 Hey Todd. Hi Mark. Hey everyone. Thanks for lunch. You're welcome. Thank you. That was really good. I hope you all had lunch as well. Are the flowers good? Are we kind of hidden? We're good? Okay great. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. So welcome back. We took a little bit of a lunch break and now we're here to keep the conversation going. Hopefully it can take us a little further into this kind of conversation that we're having. This two-person theater conference talking about art and aesthetics and practice. And this hour we're going to talk about individual artists, playwrights, solo artists. A couple of reminders for folks who might be watching. Feel free to send us some comments or questions. You can do so at any time during the broadcast, I guess is the right word, right? The livestream. So feel free and we'll take a look at those if there's comments that you'd like to share. Do you want to tell folks about the May Day Challenge? Sure. Hi again. So for those of you who are just joining us, this is for Mark and myself, Todd London. This is a continuing conversation that we've tended to have behind the scenes and in our lives together in the field over many years. But we really wanted to focus on the artistic conversation and we are doing it publicly not because we want to spout off in front of the world, but in a way to create a structure for us to have that conversation and also to generate other such conversations. So our hope is that you will pick up the gauntlet, the chalice, the idea and have private or public conversations with your friends and colleagues really about the art of the theater and not about business and not about survival and not about field issues and so on. So we're issuing a May Day Challenge for the art part and you can write to the art part at HowlRound.com if you want to commit to having such a conversation in any context, a living room, a church basement, a theater on the subway, a bar. We were going to try and do that. We couldn't do that. And sign up for it so we can at the end of today we can read out the names of the people who have picked up the challenge and you can continue to sign up for it through HowlRound over the weeks to come. Awesome. Shall we dive in? Yes. Great reminder. Send comments, questions if you have them. And they can go to Twitter hashtag HowlRound or the art part at HowlRound.com or on the Facebook page of HowlRound. This is the auction. This is the pledge drive. So when we were last together before we took a break, we were talking about group creation and ensemble work. And so one of the things that we have in common is that we both kind of dedicated part of our lives to supporting others in their work to kind of help other arts organizations kind of thrive. And I did that at the network of ensemble theaters and you did that at Neutromatis. And so the key here where I'm going is like, so we started with this group conversation around ensembles in my time at NET. And so as we think about individuals, you know, so help me out with some terminology here. Because I think part of it is like we play right. Play right. Yeah, but you know, like solo performer, right, who can also be play right. Yeah. Like help it just kind of contextualize and just kind of define as we talk about individual, like what do we what are we meaning here? Well, okay, so unlike Mark, who came into NET with some terminology around ensemble and devised and practice and so on. I actually have given a lot less thought to what a playwright is in terms of how would you define that or solo performance? I guess by contrast, I would say that what we're talking about in the next half hour or so is people whose primary artistic operation happens at least largely in solitude. So I mean, I'm interested, you know, Daniel Alexander Jones, who's a wonderful defier of every category we could throw up, but who I met first really as a playwright at New Dramatists. I saw him lead a workshop for our students at the University of Washington School of Drama last year. And he began a solo performance workshop by saying, you actually never create performance alone. Solo performance is a misnomer. You're always making with somebody, somebody who came before, somebody you're in conversation with, your colleagues, your collaborators, even if you're up there alone, you're never alone. And I'd say that's true of a playwright, too. I mean, why would anyone become a playwright if they wanted to sit in their room alone, as opposed to being a poet or a novelist where you literally don't have to interact with the people who are reading your work or people who read it to them? So I would say it's primarily but not exclusively work that is done alone, where voice is, and I'm just making this up, but voice is articulated by a person who's making the choices about how that voice gets articulated. So we were talking about group work before and the difference, say, between the voice of the Worcester group or Double Edge or Cornerstone or Junebug, you know, that who you're in collaboration with is going to determine the company's voice. Not so with a playwright. The playwright is putting words on the page and ultimately that voice will come through in someone else's tongue and teeth and mouth and a literal voice. But so I think that's it. I mean, I think about, I guess your question throws me a little. That's good. I guess what I think about it is, is that playwriting is an exercise of individual freedom. And collective work or collaborative work is a work of making society together. Interesting. That's beautiful. Yes. I mean, so in that individual freedom... I took a long time to get to that. I know, but I was so glad that we got there. That's really great. I mean, that's a keeper. But I think in this conversation about aesthetics, in the group, there's this collective aesthetic. And we talked about earlier about how process, my belief is that process leads to kind of