 platform. I'm so, so, so excited about this conversation that we are about to offer you. With me is Ryan Takada and Erica Changshach. They are devised theater artists among like, I don't even know how to compliment you all enough because you're so diverse and your talents and dance and choreography and theater and performance of all of all natures. But a little bit about kind of where this conversation comes from, like a lot of the ones that we've been having lately, it came from viewers like you. Because somebody asked, hey, let's talk about devised work. And I know nothing about it. I adore it, but I have no idea how it works, how it is born, how it is sculpted, how it comes to be. So this was a real exciting chance to learn from the best as well as share that with y'all. So thanks for that question. I think there are a few people who would every now and then would chime up and be like, um, devised work, hello, devised work, hello. So here we are. Ryan, Erica, thank you very, very, very much for giving us your time and your wisdom for the hour. We're happy to have Lauren and thank you. Hey, Lauren, Gundersen, thank you for everything that you've been doing. You've been just like putting so much beautiful, just beautiful stuff into the world. And I just really appreciate the way that you've been kind of like galvanizing and inspiring so many folks. Thank you for all that you've been doing. I don't know what else to do, but keep making things and talking about theater. Oh, I know. I felt like this like in the first, sorry, now I'm just gonna stop talking. No, great. And I talked about this, that like the first week that this pandemic hit, I was losing my mind. I was like, deep cleaning. Like I was so into homeschooling that, you know, I was like, oh, yeah, me too that first week. Oh my God. And then I was like, this is this is I'm not made. I'm not cut out. No. And so like having, you know, having the work and having people to work with is really, yeah, really great. Well, that was my whole philosophy is if we can't make theater, we sure as hell can talk about it endlessly. So we might as well use that as a way. And then I find the more you talk about theater, the more you end up making it, the more you end up making relationships that turn into things. So, you know, but thank you very much for that. I've been encouraged by everybody who's asking questions and sharing it and reaching out. So I think we've certainly built some strong communities for when all this is like people are in a different I mean, you know, you've been in conversation with folks in a different way that I have like, do you feel like folks are in a more reflective space because we've all had to pause for a minute? Like, I think as theater artists, we're just like always like running and like filling up our time in such an intense way like in your conversations. Are you feeling that people are? Yeah, I think for the first weeks and months, it was a lot of like, it was the lashing back at the, well, Shakespeare wrote Lear in his playing time. And I was like, don't put that on me. Come on. Yeah, Shakespeare was not homeschooling his children either. So you know what? You could just sit back down. But I then think we, I'm finding some folks were not ready to talk at all. The first time I was like, Hey, want to get on a zoom call and project it to the world and talk about your feelings? Some people were like, No. And some were like, Sure. So I think we've all a little bit evened out in terms of ability to and the confidence to talk about where we are with some vulnerability. There's been some great artists that have said I haven't written anything. So there you go. That's me. And and that I think helped people go, Okay, I don't need to prove how proactive I am or how creative and I can just kind of sit back and and witness, which is artists work as well. But now I'm finding people are a little bit more able and maybe just more used to it and feel the ground under their feet a little bit more. But I don't know. All right, so I'm going to turn it back to y'all for a second, because I want people to know the first question I asked basically everybody is like, How did you come to be you? How do we find you in this moment? And that can be a list of all your wonderful degrees or cool relationships or your little dreams, little kids, whatever it was that kind of got you to know that you wanted to do this. And how did you manage to create this? Ryan, would you would you start? Oh, gosh, sure. Yeah. So, God, how did I become me? A lot of trial and error. No, um, I, you know, I, I've had a really twisty, bizarre path into this broad field of performance. I, you know, did I was a musical theater kid, kind of. In high school, I wasn't very good at singing. Like, I don't know why they kept putting me on stage, just because I think I constantly, um, I, you know, like, I was just, I was just kind of loud and queer and kind of obnoxious, but I wasn't skilled by any means. And then I ended up kind of pursuing acting as a track for like a year at a state school. And then I just decided I couldn't do that anymore. But then I went to art school, and I transferred and what was really exciting, I went to the School of the Institute of Chicago, which has one of the sort of few experimental performance programs in the nation. One of the, one of the only art schools that really has a strong performance program. And I was lucky enough to meet people like Lynn Hickson and Matthew Ghoulish and Mark Jeffery and a bunch of really rad people who are working somewhere between theater and performance and this thing that we might call device theater. And so that was, that was really my beginnings around like learning some of the skills and tools and conversations around device theater. And then shortly after that, I went to grad school. And I did a PhD in performance studies. And that's where I met now and I'm a lecturer at Stanford, I teach performance and experimental performance at avant-garde works, basically everything that's on the fringe that nobody really wants to talk about or wants to like address or look at and I'm just obsessed like anything that is really confusing or difficult or, you know, doesn't doesn't even look like art or theater. I love spending time with that that kind of work. That's what I keep busy with, I would say. And I've been working with Erica for the past few years on a project, which I'm sure we'll talk about more so but called for you. And that's been a big pleasure collaborating with one of the most brilliant performance makers I possibly true, true. Erica, will you tell us your general story? And just for a second, if I look this way, I'm checking on people's comments and if they're posting any questions that I can throw your way. So are they like, get them off? Erica, how do you come to be you? And yes, how yeah, how would you like to answer that run like to get back to high school, which I, I tend to not think very much about my high school years. But it reminded me of something that I haven't talked about her. I don't know. It's hard for me to find things that Ryan doesn't know about me. But I think that I've never told you this. So I had this English teacher in high school, and his name was Mr. Sinclair. If he's out there in the world, he was like a brilliant, a brilliant person. I don't I haven't talked to him since the last day of the last day that I attended my junior year of high school. But he a lot he so he we had to read we had to read Brave New World and then I and then we had to like present a report on it. And he he opened it up that we could like do a report. We could report back in any form. And I had I was like in high school, just having an alternative experience in my brain. But I decided I wanted to do this like puppet show that would use these cows, these plastic cows and Play-Doh. And there wasn't there. I can't I mean, it's been a long time since I've read Brave New World, but there was like the drug like Soma and the Play-Doh represented the drug the Soma and like somehow I