Organizational Models

Part two of this series, curated by Aditi Kapil, playwright-in-residence at Mixed Blood Theatre, examines the pragmatics of how Radical Hospitality works, “The Financial or Business Case,” in a conversation with Managing Director Amanda White Thietje, Community Outreach & Marketing Manager Brie Jonna, and Artistic Director Jack Reuler.

How do you work as a group? How do you work without a script? How do you ask someone to fund a group without a script? And how are you still together—financially, artistically? The non-traditional model of creation is frequently mysterious if only because it is hard to understand without doing.

Cape May Stage is a small Equity theater in Southern New Jersey—about as far south as you can go before your hat floats. Geographically, we are isolated from our colleagues in neighboring cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Yet, because our audiences routinely come from those places, we are forced to compete with larger theaters with larger budgets. That demands a creative solution.

We often discuss originality at Q Artistry, an Indianapolis based new works theater organization. We debate it and comb over it with dirty, bloody brushes or pluck at it with a solitary virgin pick. And we always come up with different answers. From talking bowling pins to singing bunnies, we've presented ideas in theater form that were brand new or re-imagined. We've set Edgar Allan Poe to theatrical music in "Cabaret Poe" and turned the villain from the oldest poem known to man into an experience for audiences in "Grendel".

Starting a theater company is much like getting ready to write a book report in the sixth grade. Before you get to the nitty-gritty, you first have to figure out the “Five Ws and One H.” Who? What? Where? Why? When? And, How?

In her essay, Annah Feinberg investigates infrastructural ephemerality in America's nonprofit theatre.

Artistic director and playwright Wendy MacLeod and I wondered aloud: what would happen if, right then, that playwright was placed in a remote community of writers for two weeks, at Ohio’s quiet and serenely beautiful Kenyon College? And what if that playwright could work with the commissioning theater’s literary manager as an advising voice and with all the tools at hand—actors to read, writers to hear, and, at the end, a fully staged reading? And no ticket sales. No critics.

Speaking of centralized authority figures: we are also so accustomed to having the “initial creative impulse” of a play come from a playwright .... But given the core task of the role—establishing the high-level vision for a production—is there any reason why, say, a designer or actor couldn’t serve as a product owner? I mean… why should playwrights be the only theater artists who get to sit in the “big vision” chair? In an agile theater world, they wouldn’t.

In the middle of the National Theater Festival and National Independent Theater Festival in Bucharest, the divide between idependent theatre and state theatre—artistic freedom and money—becomes clear.

Tired of waiting for a production and the loneliness writing entails, The Welders formed to take action. The warm reception made them realize how much can be done when having a community.

The Weekly Howl is a peer produced, open access discussion about theater culture and contemporary performance that happens in real-time on Twitter using the hashtag #newplay. If you have an idea for a topic or if you want to moderate the discussion, contact us on Twitter @HowlRound. The Weekly Howl happens on Thursdays on hashtag #newplay at 11am PST / 1pm CST / 2pm EST / 19:00 GMT / 8pm CET

Alex Ates shares a brief description of A Truckload of Ink, a new play by Jim Fitzmorris, commisioned by The NOLA Project theater company.

A. Nora Long examines our culture's fascination with the starving artist, scrambling to make ends meet... and calls for a movement to dismantle our thoughts about how we make a life in the theater.

The fall of communism in 1989 ledway to the democratisation of art. Ioana Tamas gives the breakdown of how arts management had to be developed to make this transition successful.

Adam Burnett and Jud Knudsen imagine a world without arts funding and wonder: could that actually be the impetus we need to rethink how and why we make theater?

This initial conversation between Artistic Director Jack Reuler and Playwright-in-Residence Aditi Brennan Kapil examines the artistic case for a theatre in Minneapolis to charge no admission, program ambitious new work that stretches its aesthetics, capacity, and resources, and perhaps more importantly, why this matters?

Paul Meshejian challenges the idea that compensation in theater is something to be taken for granted. Instead, shouldn't we expect to not make much for our art?

The key to successful “amateur” theatre is communication. Danielle Rosvally reminds us that outsiders need transparent frame works so the relationship with the company be a success.

Kacy O’Brien wondered what a conference would look like if it was planned as one long coffee break. How would the results compare to traditional break-out sessions?

Kelvin Dinkins Jr. takes a look at value of collaboration in an an underperforming company in an oversaturated market.

I spoke with several individuals who possess a broader view of the arts in New Jersey to get a better perspective for myself and for the New Jersey City Series. Here are some thoughts from leaders of New Jersey theater that should illuminate some further context for theater-making here.