aesthetics. And in the individual freedom, we're yet never alone. Like, where's aesthetics? Where's like the... Yeah. Well, this is, okay. So this is sort of around your question. I mean, so when I really fell in love with playwriting was actually after I got to Neutromitous. And I'll tell you why and how. So I mean, I'd always, you know, I fell in love with the plays I saw and read as a kid kind of thing. And the plays that I did, that thing about like being in Midsummer Night's Dream or directing Tartuffe or whatever, those are really powerful experiences because the language is in your body. But when I got to Neutromitous in 1996, there's a great library of all the current manuscripts of the writers who enjoy seven-year residencies there. And then there's an archival... There are archival shelves of past Neutromitous. And the first thing I did was I read my way through each of the current writer's bodies of work. And what I didn't really understand is how voice develops over time, how concerns are articulated over time, how bodies of work grow. And so when you talk about methodology or practice over time within ensembles, in a way, playwrights have a leg up because they are doing that from play to play to play. One play might be an answer to an unfinished question in the play before, or it might be a redirect from the play before. It depends on who the artist is. But there was something about encountering the work of then, I think it was 43 or 45 playwrights as it had been played out over three or four or five plays. Suddenly you see something that we never are privileged to see in the theater, which is a body of work altogether. And therefore a set of concerns in full flower, really. And immediately everything about the way I thought about theater changed because I wasn't interested in individual projects anymore, only the project of voice and imagination and self over time. It's fascinating because so much of the, I mean, like so much work is project-based, you know, like we're going to bring on this playwright to do this project or we're going to fund this project, right? And so, you know, in that where we started this conversation around sustainability, you know, I don't know if there's a question here as much as I'm just kind of just kind of stewing on body of work and how the individual artist has them. It does have that leg up because at a certain level you can you can just kind of make on your own, you know. But what about so, so like you're looking at these at these scripts, but what about like product, like the physicalization of that? Right. Like where does that fit in that development of practice? Well, I mean, that's the, that's going to be really dependent on opportunity, isn't it? Which is, I guess I want to go back a step before I try and answer that. Because one of the things you said made me remember an earlier comment in our conversation about groups, which is you work with the people you love. And there's something about, so I do on how around this Lovers Guide to American Playwright series, thank you. And I think what it is for me, it really is an act of love, but it isn't about projects. It's about the person, the artist who is revealed through the work over time. So just whereas you're working with Cornerstone for however many years or another ensemble or your collaborator, Ashley Sparks, for example, and you're working out of a personal interpersonal love that's also an artistic sharing. I think the pivot that I experienced that I kind of wish for the theater in general to get out of this project by project mentality is pivoting to loving the writer rather than loving or disliking the play. And so this goes to your next question. What happens with production? Well, part of it is that playwrights wait so long for production that unless your August Wilson and your work is in circulation all the time and then the new thing comes out, there's so much space that nobody can see your body of work. And it isn't, maybe it is in the play, the way that a company's body of practice is in a production. But for a playwright, it's harder to perceive it because then there's the complication, the schizophrenia of playwriting, which isn't true for solo performers, which is, I write something and I give it to other people to do. Yes. Yeah, but in this conversation about aesthetics, that is for me a big question of, you write this world and others will interpret it. And it could be not what you wanted. Right. Right. And so in that, I'm just trying to understand and just to be transparent, Todd and I have had conversations about individuals and I will often kind of take more provocative stances on individual kind of writers, partly because my brain just kind of lives in provocation. And so like part of it is like, admittedly, in some ways it's so like, I just don't know how. So there's also like a fascination of, well, I share your, I don't know a little bit because I'm not a playwright. My writer self is a novelist and an essay writer because I couldn't stand that such a private part of my thinking that to give it to people to do it to fuck up or to even make brilliant is anathema to me. So I think so there must be something in playwrights and I'm I'm debasing this on experience that actually prizes the society of others the act of making theater because they aren't strictly speaking just writers. They are makers of events. They are creators of blueprints or frameworks or maps or however you want to metaphorize it for actual events that happen between us when we're live together in a room. And actors and directors and designers have other skill sets that enable them to bring out things that are latent or nascent. And some playwrights that I've seen, they really just want, I mean, it's kind of the David Mamet thing, which I pretty well despise, which is like, actors don't need to do anything but say my work and play the actions. You know, but that's not just what actors