Svich - Innovation in five acts: strategies for theatre and performance

Copyright 2015 by Theatre Communications Group, Inc.

Innovation in Five Acts: Strategies for Theatre and Performance is published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 520 Eighth Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10018-4156

The Authors of each of the essays herein retain the copyright to their work.

All Rights Reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This publication is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Innovation in five acts: strategies for theatre and performance / edited by Caridad Svich.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-55936-840-7 (ebook)

1. TheaterProduction and direction. I. Svich, Caridad, editor.

PN2053.I527 2015

792.023dc23 2015016598

Cover and text design by Kitty Suen and Monet Cogbill

First TCG Edition, June 2015

CONTENTS

Caridad Svich

I am humbled by the sheer abundance of passion, talent, skill, rage, and artistry in this, our field. This collectionthese five actswhich you hold in your hand or touch on the screen of your reading devicebegan as a blog series I curated for the 2013 Theatre Communications Group National Conference and its Artistic Innovation arc. The series yielded over seventy essays and reflections, which then bled into the curating process of the 2014 series I curated for the 2014 TCG Conference on Crossing Borders, which, in turn, yielded over eighty articles. Clearly, this is no dry spell in our vibrant, intergenerational, cross-disciplinary communities engaged in the practice and theory of theatre and performance. Instead what I have been witnessing, not only through these two curated salons, but also in the wider work I do as an artivist, is that there is an increased desire to articulate the passions and processes and questions that go into art-making and its production, be they from the administrative or artistic side. Coupled with this passion to articulate is also one devoted to perhaps a healthy skepticism around articulation itselfa desire too to dis-articulate and just do. Both stances are tied, I believe, to how practitioners observe the effects and after-effects of the modish, instantaneous and sometimes facile articulation of ideas on social media.

Sometimes it does feel as if perhaps one is trying to navigate a bizarre maze of what is deemed expressivity to actually locate profound, reflective, rigorous thought expressed in essay, article or other modalities in our networked world. Yet, the creative optimist in methe one who makes art and works in culture in various aspectsalso believes that sometimes one of the great pleasures to be found in our fieldthe one to which we tend to on a daily basis with our lives and our existent and non-existent bank accounts, toois when the talk turns to inspiration, and inspiration to awakened thought. The arts, after all, the making of art pieces are, at days end, about how to re-see the world, re-imagine it and transform it somehow. In this collection, revised from the blog series, for this publication, the move from inspiration to awakening occurs frequently, and at times, almost as if by chance. The writers who have contributed their work to this volume, after all, were not aware of what the others were writing. Yet, how is it that connections, sometimes ecumenical in spirit and sometimes contentious, across disciplines, modes of practice, and perspectives on the nature of art-making are forged? I do not think it is mere serendipity, but rather something to do with the word innovation in and of itself.

When I was first asked to curate the blog series for TCG Circle moderated by August Schulenburg, who offers his remarks as the epilogue to this book-play in five acts, and he said that one of the central arcs of the 2013 TCG National Conference held in Dallas, Texas would be artistic innovation, I was both delighted and a bit wary. After all, the word innovation is used to talk about fiscal ventures, car design, twitter chats and much more. In short, it is an overused word, and especially at conferences where the word can ring a hollow and perfunctory note as a catch-all term to jazz up the conversation. Everyone wants to feel at some level that what they are doing and how they are doing it is innovative. In the United States, in particular, there is a historical impetus toward creating the next big thing in the next new way. Cultural primacy is often rewarded to what carries with it the mere whiff of innovation. My wariness was warranted, in other words.

As curator, a part of me felt that the title and ostensible topic of the arc was loaded and could lead to potentially threadbare and rather cursory and even flippant takes on the subject to ones that might find themselves weighted down by the history of the word in not only culture-at-large but also within the field itself. But what I was surprised to discover, as the series unfolded bit by bit and practitioners, scholars and administrators shared their written reflections, was how unguarded, despite sharing similar healthily skeptical reactions to the word and topic itself, and generous the responses werehow devoid, in other words, of snark and bitterness. With good humor, intelligence, thoughtfulness, rigor and wit, author after author offered their considered take on the subject, unlocking new perspectives, unearthing old ones, and in general, doing what artists do best when they are walking on ground they trust and among colleagues who are not sitting before them in continual and sometimes stultifying judgmentand that is, open our eyes, hearts and minds again.

In this edited collection, more than forty practitioners and scholars voice their whimsical, fiery, deeply impassioned, political, funny, sometimes elegiac and stinging words prompted by a call to write about artistic innovation. Most of the artists write about innovations in form, or reactions to and against late capitalism and how its economic structures have made the deceptively simple impulse to say Letsas Julie Felise Dubiner eloquently writes in her essay of the same namea torturous and somewhat long-winded affair that has left many an idea for the making and production of art on the cutting room floor. This same impulse is echoed in Zac Klines essay, which brims with the potential of the word Yeshow, in effect, a serendipitously thunderstruck moment of awe and wonder can occur when seeing work that makes you believe again in theatres power. This same Yes is reiterated in Octavio Solis essay on how innovative writing can make an audience and fellow practitioner become re-awakened to seeing the world anew. Whats interesting, of course, is that this should be the goal each and every time, as hard as it may be: to make something because you want to have others see the world as if it were a new thingnew and wondrous, as Mark Schultz reminds us in his essay that centers on Shakespeares