 Just be yourselves. Be your fantastic selves. I think we're getting ready to gear up for the broadcast, so if we could have our panelists for today, come on down. And you guys can be together. I don't need a mic, I'm just gonna project. I need your mic and my mic. You guys can hear me, right? I don't need a mic. There's nothing we can do about it now. Where's the camera anyway? Oh, here's the camera. You know if you look this way, I can't see you. I'm looking at it. Are you two ready? Okay, I'm just getting my questions on here. I love these cables. Well, good afternoon everyone. My name is Eliza Bent. I'll be moderating the panel in pursuit of a dark euphoria. Since we're broadcasting today, it was encouraged that I introduce each of our panelists with a full bio, so I'm going to quickly move through their bios before we get to the questions. So to my left here is David Newman. He is the Artistic Director of Advanced Beginner Group, and his work has been presented in New York City at the kitchen. This is the S-122 Dance Theater Workshop Central Park Summer Stage and Symphony Space. These are all very important fancy locations, in case you didn't know. Also the Walker Center in Minneapolis, Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts, the Maggie Alicey National Center for Choreography, among many others. As a choreographer he most recently worked on Robert Woodruff's adaptation of Fastbenders in a year with 13 Moons at Yale Rep, and David Newman is also currently on the faculty for the theater department at Sarah Lawrence College. So David, thank you for joining us. Thank you. Sybil Kempson over here in the green is a playwright living in New York City. Her work has been presented at New York Live Arts, the Chocolate Factory in New York City Dixon Place, Soho Rep, PS-122, Little Theater, Brick Theater and the Fuse Box Festival in Austin, Texas. She's also had work here at the Great Plains Theater Conference and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Some current collaborations that she's working on is a piece with elevator repair service called fondly Collette Richland, a dance theater and Sybil collaborated on a piece called Ich Köbesgeist. I hope I said that correctly. Danke Sybil. And also Sybil and David worked together on a piece, Restless Eye, and that was at dance theater workshop slash New York Live Arts. It's always a curious title. And another big collaboration Sybil is at the helm of River of Gruel, Pile of Pigs, the requisite gestures of narrow approach. And that's with a group in Austin between the Rude Mechs and Salvage Vanguard Theater. So thank you Sybil. Welcome. Happy to have you on the panel. And last but not least we have Justin Townsend at the far end in the white t-shirt. And Justin is a recent drama desk winner. Congratulations Justin. Justin is a lighting designer and his design has appeared on Broadway including Vanya, Sonya, Masha and Spike, the other place, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. He's also worked on some New York shows that have been off Broadway such as Here Lies Love currently running at the Public Theater, Juan and John at the Public, Galileo and Unnatural Acts, Milk Like Sugar at Playwrights Horizons, Luck of the Irish, and On the Levy at Lincoln Center 3. Regionally Justin's work has appeared at the Arden Alliance, ART, Bardsomerscape, Boston Court, Baltimore Center Stage among many other notable regional locations. Well then, and I'm Eliza Bent, I'm not just a Joe Shmo that they pulled off the street. I'm a journalist for American Theater Magazine as well as a performer and a playwright. Anyhow, moving on, let's get to the questions of the dark euphoria. So I think it's interesting to think of the description of today's panel which is a new wildness in imagination, form, collaboration, rehearsal and production and the spatial challenges that this work brings. Just so that we're all on the same page here about what this panel really is. I'd love to maybe just start with defining our terms. What in your minds is a dark euphoria and how are you pursuing it? Feel free to take a liberal stab at that question. We were saying last night it sounds like a run drink. I'd like to use it as a drag name. I got nothing. Well, it is a little bit about collaboration. Know the wildness of collaborating. How we can wildly collaborate. I kept reading wildness as wilderness. So what are your takes on collaboration in today? I mean Sybil, you have a ton of collaborations happening at the moment. Maybe you could kick things off. I think for me it's about resisting not organizations like institutions, although it's good to resist those to a certain extent, but to resist over organizing stuff. I guess whenever I'm writing something and a lot of times when I've performed, if I've been performing something, I am looking for ways of problematizing, of making problems where problems may or may not already exist. And so in the collaborations that I'm doing I guess across the board, if there's anything, they're all very different. But across the board I think the thing that I'm really trying to keep intact is a sort of lack of organization. So that in some of the projects, the roles like the Austin project that I'm working on. I was going to ask about that. So we've been working on it for I think two or three years now. And for the first year and a half the only thing that had been established was that I would be the one that would be at the computer writing stuff down. And that I would be generating the text. But I also even opened that up. So that ideas and thoughts and good and bad and input, associations, images and different connections between and among material I was bringing in. So that was open