Friday, November 21, 2014
It All Comes Back to the Hook
HowlRound: Collaborators don’t have to agree. They have to trust each other. We have been friends since high school in Saginaw, Michigan, and so our trust is deep, and allows us to occasionally disagree. In 2010, we found ourselves in New York City at the same time and with the same sets of goals and interests. We agreed to begin to lay the groundwork for an open ensemble of artists brought together to create and produce original theatrical work. Initially we each invited three artists to join what would become Hook & Eye Theater—“Hook” being the spark that ignites our collective interest, and the “Eye” being the joint and several lenses through which we make our work. This early group became the "Core" ensemble, which has enjoyed a healthy rotation of membership each year, with members encouraged to explore with and without the confines of the company.
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3 comments:
Well, this sounds pretty much ideal! The thing that stands out to me the most in this article is the optional nature of participation in the company’s productions and programs. I think a reason that a lot theater ensembles are not as successful as they could be is that all members are expected to play a key role in all productions and spread themselves thin to make this one big thing happen. That’s great of course, until it starts taking a toll on collaborators, trapping them inside of a repetitive creative bubble and making them feel constrained to certain types of projects with this certain group of people. Hook & Eye Theater’s Core and Cloud circles are great because they identify the two types of people that are likely to work in experimental ensemble theater: those who are able to commit themselves to maintain the theater and being an active participant in projects and programs while also working outside of that company, and those who might have other commitments of their own and are able to collaborate and enrich the ensemble when and how they are able to. This is a great model, and surely explains why this ensemble theater company is successful and still expanding.
This place looks...busy. Just like Camille said, it seems like these performers and collaborators spread themselves very thin to make this art happen. Not that it's a bad thing, they can be as tired as they want to be to make their art, as long as it's not a mindset of the theater itself. A sort of "you can work with us if you don't like sleeping" mindset is never healthy. That being said, I poked around on their website and checked out some of the things they're doing. Their PlayLabs sound like so much fun and like they're really a relaxed and open environment. I personally really love workshops for new plays and I love having a voice in that process. I do think their theater really allows for a lot of collaboration and it seems like their attitude is welcoming and inclusive, which is a good way to bring in extremely talented artists. I'd love to go see their shows on a regular basis.
Ensemble theater companies, like Hook & Eye Theater, can be great resources to look at as models for collaboration. The opening description that the Hook & Eye Theater gives of themselves is the description of an ideal group of collaborators: one in which the members do not always agree, but where there is trust between them. While it can sometimes feel easier to work with people who have similar mindsets to your own, there is much less actual collaborating in these types of groups. It is working with different viewpoints and ideas that makes a true collaboration, even if that requires more mediation between members.
The structure of this theater sounds really interesting. The Core and the Cloud seems like an excellent way to allow for a lot of freedom within the type of work the company does. Rather than putting together productions that only have access to skills of the members of the small company, Hook & Eye has access to a network of artists and performers allowing them to explore all kinds of work.
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