Building a Rough House
Building a Rough House
Nightswimming’s creation process
By Brian Quirt, Artistic Director of Nightswimming
Nightswimming is a Toronto-based dramaturgical company that commissions and develops new works of theatre and dance, but does not produce those works. All of our resources go toward the creation of the best possible development process for each project, and to the exploration and improvement of dramaturgical process in general.
[Editors note: Please see the article and transcript of the discussion “New Writing; how do we develop new plays?” in the winter issue of the network newsletter for a full description of Nightswimming.]
All commissions begin by asking an artist to propose an idea that they feel – because of its form or content or even cast size – they would not be able to pursue otherwise. We want them to work on the dream project that they don’t think will fit anywhere else. We are interested in the idea they are afraid of, or have put aside for other, more accessible or easily sold projects.
Once a project has been determined – this includes text-based plays, but also choreographic works and, in the future, musical pieces – we put money into the artists’ hands up front, in commissions that now begin at $5,000. This fee is for a first draft only; subsequent drafts and workshops receive additional fees. A commission is the beginning of a relationship that will continue until the show is produced, regardless of how long that takes. As the piece develops, we promote the new work to potential partners, always seeking out collaborators who will find a passionate connection to the piece and commit to production.
Our workshops are designed to discover as much as possible about the world of the play and the approach to theatre that it requires. Increasingly, we are foregoing the term “workshop” for the dance world’s phrase, “creation process”. The goal of every process is to give us a greater understanding of the creator’s intentions and a growing ability to realize them theatrically.
We have chosen not to produce our work so that we can focus exclusively on the developmental process and put all our resources toward it. We do not arrange co-productions or in-association deals because we believe that producing theatres are better suited to producing than we are: that is what they do best and we benefit from their expertise and resources. They, meanwhile, benefit from the attention we are able to devote to the development process. It is an effective and efficient partnership that offers the artist the best of all worlds.
I’d like to outline two related projects that have had a substantial impact on our understanding of process. The first is Pure Research. The Pure Research program supports theatrical experiments that are not production oriented (that is what defines them as pure). Our intent is to pursue primary, practical studio research into issues of form and performance. We provide space, money and resources to artists conducting pure research into provocative theatrical questions. Successful candidates are offered three days in a fully equipped studio theatre. There are funds available to hire personnel (often actors, but past participants have included directors, writers, sound designers and DJ-s, among others), plus a small budget for expenses. Each workshop is thoroughly documented and written reports are posted on Nightswimming’s website. http://www.nightswimmingtheatre.com
Pure Research’s goals are very broad (to increase the amount and quality of theatre research in Canada) and very specific (to offer me, as a dramaturg, the opportunity to work with and/or observe the investigations of skilled artists as they gnaw on an issue of their choice). Pressure comes only from the desire to learn, the joy of discovery, the act of searching for answers with time and freedom on our side; it is time in a theatre not fixing something, not rushing something, but digging deeply. Research invigorates and inspires.
A happy by-product of the program is that it has led to new approaches in our own, ongoing creative work. Pure Research feeds Nightswimming’s work in unpredictable ways, exposes us to ideas and individuals that our own work might never otherwise encounter. My instinct says that it is transforming our approach to play development in general. Pure Research has encouraged Nightswimming’s development process to be more adventurous and more open to instinct and serendipity. Through Pure Research, I have developed a great tolerance for the unknown. I have embraced patience as a tool. I have come to value performance research as both an end in itself and as a starting point for creation.
Without Pure Research, I fear that our work would move inexorably closer to the product-oriented side of the play-development equation. I struggle to resist the temptation to make the Pure Research projects more applicable, more like conventional developmental workshops. To counter this, I am designing our ongoing developmental work to look more like Pure Research, using the program to shift our developmental processes toward the “purer” end of the spectrum, where I believe we will find more interesting places to begin new pieces of theatre. Increasingly, we are suggesting the Pure Research model to artists we want to commission, encouraging them to explore ideas rather than propose topics for a new work. The result is that we have found ourselves conducting what are – in essence – applied research sessions. The challenge we face is the same as that faced by artists who submit to Pure Research: to keep the emphasis on search not creation.
Over the past three years, our work on Andy Massingham’s Rough House illustrates the impact of this approach. Rough House is a one-man, one-act show featuring physical movement of an extreme nature. There is no dialogue. Andy is exploring the universal language of gesture, action and objective; it is part dance, part slapstick, part pantomime. Rough House is extremely funny and the physicality is both beautifully graceful and shockingly dangerous.
