I ran into a friend recently who had been out of town for
the last two years. Having a background in arts organizations, she asked what
had been happening with Audacity Theatre Lab since she left the Dallas area two
summers back. The last full production she had seen was March 2010’s VOLUME OF
SMOKE. Truth be told, that was the last full-scale production, with a proper multi-week
run, ATL has mounted in the Dallas area.
I mentioned that Audacity artists had turned out a giant
radio theatre project and produced several festival shows here in town as well
as around the country in the past few years.
“But no REAL shows?”
At this point, I knew it was a useless conversation and just
shrugged and said, “Well, no…”
“Ah, that’s too bad. Sorry to hear that. You guys will get
back on it…”
I changed the subject and we wandered off the topic. What
had started as a casual follow-up had turned into something that subtly irked
me. But why? It was true. ATL had not produced any “big” shows in the local
market. Upon reflection that interaction brought up two, separate but related,
issues. She was operating on an assumption that the primary (if not, in her
opinion, ONLY) thing that theatres do is put on plays in their own backyards.
She also seemed to be under the impression that as a theatre, a steady stream
of output must flow forth, because again, isn’t that what theatres do.
Let’s pick this apart a bit.
First, traditionally, theatre companies have existed to put
on plays in places called theatres. Though most people who think about the
theatre at all think of this as a given, it is not so cut and dry.
Peter Brook wrote famously in the opening paragraph of his THE
EMPTY SPACE, “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks
across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all
that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.”
Bare minimum, for theatre to happen, all you need is someone
doing something, someone watching and a place to have it happen. Notice his
description did not include any details like costumes, a proscenium stage, advanced
lighting or sound design, red velvet curtains or even, surprise of surprises, a
play.
As a small independent theatre, Audacity is under no
obligation to do full-scale productions in a certain place for a certain time. We don’t have to do
anything in a designated theatre
building. We don’t have to do plays. We only have to have someone do something
where people can watch. Period. We can do projects that are pure improvisation,
evenings of music and stories, stunts and happenings. We can do them anywhere
we can drum up a crowd – bars, parks, patios, galleries, coffee shops, parking
lots, living rooms, etc.
That said, we actually do plays on occasion that fit the
traditional assumptions. We at ATL don’t have anything against traditional
plays or presenting them in traditional ways, it is just that we see them
merely as one of many arrows in our quiver. Of course, our mission states we
must create these plays ourselves.
As for the second assumption - that a theatre must keep
pumping out productions all the time, or even on a season-by-season rate - a
closer look is also needed.
Again, tradition, at least since the LORT/ Regional Theatre
model came to prominence in America during the 1960s, states that non-profit
theatre have seasons. Each season is filled with slots for shows (insert
holiday show around Christmas, romance in February, Musical in the summer,
drama in the fall, and so on). Plays are chosen to fill these slots. These
seasons of plays are sold ahead of time to patrons as subscriptions (like
magazines) long before the actual plays are put into production. There is
nothing wrong with this model unless it is looked upon as the only way things can be done. At
Audacity, projects arise organically. We do not have a facility to manage and
most of our operations can be run from a laptop computer. This leads to incredibly
low over head, meaning we do not have to generate income all the time. Since we
don’t need steady income, we don’t have to steadily generate productions. When
we have ideas,only then do we find a way to put the work in front of audiences.
What this allows us is the ability, essentially, to
hibernate.
Hibernation
is a state of inactivity. In nature, the purpose of hibernation is to conserve
energy during a period when sufficient resources, such as food, are scarce.
Rodents, bears, lemurs, hedgehogs, marsupials and even some bats hibernate
throughout a given year. Why not a theatre company?
When hibernating, a bear does not die. Once spring comes the
bear comes back to full wakefulness. Thus is can be with a theatre. It does not
have to be all or nothing. If you have no pressing need for income, such as that needed to pay for a facility, there is no
need to turn over project after project. The theatre artist can take his or her
time, develop a project until it is ready, and then present it. If there is no
project on the horizon, then the company hibernates. The absence of activity
does not mean the absence of existence. The company is poised, ready and
waiting. It is there when the artist needs it and conserves energy and
resources when it is not needed.
This is what we mean when we say the theatre serves the artist, not the other way around.
It is through reflection that these thoughts form more
clearly in my mind. I cannot go back and explain this to my friend who went out
of town. I wish I could have corrected her very simple and faulty assumptions.
As I move forward in my experiments with operating a small, truly independent,
theatre company, I am learning there really are NO assumptions that can be
taken at face value. Question everything.
