SD learns more about the programs the Mellon Foundation expects to see with its recent $2M infusion

The Andrew W. Mellon foundation recently granted $2 million ($1M each) to the Arena Stage in Washington D.C. and the Center Theatre Group in L.A. to look at the ways that new plays are developed and study alternatives, in an effort to discover systems of creating more work in a sustainable way.

Arena Stage will use the funds to create the American Voices New Play Institute program. David Dower, associate artistic director at the Arena described the initiative in a long blog post as an attempt “to create a space for the new works sector to study, develop, and disseminate effective ideas for strengthening the infrastructure nationwide.” They look at it as a lab to study and disseminate best practices for play development across the country.

In L.A., Center Theatre Group will be using the money to create their own New Play Production Program. The program will fund the commissioning, development, and production of non-text-based work, but it also has an element of developing and strengthening infrastructure.

“We’ve already been trying to find ways to develop this type of work,” Diane Rodriguez, director of new play development at CTG, told me. “Now it’s just an effort to codify—what are the models that we’re doing that we could develop these artists as well as develop models for the field in general.”

I thought $2 million going to develop new structures of play development was worth a closer look, so I sat down with Dower and Rodriguez to talk more about their programs.

American Voices New Play Institute
As part of their support of the NEA’s New Play Development Program, Arena Stage maintains a blog meant to inform those interested about the status of the projects in the program as well as invite more interaction (you can read it here). It was on this blog that Dower posted a lengthy description of what the Institute will look like. It will include four distinct programs: Playwright Residencies, New Works Producing Fellowships, an Audience Enrichment seminar and a series of regular convenings to inform the theatre community about their findings, including what programs and techniques are working best.

As Dower freely admits, the first three of these programs will be directly adopted from the theatres where they originated. The Playwrights Residencies (three to begin with, provided to established playwrights only) are based on programs already in place at several large theatres and aim to give writers the financial, material and artistic support and freedom they need to create new works. The Producing Fellowships are based on a program at Foundry Theater and will focus on “developing a crop of young producers prepared specifically to handle new work.”

The Audience Enrichment Seminar comes direct from Steppenwolf in Chicago, and will offer 100 audience members unsurpassed insight into how a play is produced.

The new element Arena will be adding is the regular convenings, in order to spread the word about what’s working and insure new ideas are being heard.

“There’s no place to evaluate and disseminate what the ingredients of effectiveness for developing new work are,” says Dower. “The convenings are meant to identify promising new ideas, but also challenges and opportunities that are arising.”

Convenings will be recorded and notes made public through the Institute’s Web site. The Institute will also commission and publish “white papers” on trends and challenges in the field, describing how they’re being met by theatres across the country.

Dower takes the idea of studying and developing infrastructure seriously and will keep the focus of the Institute on these experiments. Programs that have proven to be successful in the Institute will need to be adopted by the Arena or other theatres, but will not continue to be supported by the institute.

“Let’s just say—because it’s more fun—that we discover that yes, this kind of a playwright residency is actually what people have been asking for. Well, once we’ve discovered that, Arena will continue to do its own residencies, but the Institute doesn’t necessarily need to continue to investigate that program,” Dower explains. “It’s designed actually to continue to morph.”

Dower and the institute faced a little bit of a backlash over the fact that when the plan was first presented the first cohort of fellows was already set and the playwrights residencies were limited to established playwrights. Partly this was because in order to receive funding Arena had to present Mellon with a complete package ready to go, as opposed to presenting an application process. It has since been clarified that people wishing to participate in next round of producing fellowships should apply to the Allen Lee Hughes Fellowship Program,, but the writers residencies will still only be offered to established playwrights that Arena currently has a relationship with.

In our conversation Dower attributed this in part to limited resources—they could only open this up to three playwrights in order to offer meaningful support—but also because by opening the entire infrastructure of Arena to these playwrights, they wanted to work with writers with whom they already had a measure of trust.

“In order to get it going, the choice that we’ve made, we’re going to work with people who understand us enough that we could build this thing by doing it,” says Dower. “And then after this first round when we know what it is, that’ll be the time to cast a wider net for people we may not already know but might be perfect contributors.”

And in a large part, this question of trust and developing new playwrights (in addition to simply new work) is why Dower is so persistent about building a transparent new works infrastructure.

“Underneath all of this is a real kind of philosophical standpoint on access,” says Dower. “Which is that not every organization is equally an access point for every artist. And part of the problem is that people are having to run around throwing their stuff at everything to see if that’s their place.”

