Preserving and Transmitting American Ensemble-Based Theatre Part One: Participant Perspectives
Jeffrey Mosser: Welcome to another episode of the From the Ground Up podcast, produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. I’m your host, Jeffrey Mosser, recording from the ancestral homeland of the Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee, now known as Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
These episodes are shared digitally to the internet. Let’s take a moment to consider the legacy of colonization embedded within the technology, structure, and ways of thinking that we use every day. We are using equipment and high-speed Internet not available in many indigenous communities. Even the technologies that are central to much of the work we make leave a significant carbon footprint contributing to climate change that disproportionately affects indigenous people worldwide. I invite you to join me in acknowledging the truth and violence perpetrated in the name of this country, as well as our shared responsibility to make good of this time, and for each of us to consider our roles in reconciliation, decolonization, and allyship.
Dear artists, listen, let’s be real here. I say at the top of most of my episodes that I am so excited to share this with you today. And the truth is, I am and will always be excited to share something with you. There is so much pent-up anticipation of the ability to share things with you, I cannot explain. And as is often the case, I started recording many of these episodes well over a year ago. And the great thing about re-listening to an entire season of them as I edit and produce them is understanding what continues to have the weight in our work as ensemble and collaborative creators. That, and I love remembering that shared moment in time I had with these artists that I get to interview. Such is the case at the top of this season, and all of this season. Who am I kidding?
In June 2023, though, I was able to participate in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Higher Education Faculty, at Pig Iron Theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This two-week event gathered more than twenty-five faculty, artists, and scholars from around the country to explore the topic of Preserving and Transmitting American Ensemble-Based Theatre. The first three episodes of this season, including this one you’re listening to, are dedicated to the participants, the presenters, and the organizers of this conference. Are you like me in that sometimes when describing ensemble-based or physical theatre work, you have to define it first? How it works, why you do it, the methodologies or techniques behind it—sometimes you even have to do this for theatre people. One of the greatest things about being at this institute is the common ground shared, so that we could start a conversation from any obscure reference point and understand that it finds its way back to the common language of ensemble-based physical and devised theatre.
It was just so refreshing to be in a place where we could have big conversations from the jump. I’ll take this a bit further and say that nearly ten years prior, I completed a session at the Pig Iron School, which codified so much of my personal practice as a theatremaker. Pig Iron Theatre Company is iconic, and if you’d like more info about how they do what they do and how they came to be, I highly recommend you go back to season one of From the Ground Up, where I interviewed Quinn Bauriedel, one of the three co-founding artistic directors. I have to say that this event was very full circle for me, and made me feel that there are so many more people out there doing this work in classrooms than I had ever imagined. As mentioned, the focus was on preserving and transmitting. So much of ensemble-based work is ethereal, existing only for a moment. How do ensembles catalog and record their work?
And if you’re like me, so much of the effort is placed on the creation of ensemble work that we fail to document it in the process of that creation. A fascinating query, and one that these artist-scholars, and I say that as a hyphenated word, artist-scholars, grappled with via several amazing presenters. In just a moment, you’ll be hearing from eleven of the participants: Robi Arce-Martínez, Hansel Tan, Johanna Kasimow, Michelle Hayford, Nisi Sturgis, Sasha Vega, Yizhou Huang, J.D. Stokely, Brittney S. Harris, Leslie Elkins, and Lex Brown.
And throughout, you’ll hear references to artists such as Suli Holum, Jessica Nakamura, Théâtre du Soleil, Judith Miller, and Dan Rothenberg. And if you want connections or more information about any of these artists, I will gladly put links in the transcriptions page at howlround.com.
Hey, and speaking of, please do check out HowlRound for all kinds of back episodes of the podcast. And you all, I do love hearing from you. Please drop us a line at [email protected], or find us on Instagram at FTGU_Pod, and on Facebook. If you know an ensemble that needs to be on this show, I need to hear from you, so don’t hold back. Let me know. In fact, that’s where I get some of my best leads, is hearing from other ensemble artists. So, please holler at me.
Okay, here we go into our in-depth coverage of the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on Preserving and Transmitting American Ensemble-Based Theatre. These interviews were recorded between June 13th through the 17th, 2023, on Lenapehoking Land, now known as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Enjoy.
Hansel Tan: My name is Hansel Tan. My pronouns are he/him. I am with the University of Pittsburgh. I’m a rising final year student in performance pedagogy, and we’re all still figuring out what that means.
Jeffrey: Thank you so much. The title of this conference is Preserving and Transmitting Ensemble-Based Devised Theatre. I’m wondering what you came into this institute hoping to preserve or transmit.
