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No Room For Bullies with Matt Torney
106 Plays1 year ago
In this episode Matt and Amber talk about New play programming at Matt's Artistic home Theatrical Outfit, his background in dance and current work in dance dramaturgy, and the need for more kindness in all of our rehearsal and development rooms.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Table Work' Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello, everyone. Thank you for tuning in to Table Work, how new plays get made. My name is Amber Bradshaw, and I am a new play dramaturg arts administrator and educator. On this podcast, I chat with theater makers about the art of new play dramaturgy. Our mission is to demystify the process of creation and collaboration.
00:00:25
Speaker
Explore ways to better our field, share tools to diversify and improve the work, and record what we discover.
Support from Working Title Playwrights
00:00:32
Speaker
This podcast is brought to you by Working Title Playwrights, a new play incubator and service organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, in which I serve as the Managing Artistic Director. For more about WTP and me, check out www.workingtitelplaywrights.com.
00:00:51
Speaker
I would like to see much wilder creative ambition on much, much, much, much kinder rooms. Not much fairer rooms, kinder rooms, because I think the fairness will come, or because fairness is going to mean something completely different to the winner. You can't actually litigate it with language. You can, oppression is always visible. So you can always ensure against oppression. You can't always ensure kindness.
Introduction to Matt Torney
00:01:21
Speaker
I'd like to start by introducing y'all to our guest today, Matt Torney. Hey Matt, welcome. Hello, hello, how are you? Thank you so much for joining us. It's so great to have you.
00:01:34
Speaker
Originally from Belfast, Matt worked as a freelance director in Ireland before moving to the United States in 2006 to complete an MFA in directing at Columbia University. Matt directs both new plays and dynamic productions of classics with a focus on deep work with actors and creating vivid imagery through design. Recent work includes Doubt by John Patrick Shanley, nominated for three Helen Hayes Awards,
00:01:58
Speaker
If I Forget by Steven Levison, nominated for three Helen Hayes Awards. Mother Struck by Stacy Ann Chin, nominated for two Helen Hayes Awards, including Best Production. And The Hard Problem by Tom Stoppard. Prior to joining Theatrical Outfit as Artistic Director, Matt was the Associate Artistic Director of Studio Theater, one of the leading contemporary theater companies in D.C.
00:02:20
Speaker
Before that, he was the director of programming for Origin Theatre, an off-Broadway company whose mission is to bring the best of European new writing to the USA. Additionally, from 2007 to 2015, he was an associate artist of Rough Magic in Dublin, one of Ireland's leading independent theatre companies for over 30 years. He is also a part-time lecturer at the University of Maryland in the School of Theatre.
00:02:45
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about what you're doing at TO and how the new play development part of your work is so intrinsic. Well, the first thing that I'll say about theatrical outfit is the connection to Atlanta is the most vital part of our identity.
What is American Theater?
00:03:06
Speaker
To say something that might be a little controversial, I don't actually believe that the American theater exists.
00:03:12
Speaker
People talk about it all the time. There's a magazine called The American Theatre. There is a group of gatekeepers and tastemakers, mostly associated with one or two cities, who describe the field. And there's a lot of thinking that mostly comes out of two or three universities that create the field. But actually, the people who go to theatre, unless you're in a tourist city, are your local community.
00:03:37
Speaker
And in many theaters across the country, the artists who are on the stage are not part of the local community. They're part of the regional theater system.
00:03:45
Speaker
where they're flying in, graduates from certain colleges to do plays and sing and then flying them out again. Now I think that's perfectly fine if you're in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere that wants great theatre and that you don't have an economy that can sustain artists. But if you're in a city like Atlanta that's full of actors, playwrights, directors, designers, to me it seems like an extraordinary opportunity to explore the relationship between theatre and place.
00:04:14
Speaker
And if you go back to the very beginning of what theater is, how it evolved, what it was supposed to be, you know, citizens would go to the theater on the scene place to seek insight. They're like, it's that's what it is. The commercialism of theater is something that just doesn't exist over a couple hundred years. So I see any artistic director
00:04:41
Speaker
particularly with some of the questions we've been challenged with in these last couple of years. But the biggest thing we're offered is the chance to explore a relationship to place, a relationship to our community. And I see that as a really kind of rich and vibrant relationship and it goes in a couple of directions. Some of it is bringing in great players from elsewhere, assembling great teams of local artists to create a production that resonates with this place, with this community now.
00:05:09
Speaker
And the other way is
The Value of Theater
00:05:11
Speaker
to create work here, about here, or connected to here, or resonating with here, with and by artists who are here, and you send it in the other direction so that places can communicate with other places through theater. And in a way, as soon as you start thinking about theater as a product or a commercial product, it starts to kill its metaphysical value, which is to manifest spaces, internal and external.
00:05:39
Speaker
for audiences to explore together. And that's true, even if you like simple realism or more straightforward plans, it's still an act of profound transformation. But we all know when it's dead, and we all know when it's cynical, and we all know it doesn't work. I love the idea of plays communicating with community. The play is being sent, and it's having a conversation with this community, and we're going back and forth.
00:06:08
Speaker
That's gorgeous as a, just as a cultural conversation. That's beautiful. Well, theatrical outfit, our mission is to produce world-class theater that starts the conversation, is the matter. You know, the world-class, but that can be a bit of a sticky idea. Essentially what it means is that people working in Atlanta are as good as anything you will see in New York or Chicago or London or anywhere else. It's like a bit of, it's a bit of swagger.