Rough House continues and extends our company’s work with physical theatre, and our desire to incorporate the lessons of Pure Research into our play creation activities. Andy worked solo, starting in spring 2002, and then over an eight-month period (September 2002 to April 2003) with Brian and choreographer Julia Sasso in two-hour sessions to explore physical approaches to storytelling and to capitalize on his great talent for pratfalls and physical comedy. Andy used improvisational exercises to explore comic shtick and generate material that was filed away for future consideration. More than twenty sessions were held, generating a large volume of material that has mostly fallen by the wayside. We refused to worry at the time about creating product; our work was almost entirely about how to create rather than what to create.
“Brian allowed me carte blanche as to the creation of Rough House. I was instructed to take my time and keep in touch occasionally. Terrific. Julia Sasso suggested that I film myself improvising, as a way of developing material. So I created an archive of all the falls, rolls, and slapstick bits I had been doing all these years. More like “researchals” than rehearsals. I resisted looking at the tape until the end of the third session. It was full of chaos; as a cohesive whole it seemed hopeless, yet an uncanny thread started to weave its way through the anarchy. The difference between making it happen and letting it happen was asserting itself. I did my best not to stand in its way. Then one day I knew that the time of isolation was over. I left the security of solitude and began collaborating. I didn’t know what I had, but I was elated.”
– Andy Massingham
Added to this mixture was our lighting designer Rebecca Picherack. She joined us largely as an observer at first, but she weighed in on aspects that struck her as interesting and although she knew she would be lighting the show (whatever that turned out to be), her presence wasn’t about preparing a design. Like the rest of us, it was about learning how and what this piece might become.
In May 2003, we spent two weeks at the Theatre Centre, an alternative space in Toronto with flexible seating and a rough and ready quality we felt appropriate to this phase of creation. We had no goal other than to create material and present whatever we made to the public on the last three nights of the second week. Andy began each day improvising to music; I asked Rebecca to add new lights each morning and improvise at the lighting board along with Andy. What transpired was a wonderful series of duets for performer and lighting designer. Rebecca immediately became Andy’s partner and light became both Andy’s friend and his obstacle. Using only a small metal bowl and a metal chair, we created a 45-minute piece that – very loosely – followed Andy from morning to evening, through a day, or perhaps a life.
On May 8, 9 and 10, 2003, we invited audiences to view the work in progress during three public presentations. The tremendous response, with gales of laughter, was very gratifying and indicated that we had the beginnings of a strong piece, suitable for adults and children alike. During a two-week workshop in November 2003, we created additional material, both physical and with a third prop: a light bulb suspended on a long cord.
We completed the work during a three-week process with 13 public performances in January 2005. We began by exploring character, then revived the existing material from 2003. We worked entirely in the performance space (once again the Theatre Centre, following a substantial renovation). Within it we created a rough house of 17’ white walls that gave life to the shadow play that had evolved in the previous workshops. The walls were translucent, so we were inspired to experiment with lighting and shadows from outside the walls as well, adding a new and crucial element to the final show. The space was empty, but full of possibility.
Each day began with an extended warm-up and improv session, both accompanied by different music and improvised lighting. Almost every day revealed new material; when something struck a chord with me, or Andy, or Rebecca, it was filed away and incorporated later that day. By the top of the second week, we had a 50-minute piece but neither a beginning nor an ending that satisfied us. Eschewing narrative for the most part, we sought out interesting and comic moments and looked for homes for them. We began ‘previews’ on the Tuesday – the show worked but was clearly incomplete. Over the next three days, we slowly added new material as it was created to the beginning and the end. A beautiful new sequence with the single light bulb swinging in an ellipse around the bowl, casting remarkable shadows on the walls, revealed itself as our ending. A boxing routine with Andy and the light bulb popped up one morning and insisted on being the opening sequence. It worked, but still something was missing. I knew we needed to introduce pure movement at the very beginning, to find a magical first image.
One day later that week, as Andy and the lighting designer ran through cues, it occurred to me that we never saw Andy’s shadow on the outside of the walls. So we tried it, experimenting with some lamps left over from an unused earlier image. Andy started the show upstage, behind the white wall, with the house lights still on. His moving shadow slowly faded in on the upstage wall. The light bulb in the space flickered, attracting his attention. He entered, and the show went from there.
My point is that none of it was conceived in advance; in fact, Andy still has difficulty articulating what his show is about. Clearly then, this process worked well in the semi-abstract, text-less environment of his show. I can, however, isolate several important lessons: faith in the team; working in the performance space; incorporating design throughout the process; deferring outcomes; bringing as much stimuli as possible into the room; patience; and, most importantly, creating a process for the show that is unique to that show.
We happily reinvent it for each new piece. The next one will learn from, rather than replicate, this experience. We continue to use the term ‘researchals’ to launch new projects, but we are also comfortable with conventional text based writing processes when appropriate. The show determines the process.
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