Hansel: Wow, that’s a really great question. I came with this institute with curiosity. Ensemble devising, as I said, this very coy cat we call ensemble devising has many forms, and I think I came here acknowledging that there are many gaps of my own knowledge and I wanted to fill and I wanted to be in a community of scholars that were doing really important work historicizing and thinking through what preservation meant. And of course, I’m coming as a pedagogue in training. I’ve spent many years in the commercial theatre industry and yet have personal roots that are based in a certain understanding of ensemble and devising. And as I’m figuring out and thinking through my own practice at an institutional or extra-institutional level, I wanted to see what are some of the big takeaways I can take from this institute to inflect my own pedagogy, to inflect my own practice, and to inform my own understanding of how I want to conduct my work in the communities beyond.
Jeffrey: And has there been a big pedagogical thing that you’re like, “Oh, this is something I’m going to take with me,” like something you’re putting in your pocket and taking back with you to Penn?
Hansel: Wow, every single session there’s been something to take away, be it a way of looking and thinking about devising, be it a way about troubling the idea of devising or collaboration, be it a way of thinking through certain utopianist assumptions behind ensemble devising, certain philosophical takeaways. So I am particularly excited about looking at devising as pedagogy specifically for traditions of actor training. And I understand for me to admit the word actor training itself is such a problematic thinking, a problematic way of thinking through performance creation and performing in the twenty-first century. But I think it’s useful and I think it’s got really interesting things to say about equity, interesting things to say about access and inclusion. Not to say straightforward but important. And I think it’s certainly opened up many different ways of reorienting my work in the classroom.
Jeffrey: So far from what I’ve observed in two or three days it’s been pulled back and forth and from region to region, location, location, all over the world. And I understand that there’s even more from that in the first week with yoga in the practice of devising and whatnot. So I’m so excited to hear, to see where you land with some of those devising practices and where that fits into your pedagogy. That’s great. You talked a little bit, maybe before we were even recording, you were talking about how there have been really wonderful conversations with other folks around. What conversations amongst the peers here have you felt were the most ripe for you?
Hansel: That’s a really great question. I think one of the most exciting conversations we’ve been having are issues and assumptions and notions regarding the place of the body in this kind of work, because as I’ve been learning and as we’ve been talking amongst ourselves and in these sessions, the notion of the body and its over-signifiedness or under-signifiedness in the world of American devising and global devising seems central to this practice. And I think a lot of really productive conversations that come out of other bodies, historically other bodies and how we assume inevitably or invariably occlude these kinds of bodies in our practice and the kinds of ways we can bring these bodies in and the kinds of theoretical as well as practical structures that we can attend to in order to make them… to center our practice around these bodies and to see what comes out of that. So it’s more of an experimental orientation at this point in time, but I would be excited to apply this to my own work.
Jeffrey: Yeah, the neutral mask, the neutral body, what is that? Where is that? Where does that live?
Hansel: Exactly, there are all these words that we’re grappling with. On one hand, there’s the institutional side of it for longevity, for issues of fiscal reasons. We have to keep these conversations intact and keep these classes going, but at the same time, do we need to throw the methodological baby out with the bathwater? And I think there is a case made for yes and no, and I think a lot of it has to do with what kind of intellectual and what kind of material resources you have, and the kind of communities we want to or are motivated to build within the institution and outside of the institution. And so it’s a really long-winded way of saying, “I don’t know, but I think these conversations are super productive.”
Jeffrey: Yeah. Lovely to hear. Has there been any one particular presenter or lecturer or demonstrator that has stood out to you?
Hansel: I am not so secretly in love with the Lecoq work, although I know a lot of people have many thoughts about it. So the Emmanuelle Delpech’s session on, our lecture demonstration on her reception and her transformation of her work in Lecoq has been super wonderful. That was my personal favorite. It just got us up and moving, which I think was really refreshing, because I… Yeah, it was just another way of being in our bodies and being together in a room, which I loved.
Jeffrey: This might be a little bit premature because we have a few days left in the institute, but I’m wondering what questions do you think you’ll be leaving with?
Hansel: Wow, issues of pedagogy, especially for the majority. There’s been a lot of push towards, thinking towards this kind of pedagogy, and I’m wondering what that might look like. On a very sort of micro level, I’m already deeply thinking through what it means to bring this work into existing institutional structures without rocking the boat too much. There are a lot of feathers that can be ruffled, and I think especially in certain pockets of institutional America, and especially in the theatrical industrial complex, there are very historically overprivileged ways of thinking about theatrical production and thinking about the actor or performer’s role in that theatrical production that is of a certain heritage. And I am interested in these two practices intersecting and speaking to one another and transforming one another. So I’ll be looking to see how I can make that integration in my own studio, in my own work.