did a whole show and I stood on people's desks and I wore this like vintage outfit that was my Aunt Robbins. It was like a 1960s like flair mini shift dress thing. And it was like I it was it was like an amazing moment. And then afterwards, somebody in my class at Erica, do you know what do you know what performance art is? And I was like, no, what is it? And they're like, you should be a performance artist. I was like, okay. And then Mr. Sinclair, like I wanted to make a skit for the where I wrestled with him for the for like a school tournament. And he agreed and we like choreographed a wrestling death. And anyway, so that's what I love it right now. But at that time in my life, I wasn't doing like I was I wouldn't identify as like a performance maker and I wasn't you know, I tried to like maybe audition for the school musical, but probably didn't have much success. But then ended up I ended up moving through many chapters and ended up at UC Santa Cruz and started kind of making my own work at UC Santa Cruz. And I and I would just make work with whoever was kind of available to me. I had transferred into the school as a junior and I didn't live on campus and I ended up living in a house where there was a bunch of like non students but like really creative folks and we had a garage that people could move in and out of and I would just like make work on whoever was kind of around and using whatever was available. So I've kind of been doing I think the same thing since then. I mean, we all started in some weird form where instead of being like stop doing that somebody was like that's cool. Yeah we were like stubborn. I'm like no I'm not gonna stop like I it's just stubbornness at this point. Yeah indeed. We're already getting some questions but maybe for a second you can talk about like your definition of what you do, what device theater is, what it looks like, can look like, has looked like. Just when people ask like what do you do, what is your besides like laughing and what what is your definition of it. You want to go Ray? Yeah I'm you know I think it's helpful to think of device theater less as like less of a genre and more of a process. Not that genre have process but you know I think that when you were talking about it in a theater context like a traditional theater context or a dramatic context it's it's less of a genre and the other there's a number of key things to it. That's one more of a process has a bunch of methods that we develop and discover and appropriate and steal from other people. That I think that it's often collaborative and ensemble based. It's you know there's one thing to make something just for yourself which I think would put you more in the world of like a solo performance artist or something specific but there is there seems to be something about the ensemble and working with other people in in a really particular kind of way and we could talk about that more. I think there's a lot about the de-centering of the the dramatic text. I think that you know in in drama or theater we would think of the text as really like the plan or the thing that we keep going back to to understand what our activity is around the stage and rehearsal and so forth and of course people you know as directors or actors you interpret that text a little bit differently but it always seems to be sort of at the center and I think that for the work that I like to do and the work that I like to watch and see and participate in the text is just one of many pieces of material that I think people are playing with in that context so other things you know that are key to performance like time and space and the body and objects like these things are equally as important. I think there's also an emphasis on performance as something between something between theater and drama there's like a real emphasis on the on the doing and I what else would I add to that there's so many things but the other thing would just be about this idea of discovery that I think that in the process and in the making of it we discover we discover what device theater is by doing it in a certain way by like just playing and and and getting on so it's not as mysterious as I think some folk might think that device theater is and I know a lot of my students are like why why like what where does this come from and who likes this and who does it but I think that in doing it and making it you're like oh cool this is really addictive and I love doing this even though it might not make tons of money or it might make tons of money but it's it's a really fun I think process for approaching performance. Awesome Erica how would you kind of introduce people to this world who don't know it or kind of yeah what language would you put to it if you would put language to it? I would probably send them to Ryan because that was really that was really great. I was kind of jumping off of this question that you asked Lauren when people ask us what we do how do we answer that and I think that I devise an answer depending on the audience and I think that there's a lot of like calibrating and the cool thing about what I love about this work is that that that it's constantly shifting that every single process that we engage with is determined and shaped by the people that we're working with right and so like the the answer to that question is always changing depending on the specific the specific curiosity the specific community and the the kind of like open-endedness of the of the process is what is what attracts me because I feel like I can enter into a process of devising a new work and that could end up looking like a straight up living room drama and yet the process that we have all engaged in together has led us to that place or I could you know enter into a collaborative process and it could end up looking like us like a I don't know like a wrestling match or like a high school marching band you know and and and the and as as Ryan was saying it feels like it's less about where we end up and more about devising a process and I think that in some ways it's easier to see traces of ones of ones you know ethics and cares and passions because those those those become embedded into the daily practice of making in a way that they're not always embedded into the into the into the product yeah I mean I think we should talk a lot more about process because that this whole you know my friend called it the alt MFA that I am somehow running is started because of trying to articulate practical ways of talking about storytelling front for playwrights mainly although we've expanded and talked to every person making theater but it started as a kind of practical playwriting process and that of course is much more the traditional version than what you're talking about and it's text based but it was like beginning middle end dramatic structure catharsis climax all of that kind of Aristotelian plus modern plus my own little weird ways of talking about it so I think spinning to kind of how you talk about that what is your dramatic structure how do you find it and I can just maybe ask some of these questions Julia Christine asked how do you delineate roles in your devising group you fight wrestling you keep talking about wrestling that's not wrestling about you have one or more designated playwrights actor who does it who determines the overall structure of a piece so I guess and another question was about what devising methods have you used before so maybe some way of talking about how you cut is the process the same every time I'm assuming not are the people you have collaborators that you trust and use or it anyway how does it kind of expand and contract and per per project you want to take a hit right and I'm going to oh yeah go for it wow okay so I mean let's talk about process first let's start let's let's talk about beginnings I think that's one of the most difficult things is when you walk into a studio and say you don't have like a play script with you or you don't necessarily have a plan but you need to sort of devise one I think that