves across the country.
"The scary thing about networks has been this assumption that a work responds in a similar fashion across the country," Eric continues. For a new play to have a "life" beyond first production, it must confront the very real differences between the way an audience in New York reacts to a work vs. an audience in, say, Portland,Oregon or Austin, Texas.
How do the idiosyncracies of our stories create access for more people to feel represented by our art form? And where does it create barriers for understanding, particularly in environments where the audience you encounter may not have a context for understanding the work?
"The challenge," our moderator reminds us, "is where theater sits in our culture. Only a very very small percentage of our culture has an understanding or appreciation of what we do. Every conversation about new models has to account for that fact."
Which suggests that perhaps our next convening, should focus on connecting our artists and processes to the communities who will find them of most value...
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