to everybody. And we didn't have someone who said I'm going to step up and be the director. I'm going to be the producer. I'm going to design the costumes. And then we called it a pig pile and how many organizations are in this pig pile? There are representatives from four different theater groups in the city of Austin. And they've worked a lot as individuals together on each other's work but they'd never come together before to make a piece together. So there are four different ways of working. So like the Rude Mechs they have I think four or five main original members. And with every show they make and every decision that they make in every single one of those shows, they must come to consensus. So it's not even democratic where the majority rules. They must arrive at consensus. And that's right down to the writing. And then Salvage Vanguard Theater is more, they'll have guest artists and guest shows come in but they establish what the, they'll work within a hierarchical structure. So there'll be a director and then there's a stage manager and actors and it goes from there. Rubber Rep is a partnership of two guys and they collaborate together sort of as one really crazy organism and then they bring people in to collaborate with them. And Physical Plant is Steve Moore's and it's mostly, he's at the nucleus of it and then he brings in collaborators around them. So we sort of found our own way of working and allowed it to emerge. And so that the decisions that were being made we were really working to be very patient and let those decisions sort of make themselves so that when it was time to choose roles, the roles had already sort of started to happen on their own. And it's a confusing way to work. It can be really frustrating and it takes a lot of patience and trust but I think it, and we're still not finished the piece that we've made. We're still working on it. It's very confusing. We put it all together for the first time at the Fusebox Festival this year. And some people loved it and some people just felt really lost, including myself which and I felt both. And so we have another year now to work on it and now roles are established. We're doing what is more or less established so we'll be able to sort of shape it and either give it like an exoskeleton or a frame or find something that holds the whole thing together through the middle but really working to allow that to come forward on its own rather than deciding ahead of time and imposing that upon it. So there's whatever is darkly euphoric about that. I agree with the idea about walking into a process without a predetermined result. I think it's an important part of a lot of this work, how this work is made. Pardon my voice. And the other word I was going to bring up is hierarchy. Another thing that's resisted is our traditional hierarchies so that the conversation, in an effort to make a conversation a little more richer and even less predictable. What was a project that you were recently involved in where the hierarchy was non-traditional or Well I think for Restless Eye for instance That was the piece you did with Sibyl. And another important collaborator on that was Tay Blow who was a sound designer and did video projections. It was an interesting process although the piece was initiated by me and I sort of was at the helm in that way as a director and a choreographer. The way that we worked, I know that Sibyl would respond to she would sit in the room and watch rehearsal and respond to some of the things that were being made and would send writing and response and then that would inspire me to change what I had made and in those ways we really lost the clear defined boundaries of who made what and who was responsible for what. And the lighting designer was involved equally also. Yeah, she brought in a very important element that really radically changed the way the piece was being staged and we were using these things called the Neuro Sky Scanners where they read the brain waves and she found a way to take that information and have it affect the lighting so that the brain waves of the performers were affecting the intensity of the lighting and even the direction of one of the intelligent lights where it was based on the stage. So that was a stochastic sort of a random kind of event was happening while the piece was going on. Is that then part of the darkness question? The lack of ownership? Is that sort of into the darkness the wildness? The releasing of that? Is that important in that conversation? I would think so. Because it's the part that isn't organized, the part that isn't predictable and that confusion that you have to sort of go into when things aren't as organized. And when you have a hierarchy it's really simple and in a lot of ways it's easier because everyone knows what their role is and they know they have a job and it's really defined but then like working on David's piece I had a really crazy idea about a sound thing and I said this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm supposed to be writing written text but I ended up working on this sound piece anyway and it ended up getting used in the piece which wouldn't have happened if in a regular situation you're not the sound designer and of course I did a terrible job. We'll consider that. But then how does it happen? You know the question and we have our own ideas but I'm curious to share is how then if we all can do whatever the heck we want isn't it great? Well then where is the there there? How do we eventually come to this consensus or how does it actually merit into something that we want to put in front of our peers and say hey what do you think? We actually made something. How has it worked in your experience