00:06:36
Speaker
You know, it's just like you don't, like it doesn't have to, all the energy doesn't have to go in one direction. We can create it here. And the idea of a conversation that matters is I think initially we understood that to be political, but as time's gone on and the world's got worse, I don't actually think it's about politics and I don't actually think it's about rewriting or rewiring. I think it's about connecting
00:07:04
Speaker
I mean, I ultimately think it's about making meaning. A conversation that matters is one that helps you make meaning out of a complicated world. Sometimes that can be very dramatic and complex. Sometimes that can be metaphysical and obscure. Sometimes that can be joyful, thigh-slapping holiday and comedy. Like there's room for it all. If you are leaning toward your community and asking, what do we need to be talking about?
00:07:32
Speaker
what energies need to be unleashed here so that we can connect with one another in this space, this, you know, in an ancient space. Yeah, yeah. I think that that's an idea that much more appealing to me, more complicated the world gets is what came before and what can that teach us?
00:07:56
Speaker
So what is theatrical life? That is a theater that wants to connect to the community in Atlanta, that wants to create a home for artists right in the heart of the city, and that wants to have a bit of swagger and say that Atlanta's awesome. And everyone should park here, and everyone should come here. And if you're not here, you're missing out, the end. Well, that's awesome. Tell us a little bit about Made in Atlanta and what that program
Made in Atlanta Program
00:08:21
Speaker
is. So it became very clear.
00:08:24
Speaker
that if we were going to be creating work in Atlanta, we needed to have a program that was designed to do that. And made Atlanta the idea of craft, of making, of, you know, that stamp, that seal of approval just had such a, it was fertile.
00:08:45
Speaker
to quote Deb. And we just sort of had the idea of the logo of this circular stamp made in Atlanta. And how that could be a provocation to artists to kind of step up their best Atlanta ideas.
00:09:02
Speaker
And from the beginning, the program involved commissions and workshops kind of to help the play and also readings and particularly this Unexpected Play Festival that our companies do together. We were like, we're already doing that. So we just bolded that into the conversation as Atlanta artists offering new Atlanta plays to audiences and this sort of feedback space so that the audience could help create the next stage of life for the play.
00:09:31
Speaker
So that was the original idea. So we do four to six readings a year. We do between one and five workshops a year, depending on what funding we've been able to secure. We have our first commission, which is a hip hop musical with the early life of young John Lewis, which is in the early draft things. I think it's a musical. So the third draft of the script is the first draft of the show.
00:10:00
Speaker
because we've got music and they're just so complicated. And we're gearing up to announce our second and third commissions next season. That's amazing. Who's the team for Young John Lewis? So Young John Lewis, the composer, is Eugene H. Russell IV, Atlanta legend. The director for the workshops is Tom Jones III. I think it's Tom H. Thomas Jones III. Yes.
00:10:27
Speaker
He's wonderful and a dramaturg to his bones. Absolutely. He's put together a ton of world premiere productions. The dramaturgs, our own Daeye Moon. And then the book writer is a hip-hop playwright that I mentioned to you see. He's a family connection to Atlanta called Sami in E24. He gets the kind of the political story and he just understands how hip-hop and the history of hip-hop can exist as a theatrical form in a way that's really exciting.
00:10:57
Speaker
That's awesome. I'm really excited about that commission. That's very cool. I know, but it was, it was the answer to the question, what stories are missing in Atlanta theater and lots of stories are missing. This was the first one. Yeah. This is the first one we decided to sell and like we commissioned it in 2019. It's one of the first things they did after I got hired was like the bolt from the blue of the commissioning idea, like arrived fully formed in my mind.
00:11:24
Speaker
I was like a hip hop musical about John Lewis's early life, looking at how he became a man of conviction, how he grew into his moral compass, and how that addicted the course of his life. And he was still alive at the time, we were hoping to involve him. But we were determined not to look backwards. Yeah.
00:11:43
Speaker
but to create a living document for younger generations so that they could connect the energy of this time and look forward. So that was the extent of the idea. And then I felt like it wasn't mine. I was just the steward who had received it and was passing it on. I love that. I love that. Really looking forward to how that project develops. And you're doing some other projects with Made in Atlanta, are you not?
00:12:10
Speaker
Are you doing, in addition to the Unexpected Play Festival, which maybe I should explain, every year we do three or four developmental readings with working title playwright members that are selected. And we're going to do a live one this year. Yay! Cannot wait to do a live one. But yeah, so please tell us a little bit more about... Yeah, so essentially like the commissions are projects that we generate.
00:12:37
Speaker
and that we steward from inception, and either it's ideas that come from within the company or ideas that people fixed to us, that we just want to put some resources into. Workshops are plays that a dia encounters, either people send in or they need encounters elsewhere, or that he kind of hears away directly from the writer, that have been written or developed to a certain point and need some time in the room with actors to kind of take a big step toward production.
00:13:07
Speaker
So this fall, we did three workshops, the first of our workshop of Yom Tarlouis, a workshop of the play called The Most American Town by Lee Azorio, which was part of the Unexplained Play Festival last year, and Lee was turning into a production he was producing himself. And he just needed some time and space and focus to kind of get the script ready, and we were like, yep, we can do that for you.
00:13:31
Speaker
And then a play called Marry Me Bruno Mars by Megan Tabak, who's the resident playwriting fellow at Emory. That's looking at events surrounding the spa shootings at Atlanta and Asian the year, role of Asian American identity, in American identity, and the conceptions and misconceptions around that. So three very different stories, all connected to Atlanta and the South, all looking at it from very different lenses and angles, all starting conversations that matter.
00:14:01
Speaker
And all is primarily local artists. Primarily local artists. It's amazing. That's fantastic. That's a really robust program. I would say producers in town, some of our producers do some really robust programming, but I feel like sometimes I'm unclear as to the story or the narrative that that programming has or is doing. So I feel like this is really clear. So I thank you for all of that and investing all of that.