everything is an open beginning like I think that we can begin anyway so if we begin with like a question that's kind of interesting like how I remember one of the projects I worked on was how do you how would you dance a home which is kind of an abstract poetic question but that's the beginning so having something that you can say like this is this is this is the start or maybe it's something like you're looking around and you know you're staring at your mug for two weeks and you're like what is a mug like how did mugs become a thing and why why this handle and like what is handiness and maybe you start to like do some etymological research around mugs and hands or something and then you start to see that you have these little bits of material that you can become more curious about and more curious about and research in a certain way and I'm really research driven I mean I think in my scholarly work there's like an academic aspect of that but creative research is just so open it really can be sort of anything and that's what I love about the devising process that from a dramaturgical standpoint it's not necessarily going back into like digging through like the history of the genre realism or knowing exactly like the production history of a particular thing that you might need to reference or respond to it's much more open in a certain way of like where your curiosity takes you and you never know some of it might be like a total dead end and all of a sudden you might be you know learning about 19th century spiritualism and not do anything with it but now you just know a bunch about it but it's just like because something you need to become really curious about right so I think that every every beginning is is you can begin kind of anywhere and I think it's good to mark your beginnings I think that being able to like look back and say like where did we start Eric and I we'll talk more about this but one of the projects we worked on recently is this one called first things first in Arkansas one of the those beginnings was really just about the occasion of opening this new museum called the momentary and some of the first hits that we had were around ceremonies that mark the occasion of first times so groundbreaking and ribbing cuttings and inaugurations and these sort of things made in voyages these kinds of things christening and I think it was helpful sometimes when we were in our process to just stop and go back and say like okay how is this a kind of opening ceremony you know and even if you completely change you drop it or something it's just being able to say like oh how did I go from A to B I think can be super helpful in evaluating and reflecting on your your process so I'll just say that around beginnings and I'll let Eric talk a little bit more but then I just want to say something about people um that one of my favorite things about collaborative I mean about the vice theater is that we get to devise our own our own roles and I think that's really determined by what the work needs sometimes like you might be a primary instigator right like you might come into the room and say like I really want to work on marshmallows or God knows what on softness like my thing is softness I need to like understand softness more I need to bring some people that might be interested in on softness and then we can kind of determine like what people want to do and bringing those people in based on maybe some of their skills or non skills sometimes I you know I love working with non performers in this way like I worked with my dad on a project which is really beautiful and and kind of challenging to be honest um and sometimes you end up working with like a whole marching band and like they're they're on this they're on the same sort of page as anyone else kind of in the room I think there's just a different distribution of tasks um sometimes you might need a really clear role like you're the dramaturg in the situation you're like okay cool or sometimes you're a assistant director dramaturg choreographer shaman and like cleanup crew all of the same time and like set designer and like admin like you just become you wear all the different hats and you learn in that and that's also just as brilliant I think um yeah it's it's uh really trying your hand at different things but really again all about what the work needs right how do you push the work forward by putting on different hats really quickly or learning new things or jumping in or stepping back you know so Erica how does how would you talk about process how it comes to be how you find it or yeah what's the seedling of it and how do you know what you found I mean what what what does that look like the seedling of process um gosh okay so I'm trying to understand common core math right now uh because I'm trying to home school and like the I as I've been engaging with this new way of learning math I've realized that I am someone who like needs to uh I need to learn with objects and I need to I need to be able to articulate what it is that I'm seeing and I'm feeling right and the way that I learned math was kind of this like rote memorization this kind of like stacking of numbers and the way that my son is learning math as you just you saw you guys saw you got to see my baby um is all around like building visual uh structures so that you can engage with these kind of building blocks and understand like from from the roots up what it is that you're building and I think a lot about that with the device you know with the devised work I feel like I I'm I I am a person who learns best when I'm when I'm when I'm with other people who ask um like better questions than I do right and like I think that there are there are there are a lot of things that keep me up at night you know there are a lot of things to keep all keep all of us up at night and I feel like my way of like sorting through the things that keep me up at night are to um like build a community to research with and so um uh I'm a little bit forgetting where with the what Julia's original question was but she was asking around Genesis yeah well it's kind of it was a question about process how roles are defined I think it's a kind of practical if there is anything practical is it just follow your nose you follow your instincts I mean how do you do what you need you follow your needs right if you have an impulse to create something like what are what what what what is it that you feel hungry for that can help advance that that can help advance that need right and I feel like I'm constantly especially nowadays like I'm I thrive on being in community and I thrive on like like creativity comes from me when my own when my own assumptions are challenged like that's when I feel like I'm able to make um like bold strides in terms of like generating creative ideas when when when when I think that I understand something but somebody like puts a wrench into the way that I you know the way that I the way that I understand something to be and so I I yes for me I think so much of the work is just about about like finding the people and starting simply with that like starting with the people and starting with a very very simple prompt like what is the thing that's keeping you up at night what is the thing that you're wanting to like dig into or it could be pizza you know it could be like there there's there like but articulating as Ryan said like articulating that that that seed with a group of people and then just like holding it in our hands and holding it in our imagination and holding it in our dreams and kind of seeing what generates this thing about roles I I learned this from Ryan a lot and our third collaborator her name is Rowena Richie she's not she's she's not here but I learned it from working with both of them that like you know we come to the process with a particular history I come to the to the I come I come into the room with all with with with my own experiences as like I studied dance and I come I kind of came in through like the dance through the dance door but we all come