One of the ways to approach the work is to state questions that you don’t have the answer to.
Jeffrey: Hi.
Robi Arce-Martínez: Hi.
Jeffrey: Can we just start by saying your name, your pronouns?
Robi: Yeah. I am Robi Arce-Martínez. And my pronouns are he, him, his, or they. And I’m assistant professor of Movement and Acting for the School of Theatre at the University of Greensboro in North Carolina.
Jeffrey: Everyone’s here for different reasons or came into this institute with different ideas about what they wanted to learn.
Robi: Yeah.
Jeffrey: And I’m wondering why did you come into this institute wanting to learn more about?
Robi: I’m a deviser and I believe in the power of collective creation and I believe in community. So I, what really draw me to this was the aspect of community and get to meet other people that are doing similar work and devising, but with probably different aesthetics or different approaches, so I came in here excited to meet other people and learn from each other.
Jeffrey: Have there been any really ripe conversations you’ve had?
Robi: There have been plenty, but let’s see, I think that the aspect of colonization and race has come in a couple of moments in conversation, and that is something that is ongoing but also necessary. And also, yeah, the nature of asking questions about how as an ensemble you… Like Dan was talking about that today. How as an ensemble-
Jeffrey: Dan Rothenberg, the Pig Iron founder?
Robi: Yes.
Jeffrey: Co-founder?
Robi: Mm-hmm. One of the ways to approach the work is to state questions that you don’t have the answer to. Yeah, that’s some of the things that I’ve been excited about and kind of seeking more of. I’m a practitioner, so I believe in action.
Jeffrey: What do you think you’re going to be leaving here thinking about or questions that you’re going to be asking when you leave here at this point?
Robi: What are the tools that I can use? There are tools that I have been gaining from this whole experience, but the question of what is the theatre that we want to see moving forward, which will be informed by the newer generations in the classrooms, which are, in this case, my students, what are the platforms that I am providing for them in order for them to create this new approach or this, I don’t know, new theatre that I am eager to see?
Michelle Hayford: Michelle Hayford, she/her, University of Dayton.
Johanna Kasimow: Johanna Kasimow, she/her, University of Iowa.
Jeffrey: Awesome.
We came here under the auspices of preserving and transmitting. And I’m wondering what you came here with the urge to preserve or transmit.
Michelle: I came here more with the interest in how we reclaim genealogies as part of the devising legacy that haven’t been defined that way. And also how we disrupt transmission, how do we prepare students to be advocates through really revolutionary practices in devising and applied theatre to make a difference, to change our field, to go out and create work that we need as a culture.
Jeffrey: Thank you. Can you help me unpack genealogy?
Michelle: Yeah, I think it’s the tyranny of what’s been published, what has been vetted by an academic press as worthy of being, quote, “scholarship.” And there’s a lot of other legacies of performance work and ensemble work that has been just as critical to the field, but not given that academic platform. So how do we disrupt and add to the stories that we tell about our histories?
Jeffrey: We’ve had so many presenters, and so many lectures and demonstrations, but I’m wondering, where I’m really hearing the most juicy excitement or in the conversations that are happening outside of those demonstrations and whatnot, and I’m wondering if you’ve had a really ripe or lovely or inspiring conversation with a colleague while here and what that might have been about.
Michelle: Where there’s been some heat is in how we support each other individually in our own career trajectories and where we all are. We’re all in very different places and circumstances, and I think we all really want to be there for one another and support one another. So individually, that’s been lovely. And then there’s also just been really urgent conversations about how we as a cohort are in conversation with the material that’s been presented in that in between the sessions we’re talking to each other in really urgent ways about what’s missing or what our interventions would be or what contributions we each have to make to the field, and so that’s been really exciting. And also the potential for continuing these relationships and the personal impacts that’ll have on each of us, but also our students wherever we are disseminated across the country and the work that we’ll create with our students and the hopeful possibilities in that.
Jeffrey: Anything I didn’t give you a chance to share about?
Michelle: It was fun to play with one another. When we had the opportunities to be in our bodies together and explore space together and really create and improv together, we got to know each other as artists in that way, and that was fun. And I want more of that. I want to create more of these folks, not just in a kind of scholarly academic text-based way, but I’m curious as to how we might be in the same space, how we might share space in the future as artists together.
Jeffrey: Yeah.