00:14:31
Speaker
Well, the fact that it's so clear, it's basically what's mission-aligned. Right. And like, if the two things that we are are an Atlanta theater company that wants to start conversations that matter in the community, that has to be the lens for all of our programming, new work or not. And one of the ways in which the program has developed this year is that we've got a little bit more, we're doing a renovation, a little bit more space internally, and we're able to share it
00:14:59
Speaker
Yeah, so you know, working title playwrights is now company in residence. So we're able to be like, you want to do great new work on Atlanta, here's a room in which you can do it. And I just think that that that idea of, I mean, cultural abundance, sharing, connecting, collaborating
00:15:19
Speaker
harkens right back to my first experiences of theater and youth theater, but also it's something that, though it seems obvious, is a little bit too rare, not just in Atlanta. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I think because there's such a scarcity model for us as artists, we're always running to catch up rather than being able to really set up the building blocks and really do the foundational work that needs to be done.
00:15:48
Speaker
I think it's hard to find time for that. But for me, it's like everything. If you don't have that, what are you building off of? We talk a lot about what the new audience is and how theater is going to be revived and all this stuff. And I'm like, well, they're out there, but we have to find them. We have to reach out to them. So yeah, this to me is these kind of programs do that in a really intrinsic way.
00:16:16
Speaker
Well, I think that, I mean, similar to the culture that we're trying to build in our rehearsal room is that we have to have an intersectional understanding of our audiences. They don't all want the same thing. And frankly, the patronizing idea of like old white folks as the only people to come to the theater is it's both kind of doing the emigrate to service as human beings and also doing everyone else who isn't in a disservice because they need wedged into a binary opposition again.
00:16:45
Speaker
instead of understanding art as something with multiple connection points, multiple ways in, that even an audience who is homogenous are going to walk out of that room with vastly different experiences of what they just saw, unless it is a very specific type of commercial product. But even then, it's going to resonate and reach people in different ways. Because I think that we should be trying to cultivate humble relationships with folks based on sincere invitation.
00:17:15
Speaker
rather than on deciding who people are and what they want. If artists know who they are and what they're saying, then it's about connecting with folks who need to hear that. But, I mean, saying the theatre is one thing or isn't another thing. Right. It's room for everything.
00:17:35
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, I was talking earlier about how our programming isn't seasonal, right? So we're not really selecting. And so we generally have with working title, our audiences are often based entirely on who the playwright has brought in or the actors that are in the on the team or the content itself. And so we yes, we have regulars, but because we are a service organization with a membership, but
00:18:03
Speaker
It is stark, the differences in who shows up. And so for me, I'm like, well, the audiences are here, right? It's a matter of acknowledging that they are here too. And that's what you're saying. They are, old white people are not the only audience. But also they're not a bad audience.
00:18:23
Speaker
Like, again, this is one of the binaries is because they're associated with the past or because certain theatre models have favoured subscriptions which have appealed to suddenly folks who are complicated people, complicated lives, complicated relationships with themselves and their families are suddenly seen as like, oh, just idiots who like some kind of boring stuff and not like the real audience. They are the real audience.
00:18:51
Speaker
Because you just need to understand that people need different things. You can't all need the same thing. It's like restaurants don't all opt out the same menu. What we have to get better at is reaching the audience and telling them why this play might connect to them and then not excluding folks.
00:19:15
Speaker
not telling them it isn't for you because it might be. And I see that going in two directions. Or it creates this illusion that there's a formula you can figure out that's going to kind of... Yeah. And you know what also too for me, it just clicked for me that there's also a lack of accountability in that. Like the audiences didn't make the plays. So it's their fault. So I think there's a lot to be said for like,
00:19:45
Speaker
what we are all contributing to the form and the field, right? If we're the ones, you know, if these bigger producers are the ones creating these shows, then they're responsible for the content they're putting out being, frankly, really
00:20:01
Speaker
not complicated and not representing the full spectrum of humanity. It's not the fault of the audience. It's the fault of those assuming the audience can't handle the material. Exactly. Or the myths. You assume that older white people are not going to be interested in diverse stories.
00:20:19
Speaker
because of some market data, a couple of theaters, I'm just like, we just started, we just literally just started to try and dismantle some of these myths and try and understand these things from multiple perspectives. Because the counter argument for, you know, why people are only like these audience, only like these players, you suddenly start thinking things like, well, a black audience will only like this. Because the binary thinking obscures the humanity. Whereas
00:20:50
Speaker
I mean, I've been thinking about this an awful lot, like an awful lot recently, is Greek theater, and specifically the idea of the dialectic. Because most Greek players involve some kind of binary opposition.
00:21:05
Speaker
And the play explores this binary opposition colliding and colliding and colliding and colliding and colliding. And what happens at the end of all of those plans is one person or two people are broken by the collision of these binaries and the inability for new ideas to synthesize from this collision. And generally, this is the moment of catharsis is, you know, Oedipus has the famous revelation rips out his own eyes because he didn't see the binary opposition between knowledge and ignorance.
00:21:35
Speaker
and his role within it, or our force and gentleness, the force that was causing him the need to know, Antigone and Creon being the book's famous example, you know, who's right morally or individual power versus state power. What happens, you know, you know, what happens is when they collide, everyone is consumed because what dies is mercy. So I think
00:21:58
Speaker
I'll quote a Diane Moon here, you know, very wise man. It's not that we need to solve this with intellectual ideas. We just need more narratives. We just need more. More narratives, more diverse narratives, more perspectives, more. We need audiences that are multicultural plays, that are multicultural plays, that are monocultural audiences, that are monocultural. We just need to stop being afraid.
00:22:25
Speaker
I'm just really trying to expand our horizons of what this art form could be and who it could reach.
Playwriting for Specific Audiences
00:22:32
Speaker
We don't think about one monolithic audience anymore, right? And we think about, especially for playwrights, we're thinking, who's the audience for this play? It's the people that you, as a playwright, want to come see it. That's your audience. And whoever that is, write for them. And that's that. It's really that simple. There is no right for a white audience. Explain yourself to somebody else. No, it's tell your story. Tell your story.