in with a certain like identity that is tied to like the ways that we've studied or the ways that we've spent our time and one thing that's been so satisfying in this collaboration with Ryan and Rowena is that is that I'm asked to like let go of who I think I am as a creator right that the that the thing that we are creating might not need me to be a choreographer it might need me to be a sculptor and I learned this from Ryan all of the time Ryan talks about like a pathetic attempt and that sometimes our pathetic attempt at making something like I'm not a sonographer let's say that I needed to let let let the piece that I was wanting to create required me to build a building like my attempt to build a building with like cardboard and like these post-its and like these chapstick like my attempt to build something with these bits is is like the effort the effort in that the effort in that attempt is like poetic unto itself right and so to not feel beholden by like oh I don't have the skills to write a play I don't have the skills to like become a composer well what like what happens if you try and sometimes that attempt sometimes the the the work that comes out of that attempt is like pretty damn profound like Lauren you're a playwright wasn't it good though didn't you like write in his non-native language yeah I mean like this this way of like intentionally engaging with materials or with ideas that are just like out of grasp yeah do you think of it as building a thing or is there other does the metaphor shift depending on the project you know what I mean because I think so much of certainly the way I think about playwriting as architectural and engineering and kind of finding the scaffolding that holds the story and then within those constraints you expose your voice and surprise yourself and do all these great things but it kind of it has some structural things do you and your and also kind of how how do you know when you're done no money runs out no I think I think the building metaphor you know I really do I but like anything you can build something super complicated you know or you could build a lean to and I think that you have to decide what materials are available to you at the time what time you have like only have time to make a one-day performance and you're going to make a one-day performance and it will be understood as a one-day performance and they'll be fine if it's a five year endeavor then that's a five year endeavored performance you know and I think that that building and how you build like the tool I mean I think we're what the question is really after or like what are some tools maybe that we can yeah I think the people watching I think are practical theater makers and are like okay give me some exercises give me following what Erica was on you know I think and you know about how we might build performances this idea of the creative constraint I think that you know when you're in school sometimes you have like the school master looks like you got to do your work or something's making a kind of demand but when you're when you're making performance from scratch there's no one hounding you necessarily unless you've got a commission or something but you have to give yourself a kind of some kind of constraint right you have to make the there's a big empty room you feel like you're in a giant empty theater like make that theater smaller so that you can do something manageable so a creative constraint could be something you know like only only make a one gesture that is repeated one thousand times over the course of of one minute which is like of course you can't do that so it becomes kind of impossible or something and this is something lifted from from my favorite people of goat island who I think are such a brilliant I encourage everyone to like look at goat island's work and you can there's a number of texts and the old website they've disbanded since but this idea of giving us a creative constraint which is lifted as a method from Olipo and from other you know moments of the avant-garde of having to build with and create within a certain kind of boundary I like to go for like really bizarre creative constraints you know like things that will necessarily lead to failure or lead to something where I have to be I have to make the wrong choice to do something that's really scary you know like I hate stand-up comedy so that maybe that's where I begin is like make a joke and I have some really bad jokes that I forced into projects and I will maybe we have time later show but you know you're starting with something like that where you give yourself a kind of constraint also like I love I do this with students but giving a prompt which is a kind of beginning and that prompt could be a line of text right that prompt could be one measurement from a recipe that prompt might be an image that you just are obsessed with like maybe a painting from the Hudson school or something and then you give yourself a directive right like how do you begin making something that's in that's in response to that prompt right so that directive might be get three people together and and create a birthday ceremony or something that so then you have birthday ceremony and then you have like Hudson River School is that even a movement Hudson school Hudson River School painting sure you put them together and then you see what comes out of it and it might be total garbage but there will be this one bit of it that's like brilliant and you're like oh that moment that everyone put their hands up before they they slapped the cake around and made a big mess that was aesthetically pleasing so let's follow that like let's move let's move into that world so then you step by step you start to you start to find what what moves you what what feels good what's striking you edit out and you bring back in and then from there you know it's really up to any artists to sort of develop their own tools for how they talk about it it might be you know screening an image or it might be breaking an image or it might be it's slowing I like to slow things down until a little too painful that's one of my processes it's really like because it's about attention right it's about how are we shaping and shaping attention from ourselves but also from audience people we invite in so like if I'm doing this gesture it's like how slow can I possibly get that just the worst and like what's going on you know I'm bored with that then I you try something else you know so those are some there's some some I love that prompt directive I'm seeing people really respond to creative constraint as a really helpful idea yeah that's wonderful um let me see there's such great questions you are you're both so beloved by all of these people watching um let's see what are some interesting starting points that you use as jumping off places for device pieces you spoke about the idea of the mug and the handle are there any maybe from existing work or work that you've done in the past that you could use to kind of how did those things begin I'm looking around Erica run with it I'm gonna find an example I'm with you we're gonna find some examples so this is something I'm obsessed with right now right um and this kind of this is so interesting because we're in this moment of sheltering in place and like it but um I'm really interested in uh amateur home theatrical in the 19th century I love it yeah and in them you get all these great things around just like how to amuse how to amuse yourself like um what's a good one how to amuse yourself when you're at home with your family um and some are like little plays and some of them are games some of them are like these like tableau vivants that are popular in the in the 19th century so I've been talking all these different bits right and like just thinking about like oh what is like what is a home amusement and like what are home amusements now you know so for me just starting off by like taking something that is like a kind of manual that's like a that's that prompts you to want to do some kind of action