Johanna: Feels like it’s been really robust and just truly sort of dynamic with everyone’s sort of different set of expertise and approach. Felt really diverse in that way. There’s dancers in the room, there’s people who come from art backgrounds, comparative lit, and then all these different approaches to theatremaking. So the question feels big.
J.D. Stokely: Sure, my name is J.D. Stokely. I use they/them pronouns, and I am a PhD Student at Brown [University] and an Adjunct at Emerson College.
Jeffrey: I’m wondering what you came here in order to preserve or transmit.
J.D.: Oh, that’s an interesting question. I think one thing that I am wanting to preserve really connecting applied theatre to devised theatre, especially given that in the work that I do with maybe communities of color and queer communities, a lot of that work often gets lumped in as community-based or community-engaged or more applied theatre, and I’m trying to find ways of preserving the beautiful aesthetic quality of that work and the deep rigor and commitment to that work in the grand scheme of devised theatremaking in the US.
Jeffrey: There are so many wonderful presenters, but I’ve heard so many people have wonderful conversations. And I’m wondering what the particular conversations you’ve found really satisfying with another cohort member here.
J.D.: Whoa, these are great questions. I think I’ve had some really interesting conversations with Robi specifically about how as maybe younger faculty, a lot of the longer-term work that really has the most ripples, let’s say, or the most impact is in the classroom. We are seeing lots of beautiful models, especially thinking about Swarthmore College’s model for creating longer lasting relationships. And yet, as someone who’s at the beginning of my career, I’m not sure what those long commitment relationships look like in my different departments. And so, yeah, I’ve been thinking about how I can have the most impact quickly with students with addressing power dynamics in the classroom with letting them lead the process with being really open and thinking about mentorship in a more lateral way.
Jeffrey: Has there been one speaker in particular who’s really stood out for you and that you’re going to take a lot away from?
J.D.: Yes, I hope I’m remembering her name correctly, but Jessica Nakamura’s work in thinking about what we do with Artaud, the ways that we can both glean really important and inspiring, exciting reflections from that history and that work, but also thinking about how we challenge that and really just grounding the history of some of this work in a much more culturally specific historical context.
Jeffrey: Yeah, and then you came in with one thing, but I’m wondering if you’ve developed any further questions after having been here.
J.D.: One of the things that I am hoping to transmit that I’ve learned since being here is that, as a PhD student who’s kind of midway through my time, a lot of practice is really understood by my home institution as acting, directing, and playwriting. And that has never been what practices look like for me. It’s always been more like collaborative creation and creative producing. And so I think I’m coming with a renewed excitement about transmitting that kind of knowledge to my home department and making more space for practice beyond those three buckets of acting, directing, and playwriting.
The specificity and how you build an ensemble and the narratives and how you stitch it together is just as important in doing solo work and stitching that together too.
Jeffrey: Hi.
Brittney S. Harris: Hey.
Jeffrey: How are you?
Brittney: Doing well. How about yourself?
Jeffrey: I’m great. Before we get started, can you tell me your full name, institute you’re here with, and your pronouns please?
Brittney: Absolutely. So my name is Brittney S. Harris, and I’m at Old Dominion University. I’m an assistant professor of Theatre with a focus in community-engaged theatre, and my pronouns are she and her.
Jeffrey: Thank you so much. This is about preserving and transmitting, and so I’m wondering when you applied to come and join this institute, what part of preserving and transmitting were you most interested in bringing to the table and hearing about while you were here?
Brittney: Yeah, absolutely. So my research focuses on primarily just the vicarious trauma that we as millennials, especially BIPOC millennials, experience from just the abundance of violence in our social media streams and feeds or whatnot, but that is the way that things are being archived now. They’re being turned into hashtags or movements. And so when I think about preserving eventually hashtags, #SayHerName,Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, they erase, you stop sharing them—so how do we as artists keep their narratives alive? And so I talk about embodying the archive, embodying the hashtag, keeping the narrative alive by performing either pieces about them, inspired by them, and in doing so, I’m all about dialogue with the audience. So the work that I create about embodiment then keeps the conversation alive that’s beyond the news cycle or the black and white of a hashtag.
Jeffrey: A little bit of a performance question for you is how do you rehearse that dialogue with an audience in the work that you do?
Brittney: Absolutely. So I build into my pieces places for audience immersiveness and interaction right off the board. So even in the framing of the piece, so for instance, I have a piece that was inspired by the #MeToo movement called Being Bad, B-A-D, and it’s in response to the gender disparity roles and the veil that women, especially Christian women, wear in this community, and this idea of how do we lift the veil of our eyes to be whole, and the framing is in a support group that you find is for people who are survivors of domestic violence and interpersonal violence. So I use the audience to ask questions. I give them the opportunity to engage back with me. There’s some Boal work, Augusto Boal, who’s the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, just… And called Rainbow of Desires, this exercise that we’re able to say, “Hold.”