Justin? Collaboration for me is a funny thing I'm always amazed by the Root Mechanicals to hear about them say yeah we all circle our hands and say yes we agree and I'm sure that's not what happens but to some degree about that I've been in a situation where best idea rules and then we sort of know the Ouija board of idea making we know you're pushing but as soon as the group starts moving that direction we'll call out yes indeed or ask again perhaps so I mostly trust putting it up on stage and testing it that we can sit here for days and talk about all of our lovely staging ideas and I want to write a play about or I want to do this thing but until Sybil brings in the lousy sound cue that's earth shattering that no one ever thought about that we're all sort of having lovely ideas and so it's that action and I'm always curious what manifests that action how do we get to the I was just thinking about the sound thing so I brought it and who knows if it's good or not our teammates can have it but what manifests that initial impulse what does that taste this is what I want this is how I get to and that's what I'm sort of interested in pursuing or chasing is identifying that spark that unique spark I like red but we all like red okay I think it's very impulsive and it's one of those things where I feel like this belongs here and I don't know why but it just is right here for some reason and I feel that I could be wrong so you're approaching with sort of you're laying something out on the table and saying this feels right to me what does this feel like to you guys and then you try it right because that's one of the first rules of collaboration as somebody brings in an idea you don't poo poo it until you try it and then if it feels right to everybody else then you keep it and if it doesn't then you talk about where did that come from okay so I've been reading for a long time a lot about but a lot about chaos theory in physics and it's the part of physics that they started looking at in the 70's where they're looking at stuff like turbulence and stuff that can't be measured that physicists have traditionally just sort of swept under the carpet because they can measure it but why bother because we can't predict or control turbulence so why would we mess around so they really started looking at it and there's a couple of physicists that have been writing for almost 10 or 15 years and they've also done a lot of work with Native American cultures interestingly enough to find where our recent advances in modern physics intersect with the Native American worldview and it's actually really surprising they're coming at it from completely different directions but in a lot of cases they're coming to the same conclusions and so they talk about the patterns that are implicit in nature the way things are made however we subjectively feel that that happens that there are patterns at work and that there's patterns at work in behavior of groups of human beings that are disorganized that aren't easily predictable and that aren't controllable and it's the kind of thing that happens when children are playing together they don't always make rules and say I'm going to be the boss and we're going to follow you and they're not deciding ahead of time but they're making creative decisions and somehow it finds they call it there's a point of bifurcation and amplification that's the point where one person starts just doing something and then other people start gathering around that action it's not even a decision or maybe it is you decide you're not doing this but it's not based on a committee that decided this is what we're going to do so you just start doing something and then others gather around it and then they're not really sure how it happens but suddenly it's happening it's like the hundredth monkey all of a sudden everybody's doing it and so they're not really sure why or how but that's what I'm interested in and I guess if we're talking about the dark euphoria this sort of dicey area where stuff happens that we don't decide ahead of time for me it's just about like stepping back and saying I'm going to allow something to happen here and inevitably it does something happens whether it's in time for your deadline or not is another question like we got done with that restless eyepiece and we were talking the other day it was like the show having the production sort of ruined our research it was like shut it down shut down our process we couldn't rehearse anymore because the show was up Peter Cassander a colleague he calls it a heavily researched gut instinct and I like that combination that idea that we have to be of the most knowledgeable to trust that something will come up and also this notion about the way that children play and studying the ways in which children play are not a journalist I perform with a group called half straddle and we're a company we're an ensemble and we have a very peculiar way of going about business and often it resembles somebody telling somebody else how to say a line and we'll know why don't you stand over there and then somebody kind of fooling around and doing a weird gesture and then the weird gesture gets put into the play somehow and it ultimately feels a bit like like we're messing around and we're in somebody's basement and we're a team. But something ends up happening I mean I've seen those shows there's so much happening that couldn't happen if someone said if someone tried to envision what would happen ahead of time. Well I guess maybe that leads to my next question and we've kind of touched on this but what in your opinions do you feel is essential about collaboration I mean obviously hierarchies work well there's a reason why these hierarchies usually