that's not necessarily a play script it's just like some other kind of weird next thing and just to do them and I've been forcing my partner to do them you know against his will sometimes you know now that we're sheltering in place stuff with me so he's my play partner you know I'm like you have to now make a giant with me or you have to make this like floating head or you have to do the bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep tableau I love it that's the naughty child you know so you so starting with this stuff and then my my my hopes and dreams is that you know I will start to collect how other people amuse themselves that aren't necessarily victorian right but like what are people like ice bucket challenges or you put a chair against the walling trip and over it or people do these kinds of family games collecting them in a kind of community stitching them together and creating a kind of portrait of like of home in a way so this become this is like a beginning point you try it out and play it and then you think about how do I build it up what are the next steps what are the next steps and what are the next steps a bunch of things I love that this isn't really interesting question about messaging are you always trying to create to get your message across or how does it feel if your work is interpreted in an opposite way do you think about conveying a message do you think about the whole I want the audience to feel this or is it like feel how you feel we're making a thing or how does it kind of do you consider that at all or is that yeah I mean I don't know that I would use the word message but I would use the word experience because what we're doing when we're sharing the work with audiences is that we're inviting them into an experience with us we're hosts right and we don't want to be assholes and or maybe we do or maybe we do you know that so I think that there there's there is like I think I just think about who I want to be in the world and and sometimes I I of course as we all want to and as we all should like sometimes we do want to provoke like part of what we do is to kind of disrupt the patterns that that exist right but how do we do that in a way that isn't like calling someone out do you know what I mean like how do we how do we introduce a way how do we introduce like a structure that asks people to just to just think ever so differently about something again that we assume that we understand so I don't know that I think about messaging but I do think a lot about experience and I do think a lot about the kind of experiences that I think are like are valuable in the world and the kind of experiences that I think like contribute towards a more like just a more beautiful you know a more sustainable world so that's awesome that I mean that that yeah that's really great because there isn't a question of kind of what is the moral of the story what's the point of the story and there doesn't have to necessarily be one in a specific definition as we sometimes are challenged to do and and yeah the experiential stuff that's one of my favorite device work has been it felt like an event an experience a thing that I walked away and I was like I got something way different than they did because I know you are on literally a different path than I was and you know it's really really cool and I think the world that we live in is a little bit it's a little bit dangerous right now I think because we're I think that a lot of us are we're trying to understand what it means to be risky right because we don't want to offend we don't we we're very conscious right now of how we're all moving through a moment where we're like taking taking responsibility for our actions what does it mean for me as the person I am like living in the body that I'm in to like move through the world in a particular way and we want to take responsibility for those for we want to take responsibility for the ways that we that we present the ways that our the ways that we like affect the ways that we move the ways that we inspire the ways that we shut down you know the way that we shut out and so I think that it's there it there's there's a carefulness that's that that I think a lot of artists are feeling right now and it's really hard for to like weigh that carefulness with fear right because I don't think that we can I don't think that we do our best our best work when we're afraid right like when we're when we're feeling like afraid of doing the wrong thing afraid of misrepresenting there's there the like we don't want to go we don't want to go out and play in that playground and so I think that there's at the core we have to also just trust that like who we are that what we make reflects who we are right and that the images and that the ideas that come from it like yes they should be checked and yes we should be we should be checking ourselves and we should and our collaborators should be like you know an outside eye for us and I think that we need to like let up on the message a little bit and find figure out how we can play more wildly and more freely and figure out the spaces where we feel safe to just like cut loose and see what's there and like take some risks and risk saying the wrong thing you know because that's that's part of the you know that's part of the learning that's part of the process right now great Tim Etchells has this great thing from force entertainment which is another one of the sort of big devised groups out of the 80s 90s and they're still making work but he has this great thing about playing with what scares you and I think that's really I mean it's just a simple phrase but to to play with what scares you I think you learn so much about that here we go this is a great text oh good yeah read that everybody yeah well give me a good bibliography yes a bibliography um this is an interesting way to talk about what um the project that I'm delighted to be a part of but uh the question was are you finding ways to devise through this now virtual medium either alone or with with people I don't know if this is what you want to talk about but what is your what's one of your answers to that question or how is your experience in this new world then can I say one thing before we go there yeah because I feel like the for you practice that Ryan and I are working on right now I I want to talk about that and you know Laura we could talk about that forever and ever and ever yes please so like way back to this question just around beginnings and around like methods and around kind of like practical advice I just wanted to to perfect yes the room which is like super nitty gritty just nuts and bolts kind of stuff so imagine that your process is uh is three weeks you have a three week process to to make something I always feel like the first third is just like make as many things as you can and put them all on note cards like find a way to summarize whatever it is that you've created on a note card and hit the studio again and again and again and again and every day just generate five ten twenty little note card one of them might just have like a sentence one of them might have like a song a piece of choreography and for the first third of the process and also go into the room like knowing what it is that you're exploring right so before that first before that first day like we are going to explore whatever the thing is we're going to look at barn owls right and so that means that we're all going to be like researching barn owls we're all going to be like turning into barn owls whatever the thing is and the second third of that process like go back to all of those note cards and just do them again what is it just do them again and then and leave the edges at the beginnings and the ends of those moments soft right so like it's how you enter into a moment and how you exit out of a moment it's like it's a you know soft beginnings and soft ending just hit all of those note cards again and just like line them up in any random order and just do them all right and then try another