00:23:00
Speaker
Because what will happen is if your story is big enough, rich enough, human enough, people will want to see it. Absolutely. I mean, that's one thing that we saw time and again, certainly as we were emerging from COVID. We can't actually predict who's going to come and see each of our plays. We're always wrong. Right.
00:23:24
Speaker
I mean, I'm at the point now where I'm like, data is hard to, it's hard to get good data and hard to make good decisions off data. It's much better to rely on instincts and creativity. The way in which we measure success, and we'll continue to measure success going forward, are the ways in which we represent our community. Like I don't think that theatrical outfit can really live up to its full potential.
00:23:51
Speaker
and tell our audience, our artists, our staff, our board, all look and feel like Atlanta. Now you can question what that means, City of Atlanta, region, it doesn't really matter. I think the answer is different depending on what you're really asking, but you know when it's not. You know when you go and you sit in that room and that doesn't feel like
00:24:16
Speaker
Like our community. So that, I think, is a much more profound guiding principle for me, place, community, than the morality of a binary opposition as expressed in the internet. Algorithmically tuned to induce the maximum amount of rage to sell you something, encourage a certain, like, whatever, you know? Yeah, I love that. That's really profound.
00:24:45
Speaker
So I want to ask you a little bit about your experience with dance. Oh, many people do not know about you. And obviously, you're new to Atlanta too. So I want people to get to know you know my secrets. Exactly. And of course, you have quite
00:25:05
Speaker
a background in dance and you still work in it today. So tell me a little bit about your background in dance, how you got into it and kind of how you engage with it now. Yeah, sure. So I was a reluctant dancer. The way it started is my mom came home one day and was like, good news. I signed up for a dance class. And now if you're a 12 year old in Belfast,
00:25:36
Speaker
You've got to assume easily that your mom was trying to get you killed. You know, she definitely doesn't want you to have any friends. I guess like Billy Elliot is a real. Yeah. Yeah. When I watched Billy Elliot, I wept. I wept. So I cried so hard. It's true. But but she basically, you know, being a tough Belfast mother said I've already paid for it to do it. And I was dreading going in there.
00:26:04
Speaker
Um, and I walked in and it was a hip hop dance class. And the guy teaching the class was this sort of big, big black dude from London with silver and Baker and East End accent. And we had this like baggy trouser for Beanie. You know, he's just, he's probably the coolest person I've ever seen. And, um, it was at the time when wrote that Basil Armans wrote me on Juliet. I'll come out.
00:26:30
Speaker
and they were doing a kind of hip-hop dance routine to the album for a show. And you know, it was my first thing, at first, I had two left feet, didn't know what I was doing, so just sort of watching. And I can tell you that what I was seeing in that room was nothing that I'd ever seen in Northern Ireland or Belfast before. It's like no one was talking about politics, the obsession that
00:26:56
Speaker
Irish theatre hands with what is Irish theatre or what is Ireland wasn't present. It was about kinetic movement. And I remember there's a couple of dudes who were very cool, you know, like big boots and chains and all that kind of stuff on and they were like doing this dance where they're throwing chairs around. And it just it wasn't the kind of
00:27:22
Speaker
gentle dance that I was expecting. It was something much, much, much more vivid, primal, connected. And I was hooked. So I went every week. And then I got another dance class. And then I got a third one. And then I was like, you know what? Actually, I was given ballet a hard time because there's a lot of really good technique in there. So I started taking the ballet class. And then got to the point where I was doing six days a week of some form of dance or theater training.
00:27:49
Speaker
And that basically became my entire life. And I remember when I was 16, I joined a dance company with these two Belgian dancers who were based in Northern Ireland, but would tour. And I made some work with them in one of their touring pieces. And I did a lot of work in kind of parades and festivals. And then I got invited to join a youth dance ensemble that was dancing with Merce Cunningham when he was doing a performance. I didn't know what he was.
00:28:19
Speaker
just like some old American dude. And there we were, dancing with, you know, Merce Cunningham and this very famous storied New York company at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast. So there's all of these sort of pretty extraordinary experiences and extraordinary creative experiences. And every single one of those rooms was different. It was teaching me something. And I think that whenever it came time to choose what I wanted to study in university,
00:28:48
Speaker
Much as I loved that kind of the animus in the body that creates movement, what I was actually interested in was form. I was more interested in the dramaturgy of dance than the dance itself. So I decided to go into an intellectual degree and I decided not to do an acting degree.
00:29:11
Speaker
But I did a theater and literature degree to kind of go and just expand my understanding of language and form. And then the plan that always being to kind of go and study acting after. But then I found directing. So you found directing in college? Yeah, it was one of these things where I was convinced I was going to be like some form of
00:29:37
Speaker
dancer, dancer, actor, dramaturg. And I took a directing class. Well, all the things I loved about dance and all the things I loved about performance were there. And all the things I loved about, you know, structure and inspiration were right there.
Matt Torney's Directing Style
00:29:54
Speaker
And then it just became part of my practice to be very, very, very aware of the physical aspects of production.
00:30:05
Speaker
And the way I sort of, after I did my MFA directing, the way I learned to describe it is I look at things simultaneously from the inside out and the outside in. From the inside out is its spiritual dimension, its content, like what is the force of this story is exerting upon the world. Outside in, what are its mechanics? What's its form? What's its showbiz? It's like Barnum.
00:30:32
Speaker
PT Barn, I'm looking at it, you know, checking the tires, you know, and I'm looking at it from the outside in, you're like, well, how is it moving? Where is it moving? What are the lines? What are its dynamics in the inside out? Is it's why? Yeah. And I find, you know, that's what keeps me hooked as an artist, is exploring both the why and the how. We're looking at things from the inside out, you know, outside in. So dance just became part of the vocabulary of directing.