do. And then there are writers who you see it. It's so beautiful. It's like they love nothing more than to get in the room with other people and hear the words and gather people around their ideas or experience because those people can get where they ultimately want to go is to the audience. So it is a kind of weird and schizophrenic work. But I would imagine that most cases it comes out of a real desire to make change in the world the kind that you can't clock if people are reading your novel in private and that theater is the thing they love. I don't know. I feel speculative about this. I mean, what do you, what's your question behind the question? Because I feel in a way that you're distrustful of playwriting. I kind of feel like I am. No, thank you. Thank you for saying that because there is something, there is something. So a provocative statement that I have made to Todd in the past is that I feel like playwrights, I kind of tend to view playwrights as editorialists. Not anything dismissive about it, but it's so centered around an individual. There's something for me, like there's something, I think about the Bible and there's something. I never think about the Bible. So bring it on. So I think about the Bible and there's this text that we will make something of. We will interpret. We will live out. You can take this thing and play the, say the lines and maybe do the actions and there's something. I think part of it's not distrust, but it's almost kind of reverent, like in an odd sort of way. It's such a mystery and kind of religious kind of sense for me that like I don't, this authoring of Scripture. Sure. So you see plays in a way as Scripture to be passed on rather than seeds for inquiry to be joined? I think it does. I mean, I think it's scripture at its best does both. Yeah. So, huh, so we're different people in the world, all of us, all of us, and some people do their best exploration in privacy, right? Yeah. And they go really deep. And there's something about writers and writing that is kind of the ultimate in individual freedom because you give permission to your talent to find its fullest expression. And then there's something about us as community members and people in a society who want to tell others. And there are something about some of us who want to share with others and then have them contribute their best contribution, right? Their talent and permission. So actors, for example, have given themselves permission to spend their lifetime in feelings and entering other bodies and identities. It's a different kind of freedom and a different kind of permission, but how beautiful to put it together. But I don't think of that as scriptural or dogmatic in a way, and maybe this is not what you're saying, or editorializing, because it's really just like, when do other people enter your process? And that's why there are playwrights who work with companies. There are playwrights who bring things to companies and then rewrite others who watch the work for a month or two months or 10 months and then go and write. And to be clear, like most of my, a big chunk of my life, artistic life, was working in that playwright, like a writer working with the ensemble. Exactly. Mixed blood. Yeah. So it's very central. You're not a hater. No, I know that you're not a hater. Yeah. But it's, I was kind of just kind of thinking about chewing on, like when you're talking about like individual freedom and kind of, and then this more democratic view, right, which was like, like, you know, like the solo artist versus the collective. Right. And, and, and there's something kind of cool in that. And I think, I think, I think part of it is, is, I, I don't know if I hide in the, in the, in the group, or if I just trust, like, you know, like, like, there's a, there's a kind of audacity of the, the individual freedom is a scary and wonderful and grave thing. It's totally audacious. Yeah. You know, in a way that like, I think truth be told is, I think in some ways, like for as hard as collective creation goes, it's also easier because like, you're in a group full of people who have just like, say, like, that is just crap. And we should not do that. Or like, no, like, let's go deep. You know what I mean? Like, like, you're just, well, yeah, but they're both impossible in their own ways. Aren't they? I mean, to get up every morning and feel that anybody gives a shit what you write, especially when you're writing for a long period of time about something that nobody asked you to write about, and nobody ever asks you or rarely asks you to write about anything, versus having to deal with people that you know only too well over only too long. Do you know what I mean? And actually having to make society together. So it is, it's like, it's like, those are so hard. You know, I think a lot about this and Bogart thing, I think I've mentioned it to Mark, which is, and Bogart says that every play we make or every production is we're creating a model for how society might be. She says it better than that. But it's like, we're always modeling how to work together. I feel like the work of the playwright as a non playwright is different. It's like, it's almost like the work of the playwright is to see how far our humanity can go when free of all of those restrictions of actual people and actual bodies. And then the work is to put it in actual people and actual bodies. And yet every playwright is different. So I'm aware that as I'm talking about this, it's like, Anna Devereux Smith is a playwright, but she's using other people's words and intonations. You know, Robert Schenken is a playwright, you know, most notably writing from history. Lynn Nottage is a playwright who works in such different voices all the time. And there are playwrights who write from themselves in a naked way. And playwrights who are deeply obscured in their work. So like, because like, because it's so it can, it varies by individual, and there's