Teaching Artist. Dramaturg. Theatre-Maker. Director. Collaborator. Stage Manager. Actor.

This is a sampling of the many artist labels I’ve used to describe myself and the work that I do in the field of theatre for young audiences. Recently, a new one has surfaced somewhat unexpectedly for me:

playwright

You know that thing you swore you’d never do, never be able to figure out? That thing you admired, but didn’t understand. That thing you didn’t know how to start. For me, that thing was and is playwriting.

The child has

A hundred languages.

So has theatre. And the very young child doesn’t even try to distinguish how meaning is created: gesture, atmosphere, sound, light, dynamics, physical presence, openess of the performer’s body, face, rhythm, pacing, engagement, comfort, safety are all as valuable as the words: all are new and exciting places to explore and mine for meaning. Well maybe theatre hasn’t quite a hundred languages ... but it has a multiplicity and all of them contribute to making the meaning of a performance and all of them re-inforce one another, deepening clarification of meaning and experiences. 

Lately, I’ve been questioning my assumption that post-show discussions (PSD) are vital to new play development. So I recently surveyed and interviewed theatre professionals about them. The results revealed a wealth of information about structure and facilitation in the use and understanding of PSDs.

When I am facilitating a PSD, I use the curtain speech to invite the audience to stay for it. I assure them we will not ask them to be critics, but merely offer their reactions. After the reading, I repeat my invitation while handing out feedback forms. After 2-4 minutes (any longer and they leave), I invite folks down to the front of the house. I review the ground rules. I tell them I have questions I can ask, but I want to make sure their voices are heard, as I utilize an open structure. I inform them the playwright has the right not to answer a question and I may even stop him from answering a question. I then ask a question of the playwright (sometimes one to the director and/or actors, if appropriate) to help the audience understand the development process as well as to role model question asking. Then, I open to audience questions. When needed, I jump in to clarify or reframe a question. When our time is up or I sense the playwright or audience is tired, I stop the discussion, even if there are hands still up. I inform folks they can ask me more questions before they leave or email them to me.

On the plane back home. There is a safety instruction video showing a men’s football team (it might be Manchester United, I’m not sure, I’m not the least interested in football, or in the bodies of men playing football, so I don’t really find it essential to remember) playing with the safety devices accompanied by a song whose only text (repeated over and over again) is: We are Turkish Airlines. We are globally yours. The flight will take almost twenty-four hours, including a stop in Istanbul. I’m exhausted. It feels like I’m leaving the world. Or like I’m going back to the world. To what I’m used to. It feels like I’ve spent the past week in another sort of reality than what I’m used to. I have a feeling of unreality, I do no longer know what is real.

Liz Skitch and David Megarrity, 2000'Building music into a creative process gives your unfinished work a ‘finish’. It’s fun to work with and makes you feel less like a doofus when you’re a performer doing silly things onstage in rehearsal. It’s like jumping around on a springy bed – it lifts you up, but is there to catch you.'

In this blog, Australian theatremaker and composer David Megarrity, describes how music can be a vital part of developing a performance:

http://lifeinthelongtail.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/backseat-drivers-music-driven/

Najmniejeszy bal świata | The Smallest Ball in the World, Teatr Baj Pomorski, ToruńReprinted, with permission, from Teatr Lalek magazine, nr 4/110/2012

Since for some time I seem to be functioning in the media vocabulary as a “young Polish playwright”, and since in a few months, which I plan to enjoy without undue reflection, I shall be thirty, I aim to write from the vantage point of a young playwright who has been familiar with the topic only for several years. This is a highly convenient perspective – the young are quite easily forgiven. On the other hand, it is challenging since youth is not always treated seriously. Well aware of this polarisation, I wish to take part in a discussion that has been going on for years.

In the world of theater for young audiences, the ground is shifting under our feet: unstable and unfamiliar, far less funding, and the zeitgeist is way different than just a few years ago. As we look ahead, we have little idea what the future will look like. This is very scary.

And very exciting.

The playwright is a special creative type.

He reacts to the world with hearing and perceives it as a great parlatorium, in which everything is in a state of a permanent dialogue, even with itself, and where all sounds are a communiqué of sorts even if only produced bya squeaky door or dripping water; silence too screams because it is yet another form of dialogue – the dialogue of emotions.

It is insufficient to merely hear such a dialogue. One has to be able to record it and endow it with a theatrical form. What sort? Naturally, a form that is not connected with direction, stage design or music, but with dramaturgy.

I am a professional playwright. I make a living writing plays. But I haven’t had a professional production in seven years. I write plays for the school market and student performers.
 
For many years I avoided saying the above out loud, in public. “I write for the school market.” I didn’t want to admit to the kind of plays I write because I felt there was the stigma to writing for youth. For kids. It’s not real writing. It’s not writing “real” plays.