Production Collaboration in the Theatre

Guiding Principles

Rufus Bonds Jr., Maria Cominis, Mark Ramont

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000504170
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

Production Collaboration in the Theatre reveals the ingredients of proven successful collaborations in academic and professional theatre training, where respect, trust, and inclusivity are encouraged and roles are defined with a clear and unified vision.

Garnering research from conversations with over 100 theatre professionals on Broadway and in regional and educational theatre, the authors provide multiple approaches to working together that are designed to help students and teachers of theatre discover and develop the collaborative tools that work best for them. Each chapter offers practical application with discussion prompts from real-life scenarios to practice and develop the critical problem-solving skills necessary for theatre artists to navigate common collaboration challenges. Compelling topical case studies and insightful interviews invite readers to explore the principles of collaboration and inspire them to build joyful, equitable, and collaborative relationships in academic and professional settings.

Production Collaboration for the Theatre offers theatre faculty and students a practical approach to developing the interpersonal skills necessary for a lifetime career in collaboration in the theatre. An ideal resource for actors, directors, designers, and production teams, this book provides theatre artists in training with an opportunity to develop their collaborative style in a way that will guide and support the longevity of a successful career.

1Challenges and Guiding PrinciplesSeeking Common Ground

DOI: 10.4324/9780367810252-2

A University College London Division of Psychological and Language Sciences (UCL-PaLS) November 2017 study found that watching a live theatre performance can synchronize the audience’s heartbeat. The team monitored the heart rates and electro dermal activity of 12 audience members at a live performance of the West End musical Dreamgirls. The team found not only that individuals’ emotional responses were mirrored, but the audience members’ hearts were also beating in unison, with their pulses changing in relationship to what was happening on stage. This continued throughout the intermission. Study leader Dr. Devlin said, “Experiencing the live theatre performance was extraordinary enough to overcome group differences and produce a common physiological experience in the audience members.”¹ This experiment suggests the performance of Dreamgirls touched the audience with the universal chord of needing to belong to something bigger, and that theatre has the power to bring people together as a community – and indeed community is at the root of theatre’s origins.

In ancient Greece, theatre was created to honor the gods, funded by the city and voted by judges chosen by the people. It was based in ritual and culture. In Africa and Asia, theatre was rooted in myths, rites, and folk celebrations. These traditions externalized the beliefs of society. Our theatre today, at its fundamental level, inherits these characteristics. The difference is that we have more elements, more collaborators, and many different points of view. Lastly, our theatre has many different purposes. Whether the goal is profit, not-for-profit, education, cultural expression, entertainment, or to promote change, theatre is social and creates community because in theatre we unite in our differences.

Much like the Dreamgirls audience, theatre-makers bring their individual experiences, culture, education, opportunities, values, opinions, and biases into their work, which makes collaborating interesting but also offers challenges. These challenges are what make theatre unique because theatre widens the lens of humanity, enabling us to see the world from many different perspectives.

Do you think each of the 12 audience members involved in the experiment shared the same point of view about what they saw? It would have been interesting to follow up this experience with a post-show discussion to see what the audience thought and whether their opinions aligned. Since it was not included in the study, allow us to speculate.

Each person in the Dreamgirls audience might have had a slightly different intellectual and visceral response to the musical, even though their physiological data shows them synchronized. An individual’s intellectual response is put into context by their “point of view,” driven by preference, aesthetic, and life experience.

This is true for a company when mounting a production. A variety of perspectives is essential in collaboration because it gives each production its identity and allows everyone to share their area of expertise. Differing points of view contain exciting opportunities, but how we navigate those different points of views can sometimes present challenges. A company shares many different points of view. When putting up a production, this can make collaboration challenging but also essential because it gives each production identity and purpose.

What Makes Collaboration Challenging?

Tracey Moore, actor, educator and author, talked about her time working with Ben Krywosz and Roger Ames in the Composer/Librettist Studio at New Dramatists, in which she participated as an actor. Five librettists, five composers, and five actors practice collaboration by exploring different ways of telling stories through music. Tracey shared that it was one of the most life-changing experiences of her career. She felt she had a real impact on creating new musical theatre works, and gained a better understanding of what collaboration entails.