order and then you might be like oh this this song has no place in here like chuck it pair it out put it in another pile you might find that you go you go into that second third with like 15 note cards and then two days you're like actually there's only 12 of these that i that are that i'm really really interested in and then you start playing with like sequencing of that and then when you start putting these note cards together when you start putting these ideas together the transition from one moment to the next like that feels like the most right most exciting place for me to play like the moments that i built actually end up feeling secondary to how i get a moment to moment yeah interstitial space is like so much so so much fun to sit in and you just keep playing with sequencing and this thing around around narrative arc you know i i i love i love i love understanding what narrative arc is i had i was doing a residency at girassi years ago and i was at this playwright her name was Simone yahuda if she's out there and she um she she's she was a playwriting teacher and she just had me say to her that uh um this is a story about blank who needs or wants to blank and after blanking they finally blank because blank so this is a story of like Dorothy who needs or wants to go home and after like confronting the wizard of Oz she finally got to go home because she revealed that like power lies within or whatever i love like holding i love that because i love having that in my dna because because i think that storytelling and like the natural arc of storytelling is something that we're all like it lives in our blood in our bones and we were drawn to it because because it is aligned it's not a forest thing right like that's how we we move through life and that's so for me i don't think about like adhering those note cards to that structure but underneath my just underneath my like intuitive organizing that structure is living somewhere right and it could be like such a like you know i think that there's this concept called the thin so the thin red line i learned it when i was working in Berlin right and there's this idea that like through every work of art whether it's like that abstract dance piece like about like there's like a thin red line that moves moves from the from the beginning to and and that thin red line might be like buried underneath dirt it might be like forefront you know it might be like that thin red line might will live in the frame in a different way but it's always there and so identifying for ourselves what that thin red line is that could be a thematic thing that could be a thing around like design that could be around architecture you know what is the line that is like going to be the consistent thing spring together that is the thread together that is going to hold all of these seemingly disparate pieces and to trust that the human imagination like wants to make sense out of things right and the beautiful thing about the work is that our job in a way is to like present a puzzle right and to give enough context to give like enough of that thin red line that people aren't like frustrated i'm like fuck it i just have to stick you know it's like how it's flirting like how do we give enough so that they stay interested but not be like i'm going to talk for two hours about who i am and expect you to be interested in that it feels like i don't know making work always feels like a process of flirting where i only give you enough for you to just stay looking at me and wanting more that's amazing i love that definition that's so wonderful and what you talked about is exactly what we've talked about in the playwriting classes about who do they want what who's your main character what do they want do they get it at what cost like all of these kind of simple like bullet point ways of breaking it down can be very intimidating because it feels very concrete but then you go yeah but you can do that in one billion ways and like the character the main character could be like this lamp yeah exactly free of my lamp who like wants to get who wants to get broken so like the thing that's going to be consistent in my piece is my lamp is going to like move through the world of my of the work and everything else around it is going to be like diverse and chaotic and heck everything else around it's going to shift but we're going to have like this one thing to just follow through and like i i love that that that that this kind of work like asks people to ask people to fix their imagination okay yeah like and for me like that connected to like a deep sense of my own politic like i think that i think that we should be flexing our imaginations in order to like imagine how to continue to move through this world and how to navigate like the complexities of this world like we need we need to think creatively you know and we need to think expansively and we need to think nimbly and so for me this work like creating work that is intentionally abstract that doesn't give the answers that doesn't like provide the message that isn't didactic that isn't luxury but that does say like do you want to go out on a date with me are you intrigued about i'm like aren't you intrigued about this thing and i love that lamp you've been in for a long time yeah and then we can dig into you let's leave it yeah we could do it that's great that's so how are you approaching the now maybe that'll be a little bridge into the the question but also kind of what what is this now i think you're totally right the create the creative instinct is the is what always saves us and connects us and and reinvigorates us and lifts us up um what are you what is your life like now what are you working on are you devising in this moment yeah so ryan and i ryan i just want to tell everybody just about what the for you project is in a nutshell so we've been working ryan and i and romina our our third collaborator um have been working for three years on this project called for you and it's uh it's um inspired by two very simple ideas seemingly simple one is to bring groups of strangers together for these kind of like intimate um encounters intimate awkward romantic the weird bizarre encounters always strangers and the other is to think about performance making as gift giving and so oftentimes that means we're creating with a very specific audience in mind sometimes that means we're creating for an audience of one sometimes that means we're creating for an audience of 12 sometimes that means we're creating for an audience of 300 but we're always thinking about who who are we creating for and how do we think about generating performance so that the so that what we're creating is a gift to that person to that 12 people to those people um so we've been working through uh this project and the work has has been pretty favors in terms of the output um did i miss anything right no it's okay um and so this led us to this moment um where we're all sheltering in place and we started thinking about how it is that we could um uh dig into this for you method uh to continue to make work um in this moment that we're all in and we we our collaborator robina is a senior atlantic fellow at university of san francisco's memory and aging center the global brain health institute and she's been looking a lot at um uh how to take this for you methodology and to the mental population i'm looking at like looking at working with folks that have to mention and their caregivers and so we were about to launch into that work and robina has also had her chosen to working with elder folks making art with elder folks for a long time and so um that led us we were about to embark on that project and that of course got postponed but we decided to continue to uh think about ways that we could work with with elder folks and we i mean the the thing about device work is that you work with what you have right really looking a hard look at the resources you have and what we have now are like we have we have a lot of friends that are artists that are like hungry to create