exist with sometimes exist with director playwright actor so what do you feel theater gains when you collaborate in this in this darkly euphoric way Well for me I do trust a little bit of hierarchy and I like when the baton gets tossed past I don't think it needs to be only one person and I worry because I worry I do I worry about mobs of people telling me what the right answer is inherently so the idea that we can that there might be someone who says no this is the right idea even if it isn't the person we traditionally know I respect and am excited by because I do think there needs to be something brought to the table that when work is being made sometimes we just sprint one direction and maybe enough to initiate something I really just personally for me I just love the feeling of having made something and feeling like I can't take credit for it for some reason that feeling is so satisfying to me and I often feel like it's like that will be the thing that saves me from going to hell or something that I can't like that I won't be the one taking credit for all of the stuff that I've made but it's that's very personal so I what is what is there to be gained I think that's a question everyone would answer for themselves like whether it's their thing or not and I don't think it's for everybody it can be really frustrating to work that way and it can be really frustrating to see the stuff that's made that way for some folks and for some folks really love it I think it depends on the type of work one is after I think this process leads to a certain kind of work and I enjoy the collaborative process because of the rehearsal process itself the way that authorship is shared and the kind of permission that brings to the room everyone gets a chance the brain trust grows then and with time the decision making gets a little more specific with experience it's like an improv group in the dance world to improvise with a group of people seems sort of you can just do it but actually the most effective kind of improvisations require months and months of rehearsal and it is also related to play I love making theater and I want to have fun doing it and so this is a way of working with colleagues and friends that who inspire me so we can have a great time in a way not just fun like a frivolous sense but rich enriching fun my mind is spinning I'm sure everyone in the group also has some questions that they'd like to ask shall we open it up to the Boston Christopher has a question for you what I'm curious about is how after going through the dark euphoria that you might take the same approach in a collaboration I think Justin was touching on this a little bit maybe but in terms of how you would then apply that to the more traditional structure and can you apply those same rules or at least open up that release the pressure of that using some of these skills and have you been able to do that and maybe an example of how that might have worked in terms of the way people think I would say right off the bat I think it's very possible inside of a more traditional hierarchical structure for these dynamics to exist and I think it does depend on the people in the room the producing organization or institution that can allow that kind of dialogue and I think more and more people are moving in that direction I recently worked with the director Robert Woodruff at Yale Rep and it's pretty amazing that regional theater would give a ton of money based on a Fossbinder film a very dark brutal piece of work and you know it was an enormous production and the way that Robert worked was he came in with a lot of really clear ideas he had to it was a four week schedule so we had to adapt a feature length film for the stage in just a few weeks I mean when I worked on Restless High it was two years, two and a half years to develop it off and on but what he was able to do was create something of that nature of a collaborative nature he asked the opinion of just about everyone in the room about decisions he was making as a director even on the design, costumes and everything else inside that very rigid, rigid hierarchy with which Yale Rep works I found that really inspiring I think as a lighting designer I try and work very agilely and very quickly similar to the way an actor might work in the first rehearsals so trying to figure out instead of how to paint painting that we all will now think well that's pretty it's rather how can my work affect the action and participate as a scene partner so that all of a sudden there's this big energy in the room and it might affect how things move or you know maybe it's wrong and I turn that off but so that I'm constantly providing and challenging what has already known in the hall and moving it into performance so that and you know sometimes people just want to get out of the way and make sure I can see them and that's alright we do that kind of play sometimes and sometimes there needs to be an agile way of looking at what is the event that we're making and there is some more momentum to that and I think that's where I like to be the most is offering and instead of talking about it again putting it up on its feet and saying well here's a big light through the door oh my gosh well now you're entering in over there even though we've been rehearsing it for four weeks the other way that simply seeing an architecture and seeing time and space happen in front of us hopefully there's a group of folks that I'm working with who can nimbly adjust or say oh Justin get out of the way I think it could be something as simple as just having more awareness for like if you're in one role or one job in a production having more awareness and just developing more of a sense of responsibility