It’s kind of like Forum Theatre, but “hold,” and then the audience can come in and give their perspective like a rainbow of, “If I could say this or that,” and you get all these multiple perspectives and allowing the artist to work through a certain situation, but also makes you that beautiful spec-actor, not spectator. So I build it into the framework of the piece itself. It’s meant to be a dialogue, not just talking at you or throwing up some really big themes that make you feel a certain way, but if I’m going to ask you to feel something, I’m going to give you a space to express it as well.
Jeffrey: That’s awesome. Big smiles here when we talked about Boal overall like, “Yay, Boal!”
Brittney: Absolutely.
Jeffrey: What conversations have been really ripe for you?
Brittney: The conversations that have been ripe and the beauty has been this beautiful marriage between scholar and practitioner. This idea of here’s all these theories, these are people who’ve applied it, and you’ve read it, but then being able to apply it in our bodies. There’s a lot of practitioners that have come up over this week so far, especially like Mary Overlie. This idea that I learned viewpoints work from a whole ‘nother perspective. But this idea of now getting a new origin of the history, being able to apply it more accurately for our students on the university level then extends out that narrative. That’s how we preserve the embodiment and then also the carrying on of the proper information.
So what I’ve enjoyed just is the conversations is afterwards and these fifteen to twenty minute breaks that we’re on, how do we sit down and say, “That’s how we’re going to bring it to our students.” That’s some of my favorite conversations. So I’ve enjoyed, again, just the beautiful intersectionality, which is a good word that’s been between the scholar and the practitioner, and finding that they’re both needed. You have to be able to understand the history. And then also, if you’re going to understand it, how do we apply it to keep it alive? Because both are important. You have to have both.
Jeffrey: How do we become… Yeah. Embodied scholars was a really great thing that somebody said the other day, and I really took that to heart. We’ve had several panels, and several talks, and several papers delivered, and presentations, and lectures, and demonstrations. What’s one of them that stood out to you?
Brittney: Telory [Davies Arendell], she came in with Embodied Playwriting. And I’m a solo artist myself, Being Bad is a solo piece that I tour to multiple French festivals. So this idea of hearing how Suli [Holum] took this piece that was very much rooted in her own history with her mother, her own work, and hearing about domestic violence survivors, which is also very similar to my work that I do, and the extension of applying the theory, again, of Viewpoints in the extension of telling narrative and then allowing the audience to be immersive in that experience has been the session that has resonated with me the most. What it shows is that there is power in narrative-based storytelling still, this idea that, yes, the ensemble is important, but sometimes that narrative, either if it’s linear or not, it’s so important that we need stories that are compelling, that are physical, that aren’t just, “I’m going to sit down here and tell you about my life, but I’m going to embody that and take you on the journey.”
And for me, it locked in on practitioner and the scholarly and how they both have a place in teaching people about this work. Because at the end of the day, the theatre people are going to love the theatre. But if we can bring in folks that are non-theatre folks that can be like, “Hey, that’s really compelling. And what did you… Oh, wow, there’s a method to this madness?”
There is, and that, for me, just was like, “All right, I’m supposed to be here. There’s someone who’s doing similar work as me,” that was the session that resonated with me the most.
Jeffrey: I hear that. And I really also… I want to echo that this is ensemble-based work, but also devising is a big focus here too. And just for Suli to demonstrate how she devises and co-writes and is as much of a playwright in the moment in the physicalization, in the making of the work.
Brittney: She described, which was so fascinating, that her ensemble was the stage. That was so powerful. She’s like, “Yeah, my props, my objects, the lighting.” And she’s like, “These are my ensembles.” Yes, tell it! Because I also do that.
When you’re in solo work, everything is so important, has a meaning. If you’re going to have a veil, the veil’s going to be looked. You’re going to have a rose, the color of everything. And in that, the specificity and how you build an ensemble and the narratives and how you stitch it together is just as important in doing solo work and stitching that together too, so yes.
Jeffrey: Thank you for hitting that.
Okay, last thing I’ll ask you today though I want to talk to you forever, this has been the best ever. I know it’s like day eight or nine for you all. We’re on day eight and we end on Friday here. Everyone disappears on Friday. But I’m wondering what you think you’re going to be, what questions are you going to take back out into the world with you?
Brittney: Oh my goodness. I was just talking about this with another participant. The difference between having an ensemble and having a piece that is ensemble-based, and I know they are similar, but let me explain this.