that are feeling like they are wanting to engage in like meaningful art making practices right now they're wanting to be of service they're wanting to like flex their creativity they're isolated they're going batshit crazy like a lot of folks are like what do i do in my room and can i do like is it i don't and and and so we were interested in creating this project connects artists with elders and so ryan do you want to can i tag you to talk about artist elder project yeah so we're we're putting artists and elders in conversation basically i mean just to ease the hardship of isolation across the board and that looks different depending on who we're talking to i mean it's always it's so it's so person-specific right in relationship-specific this is very relational kind of work and we're we're working more and more in this realm of social practice and social engaged art where device theater has a really interesting kind of home and working with folk outside of the theater world right so some of the artists that we've come to or that that came to us we put out a call some of the artists that came to us had a particular elder in mind like a grandparent that they wanted to work with some of the artists like yourself are working with a folk that we've met through this process or maybe it's an elder that we've known in our in our own communities and then somewhere just total strangers stranger artists and stranger elders that were like having these these first dates in a certain kind of way and getting to know them a little bit in the same way that we would in our other for you processes where it's just conversations just asking kinds of questions like what do you enjoy um who are you what are you doing like what's what's behind you what's that thing like really really really curious questions that could maybe give us some creative material to play with and respond to i think this idea of the creative response is one thing that is a good tool for devising is just making a creative response to something a question an image a person a moment or something so making a creative response is something that we learn from one of the elders and so right now we have like 30 plus diads doing 39 wow we have 39 artists paired with 39 elders amazing artists and each elder are having conversations they're sometimes they're making stuff together sometimes they're breaking on a collaborative project and sometimes the artist is making something for the elder but that's 39 relationships that are that are happening right now it's very exciting thank you lauren for being a part of it too oh me as it's been an absolute joy and we're just at the beginning but i've had one of my conversations it was incredibly enlightening and um yeah it was amazing and it's such a great idea it's such a simple idea i mean but it's all i'm a very complex i don't know if it's complex but it seems complex to organize and orchestrate but the idea is so pure and and and exciting and and true like something about it you're like oh yeah yeah that's exactly right i mean this has been the real blessing of this work i've talked about this you know before but one of the blessings of the for you project is that um that in my like earlier i don't know my for most of my life i've made performances because i've been like suffering over something right reason why i make a new piece of work is that i'm suffering about something and i don't want to suffer alone so that's like underneath what it is so the so the the making process performance making process is somehow connected to this um uh desire to have a community to process with fade into study with and this for you process that rain and i and romina have been you know moving through for the past three years has been such a relief because i'm no longer making work or at least right now i'm not making work to process my own suffering right i'm really thinking about like i'm really thinking about impact like how and and and you know as ryan said like i think that we're interested in art that like barely passes for art like some of the some of the some of the performances we make like their performances because we're calling them that right yeah so we're so it's really on our terms their performances because that's how we want to frame them and that's how we want them to be regarded and because we're not therapists but we do think about like the fact that the work that we make can have impact you know sometimes we get it sometimes we get it wrong but like moving forward with the kind of like best you know with the kind of best intention and kind of getting out of my own way and thinking about how the work like lands you know i mean even calling it a gift is is like a revelation just calling a new piece of art thinking of it in that way it's such a delightful reframing not a project or a product or a gift it's an offering and the thing about the gift is that it's like we we i don't want to i don't want to sit in my sit here and say like we're giving these i don't know there's there's the way that it can be like framed in a really gross way where you're like i'm providing something that you need and i'm the person to do that like it just feels kind of gross but like the thing is it's a gift for us as makers like what's happening to the work that we've been creating the actual work that we've been making both aesthetically and structurally like the work is is shifting i'm loving the like bits and pieces that we're creating out of this prompt so the gift is yeah it always i'm getting a ton of questions about how you pay for this how do you funding how do you a lot of it is how do you describe it enough to get funding or you know whereas of course my work here's the script we're going to produce it you can tell what it is by it's script um how do you do you have any kind of tips or first of all like anybody can contact me outside of this or right like if people have other questions just that's because that funding question is a is a big one and it's a personal one but i'm happy to talk about it i mean first of all we make with what we have right so so we have to really think honestly about what that means like what are we wanting to make for if i'm if i'm like i have a hundred dollars and i want to make and i want to work for like 500 hours that's my prerogative so we just have to think for ourselves about what we are able to do you know for me my work is my work like this is my livelihood and so i have to you know think strategically about about how to make i'm a choreographer for like for theater for regional theater although i might be out of work for a long time in that regard um but the for you project i think that we've been really lucky and that we've gotten some great support there's like there's a really um incredible organization called creative capital and they funded this initial round of for you uh three years ago and then we also got commissioned through your babuana center for the arts to create three rounds of of for you so that creative capital support has been uh really incredible and they i think they they fund projects again performance they fund art that like i hate to say like that that barely passes for art you know and in the best way right but they are funding they're funding folks who are really thinking about how to like reimagine how the work can live in the world and really thinking around like new new methodologies new new rubrics for gauging success new ways of thinking about impact so that's a great organization the um we the project in Arkansas we were commissioned by the museum so that's another another way is to just directly approach the presenting organization um with an idea um and then we also discussed support there's this another really fantastic uh organization called new england foundation for the arts and they have something called the national theater project and they also have a national dance project and so these are grants that are there the thing that makes them so special it's a long-term relationship and it's and they look at how to move