Creative Process Sharing Workshops at the TNT Festival

The Next Thing (TNT) Festival in Boston presented three process sharing workshops livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv from Wednesday 20 February to Friday 22 February 2013.

Workshops featured The Debate Society, Double Edge Theatre, Los Angeles Poverty Department, Mondo Bizarro, New York City Players, and UNIVERSES. Each company will facilitate a forty-five minute workshop followed by a thirty minute audience Q&A. Tweet in your questions using #howlround.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOPS

The Debate Society & Mondo Bizarro: Wednesday 20 February at 8:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m. PST / 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. CST / 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. EST / 16:30-18:30 GMT

The Debate Society Workshop

When we make our plays, special/sad/bad/funny/unexpected tiny moments are what we search out and the things that become the fundamental base that we expand upon to create our onstage worlds. We work to find these minor elements of language or action that get to the root of the mood and meaning of our play. In this workshop we will guide (and sometimes trick) each other and ourselves into making these moments; working on our feet with objects, lists, etudes and possibly some god-awful love letters. This workshop will be led by Oliver Butler and Paul Thureen.

Mondo Bizarro Workshop

Cry You One is a project of Mondo Bizarro that combines a site-specific performance with an outdoor procession to highlight how rapidly one of the world's most vibrant cultures is disappearing. It is shared on the sites of erosion in South Louisiana, where water is reclaiming land once occupied by people’s homes. Led by Jeff Becker and Nick Slie, this interactive workshop will guide participants through our process when creating site-responsive performance events, using Cry You One as a focal point. People should be prepared to witness, ask questions, move, sing, and make things with their hands.

Here is the recording of this livestreamed event below:

 

New York City Players & Los Angeles Poverty Department: Wednesday 21 February at 12 p.m.-2 p.m. PST / 2 p.m. -4 p.m. CST / 3 p.m.-5 p.m. EST / 20:00-22:00 GMT

New York City Players Workshop

Playwright Christina Masciotti and performers Linda Mancini and Jay Smith will lead a workshop exploring the role of the performer in staging new text. Topics will include: generating new text by listening, the relationship of text to movement, making the text be heard, and the collaboration between performer and playwright/director in developing new text.

LAPD Workshop

Led by John Malpede, this workshop will fulfill our expectations of what a workshop should be. It will be good, if it turns out to inspire or be meaningful, so much the better, but it will be good. It will investigate the form “workshop”—as in, why do we do things in a workshop that we wouldn’t do elsewhere? Or where else would we do such things? The workshop will engage with current issues and be based on who’s in the room.

Here is the recording of this livestreamed event below:

 

UNIVERSES & Double Edge Theatre: Friday 22 February at 12 p.m.-2 p.m. PST / 2 p.m. -4 p.m. CST / 3 p.m.-5 p.m. EST / 20:00-22:00 GMT

UNIVERSES Workshop

The company opens with a short performance of ten minutes. This gives the workshop participants a quick snapshot of who the collaborators in the UNIVERSES ensemble are as individuals within a collective and demonstrates the strength of the collective of the individuals within it. The object of the workshop is to find the value in each of our stories and demonstrate how each individual has a place in the group; and how every group needs clearly defined individuals for a clearer snapshot of the makeup of our global communities.

Double Edge Theatre Workshop

Members of the Double Edge Theatre Ensemble will lead a workshop/ demonstration of its original creation methodology for participants and observers. Using elements of physical training, object work, and ensemble process, Double Edge actors (with participants) will layer together a 3-5 minute etude. The workshop will be directed by founder/ Artistic Director Stacy Klein, and led by ensemble actors Carlos Uriona, Matthew Glassman and Jeremy Louise Eaton.

Here's is the recording of this livestreamed event below:

 

ABOUT THE COMPANIES

The Debate Society

The Debate Society is a Brooklyn based company that creates new plays through the collaboration of Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen (writer/performers) and Oliver Butler (director/developer). The Debate Society trio are recipients of a 2012 Obie Grant, Sundance Institute Fellows, winners of a 2010 “Village Voice Best of Award” for “Best Argument for Devised Theater” and the 2012/13 Ars Nova Company in Residence.

Double Edge Theatre

An artist-run organization founded in 1982, the company applies rigorous physical training and the principle of an actor’s autonomy to create work in an ensemble, laboratory setting. In 1994, Double Edge purchased a 105-acre former dairy farm in Ashfield, MA, to which the theatre soon moved its operations from Boston. Today the Farm Center has activities which include year-round theatre training, indoor and outdoor performances, and community events.

LAPD

Founded in 1985, LAPD creates performances and multidisciplinary artworks that connect the experience of people living in poverty to the social forces that shape their lives and communities. Made up of people who make art, live and work on Skid Row (LA’s poorest area), LAPD was active in a movement with advocates, residents and social service professionals, that changed the paradigm by putting forward the idea that Skid Row could be improved by nourishing the powers of the people who live there. LAPD has created theatre projects throughout the U.S. and in the UK, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Bolivia, while working with artists and arts organizations, drug recovery programs, shelters and communities.

Mondo Bizarro

Mondo Bizarro creates original works of performance that are rooted in a particular sense-of-place and that reflect the joys, desires, memories, and possibilities of the communities from which they are born. Their work ranges from collaborative ensemble productions to large-scale festivals, from digital storytelling to daring site-specific events. Artists of place, all their journeys begin and end in New Orleans: they tour to embolden their efforts there.

New York City Players

A theater company founded in 1999 under the artistic direction of playwright and director Richard Maxwell to create original work about people, relationships and feeling. The company has produced 25 projects in over 20 countries. New York City Players appeared in the 2012 Whitney Biennial and has been selected for national and international recognition, including four Obie Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award.

UNIVERSES

Known for their 2001 seminal hit, Slanguage, New York-based UNIVERSES is a national/international ensemble of multi-disciplinary writers and performers who fuse poetry, theatre, jazz, hip-hop, politics, down home blues and Spanish boleros to create moving, challenging and entertaining theatrical works. UNIVERSES’ last play Party People premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival July-November 2012. They were last seen at ArtsEmerson in 2012’s Ameriville.

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected], or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal/WhatsApp. View the video archive of past events.