Sharing Process

New York City Players and Los Angeles Poverty Department co-facilitated a workshop sharing process as part of ArtsEmerson's The Next Thing (TNT) Festival on Thursday, February 21st, 2013. This workshop was created through a partnership of HowlRound and the New England Foundation of the Arts. Before the workshop, we asked each company a few questions about their process:

HowlRound: What is the very first thing you do when creating a piece?

Los Angeles Poverty Department: It depends on the piece and who is involved. For example, for State of Incarceration the first thing was for everyone to spend half an hour in their cell and then write about it. But, most people in the project had been in a cell. That instruction wouldn’t make sense for another group. And, no other project has started with such an instruction—no matter who is in the group. For Utopia /dystopia, our project about gentrification in downtown LA, people went out and met with real estate agents selling and renting lofts in downtown LA, then came back and did performative reports on their travels. For yet another project, Call Home, we put a phone booth on the street and invited anyone and everyone to make a phone call—anywhere in world—to someone they loved.

New York City Players: Vision Disturbance was created by two different artists working together for the first time, but there are some similarities in approach. Richard Maxwell (director and playwright): When I create a new work I begin with the schematic – a layout of what is going to happen. I also sometimes draw a picture of what, exactly, I see in the room. Christina Masciotti (playwright): I write the structure first. Then I find single lines from my notebook to begin with. The lines are things that I hear spoken around me, out in the world and by my family.

HowlRound: If your process were a president, who would it be and why?

New York City Players: Abe Lincoln - lean and in plain clothes.

This workshop was livestreamed on #NEWPLAY TV—see video below:

New York City Players Workshop Description:

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.

Los Angeles Poverty Department Workshop Description:

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.

ArtsEmerson: The World On Stage, in association with Howlround: a Center for the Theater Commons and The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival, presents a combustible combination of theatre, film, music, workshops and live-streamed events. Completely housed in ArtsEmerson’s Paramount Center in downtown Boston, The Next Thing (TNT) Festival (FEB 15-24) creates an unprecedented opportunity to dive deep into the world of contemporary ensemble performance. For more information about the festival, click here.