so many individuals, you know, like, and you, like, I'm curious about like practice and support and sustainability and deepening practice and how to the individual, the individual human being versus the body of work. Is there a question in that? I don't, I don't know. I guess, like, are you supporting the individual, are you supporting like, like, like Lynn Nottage, or you're supporting this artist who's done, and not that they're, they're, not that they're different. You know what I mean? Like, like this is where it feels like I don't have the right words. Well, here's how I think about it. So, and I don't know if this is your question or not. I think about the work of supporting playwrights as supporting the flowering of every unique being. Do you know that, and that is something that flowering, for example, isn't, that's a word that I'm using is something that happens over time. You know, so these guys, you know, open in a minute or a day or whatever, but our as unique beings in the world, we open over the course of whatever time we're given, as opposed to say group work, which is about the flourishing of our social beings to a certain extent, and what we can do in society with one another. And at a certain point, playwrights enter that society as well when they give their plays to others to do. So I think about playwright support and playwright loving and looking at bodies of work as how is the writer flowering over time. And I actually don't care about individual plays as much as I care about the making of bodies of work. And so what that means that if you're a person, and now we're talking about Todd, we're talking about me, if you're a person that works with playwrights, what you care about is like making sure they go back to their desks, making sure that that body of work goes fine. You don't care about fixing or perfecting a play, except as it's the expression of where they are at this moment in their lives. Do you know, it's really different than being a curator or producer and caring about the project. So I don't, I guess that's not answering. No, I mean, I think this whole conversation, this specific conversation for me is just kind of wrapping my brain around in this talk that's about aesthetics and practice, trying to better understand ways to enter that examination. And then I think like things that have been really helpful are just like thinking about bodies of work is really useful, thinking about kind of that individual and society really useful as just, you know, as somebody who, again, works a lot with playwrights and plays and loves it. And at the same time, also, it just slightly feels a little out of reach sometimes for me. Yeah. And like how to look at it or how to look at it beyond just to play it. And then, and so when I look at a body of work, then, how to make it. But it's so weird to me, Mark, that we're having this discussion because you are a person who surrounds yourself with, we were talking at lunch about, if you don't mind my saying, a kind of free floating ensemble of colleagues and friends that Mark has. That is a commitment to people's flourishing over time and their commitment to you. So that is, it's the same work, which is all of our work on this planet, which is where it is, feels to me like scripture or something, which is our job is to be the best of who we can be with the talents that we bring to the table, to give full permission to those talents and and articulate them to the extreme and beyond if we can. And so, I don't know where to even go with that. I think that's, I think you arrived. We do have two comments and one commitment, but we can get to that later. Do you want to? Great. One last thing before we switch to comments is that it's fast. I mean, one of the things I marvel about you is like, is just like, you know, we started this conversation with, with just love of the field and the form and the theater, the arts, the art form. And, and it's so, it's so great because like, because one of the things that you're also an ensemble guy, like you are so collective and, and, and your love and support for the individual. And you, and I, as I hear my, these words coming out, I don't, I don't at all want to paint a dichotomy or zero somewhere just like this or that. Cause I think you're, you know, I just thought you were writing a Valentine to me. But, but it's the, but there's something because like, even as you talk about the individuals, you know, you're, you're looking at it collectively. Sure. And, and, and the, and that you kind of like are holding up the individual within the collective of, of that. Maybe there's a point there, maybe not. But the one thing that before we ran out of time is I also want to talk about, so we've been talking about playwrights, but what about like the solo creator, like the Daler Landersmith or the Luis Alfaro's or the Daniel Alexander Jones. But they're all playwrights. They're playwrights, but sometimes they write on their own bodies for their own voices and sometimes they write for other people. So all three of us look at that differently. Like in this conversation about how do we look at the work? How do we approach the work? How do we end this work? Is there a difference? Does it matter? I think now's the time to turn to our comments. Great. We, we have one from Lisa Shadak. Hi, Lisa. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and dialogue. