September 17: The Small Theatre Alliance of Boston Meets the Theater Commons

On Monday, September 17th, the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston meets with the Center for the Theatre Commons at Emerson College to learn about the projects being developed at the Commons for use by the new play sector.

Earlier this year, after it was announced that the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage was splitting into two branches, and one of those branches, The Center for the Theater Commons, was taking root at ArtsEmerson, I speculated as to what that could mean for the Boston theatre scene. It certainly occurred to me that the local scene needed to become more familiar with the projects being developed at the Commons, even if the Commons' mission covers new play development nationwide.

The philosophy behind the Commons is a practical one: given that there is an abundance of creativity in the new play sector and the unequal distribution of opportunities preventing that abundance from reaching audiences, how does one increase those opportunities. The mission of the branch of the AVNPI that has become the Commons has been the study of this bottleneck and isolated efforts to circumvent this bottleneck so to create both  the tools and shared knowledge base that allow both problems and solutions to be studied in greater detail (see my notes on an early iteration New Play Map) as well as those that assist those working in the new play sector in the effort to widen that bottleneck and placing those tools and knowledge in "the commons" that can be accessed by anyone much like the books at the public library. Other projects have included the online journal HowlRound and #NewPlayTV as well as the popularization of the #newplay hashtag.

As Commons founder David Dower, director Polly K. Carl, and associate directors Jamie Gahlon and Vijay Matthew made their rounds in Boston discussing the philosophy of the commons, I made face-to-face contact and in my capacity as a member of the Small Theatre Alliance's events committee suggested a meetup between the commons and Alliance members involved in the new play sector. This meeting will focus on the tools being developed as part of the commons and getting them into the hands of playwrights, dramaturgs, literary managers, artistic directors and all those with a hand in developing new plays.

The event will run from 7pm to 9pm at the Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theatre in the Paramount Center at 559 Washington Street in Boston.

Facebook users may RSVP here.

The Theater Commons Comes to Emerson and What This Means for the Boston Theatre Scene

As 2011 was coming to a close, the big news on the Boston theatre scene was that David Dower and Polly Carl of the American Voices New Play Institute would be moving from their base of operations at Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage to Emerson College. In the midst of this excitement, The real question was what this means beyond Rob Orchard's aim to make ArtsEmerson a major regional player in the performing arts.

As outlined by Dower on the Arena Stage blog, this is essentially means that efforts that had previously been grouped under the hashtag of "#newplay" are branching in two directions under the auspices of two separate organizations. The first, staying at Arena Stage and retaining the American Voices New Play Institute name, will, amongst other things, focus on the much lauded resident playwright program and on Arena's own developmental work.

The second branch, now using the name "Center For the Theater Commons at Emerson College" will focus

on the tools and initiatives designed to advance the national infrastructure for new work and the people who make it. So, where the AVNPI will house Arena's activities, this new entity, The Center for the Theater Commons, will develop and maintain the tools of the #newplay commons and act as staff to the nationwide effort. The map, the live stream channel, the journal, the research projects, and the activities of Howlround will be housed at the new Center, situated in the Office of the Arts at Emerson College. The web portal for this platform becomes Howlround.com.

Polly Carl and Vijay Matthew, writing at Shareable while explaining the needs that brought the New Play Institute into being, outline the projects that the Commons will continue to develop at Emerson. Most of these involve using technology both to both build and document the "new play infrastructure." The two most visible of these initiatives that the Commons will be bringing to Emerson, are the online journal Howlround and the New Play Map, of which I've written about twice before.

Given my position in the industry: entering the field of playwriting without the connections that comes with an MFA, not having a salaried position at a regional theatre, I have had little use for the Howlround. The contents had sadly struck me as being more about omphalloskepticism than about theatre featuring often cryptic essays by more connected figures than myself wondering if they were reaching an audience or not.

The New Play Map, on the other hand, was a project I have supported enthusiastically since it went online last year. It is a crowd sourced map, documenting the new play infrastructure, presenting the artists, collaboratives, conferences, venues, and companies writing, developing, and presenting new plays. I even explored the possible uses that could be explored since the source code was released (New Dance Map anyone? New Opera Map? New Performance Art Map?)