the work how to tour the work and so i'm very curious to see how our relationship with them unfolds over the next few years as we are imagining new ways for recording okay that's really really i think that was really helpful that is like three or four questions about like this all sounds incredible one more thing about funding though please please it's like you just do what you can like that sounded very like official because i'm talking about about commissions and grants but also like you like you work with what you have like when i first moved to san francisco i like exchanged art modeling for space at a buddhist center and i made and we made a show at the buddhist center and we kept all the ticket revenue and that was like and i worked with a cafe so every person that came into the cafe i was like you have to come see my show so you just like i think what as we're devising new work we are devising processes and we're and we're devising like our own terms right our own terms for how it is that we create and i think that we that you know this this thing that ryan's talking around with constraints like don't we don't have we can work with whatever those constraints are and and to feel i think the cool thing about this work is that we are not beholden to proscenium right we are not beholden to presenters we we we are we can continue to create with what is available to us on our sidebox you know i would say the when we look at a lot of theater companies and makers there is a connection to the university i think that teaching is one of the avenues where you can use all the resources of of a university or of a school as part of your creative research and i don't think that that's the only avenue like i think about um you know good to go back to good island a lot of the members had other jobs they were uh carpenters and they worked you know at you know other in other contexts or i think about leslie and helen like i think about helen using you know they're interested in this question of loss this is from a company called curious out of london they're really interested in this question of loss and to research it helen took up a job at the lost and found for like the train stations in london right and worked there for a long time and you that's her creative research but also got paid right because you're doing this kind of bit and i think that you know wherever you are in your life like you can use anything like anything that you're up to as the occasion and opportunity to make and that you can kind of make that choice like if you want to if you're if you love gardening and that's your bit and you're really into gardening and you garden all the time or maybe you hate it but you just happen to be doing it start thinking through that like start looking around to be like what is mowing and clipping and what is the choreography of this and what are the different sites and contexts like i think that that there are these different ways that we can support this kind of play and just to go back to the very beginning of our conversations where erica is playing with brave new world and i'm playing with garbage as a you know young kid a school and not just like making stuff and being bizarre like it doesn't it doesn't cost a lot to play and you you have to find a way to support more play in your life and that's kind of like a lifelong thing that's not even just a devising process thing it's like how how do i play with my partner maybe my partner becomes the the occasion for a gift performance i play with my local community my church or something and like that becomes the occasion so i don't know that that would be my sort of addition to that conversation around right support um as we're ending our hour already um could you there was somebody's question um about what was the what was the last piece of work that like took your breath away or was just the most the greatest thing according to you um do you have something that you could describe for us about the last thing i guess it doesn't have to be theater it could be anything but i think they weren't asking about a play but or a device work but hmm i'm trying to it's a it's like this thing of like hit or i'm like what's the first thing that comes to mind yeah i there's a company called i always get the number wrong 800 high women that's what i was going to talk about oh 600 800 800 800 i was going to talk about that 800 highway men i'm just there there's something about this piece called the fever that's ryan y'all are the same you can find some um uh video of online i encourage you to look for their company and their base out of new york and uh they're sort of kindred spirits in a lot of ways but just these different um my favorite i guess my if there's one thing within that piece that i just i think about all the time is the um light ask in terms of participation so sometimes you're like you need to participate with me get on stage but these subtle ways of of asking for help like will you help me or you know um can you can you stand here versus stand here and i just thought that was just as i know it sounds so silly and simple but being in and i was like wow this is a really gentle form of participation that's super effective so i i think about that work right now what about you erica anything i was really going to talk about that same work like some of the work that i've been most excited about is um is work that just asks the audience to to sit in the room in a different way and another piece that came to me hey ryan what was the artist that we saw when we were at the momentary where we read famous speeches oh spokyoki um uh let me think of her name i'm gonna think of her name so there it was in the it was at this gallery space and there was a whole binder of just famous speeches and the public could just pick the speech and and it would come up on in like on a karaoke stream and you could just like read that speech and you would just sit in the space and space is open for maybe three or four hours but just to see like all of these really um powerful words that have like changed the course of history be embodied just by you know by the every person people and funny is um any dorsen she does like algorithmic theater and she's you know i don't know her but i yeah but i i that piece came to mind that's great um maybe if there's any we've been asking for like a um somebody said about a bibliography would be great are there any like a book or so that you might want to share with folks all the books this is um the goat island a collection of texts called small acts of repair it's collaboratively written amongst all the different members as well as people within the fields um it's a beautiful text in the back of it has a number of exercises that you can use great um erica your turn um i think uh 39 micro lectures we did not plan this like we honestly just we just um certain fragments from tim etchels has um some great uh history of their work but also provocative essays and their poetic and some exercises i think this is really like uh huntsies lemons post dramatic theater does a great job of historicizing some of this work if you're interested in that um also the wooster group handbook or okay is really good is there somewhere loren that we can just post for your yes this will be on my facebook page as well as howl around but my facebook page you could add in the comments anything and um there are some some stuff that i'm sure they would appreciate if you want to pop in some some specific answers but um thank you i'm so sad to wrap it up because i oh my gosh this is this is really amazing and quite generous um of you thank you for sharing your wisdom and your time internet bandwidth um this is so great uh thank you all for your questions out there and um thanks for listening thanks lauren for everything that you do this is so fun to be with you so great i'm so glad to get to know you both a little bit more through your work and may we be able to continue this conversation in person safely shortly yes take care more scenes bye everybody