Event 11/27

Hello Blog Readers!

We’ve been in a quiet mode for a few months, but are about to be back with a vengeance.

We begin this new phase with an exciting event this Sunday, November 27 featuring local playwright (now on Broadway) Lydia R. Diamond in conversation with Tarell Alvin McCraney and Ilana Brownstein (Founding Dramaturg, Playwrights’ Commons).  Attend in person at the Wimberly Theatre, or online at #NewPlay TV and on twitter.

Here’s the complete event listing:

In celebration of Company One’s current production of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s trilogy, The Brother/Sister Plays, we invite you to join us in person and online for a dynamic conversation between McCraney and Boston playwright Lydia R. Diamond (Stick Fly, currently on Broadway), moderated by dramaturg Ilana M. Brownstein. The event will feature questions from the audience, and will be simultaneously broadcast on #NewPlay TV, a web channel curated by The American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage, (livestream.com/newplay).

Admission to the event is free and open to the public: Sunday November 27, 5:00pm in the Wimberly Theatre at Boston’s Calderwood Pavilion. Those who cannot attend in person are encouraged watch online and participate via twitter with the hashtags #NewPlay and #C1Bos.  The event is part of Company One’s new play outreach programming, and marks the first collaboration between Company One and #NewPlay TV.

EVENT DETAILS:

5:00pm, Sunday, November 27

In the Wimberly Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion

527 Tremont Street, Boston MA 02116

– Online at livestream.com/newplay
– On twitter: #newplay / #C1Bos / @DturgsC1 / @company_one

You Can Haz Documented Performances?

Our interest was piqued recently when we heard about a new initiative to better document live performances in this country.  Meet The Emergency Index. Odd name, cool project.

Essentially, the idea is (quoting Emergency Index) that “since a defining feature of performance is live-ness, documenting performance is a doomed endeavor. This has made it difficult for the emergent discipline of performance to look at itself, to take stock of its achievements and acknowledge its failures, quite simply, to assess the state of the field.” And that the current documentation processes are problematic because “the most widely distributed documents are often put forward not by the creators of the performances, but by institutions with various agendas.” The big questions to emerge are (1) “how are practicing artists and scholars to assess the state of the field?” And (2) “Can we document a performance in terms of its internal logic, not in terms of its consumer appeal?”

What does this mean to you, theatre artist? Well, Emergency Index wants YOU. They’re practicing “a policy of radical inclusion; therefore, included works will not be restricted by genre, quality, popularity, politics, or venue. However, creators of performance works will be asked to describe the primary problems driving the work, and the tactics developed in the performance to address them. The goal is to highlight not the experience of the performance, but to document achievements, innovations, and developments in the field.” (Boldface theirs.)

To me, one of the most aspects of the project can be found in point three of the submission guidelines: “Authors are asked to focus on the problem or issue the work was made to address, and on the aspects of the performance which addressed those issues, rather than describing the experience of watching the performance.”  In other words, for the purposes of this yearly publication, they want “an articulation of the theoretical, formal, political, aesthetic, historical or other problem your performance was made to address, or is most related to.”

This seems like an exciting and important development for the contemporary theatre. …Will you participate?

You can find their guidelines for participation HERE. Submissions must be received by January 12, 2012.