One final piece of the institute will be an interactive map of how new plays get accepted and developed across the country. Dower hopes the map will clarify the process by which new playwrights can enter the regional theatre infrastructure, and have their works produced by organizations appropriate to them, and advance their careers.

“This challenge that we’re being faced with about the lack of authenticity and the dialogue between the artists and the institutions—I think that’s fundamentally what this conversation is hoping to address,” Dower says towards the end of our conversation.  “Somehow getting to telling the truth to each other about what’s actually going on, and having that be helpful—it’s a challenge but I’m hoping that this effort will be progress.”

Non-Text Based Initiatives
When Center Theatre Group announced they were receiving $1 million to develop works that were non-text-based, the relief at the good news of yet another large grant going to new play development was quickly followed by consternation surrounding that “non-text-based” quote.

“It’s actually a response to what’s happening nationally in the field in general,” Rodriguez says. “I think that there are a lot more companies that are doing work that is collaborative in nature, where it’s not the single vision of a playwright but the voice of many people at the table. And also, it’s an effort to be more inclusive of that kind of work in what we produce here at CTG. And so there’s also a move that is happening nationally of figuring out how to support these kinds of artists who usually are not represented in the regional theatres.”

So yes, not only is the CTG initiative based around supporting new works, it’s also an initiative to discover and document successful techniques for supporting this type of work. Rodriguez explained that while groups like The Civilians or Universes have been embraced by the regional theatre community, there are many more that aren’t being represented at that level, and instead are limited to single weekend runs at performing arts centers or smaller venues. She mentioned the Rude Mechanicals from Austin (who are also being supported by the NEA’s New Play Development Program), Builders Association from New York City (although their artistic director Marianne Weems now teaches at Carnegie Mellon in New York City) and the Elevator Repair Service, also from New York City as examples of companies creating vital work that haven’t had the kind of institutional support CTG aims to give with this grant.

“So this is an effort to figure out ways of us developing their work,” adds Rodriguez. “We’ve already been doing that, now it’s just an effort to codify—what are the models that we’re doing that we could develop these artists as well as develop models for the field in general.”
After three years (the length of the Mellon grant) CTG is required by the conditions of the grant to release a paper summarizing different processes and models, examining what worked and what didn’t, so that theatres across the country can learn. Additionally, the Center Theatre Group will use it’s semi-annual New Play Production Newsletter to update everyone about the troupes, their processes and how it’s proceeding, so the field has a chance to learn along with CTG.

To find these new models, CTG will fund seven different projects that follow three different paths: commissions, completion funds and an “innovation fund” designed to support “maverick” approaches to theatre. Within the commissions branch there are three ways they’ll try: CTG will create an ensemble themselves to make the work; look for collaborators to work on a text that already exists and deconstruct it, giving it a new spin with the creators; lastly, the straight commission, which means “We support them in the development of the work at their site, in their home base. And we come to them,” says Rodriguez.

But for the most part with commissions CTG will have a developmental process where over the course of a year or two CTG will work with the ensemble, “responding to what they say their needs are to develop the work,” says Rodriguez. “Giving them rehearsal space, dramaturgical support, production needs, that they wouldn’t have necessarily if they did it at their own space. So it’s a deeper investment because we have the resources.”

Like Arena, CTG is not accepting applications to join this process, instead choosing artists to collaborate with based on relationships already in place. 

“It’s going to be people that we know or work that we’ve seen,” said Rodriguez, stressing that they wanted to work with these people in new ways.

Rodriguez used the example of CTG’s relationship with Phil Soltanoff (artistic director of Mad Dog Theatre company, already announced as one of the artists participating in the program) to give more details about what CTG’s “deeper investment” would look like.

“Phil is coming into town, and he’s looking for collaborator. He may bring a collaborator that he’s never worked with for, or he might find one here in Los Angeles,” said Rodriguez. “We’re going to have a workshop of 20 people that we select that are interesting performers, and maybe a designer’s thrown in there. And Phil works with those 20 people for a workshop. And then we see if those people, if a smaller group of that same group is interested in proceeding with the project. And then we form a smaller group. And that group stays with us for quite a while, a year—at least a year—creating the piece. Now that’s very different than us hiring actors and they come in with a piece already done.
Part of CTG’s process will be figuring out how to cover the creators through equity, how to work with the company administratively, and also finding artists in L.A. who are willing to commit to a year-long project.

“It takes a kind of artist who wants to make work,” comments Rodriguez. “It’s the difference between the words playwriting and playmaking.”
 

---

< Prev Article		Next Article >