00:31:00
Speaker
For me, it became part of the eye with which I used to analyze productions. And I've done some things that are more intensely physical. I've done a lot of things that are very textual.
00:31:12
Speaker
And then recently there's a dance company in Washington, D.C. who've been hiring me to work with them to help conceive direct original ballets. So we did one of the Love Song, which I have for Prufrock, and we just did another one that was a radical reimagining of the Great Caspi. Oh, fun. Yeah. Breaking it apart because it's in the public domain, so you don't have to be kind to it anymore. You just explode it.
00:31:40
Speaker
like we did with proof rock into a series of images. The image we used was a stained glass window being hit with a hammer. And you pick up the pieces and you arrange and rearrange and arrange and rearrange the patterns of what you get. Turns out you get something that looks a lot like the Ray Gatsby.
00:32:00
Speaker
lonely souls lost in a dazzle of materialism, leading inevitability towards tragedy, truths are revealed behind all alarms. It's a very classical ballet structure right there. Right, right, right. Dance, and I think dance dramaturgy initiates with a feeling in your body that then you interpret into words.
00:32:26
Speaker
So I would say that when I am working with actors in a room, I have those instincts about where they should be and where they should go. I find that directors who plan everything in advance kill the creativity and the artists with whom they work. And it can be very successful. It has been very successful for certain major American and international directors who have a visionary sensibility, but that is not about community. That is about
00:32:57
Speaker
artist as genius consciousness. I wouldn't do a void. The time was void. You know what I mean? It's like, it's a different model. Whereas what I try and do is operate as a catalyst.
00:33:12
Speaker
to kind of like meet artists and see their instincts, tease them out and weave it together into something. So sometimes what I've made looks very much like realism and sometimes it looks quite abstract and sometimes it looks like a big opera with lots of color and sometimes it looks like something else. But what I've learned is that you just gotta listen to the play.
00:33:38
Speaker
from the inside out and from the outside in and find a way to meet those energies.
00:33:45
Speaker
Mm, that's great. That's really beautiful. I feel like you can do that as a dramaturg just as much, right? It also goes to this idea of trying to make sure, especially for new play dramaturgs, that you're not just grounding your feedback and your response in analytical criticism. You're allowing your body and your heart and your soul to respond.
00:34:13
Speaker
That is such a big part of what you are doing as a dramaturg when you are giving a playwright feedback. It is a sensory experience and should be, right? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Like the thing is, the tricky thing is that at some point there needs to be some rigor involved. And often that looks like this, not this.
00:34:40
Speaker
You've got to choose. So one of the things I observed studying Viewpoints in my MFA with Aunt Bogard is Viewpoints has never met a choice it doesn't like. It empowers individual creativity, but it doesn't always connect that creativity into an ensemble. That's something that emerges if you've been working together for decades, like City Company. And I was just like, aha, the director's job with the way that this tool is useful to directors is choosing what is the play and what isn't the play.
00:35:09
Speaker
And I think if you create an environment in which people are connected to their sensory instincts, their spiritual instincts, their emotional instincts, but that all of that is being focused, condensed and channeled towards this very, very, very specific goal. That's when stuff starts to resonate at a kind of extremely powerful level. I think that's something I learned in the classical theatre as well.
00:35:36
Speaker
I can't remember who, I mean, look, it's almost a cliche at this point, but I remember the first time that someone said, treat classic plays like they're new plays, and new plays like they're classic plays, was very wise. Because like, assume that the classic play has never been done before. So what does it have to say to the world anew?
00:35:57
Speaker
and assume that this new play has a very sophisticated structure that needs to be analyzed, like the Talmud, rather than rejected because it doesn't resemble something familiar.
Lessons from Classical Theater
00:36:09
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I mean, when I think of people, I immediately thought of Jason Minidakis when you were talking about that, because, you know, Jason, who is at the Marin Theater Company these days, who was the artistic director at Actors Express in Atlanta when I was an intern there,
00:36:26
Speaker
He came from Cincinnati Shakes and he did Shakespeare for 10 years and developed his own directing technique, which I had the honor to learn, which is really, you know, text is music based.
00:36:43
Speaker
But he used everything he learned from Shakespeare to create that style and never once put it to Shakespeare after he left, right? So he used it for new play development collaboration and it was, and it was, it was fantastic. And so much of it was about energy and flow and people connecting kinetically to the work.
00:37:09
Speaker
Right. So yeah, that really resonates for me as well. There's so much to be learned from the structure of the classics and not in copying them, but learning about how they do what they do. Learning about how they do what they do, but also there are some classics that have endured because of the relationship with the canon. And there's some classics that have endured despite the relationship with the canon.
00:37:39
Speaker
And I think that when you are awake to what is present, I mean Greek players obviously, I'm on that kick at the minute, the idea that the theatre can be a place where binaries collide in search of synthesis. I mean that idea, that doesn't have to look like King's.
00:38:01
Speaker
No. That doesn't have to look like, you know, a certain royal family and gods and choruses and stuff like this. You can use that idea of a dialectic mirror to the world or sophisticated political world and collide those binaries in search of synthesis.
00:38:20
Speaker
Be humble. As what I begin to be processed by saying about my core values are integrity and kindness. Kindness and respect go hand in hand. Integrity is what leads us to rigor. Integrity is our route to exceptional work and kindness is our route to culture and community. And they go hand in hand. And someone in the room might want to be very collaborative. And someone in the room might want to be very quiet.
00:38:46
Speaker
And someone in the room might want a relationship with a mentor. That mentor might be you, it might be someone else. Someone in the room wants to give you three choices and you pick one, someone else. And I think that the emotional intelligence skill is probably the best one to bring into those spaces rather than the political theory skill. Because what you want to be is humble enough to not think that, not think that because something worked before it's going to work again.
