Recent Essays

Beau Jest in Boston is thirty years old. Over that time we have seen several transformations, but the impulse that brought us together has never changed. We are actor-driven. We only do projects we are personally invested in pursuing as a group. We like work that is physically inventive and imaginatively staged. We like to take our time developing a piece, and will spend anywhere from two months to two years on it. We use Beau Jest as a laboratory to explore new ways of combining gesture, text, and physicality.

In this, Strange Attractor’s first major process, we put our commitment to the test, and through that difficult process, we became an ensemble. We still worked without a director, but unlike our first casual process, now we cared about the outcome. We’d fundraised for airline tickets and stipends and gotten our communities excited about our company. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to make something—we wanted it to be good.

Vickie Vértiz writes about Teatro Luna's production of Your Problem with Men

We’ve found most artists we come in contact with in Detroit aren’t bound to a single discipline—printmakers curate community food-based events, and trained painters build large-scale public installations. This inherent openness to working cross-disciplinarily has helped us to expand our ideas about the work of our company and the nature of our ensemble.

Offering insight into the relationship between ensembles and universities, Michael Rohd shares the text of a talk he gave at the Network of Ensemble Theaters.

This long standing collaboration can be felt through and through the ensemble work on display. Premeditation is tantalizing with promise—a talented cast and inventive staging in a noir 1940’s-esque comedy about marriage, infidelity, and murder.

Steve Lyons offers insight on the necessity and development of the American Association of Community Theatre NewPlayFest.

I remember how the stories of this community changed my life. I was shaped artistically, personally, and as an organizer. The community has stayed and made families, created a safe and healthy vision for their town, and made rich lives full of love. I’ve gone on to make art around the country—able to do so because of what I learned in Lost Hills.

I call the process of creating and performing trauma “spiritual work,” because it feels that way. Embodying trauma is a cathartic experience that transforms specific memory that lives in my body, into story-physical manifestation.