There's an embryonic idea I'm working on for a company-- but it feels like it's at the edges of my brain and needs a catalyst for the AHA moment. So I'll rant a little
now and see what I come up with-- maybe one of you has an AHA response???
If part of my (our?) dissatisfaction with trends in American theatre today stems from the running of non-profit companies with subscribers and seasons, is there a way to break apart that model and build something else in response? Perhaps a company built on a project-to-project basis that attracts funding and audiences for each specific project? A company that knows it's temporary, like the show itself?
The company's project ideas are need-driven. Those needs can be broadly defined. (Ex: There's a need to bring light to the state of veterans affairs. Or there's a need to create event-style theatre pieces to help shake up the audience experience. Or there's a need to LIGHTEN UP during the election year. You get my drift.) Fundraising strategies get streamlined this way and different deep pockets can be picked with each topic that projects are based on.
Projects are given lengthy developmental processes (9months-1year for creation) and are built with an investment in the community that the need-based idea comes from. (Is this from interviews? Classes? Coffee shop readings?)Using the "Tipping Point" idea of "The law of the few" seems important here.
There is no single location for the company. The company locus moves to serve whatever community best fits the project. (Ex: I've got an idea for a project on Executive Assistants. The piece could take place in a midtown location during lunch or at happy hour during the week.)
(The more I write this, the more I'm thinking about En Garde Arts and Tectonic Theatre Project. I think I'm talking about a mash-up of the two models.)But how is there sustainability with a model like this? Does a company need institutional memory in order to have success? What are the administrative needs and is there a way to experiment with their structure without creating chaos or funding gaps?
I'm also thinking a lot about how to make changes in theatre that can cause audience excitement and artist invigoration. I want to change the way theatre is created and perceived in this country. Are these somewhat scattered ideas a pathway to that goal? Or is this just a rehashing of old ideas that have fizzled before?
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Economic Systems, Individualism, Community and Ensemble Theatre
Ok here I go, to begin with you have to forgive any grammatical mistakes, and misinterpretation of sentences because of it. Anyway, I definitely agree with Quincy that there is a problem and dissatisfaction of American theatre (I must add that almost same problems if not worse ailing Turkish theatre). Before I go any further I have to talk about my problem with "Company" theatre. Even-though it has meaning of "group of people" or "an organization of performing artists " or "a body of soldiers" it also has the meaning of "an association of persons for carrying on a commercial or industrial enterprise."
Yes, at the end I want to be able to earn my living doing JUST Theatre, yes I'm tired of having a day job and try to survive and create theatre the same time but I don't want to turn theatre in to a Commercial Business. I don't want a "Company".
What I'm trying to say is, to me theatre is a communal entity, it is not where a playwright writes the play and some director finds it interesting and casts come actors who doesn't have any idea who this director or playwright is, and then producers gets some theatre funds it and viola. You have a show.
To me theatre is a ENSEMBLE work. Where it gets created by group of people who believes the same goals, where all the hardship and the joy shared by every single person in the group, to sweeping to floors, to putting up lights, to write, to direct, to act even to breath together, then I believe you can create the strong ONE voice on whatever subject you are dealing with. I know it sounds very naive and too romantic but I see that this is the only meaningful way to create theatre. Then you have the unity, the Oneness. Failure and success shared by all.
Of course I am aware of near impossibility of this idea in this time and age. When we look at the Group Theatre in New York in Thirties(they were living in a totally different world where being idealistic portrait as a virtue not as dumbness) or Le Théâtre du Soleil in France (different social settings) it is hard to not feel helpless.
Today everything bombarding us, both the artist and the audience alike, with idea of individualism, uncertainty and suspicion on others.
I guess that comes with the economic system that we live in. The system needs us to survive. But only the way its want us to live is to spend more and share less, if it is possible share nothing, otherwise it'll destroy us. Breaking every possible way to communicate with each other.
Either the MONSTER got to big to handle or we got to small to make any difference or both.
But what are the possibilities? Is there a meeting ground of company and ensemble theater? And conversation continues...
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