00:39:16
Speaker
and humble enough to not think that you know best. No room for bullies, no room for sarcasm and belittling, no room for dismissing. Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. And I think that is the foundation of what I talk about when I mean facilitation, and I think being humble and being kind
00:39:39
Speaker
And unfortunately, that is not something that we get enough of these days, right? You know, that it's something that we as humans need to challenge ourselves to constantly be doing. It's not necessarily going to just happen, right? It is a conscious and intentional effort and being thoughtful. Yes. Right? Listening.
00:40:05
Speaker
Yeah, and listening. And listening. And making sure that everyone knows that if someone is called apprentice or intern, you treat them with respect. Yeah. That they're part of the community too. This is how they learn. This is how they grow. Everyone has something to contribute. Again, I don't know. I suppose as I listen to myself, I sound more like a priest. But I think I'm just so suspicious of
00:40:33
Speaker
I'm so suspicious of language because so much language is used to part control. And then when I find myself in spaces where language is policing interactions, so that the interaction being policed is rarely because of instinct or impulse, but often things that are being mapped on to language or mapped on to this society or the community. Whereas I'm like, if we as theater people,
00:41:01
Speaker
can be kind to one another, what might emerge that has not existed before?
00:41:06
Speaker
And I appreciate what you say about bullying because I think people need to understand that that is exactly what that behavior is, right? And that if you are trying to grab power in a space and harm others, you are you are bullying. And I think as adults, we don't think of ourselves that way. We think we're not kids, so we can't bully each other. But in fact, we can and we do. Right. Whenever
00:41:35
Speaker
people are free in a space to discover. And they know that they're supported. That's great. Then they can connect. And then there's room for danger. You created that permission, that community permission. Yes. But it feels a little bit more like a family and less like a meeting, a balanced meeting. Yes, yes. I'm a good family, not a tall story.
00:42:06
Speaker
That's just a feeling. Not an unaccredited, unhappy family, but you know, or maybe that's the dark version of it. But that idea, the best word is ensemble. That's why I always call them creative teams. I just immediately start up, you're the development team and you're all on this team. Like you said, language, right? One thing I've observed
00:42:33
Speaker
is that the theater community is full of bullies who don't know they're bullies. Yes. Like the acts, when you see an artist break another artist's heart in a room because that artist isn't tuned in to us really going on or isn't really listening. Like those are the moments that I think are, they're the things that people never forget. There's profound emotional impacts. Now often,
00:43:01
Speaker
The director is the person with the most power who misuses it the most. That's not always the case. And I think that this is one of the great things to come out of conversations in the last couple of years is people are being held accountable. People are being asked to be responsible for the impact, not the intent, which I think is truly wonderful. And people are meeting one another in the healing space.
00:43:30
Speaker
The meeting one another in the healing space is not the stuff that has to end up in the media. Right. Algorithms don't like healing space as much as they like anger space. So the column inches devoted to the villain are not devoted to excellence point of kindness.
00:43:52
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, this is one of the, I mean, one of the questions in your list about what it relates to more of in the future. I said, I would like to see much wilder creative ambition on much, much, much, much kinder rooms. Not much fairer rooms, kinder rooms, because I think the bareness will come or because fairness is going to mean something completely different every room. You can't actually litigate it with language. You can, oppression is always visible.
00:44:22
Speaker
So you can always ensure against depression. You can't always ensure kindness. Yeah, that's beautiful.
Recommended Reading for Playwrights
00:44:28
Speaker
So let's move into favorite new play preferences and inspirations. You know, we've mentioned Peter Brook, obviously, big fan of Peter Brook. Do you have any other books, essays, quotes that you want to add to that favorite resources of yours? Well, I assume any. I would say that for structure, I've never read a book.
00:44:51
Speaker
Never read a better book than the art of chromatic writing by Leos. I agree. That's a real classic. Because it's just so simple and clear. No metaphysics in it at all. It's just about redefining structure as character instead of action as a response to Aristotle's poetics. I think that for colored girls, choreo poems,
00:45:21
Speaker
As an Irish person reading that for the first time, understanding the sophisticated imagery of the soul that was possible on the American stage, I was really, really, really profound. And as a structuralist, how do you tease out of that something for production? It's just a completely different possible, completely different experience.
00:45:48
Speaker
And I'd say even for folks interested in realism, understanding how images can resonate, how abstract images and resonances can collide. That's very profound. And then, I mean, this is going to sound a bit of a stodgy one, but like just the Cambridge history of theatre. I remember before I kind of went to grad school,
00:46:17
Speaker
I read the entire thing annotated it. Wow. With like sticky notes. How long is it? It's not, it's not that long. You know, it's a textbook because I can suggest the textbook is just sort of like, you look at your Greeks and you look at the dark ages and you look at the medieval ages and you just kind of iterate towards it. Right. Um, and, and just some of the different ways in which plays have worked. Yeah. Cause I think there's a, there's a disease in new play making.
00:46:45
Speaker
where something is popular and then it's copied. Yes. Oh God, yes. Please do not subscribe to this disease. Do not do this. And I'm not sure if theater history is the antidote to this disease, but I do think that an understanding of theater history is a way to connect to the spiritual and metaphysical history of theater. If you can kind of get past the stuff for the detail or the stick and just be like, right,
00:47:16
Speaker
Elizabethan England, what is that? It's kind of like, what have we learned? That's it. Well, how did they do this? How did they solve it? Because so much of the contemporary definitions of success or failure are connected to money. Whereas actually, I think it's probably a bigger conversation out there. You just need to free yourself from the kind of
00:47:40
Speaker
chains of this not-for-profit capitalism and I speak to you as an artistic director of a not-for-profit who dances daily with the ethics of not-for-profit capitalism and there's many comforts in it including you know paying union wages and all of those things but I think in terms of the future of theater like when I think back to what has formed me as an artist is I am able to read contemporary plays and see resonances in them
00:48:11
Speaker
that I reach back to my interest in classical theater in ways that are tremendously useful. Can you give me an example? That would be a hard question. No, no, no, no. I directed this amazing new play by a writer called Leagrid Stephens called The Twelve Labours of Hercules.