toward in some way everything that's happening and that's what I've been working on trying to sort of engender with the elevator repair service project that I'm working on because they make work together but there's one guy in charge who really makes the decisions and there's a lot of group generating stuff but there happens like this feeling of passivity that people are being waiting to be told where do I go how do I do this what do I do and maybe taking more initiative along those lines and maybe opening up awareness to what is that lighting guy up to and what are the signs that we are making what are we saying by what does this line actually say what does this mean if I stand this close to this actor instead of over here and you're at the risk of becoming a little bit of a pain in the ass to the director but I think that if you're just bringing questions to the table and an awareness to the table that you're all and if you're also willing to take on more responsibility for the thinking about what are we saying what are we signing up for when they come and see this show and starting a dialogue and that's a small adjustment but I think that that could be a good way to bring it into the regular way of doing it. I'm curious about the ways in which you've or some collaborative skills you've developed over time that you may not have had 5 or 10 years ago and what are the areas in which you still have as a collaborator what are you working on? Well I think that's what's so great about doing collaborations is that there's always you never become an expert at it. There's never like John Collins the artistic director of elevator repair service who I've been working with has been getting so mad lately about people are everyone's talking about devised theater it's the new like latest thing everyone's talking about it it's getting all this new funding and all this new recognition because he feels like by giving it a label like that that we're standardizing it as a way of making theater and he really is bulking against the idea that that is like one way there could be one way of doing it and so I think that you're constantly learning because every time you step into a new group your process is going to be as different as are the people in this group from the last group that you worked with so it's you're constantly learning because you're constantly working with new groups of people or even if you're working with the same group of people a group of people changes over time and so you're adjusting whatever your practice is and your process is with the passage of time and with everyone else's development as well so you're constantly having to grow and expand your thinking and I think mostly I've just learned how to work with people which is a lot of people don't know how to do that and I think most theater people do but if you go outside of theater in a lot of cases people have trouble working together and dealing with other people so theater in general is good training for that I thought immediately about one thing that I've gotten much better at is listening and one thing that still needs improvement is listening and that really sums it up in maybe a too cute way but that really is true listening is a fundamental piece and the other response that I keep coming back to is improv 101 but it's a continued reminder of the yes and the how can I the most offensive or most upsetting or downright wrong idea how can I open my heart to it and that moment I think is when there's sort of grace in the air when we sort of say okay let's move and maybe in a different way than I expected to and I find that's where the surprise turn happens or the oh yes and then it will allow to the hook back that I was trying to find but until those two energies deciding to move together or three or five that starts to create momentum and I think in the individual it's a willingness to let go of your idea as the right idea like my way is the right way and why won't you guys see it my way and to be willing to just really let that go and it's so painful but it's so great when you can do it it's interesting too because I feel like I work in a fairly collaborative manner but a play of mine that recently had a production in New York I was amazed one of the actors one day we were talking about an idea the director was kind of describing what it was that we were going to try and the actor said I know my problem with that idea is and I kind of blurred it out I said before you talk about your problem with the idea let's try the idea so it's sort of I think that's always sort of an interesting thing and it's really dealing with people and the individuals in the room and clearly this particular actor wasn't so used to trying stuff out I guess which was strange but anyhow what are the other questions that people have do you guys having worked with a number of different companies around the country and having friends and people who are doing different types of dark way of work do you guys recognize or spot any social generational energies that seem to be curious of your observations of what might be generating I have been noticing I feel like it's tied to the economy crashing a little bit not a little bit but a lot and I've been going to a lot of talks of artists who were making art in the 70s in New York when times were really tough and talking about the transition from making work in that era to the 1980s when all of a sudden everyone was making a lot of money and how there was so much less interest in art and all of a sudden funding was really scarce and you had to make a piece you know make it already and then they'll tell you whether they're going to have you at their venue or not but there's no help to develop