our process

Our work is collaboratively created by an ensemble and design team, led by a playwright. Our process is inspired by experimental and devised theater techniques, but developed over nearly two decades through experimentation and evolution.

IT STARTS WITH AN IDEA

We don’t start with a script. On the first day of rehearsal, we have a director, a playwright, an ensemble, a design team, and an idea. Usually the idea comes from the playwright and director, often it’s something they’ve been discussing for a while.

Next, the ensemble and production team dig into the idea and bring ideas of their own to the table. This looks a little different for every show: some shows are historical, and require more factual resources. For purely fictional shows, we might look for analogous inspiration or aesthetic guidance. If research is going to be heavily historical, we bring in a dramaturg to help.

We encourage production members to continue their research throughout the process, and use email, Slack, and Pinterest to share ideas, links, and images that might inform the final story.

Generating POSSIBILITIES

Once we have explored the concept together, it is time to begin generating possibilities. We use improvisation, devised theater techniques, and brainstorming to generate ideas and create rough scenes, which are refined and explored in different ways to see where the story might take us.

We view actors as subject matter experts in the creation of character and our playwright and director work with the ensemble to build their characters together, exploring possibilities and ideas about the characters and their relationships with each other.

Likewise we consider our production team to be our world builders, helping us decide how we bring the story to life and what storys will be told by which production elements. It’s a collaborative process, with story, design, and character growing together to create an interwoven tapestry.

BRINGING THE STORY TOGETHER

Once we have enough possibilities, we begin the work of weaving the ideas together to create a unified production. We begin making choices, refining, and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes some of the choices we make mean unmaking other choices in order to bring the story together. Everyone in the production must work from a place of collaboration, and ultimately, the story comes first.

All the time, we are refining the narrative, the characters, and the design elements, and the choices we make become smaller, more precise. It doesn’t happen all at once, but scene by scene, and element by element. The closer we get to performance, the more coordinated our choices need to be. Bigger decisions get made earlier, but the refinements will keep getting made, though out the process.

sharing it with you

Finally, we share our production with an audience. This, in some ways, is the final act of refinement. We say ‘the script is never finished’ because even once we bring it to stage, your reactions will continue to shape our performances. Our ensemble and production team are waiting for your response, your laughter, your sighs, your deep silence. We use that, listen to that, bring it into our story and let it shape the show, night after night. After all, it is live performance.

We love our audience. Thank you for sharing these moments with us. It means so much that we have that time, together.