00:48:36
Speaker
And it was an autobiographical story about his family growing up on a farm in Iowa during the Second World War in the Mormon community. And what happened when the father went away, the war never came back. And the family had to endure this life without him. And the way in which he explored the scale
00:49:04
Speaker
of the emotions captured the kind of intimacy of what they're going through was by reaching back to the 12 Liberals of Hercules and grafting these classical illusions onto this world of intimacy and familiarity. So he would, you know, my favorite one was the Nemean Lion was a cat.
00:49:30
Speaker
I was like killing the chickens of nature, ark of the farm. Right. You know, broke the cat's neck and hides in a sack. You know, it doesn't tell the kids because they love the cat and their heart will be broken. And you hear this epic music come up and the turn titles come on, Hercules, slaves, the minion lion. You know, and it's like, and because of my interest in Greek mythology and Greek theater, I knew how to make that resonate, not as a cliche.
00:50:01
Speaker
But as like refracted mirror, looking at these heroes, or these heroes were looking at us through or to use American myths as if they were larger. But that was like both aesthetic and structural. Now, Lee Grid is an incredible playwright, it kind of maps complex historical illusions.
00:50:26
Speaker
into his plans. But as a director, I was able to meet them, tease them out, and turn them into real, living objects an audience could experience. Right on. Very cool. Thank you for that. Sure. All right. So favorite three playwrights right now. And why? Sophocles, Antigone, because I just gave a lecture on Greek dialectics.
00:50:56
Speaker
and was very interested in looking at that place when you're in temporary lengths. And how unresolved it is. Oh, God, yeah. Yeah. Shouldn't take any berry, her brother, who has been named a rebel by a new regime, or should she let him rot and have his soul forever be unrest? Because he was named a rebel for political reasons.
00:51:24
Speaker
by regime. So individual and familiar rights versus state power. Like, I don't think anyone's cracked that. Yeah. But the fact that that what's what's off at least was offering citizens of Athens was temperate. The extreme voices will consume one another.
00:51:49
Speaker
If you don't think of it from a human perspective, from the point of view of mercy and forgiveness, and fallibility and failure, you're not going to reach anything that resembles reality, because extreme positions exist on your language. But that's a play that, like, you know, has been haunting me for the last few days. And always on this list from me is Anton Jacob. Those plays,
00:52:20
Speaker
the comedy and tragedy of them, the emotional complexity of them, the mystery of them, the layers. I don't think there's anyone who writes better character studies. I actually often think that people don't understand Chekhov at all and that he's really quite funny. Oh yeah. And so often the productions I've seen have not been funny at all and I'm like,
00:52:46
Speaker
People don't understand that he's funny, do they? Well, you know, you wrote comic short stories when he was alive. He wasn't known as a playwright. He was known as the comic short story guy. I love that. Funny books, funny short stories, funny short stories. And he wrote, he had this book of, like, observations that he had to put in his stories. Yeah. And I remember, you know, I read that before I directed Three Sisters. I directed Three Sisters and Cherry Orchard, and nearly directed and coven. That one fell through.
00:53:15
Speaker
And one of his observations was, I met a woman today, the skin on her face was so tight that when she closed her eyes, she had to open her mouth and vice versa. And you're like, that's not Hamlet wandering through the Russian steps. That's like, people are ridiculous. But they did their plays at like every stage in my life and I've read them, I've resonated with them differently. Their observations rather than
00:53:45
Speaker
than didactic lessons. So Sophocles is a classicist, a structuralist, opposing forces in this kind of quite direct way. There's this softness and expanse, flexibility in dynamism to chuckle. And the third person on the list is, because I've been reading a lot of replies for season planning, is Lynn Nottage.
00:54:12
Speaker
who has the most flexible ability with form and style. I was like, I think any contemporary American writer. The fact that she can write both Malima's tale and sweat and crumbs from the table of joy. You're just like, here's a really phenomenal memory play. Here's a really phenomenal kind of like gritty political drama. Here's a kind of allegorical rond
00:54:41
Speaker
about, you know, just the scale of her dramatic imagination. I just love how she just completely reinvents herself all the time. And whatever she does, she brings the sophistication to. Yeah, like Madonna in the 80s.
00:55:04
Speaker
Gotta keep it fresh. Gotta keep it moving. Because as soon as you've created something, you are that famous.
00:55:12
Speaker
People are going to copy it. So you got to do something new, right? But also, you're going to get bored otherwise. So you should be trying new things, right? Absolutely. I love that. So favorite three dramaturgs or new play artists? OK, I'm going to name three dramaturgs. I love the dramaturgs. The first two are the two dramaturgs I work with at Studio Theatre in D.C. Adrian Alice Hansel and Lauren Halverson.
00:55:38
Speaker
who just are two brilliant minds, hearts and souls. And their approach to new play development was so focused on the playwrights but also expansive in terms of audiences and narratives and
00:55:58
Speaker
emotional impact and structure. I learned so much just from spending time like reading plays with both of them. And then also at studio the practice was the dramaturges in the room. So there will be show dramaturges as well, which was just invaluable to have that gaze present that you can work with. They're also just sort of two wonderful human beings.
00:56:26
Speaker
And I took notes on the impact that a great dramaturg can have on the organization. And so my third dramaturg is going to be Adaiye Moon, our associate artistic director. Because welcoming a dramaturg into the kind of leadership philosophy of your organization is a very, very, very wise move. Because the structure and impact and philosophical ground of your decisions is always up for discussion.
