Category: 2015 Festival

This is the third in a series of blog posts by our 2015 Emerging Artists, Intiman’s summer training intensive for a diverse cohort of up-and-coming theatre artists.

Today’s post is written by Anthea Carns, a playwright with a BFA from Carnegie Mellon who uses her art to make sense of herself and the world.

Shortly before the Emerging Artists Program started, while I was in the throes of finishing a first draft of my script, I had the chance to hang out with some friends from college and catch up on what projects we were all working on. I described a little bit of the program: how I’d been given the task of writing a piece inspired by Lillian Hellman’s work, to showcase six talented actors and a director new to the community.

“Are you excited?” one of my friends asked.

“Honestly?” I told him. “I have never been so scared by a piece of my own writing before.”

I’ve used that line a few times, and it remains true: this whole process is terrifying. In a good way, I promise–but terrifying nevertheless. Like standing on the edge of a canyon and surveying the view, admiring the beauty but wary of the drop.

The fear is because I’m doing something big and challenging and exciting, because I’m writing about a person to whom I want to do justice, and for a group of artists that I’d like to help shine, and because writing makes you vulnerable and the best art comes from that vulnerability.

Having the script read for the group on the first day of the program was the first hurdle we had to clear. Starting rehearsals was the next one. And as we’ve spent more and more time in rehearsal, with the entire team bringing their expertise and skills to bear on the text, I’ve had less time to be terrified. Too busy working, as our team creates something beyond my imagination.

See, writing is often a solitary act. Even with the communities of writers I’ve been lucky enough to be part of, most of us are most productive when we put on our headphones, close our office doors, and focus on the world we’re creating rather than the one we’re inhabiting. The end goal of writing is connection with someone else, sure–Stephen King calls the writer-reader connection “an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy”–but the writer and the reader are both going to be alone when they’re experiencing the words.

Playwrighting, though, involves a group even in the moments when the writer is sitting alone trying to put words on the page. The lines on the page are going to be spoken and embodied by someone, who’ll be in dialogue with someone else, who’ll be part of a larger cast, who’ll be connecting with an audience full of people. And once you get into the rehearsal room, the cast, the director, even the design team is helping you refine your text. If you’re lucky, the actors will speak the lines exactly the way you imagined them when you were writing.

If you’re luckier, the actors will come up with something better than what you imagined.

I’ve been very lucky indeed. Our cast came to our first rehearsals willing to roll with whatever we could throw at them. And we started throwing stuff pretty fast: from me, new pages and scenes that I’d written two nights before, and from our director Alice, non-traditional gestural and movement work. We asked a lot, the cast responded with “yes, and,” and I got the inexpressible delight of watching them discover things in my writing I’d had no idea were there.

Alongside our regular rehearsals, we’ve done work with the whole cohort to help shape and develop our pieces. You’d be amazed how much you can learn about your own characters and how you’ve written them when you watch your actors improvise and bounce them off characters from other works. I got to watch Joan of Arc get into an argument with a 1960s Vietnamese-American lesbian while a 1930s strikebreaker harangued them for money. And if you don’t think that’s worth the price of admission, man, I don’t know what to tell you–I learned a hell of a lot about what the actors had already discovered and what I might need to help them find in just five goofy minutes. At the start of the program, Andrew Russell told me and Alice that actors were often the best dramaturgs, and so far (with the greatest of respect to my fellow dramaturgs, of course), that’s been true.

There’s a lot of work yet to be done, of course: new material to write, existing material to shape, tech rehearsals, performances. And I can’t tell you how excited I am for it. Scared, too, sure, but not of the drop.

There’s a pretty awesome team on my side taking the leap with me–and I trust us to catch each other.

Or maybe we’ll take off. Hey, it’s theatre; it’s writing. We’re already engaged in acts of telepathy and creation. A little flight isn’t out of the question.

Photo Credit: Pamela M. Campi Photography

This is the second in a series of blog posts by our 2015 Emerging Artists, Intiman’s summer training intensive for a diverse cohort of up-and-coming theatre artists.

Today’s post is written by Averil Kelkar, a BFA Acting student at New York University. As a gay actor of color, Averil takes pride in working with a company that is aligned with his desire to use theatre as a dialogue. Averil believes that art comes in all shapes, sizes, backgrounds, and perspectives.

Is the theatre really dead?

Simon and Garfunkel callously poised this question back in 1966 in one of my favorite songs, The Dangling Conversation. To qualify the argument, Simon writes that “we speak the things that matter with words that must be said”.  And this question must be answered.

In the spirit of many important questions, there’s not a “yes” or a “no”, “black,” “white,” or even “grey.” And I’m here to say that every single experience with the Intiman Emerging Artist Program boldly extinguishes this fear that lives within any theatre artist today. We extinguish this fear with our passion to create new, inventive work and breathe life into both the arts community and the Seattle community at large.

A redefinition of theatre artists is needed. Long gone are the days of “I’m ONLY an ….” Every person on Intiman’s team –emerging artist, apprentice, or staffer– explores multiple modes of theatre. Andrew Russell, Producing Artistic Director, has a strong and active creative life as a director of theatre and has also branched out into playwriting for John Baxter is a Switch Hitter. Jennifer Zeyl signed on board as Associate Set Designer while also leaping on as Producing Manager. These are merely two of the endless examples at Intiman. The creative and the business sides of theatre have become synonymous, as, I dare say, it should be.

We will not allow men in suits to control the artistic integrity of our work anymore. Intiman is a community of artists from all backgrounds who find theatre to be an immediate and essential discourse for the community, and continue to breathe and direct that life and passion in their work.

The Intiman Emerging Artist Program (IEAP) stresses the importance of the Seattle artistic community as a whole. The program integrates a series of directors, writers, and actors from all backgrounds. This collaborative approach makes for a rich and process-oriented rehearsal environment. Working with dramaturg-turned-playwright Anthea Carns, and dance-inspired-performance-director Alice Gosti, means the approach to the text is always new, scary and inventive. That is within the program alone.

IEAP also explores the interconnected network of performance-based companies within the Seattle community. In the first two weeks, IEAP has opened doors to Washington Ensemble Theatre (W.E.T.), Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB), and the out-of-town based company, The Williams Project. These three companies speak to the ways that the Intiman is changing engagement within the performance community. W.E.T. is an established part of the Seattle Theatre scene, while PNB practices a completely different medium with their acclaimed dance productions and support of up-and-coming companies expressly using performers from around the country.

Intiman is connecting their artists to  Seattle’s theatre scene — asking its artists to branch out and explore different types of performance as well as interconnecting their artists (and subsequently Seattle) to be a part of a dialogue larger than our beloved city.

In redefining the way theatre navigates the community, The Intiman renders Simon’s question irrelevant. Instead, Intiman operates as a community of artists who happen to perform text based stories. We call this theatre. This is not ‘the theater.’ ‘The Theatre’ being the institutional culture that exists for art’s sake. This is our theatre, our theater here in Seattle, and here now in 2015. Intiman is asking Seattle to answer essential questions about what it means to be a Seattleite, an artist, a citizen and person. As Intiman has already told you, the hunt is on – and  Intiman is ready to strike. And I am proud to strike along with it

Photo Credit: Pamela M. Campi Photography