So you’re going to have a piece that’s like based off, say Antigone, that has a Greek chorus and all of that, that’s an ensemble. However, if you’re building a piece that is ensemble-based, that means I need to bring in your perspective, that perspective to keep building. But there’s this disconnection that I’ve noticed, especially at my university, that they don’t know how to work as an ensemble yet. They haven’t been given the tools.
Here, we’re given very specific practitioners that practice ensemble-based work with Lecoq teaching you that Viewpoints can also be skillful in that. And what I’ve been very open to and having questions about is, how if… So, for instance, I devise at my university, how can I build a sense of ensemble if they haven’t had the tools to know what even makes an ensemble an ensemble?
There’s a whole history of this. If I go there and say, “Pig Iron,” they’re not going to know. But I have to do my job now as an educator to bring that history that’s also about preserving the archive, that’s getting new materials, and no offense to the… your Stanislavskys and the Actor Prepares and your Utas and all, but we need to bring new material to the university to keep this alive and to teach it better. So that balance between, I’m building an ensemble versus this is an ensemble-based piece. That’s the questions that I have that I’m going to be figuring out for the next year or so.
Jeffrey: I love that.
Nisi Sturgis: Nisi Sturgis, she/her/hers. Yeah, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Jeffrey: The title of this institute is to preserve and transmit ensemble and devised work, and so I’m wondering what you came into this institute with the idea of preserving or transmitting.
Nisi: Language and tools. I wanted a way of speaking about this work in the academy without sucking the joyful marrow out of it. Because so much of the theory and history, as fascinating as it can be for students approaching this work, it can feel overwhelming of, “What does it have to do with me right now? And where is my story in all of this history?” and that history is invaluable, but I have felt that when I try to approach the work from that angle, it’s weighed down.
So I wanted the tools from these brilliant collaborators and people digging in the dirt of this field of, “Oh, look what I found,” of the wonder around it, of their exercises and experiments, and their impossible questions is something that keeps coming up throughout this institute that I will definitely hang on to and bring in to activate the work that I’m doing in my classroom.
Jeffrey: Thank you for that. There’s a fantastic level of connection and conversation between the sessions.
Nisi: Oh, yes.
Jeffrey: And I’m wondering if there’s… Has there been a conversation that has been especially ripe for you, that has happened after a session where you’re like, “I want to talk to you about this. Let’s break this down?”
Nisi: Robi. From the jump of seeing the tactile expression of his work with masks, I felt drawn in of, there’s something that I’ve realized that I’m going to do from here on out with my students when I’ve assigned things for them to read on a screen, never again. Seeing Judith Miller take us through Théâtre du Soleil and having these beautiful pictures and handouts, those connections of, “Oh, the tactile,” what it does for artists in the room and how unifying that is. So Robi offering us just examples of his masks connected me so much to his work in this visceral way, so I will definitely be taking back, bringing in objects to activate instead of just ideas, which I know has a lot to do with moment work, the history of that work. Yeah, but I hadn’t seen the shining eyes of a collaborator of something that they’d made and how personal that was in activating how they’re approaching this, so that’ll be something that I’m going to keep close.
Jeffrey: Yeah. What have been some questions that you have discovered while you’ve been here?
Nisi: Honey, my notebook, at this point in the day, I’m flooded. There’s something about in Dan… Rothberg’s?
Jeffrey: Rothenberg.
Nisi: Rothenberg, thank you. Dan Rothenberg’s Toshiki Okada’s sort of suspension of space and memory that I’m really curious about of how our… And even today with Deb Margolin, her automatic writing session of something about these prompts, these provocations of what you’re trying to hold onto and Quinn talking about the first day of, here today, gone tomorrow, of these thoughts that we are chasing. And Lex Brown was talking about our work in the academy of feeling the chasm open up behind us as we’re reaching towards something of that suspension. Again, there’s something active in that instead of that we have the knowledge holding onto it of that propulsion forward. So that’s all fragmented, but that is the closest that I can get of… They’re all superimposed for me right now.
Yizhou Huang: I am Yizhou Huang. I am assistant professor of Theatre in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts, so I do work with a lot of visual artists as my great colleagues at St. Louis University.
Jeffrey: Pronouns?
Yizhou: She/her/hers.
Jeffrey: Thank you.
Sasha Vega: My name’s Sasha Vega, my pronouns are she/her, and I’m a part-time lecturer at Rutgers University in the media area.
Jeffrey: I’m wondering, what sorts of questions did you come into this institute with?