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for listening. Geez. Ensemble-wise, there is a magic that comes from working, dreaming alone and sharing it with collaborators the next day to develop it together. It's an immediacy to that too. Yeah. But I wonder if the process of a playwright working alone and creating a finished product for others to translate is a system that is outdated now. Okay. He's going to make me answer. Thank you. You know, I, again, I don't, I don't think that a playwright creates a finished product. They create a roadmap. I mean, Ryan McNally creates maps, but they lead you places and the maps change. I think, yeah, there's a kind of sense that, oh, playwriting is old-fashioned, but it's actually the same thing. I mean, I guess this goes to Mark's last question too, which is in my belief, and this is where I'm just like holding forth, we create theater, which, whether it's created for play, by playwrights, whether it's created in rooms by ensembles, by solo performers, by singers, improvisationally or whatever, theater is always about us being in a room together in the end with performers and spectators, or performer, somebody watching and somebody doing. And the event is always the space between us. And I don't think the, this is my resistance to the implication that playwright is outmoded or old-fashioned is the goal is the same, which is to get us in the room together, maybe the sense of text as a univocal thing feels a little old-fashioned, but playwrights actually write for other people to speak in many voices. So there's a sort of dissemination of voice that happens among playwrights. So I think we're all working at the same thing, which is what Mark and I are trying to do here, which is like what is happening between us today in this space and what translates or carries to you and what is your presence due to alter us, because we're all engaged in the same things which are defining our humanity and defining our community. Yeah, drop. I'm Laurie McCann. Welcome back Laurie. I'm remembering an amazing weekend of Thornton Wilder's body of work at Actors Theatre of Louisville's Classics in Context back in maybe 1997. Each piece performed or read or discussed bounced off each other with such resonance, reverberating still for me. I'm encouraging theaters to consider such big undertakings for other living writers. Paula Vogel's body of work comes to mind. Shakespeare theaters do this, of course, and then there are other such undertakings, I'm sure, but it's such a wonderful way to honor a playwright's body of work and signature theater. Profile theater in Portland. There are others, yeah. I love that idea. Yeah. Because then you can really, the demand is to look at everything in a way that when you do it with Shakespeare, I mean you mentioned, Laurie mentions it. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's great. I mean my dream is that you walk in a theater and somehow temporally it works that before you get to the stage you have walked through two or three other pieces by the playwright whose newest work you're about to see. That somehow you've absorbed that so you can see that work. You know, you can do that when you're home with a novel. You can read, you know, Laurie Moore, Philip Roth or Toni Morrison and you can go to the shelf and see the other nine books by them that you read before. I think about like the Nobel Prize, you know, like we're going to look at a body of work and just kind of lift that up and how, you know, yeah, how to continue to do that. I have one last question because we're running out of time and there's so much here. Riders, but I just forgot it. You know, I have a theory that I'm making up on the spot right now is, you know, so I feel like in my question, kind of like leading this kind of conversation and maybe partly in Lisa's like, I don't at all hope that I put you kind of in any kind of defensiveness or having to defend this writers because like I said, I love writers. I came to this because of individual voices and reading those scripts and being transported into these worlds and it's the best. And I wonder about our kind of cultural, socio-political moment where there's just a distrust of other people. And the idea that I'm entrusting an individual versus like a group that, you know, and not that the group is any probably less safe truth to be told, but I wonder if there's something in that. It's so weird to me that you're saying that at this moment. I get it because we are, especially when you say our plays editorials because we're so worried about opinion because opinion is like always in our face. But we also live in a moment where people are just gobbling down memoirs and plays are not memoirs and they're not editorials. They are again, they're dispersed, vocally dispersed objects. And so what is that? Is it a mistrust of the written word? Is it as opposed to something that's more fluid and not set? Is this why, I mean, I don't know if it's true, but it certainly felt true a few years ago that improvisation is like really important at this moment. I don't know. I do, I mean, I keep, I'm curious too about Lisa's Shaddick's question and wish you were here in the room with us too, because I'd love to know more about it. It's like, what is that distrust? Is it a distrust of typewriters? Is it a distrust of written word or expertise or something? I mean, you and I are living in that fear. We're sitting here trying to do everything we can to mitigate the fact that we're like experts or we're like, and yet we still live our lives and we've done a lot of stuff. We have things to say, but we don't want anybody to take it as like anything. Yeah. But I feel like there's something like, I think there's something in that, in this, you know what I mean? And it's probably a much bigger thing that we're not going to pack in the zero time that we have left. But I do want to just kind of put that out there, because maybe somebody will pick it up in another, maybe during the May Day Challenge. Yes. And we have one commitment, another commitment for the May Day Challenge. Who is it? A host of people in, that's Shireen in Detroit. Shireen and Jake. And a host of people. So yay! We got to keep a list so we can say at the end. So we're going to be back in 19 minutes. 19 minutes. And we're going to be talking about civic impact, social engagement, community engagement, civic, the aesthetics of civic, all that stuff you just said. Thank you. See you in a few. Bye.