00:56:55
Speaker
And you look at things from artist perspective, audience perspective, theatre history perspective freely. And a dine might have read more plays than anyone I've ever met. You know, from the international canon, the American canon. He's always, he's always, oh, that reminds me of, boom. He's constantly consuming. Yeah. Just so much. It's amazing. Yeah. So I rely on a dine a lot for artistic decision making. You're, you know, really welcome his mind and his perspective.
00:57:24
Speaker
Um, so yeah, I love that. Um, I think we would all benefit from seeing dramaturgs in more leadership positions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think so too. And I think any theater that has a new play program and doesn't have a dramaturg should really consider what they're doing.
00:57:49
Speaker
Indeed. Absolutely. I'll say no more about that. I completely agree with that. And then some of your favorite theaters. In New York, Playwrights Horizons. Just that ongoing dedication to incredibly sophisticated productions of new plays.
00:58:11
Speaker
So many new plays are presented with Apology because of the economics involved. I'm familiar with this both as an artist and a producer.
00:58:20
Speaker
Tough one. Refer back to comments about not the profit of capitalism. But they just have done such a terrific job and one of the first places I go to look for exciting new playwrights. Rough Magic Theatre Company in Dublin, where it's an associate artist. They're just the leaders in the field of the new work development in Ireland and have an abundance of dramaturgical talent.
00:58:47
Speaker
Not just in the dramaturges, but in the directors and producers and company managers. It's just a really, really, really loving and inquisitive group that I've had a huge impact on the way I approach my work. And then third, World Court, London. Yes. Granddaddy. Yes. What they did for breaking open the canon and letting new voices in.
00:59:17
Speaker
It was just incredible. And I think that they had their heyday in the latter part of the 20th century. They also started a movement where there's tons of amazing new play houses all across the UK now that are built up on that model and artists from the World Court have been on to found. So the dynamism of new play writing in England, I think, is a lot.
00:59:44
Speaker
I agree with you. I love that one. I love that one. I've had an incredible time watching all of the wild movies and stuff they were doing in the 80s and 70s and stuff.
00:59:58
Speaker
Talk about some cool work. Yeah, I'm also STID funded. So they just said no, it was just a different model of success. They could be so much freer. Yeah. And you know, this whole idea of stuffy British people, man, that is not the case with this work. It is wild stuff. I mean, people check it out because it is some of the most interesting stuff I've ever seen. Howard Branton.
01:00:28
Speaker
Yeah. Romans in Britain. Edward Bond saved all of Carl Churchill's already stuff. Really good.
01:00:37
Speaker
I mean, I, the Mahabharata, like all that, oh my God, just mind-blowing. So find that stuff, y'all. It's usually in libraries. Usually you have to find it in a university library, but it is so worth checking out. And then I guess best advice for new play artists, you know, coming up today, what do you think is, you know, what should be the foundation of what they are doing?
01:01:07
Speaker
and where they're
Advice for Emerging Playwrights
01:01:08
Speaker
going. So I give the same advice to every artist that comes and asks me for advice. Don't wait for someone else to do your work. Theater is a very complex ecology. The timeline for like here, because I've got a lot of very, very, very good intentions, but the financial and economic realities, whatever they do in a given year, very, very, very challenging. The number of opportunities are very limited.
01:01:39
Speaker
I think that one thing Atlanta is lacking and one thing that the nation is lacking are like dozens and dozens and dozens of unapologetic young theater companies.
01:01:52
Speaker
who are taking wild risks and cultivating new audiences and breaking open what theater is, breaking open how theater works, breaking open how theater relates to media, who are taking all the risks that we can't, because I find this thing happens is because particularly in Atlanta, there's not a lot of young theater companies applying pressure from below. You got a whole bunch of middle-aged theater companies like us being expected to be radical. And I'm like, I think that in the theater ecology, our job isn't to be radical, it's to be excellent.
01:02:20
Speaker
Our job is to provide in common wages for artists and try and like always be paying artists more and building a pot of money. And that's where the vast majority of our money gets spent. Some people. And I just think we need to keep, keep, keep, keep, keep doing that.
01:02:37
Speaker
And what I would love is if it was 10 young companies inviting me to something every single week. We got this radical happening. We got this brand new play. We're doing a festival of 10 new plays by trans writers. We're breaking open this thing. We're doing a live concert, hip-hop theater collaboration. We're doing an art gallery invasion. We're doing a polemic street rap battle play.
01:03:04
Speaker
that's written in 24 hours in response to political movement. We're reinventing classics in site-specific environments. We are taking over a theater for six months and founding an ensemble, and we're just going to kind of see what happens in months five and six. Like, bring it. Bring it. The new work development room is a safe room.
01:03:31
Speaker
New work development is a necessary stage towards new work creation. Don't just be a developer, be a creator. Love it. That is fantastic advice. And so where can listeners connect with you and keep up with your work? Our website, tacticaloutfit.org, our social media channels. I'd say pop on there, join our mailing list. We're fairly communicative, particularly around the end of the year.
01:03:59
Speaker
Tuesday. Also our social media channels, we try and peel back the curtain and the people into the rehearsal rooms and show folks what's going on behind the scenes.
01:04:12
Speaker
That's awesome. Thank you so much for everything you do for this community and for Atlanta. And I am personally just thrilled you're here and contributing to the ecology here. You know, I think we all need to be working together and supporting one another. So I'm just really grateful to call you a friend. And thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure.
01:04:35
Speaker
Thank you listeners for tuning in to Table Work, How New Plays Get Made with Amber Bradshaw. This podcast was brought to you by Working Title Playwrights. If you like what you've heard today, support this podcast and all our initiatives by leaving us a review, following us, and or consider making a tax-deductible donation to Working Title Playwrights at www.workingtitelplaywrights.com.