the piece and when I moved to New York it was the mid 80s and there was a recession happening and there was so much great work it was such a great time to be there and of course there were no like I had a really hard time finding a day job and I didn't have any money but it seemed to be kind of exploding like everything that I went to go see seemed so rigorous and had so many wonderful ideas behind it and everything was like exploding something and again people were saying the internet saved our generation from poverty but I think it also destroyed a lot of the art making that was happening or a lot of the rigor and the focus of the art making that was happening and great work was more scarce and I watched it happen and then now we've had this economy crash again and it's like it's the best thing that could have happened at least for the art world and that's kind of across the board because suddenly everything that I'm going to see is an incredible piece of work and that's in New York and I don't know I haven't heard a lot of people say that in other cities that I visited but I've seen it happen and I've also heard about it happen from those artists from the 70s into the 1980s and I don't know why I sense a resurgence of a kind of a DIY approach I think that's where that term devised theater although that was around, has been around I think for a while but that sense of I can't find work or get produced or enter into the traditional commercial theater so I'm going to do it myself and I get a sense of that happening a lot more now We've heard it talked about before and I think it is something that should be brought up too though Kevin is to say that I think that as I watch newer generations behind me come behind I think they're dealing with a lot of student loans that someone has told them they need to have to enter into this business so I'm really aware of a lot more money or a lot more debt being put on for theatrical education which means a less nimble generation as they try and figure out how to pay first for these expenses and then start to make work so that's something I'm aware of and checking as we figure out how we support our younger artists too We have a few more minutes perhaps we have time for one more question Is it on? I have a friend who's a songwriter he works with the guy who does all the musical backup in Nashville and they have a friend who does all the mixing in New Zealand The question is is there a lot of collaboration in an internet world in an interconnected world from your perspective and how do you think it might work in the theater? I recently saw a show in Austin and it was done by a British theater maker it was a very strange performance it was about 20 minutes long it was almost not even a regular play but it was an audience of two and the two audience members had to sit facing each other and there were screens in front of our faces and the actor in the piece was a man in China who had worked in an Apple computer factory and suffered terribly from the various factory conditions there and it was sort of back and forth narration between the audience listened in these headsets and so you'd hear the British man speaking but then you'd also see the man in China waving on Skype and telling his story and there were subtitles so that was I mean I think that's part of the future is certainly having like Skyped and teleconferenced performance styles really thrilled in a bizarre way that we have all these technologies because I think it will be the savior of our business in the sense that our gathering together in a room and hearing each other becomes somehow more important if we spend our days hooked up to these screens and so we may or may not use them and successfully or unsuccessfully I'm not really worried about that but I do know that gathering in rooms to hear stories will somehow be a strangely unique thing that we'll be I'm excited about I know a guy named Whit McLaughlin he lives in Philadelphia and he has a company called New Paradise Laboratories and he was a teacher of mine when I was in high school and he's still making work but he's been making internet theater and he's talked to me about it a bunch and for some reason I don't I think I need to be in the room with people and it might be because I live in a place where there's plenty of people that I can be in a room with there's a lot of people living there to work with so I don't need to do internet theater but his argument is that we have to start making theater like on Facebook for example because before Facebook gets completely taken over by advertising and marketing and corporate interest that we have to take hold of it and start making artwork so that it stays as a medium that belongs to everybody so that it doesn't just become about marketing and advertising and so making stuff for Facebook that people are looking at it and they're not really I mean I interpreted as you make something and I'm looking at it and I can't decide what it is I can't easily discern what it is what the post is or who the person is or and he's doing crazy things like you go and you get a different identity and then you show up at a party wearing this badge and that's like these things the lanyard but it's not your name it's someone else's name and it's this internet personality that you have done so it becomes like a video game but then they'll have like a party and people show up and it's like a masquerade ball because people know you as this other person and I don't know what the implications are how that's going to play out but that's one idea anyhow. Well that sounds like at the perfect end of a dark euphoria conversation the internet masquerade so onward pursue it thank you everyone thank you