Yizhou: So I always find it—like devising, collective creation—I always struggle with how to teach them. I am not really a performer. I sort of come in as a scholar, as a theatre historian. And sometimes you read about people’s process, you read about the exercises, and I just felt like I’m always a little bit detached from what actually happens in the room. So I came in thinking that this would be a really great chance to actually to get some hands-on experience. And I do think we get that. I think the exercises are really helpful. They’re just way more direct in terms of helping me understand how it actually works.
Sasha: Yeah, so my kind of pathway here, it’s kind of like a left turn from visual arts so I have made a couple devised ensemble-based performance pieces, but I feel like I’m really learning on the go. And so part of what I came in with quite simply is just how do people make performance, which is something that can’t really be codified, right? That’s not something that you just have a system for, but I just wanted to hear more about how collectives and individuals have navigated the sort of question of building a time-based event. Yeah, I think unless you’re in process already, it’s sort of made really mysterious.
Jeffrey: What sorts of conversations have you had that have made you feel like, “Oh, that’s a conversation I wouldn’t have gotten if I hadn’t been here?”
Sasha: I could say that, so because I come from a visual arts background, what’s been really fascinating is just being able to have conversations with folks across different disciplines whether they’re practitioners or scholars and I’ve only been teaching for a couple of years as an adjunct, and so I find it actually it’s been really thrilling to talk to somebody who’s been going at this for ten, twenty, thirty years. And so I think what’s been really surprising is the ways that I can find actual continuities of pushback or questioning or distress that actually exist across discipline, whether you’re in visual arts or theatre or dance. And that’s actually been kind of really helpful to hear as a way of being like, “Oh, well, we really should be all kind working a little more together as opposed to being in these arbitrary silos that don’t really serve us anyways.
Yizhou: I agree. And one of the throughlines, there’s so many throughlines, but one of the questions that keeps popping up is this relationship between scholars and artists. How do we preserve this? How do we record this? How do we pass it down? So I’m thinking back to the first week when Bonnie’s like, “All these writings are too self-promotional. I don’t want to read this. I want to read real criticism to yesterday with Telory” and she’s like, “I don’t think of myself as a critic going in to criticize what Suli is doing.” She’s like, “I think that’s not really the approach I’m trying to get here.”
And I do think that’s consistent question that people ask to these scholars. Where do they see their intervention? Is there even an intervention, right? What’s this relationship between scholars and artists? Which I think is a very fruitful conversation to have.
Leslie Elkins: I am Leslie Elkins, and my pronouns are she/her. And I am an Associate Professor of Dance at Rowan University.
Jeffrey: This institute is about preserving and transmitting, and I’m wondering what you came here to preserve or transmit.
Leslie: At Rowan, I have the great honor and privilege to team teach and work on devising with one of my theatre colleagues, Dr. Christopher Marlowe Roche. And we have recently implemented devising as a requirement for all of the majors in the theatre major. And I feel like it’s important for me, coming from the dance side of the department, to make sure that I do what we’re asking the students to do, and that I understand how the history of devising reaches into dance in ways that I haven’t necessarily been aware of. And this institute is definitely giving me all of that and more.
Jeffrey: A little bit of just jump in the deep end. Just go right ahead.
Leslie: Yeah, why not?
Jeffrey: One of the greatest benefits is having the conversations with other people while you’re here as well, and so I’m wondering, what’s a conversation that you’ve had that’s been really ripe?
Leslie: There have been so many on the… So I think many of the conversations that have happened for me outside of our sessions are conversations about how we connect. And the connection might be geographic, or it might be training-wise, it could be that there are several participants who are currently finishing up their dissertations and their doctoral work and sort of commiserating on that writing process or realizing that there are several people, again, sort of geographically close, not Philadelphia-based, but not that far, and realizing that we can extend, not just invitation, but just extend our physical reach and work and support each other’s work. That was the other thing. So the Pig Iron students, I was immediately drawn to them I think because I really do identify as a teacher. I’ve had many conversations with the Pig Iron students, talking to them about where they are in their training and their artistry, art-making, what they’re wanting to do, and letting them know that…
And it feels so odd to say this, I don’t think of myself as having any kind of real power, but because of my position in a university and being the director of the dance major and working closely with the chair of the department who’s also a dance faculty member right now, I have the ability to support these young artists coming out of Pig Iron, and I want to because they’re doing the kind of work that I am interested in and that we want our students currently at Rowan University… It’s the kind of work, not just the way it looks, but the process. So I’m enticing them to stick around Philly, which most of them seem, that are working for the institute, most of them say they’re going to stick around Philly, and I want to get them to Rowan.