The question, for the Boston theatre scene returns to "how do we use this?" Theater Commons, despite being local, is under no obligation to show Boston playwrights or Boston theatre companies any special favor, especially when the new staff understandably come with any number of professional obligations to past collaborators, however it does become incumbent on the Boston theatre scene to become aware of what is going on in its own neighborhood.

I have already suggested to the newly elected board of the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston to strongly urge that member companies, and individual artists working in new play development document their efforts on the New Play Map. Some already have started to do just that, some already had. This longer essay is for those who have not responded to the Alliance's urgings. Placing our work on the map is not just to advertise our presence to the larger national scene, but to document how we operate, so that organizations like the Theater Commons have a better grasp on what tools we (both nationally and locally) need.

What this means for the local theatre community is what we are willing to make it mean.

New Play Map Source Code Released!

Back in January, I presented my initial thoughts regarding the New Play Institute's New Play Map, a platform for an open-source, user generated, map of the new play sector. The Institute has since continued work on developing the code for the map, while I have noticed that in my greater Boston metropolitan area, more "generative artists" (a term that embraces both playwrights and collaboratives), and presenting organizations have slowly begun to appear on the map. Locally, the playwright development organization, Playwrights' Commons has even launched a campaign to map Boston area plays and playwrights.

On May 19th, the New Play Institute announced that the source code for the latest version of the New Play Map has been posted to GitHub.

Of course, the immediate question is: what could be done with this code now that it has been open sourced? The Institute asks:

We're dying to find out what you could imagine doing with it.

(Theatre organizations in other countries: Why not take the source code to map the theatre infrastructure of your own country? That would be the simplest and easiest adaptation of this project.)

Since the introduction of the Map, I have considered what other art sectors would be well served by the platform. Plays are not the only works that can be tracked in this manner. My attention went to some of the other performing art forms: dance, opera, (and for a lack of a better term, "performance art"), are amongst a number of composed pieces that can be performed and presented in any number of venues, by various performers, presenting organizations, and can even go through a development process of workshops, conferences and festivals.

So why not a New Dance Map? New Opera Map? New Performance Map?

New Play Map

A few weeks ago, The New Play Institute at Arena Stage launched the New Play Map an open-source, user-generated, collaborative project to map the American new play sector. The purpose is to

...to make visible – for the first time ever – all the organizations, activity, and generative artists that comprise our yet unknown infrastructure for new work.

Essentially, as the map becomes better known, theater companies, conferences, and festivals that present or develop new plays as well as generative artists (which could be either playwrights or collaboratives) can add themselves and the organizations with whom they work. The idea is that much like various projects of the WikiMedia Foundation, the more users providing information, the more useful the map.

I admit that when I first placed myself on the map, I did not fully grasp the utility of the tool, and shared some concern with Dan Rubin at Dark Knight Dramaturgy that the system could be "overwhelmed" and I even expressed concerns that only an early adopter would reap the benefits, but I'm beginning to see that my understanding of the potential was limited.

Trisha Mead, writing on the New Play Blog, suggests a number of uses:

• An easy visual snapshot of the new play work happening nationally, helping playwrights, funders (and possibly journalists) identify hot spots as they emerge

• A research resource for literary managers and artistic directors to discover new projects in development and join the group of institutions helping to bring them to fruition.

• Built in documentation for funders of a given project, creating a public and verifiable reference for each step in a play’s development.

The more obvious use for me, as a playwright, is that of identifying organizations that might wish to present and develop my work. As Mead suggests, for those attempting to identify how the new play sector actually functions, as opposed to how we imagine it functions, there's a place where empirical data is being compiled:

For instance, were one to investigate how I operate (and I still haven't put in all my data points) one would notice that much of the time, I tend to either self-produce in, or have my work presented by, non-traditional venues. Someone could ask: Is this a viable strategy for playwrights developing and presenting new work? Am I unusual in that regard or are there a number of playwrights out there using similar strategies? Should more traditional presenting organizations adjust their policies to take in account that this is going on? Alternately, does being entered into the map provide a potential opening for a similarly operating artist to "go mainstream?" Will the map show us models to be adopted or show us where initiatives are needed?

How do I work this?

(Yes, I did once describe the Talking Heads' major accomplishment as being "letting a generation of geeks and nerds know that it was okay to dance." Dancing is cool. I highly recommend it.)