Saturday, November 08, 2014
Uncovering Staged Readings and Discovering the Art of Collaboration
HowlRound: After six years of producing a Theater for Young Audiences play development series, I still had an obsessive need to control details instead of embracing the unpredictable nature of development. Each season I focused on creating clearer guidelines for my artistic teams that would magically resolve any problems we faced, like onerous requests for technical elements. Instead of allowing the play development process to flourish, however, I inadvertently stifled it. New play development is a bit messy. This is especially true when a staged reading is part of the process.
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Although the focus of this article is on staged readings, many of the issues addressed apply to artistic processes, collaboration, and problem solving in general. The author discusses her need to control all of the aspects of the process hoping that by setting clear parameters they would be able to avoid problems along the way. But what she found was that she was actually strangling the natural artistic development with all the constraints on the process. Embracing the messiness of the artistic process and collaboration is an important piece of a project's development. This is one thing that applies really well to a lot of the projects we've worked on this year, as we've been working in groups. While it may seem more productive to stick to a plan and not allow yourself to get sidetracked, this can sometimes be an important step in your group's process and lead you to something really great. The difficult thing is finding a balance.
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