Jeffrey: It kind of goes to who was the person who said it the other day that, it’s Cláudia [Tatinge Nascimento], I’m going to miss her last name right now, but how we can’t clock, we cannot teach what the student’s theatres, what the-
Leslie: Their current, we can’t teach them the current theatre.
Jeffrey: Right. Yeah. So come teach us the current theatre.
Leslie: Yeah, come teach because I can learn so much from them, my students can learn from them, and we can make it. Yeah, for sure.
Jeffrey: Yeah. So that said, we’ve also had some wonderful speakers, and I’m wondering if there’s someone in particular who’s presented on something that has just illuminated something for you.
Leslie: Ruwanthie [de Chickera] I thought, was unbelievably powerful in sharing the immense work that she’s doing in Sri Lanka. I went home, it was on Friday afternoon, and I went home and immediately went to the website and immersed myself in reading and looking at more and more things because her work, especially with teenagers and the things that she was saying about what we teach when we teach devising, is potentially what’s going to save humanity. I feel that. I feel that deeply with young people, I think it’s really important.
Lex Brown: Hi, I’m Lex Brown. My pronouns are she/hers, and I’m here as a lecturer in Visual Arts at Princeton University.
Jeffrey: I’m wondering what you came here to… Oh, my god… What is it?
Lex Brown: Preserve and transmit?
Jeffrey: Preserve and transmit, my brain just totally went bright blank. What did you come here to preserve or transmit?
Lex Brown: I’m not sure if I came here thinking that I personally had anything to preserve, but rather that this would be a great opportunity for me to learn about practices that are adjacent to my own cobbled together knowledge and approaches that come out of visual arts and performance art within visual arts. So I think to borrow a word that we use today was “transdisciplinary,” operating within a different discipline than the one you have a background in. I actually made some real connections with people. I think we’ve been really lucky that the group of people here has been really kind, intelligent, responsive. So I’ve had a conversation with everybody that I think is valuable, but as far as taking this back and transmuting it in an embodied way, I think that will really seriously mean just hanging out with people, collaborating, making things together, staying in touch, and transmitting in a real way.
And then for me, pedagogically, there’s so many takeaways from this experience for my drawing class about different ways that I want to think about line or shape or shadow and introduce those in the classroom. And then also just the culture of the classroom, making it a room that is about exploration and innovation with drawing, especially students come in and they have this idea of, “It’s supposed to look like this,” and it’s very representative and super literal, and I think that this world of devising that we’ve been talking about really offers a different way to think about creating imagery that’s not based on representation, which is kind of like a translation of something being based on the text. So I think there’s a lot of really interesting crossovers that I’m really excited to bring into my classroom when it comes to visual arts and also into my practice and into my life.
Jeffrey: Thank you.
Lex Brown: You’re welcome.
Jeffrey: Before I go any further, I want to say thank you again to all the participants who are so generous enough to talk with me. It was really wonderful getting to know you and how our paths and pedagogies overlapped, so thank you. I miss you all, and I hope you all are doing so well out there. I am so grateful for the work that you are doing and continuing.
Also, I have to say thank you to the folks who even invited me to the conference, Quinn Bauriedel and Allen Kuharski. None of this would’ve happened without their generosity, so thank you, thank you, thank you.
I also have to say thank you to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who provided me with a grant in order to make sure that I could cover some of my expenses while I was out there as well, so thank you to all parties who made this opportunity possible.
Finally, I want to acknowledge and send appreciation to my amazing wife who made it possible for me to leave town and spend time with these outstanding thinkers. Sustaining this work socially means appreciating our interpersonal connections as creators, and sometimes that means family putting more time in so that we can take time out. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
There’s so many reasons for doing this work represented across a variety of institutes. One of my favorite at this institute was hearing origin stories from each of these folks, how they came to it and what continues to inspire them. One theme I noticed was the eagerness to create work for untold stories, an idea that has been sprinkled throughout four seasons of work for me as well.
All right, I’ll be back next time with episode two of three dedicated to the institute. Next time I’ll be talking with some really fascinating artist-scholars who will bring us into how they found devise work in their careers and unpack why this institute is such a historic moment for the field.
All right, thanks you all. We’ll catch you next time on From the Ground Up.
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And of course, we always love fan mail at [email protected]. This podcast’s audio bed was created by Kiran Vedula. You can find him on SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and at flutesatdawn.org. From the Ground Up is produced as a contribution to the HowlRound Theatre Commons. You can find more episodes of this show and other HowlRound shows wherever you find podcasts. Be sure to search with word HowlRound and subscribe to receive new episodes.
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