Tracey discussed a concept developed by Ben Krywosz, co-founder and artistic director of Nautilus Music-Theater in Minneapolis, about the dynamic between the collaboration and the product:

Ben uses an axis graph to illustrate his point. One axis of the graph indicates the perceived value of the relationship (very important, not important) and the other indicates the perceived value of the product (very important, not important). One collaborator might value the relationship over the product and one might value the product over the relationship. Ben illustrates: “There’s this interplay between the valuation of the relationship and the product and that in itself – that negotiation for value – is the collaboration. Some partnerships may have a diagonal graph line that goes right up the middle where both parties value the relationship and value the product in the same way. But it is more likely that you have one person more invested in the relationship and another person more invested in the product, or that these things fluctuate over time. Occasionally, those two dots end up so far apart on the graph that the collaboration falls apart.

Tracey used Jerome Robbins, choreographer/director, as an example:

The history of Jerome Robbins is that everyone despised him, but to me it was just a question of where he was on this graph. He only cared about the product. He didn’t give a damn if anyone liked him. We could consider him a bad collaborator, but look at the shows: West Side Story, Gypsy, Fiddler on the Roof. Then you look at Lynn Ahrens and Steve Flaherty, or Kander and Ebb: it appears that these are more balanced collaborations that value both strong relationships and strong products. So the idea is that you don’t necessarily want to dictate what a collaboration looks like, but it might help if both parties understand where the other is coming from.

Since 1986, Nautilus Music-Theater has been a collaborator’s heaven for composer/librettist teams, and it is one of the best-kept secrets in the collaborative world. While Ben’s work with collaborators is specific to co-authors/co-creators, we can use his axis graph (Figure 1.1) to view why we might collaborate better with one person over another and why some collaborations just will not work.

Figure 1.1Nautilus Music-Theater interactive strategies

Ben Krywosz defines collaboration:

Authentic collaboration is a state of grace whose entry we have no control over; it occurs organically when circumstances and participants are ripe. We can cultivate that ripeness by following easily identifiable principles, but a healthy collaboration can’t be forced.

One mental model for taking a snapshot of any one moment in time during a collaborative process involves tracking the importance and quality of both the relationship and the project. This concept, borrowed from the world of progressive team-building, allows the participants to develop the interactive strategies of compromise (blending), domination (leading), accommodation (following), and resignation (letting go).

Skilled collaborations have learned how to actively dance elegantly through all these strategies, moving cooperatively in response to each other like the choreographic wizardry of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Over time, the sum total and net result is authentic collaboration, even if at no point during the process did that state of grace actually occur. The collaborative process requires an intentional exercise of collaborative skills, a clear awareness of one’s values, and a committed confidence in the benefits of working together.

What makes production collaboration challenging is the varying points of view unique to each collaborator within a production. However, this is why great plays get produced over and over again. Why are productions of Hamlet, Death of a Salesman or Romeo and Juliet – or any popular play – produced each year? Are all productions the same? Of course not!

Each production is unique to the company that produces it, the collaborators within it and its audience base. Point of view leads to unique insights and interpretations, and while we will not all agree, this is what keeps theatre constantly changing, growing, and challenging the status quo.

Our Research

The data gathered in this chapter were harvested from the survey administered to a number of theatre professionals, referred to here as “The Collective.” The authors distilled the information from the survey, which addresses primary challenges in theatre collaborations that prohibit a creative atmosphere and healthy working relationships. We have boiled down these challenges into five categories: inflated ego, lack of time, poor communication, inequities and lack of a clear vision.

A healthy ego is seen in a person’s confidence, sense of self, resilience, the ability to solve problems, the ability to develop meaningful relationships, and a sense of meaning in their life. An inflated ego is seen in the rehearsal space as dismissing ideas before they are considered. It involves not fully listening to one another; communication breaks down, misunderstandings occur, feelings are hurt, blame is cast, and there is an overall lack of trust and safety. It is seen in power plays through domineering, over-controlling, dictating, belittling, and intimidating behavior. It emerges in personality conflicts and the desire to be right over compromising. It is visible in pursuing one’s own personal agenda over the greater good for the whole project. It can be seen in a pre-conceived vision of a performance, design, or directorial concept, which does not allow for other contributions or expansion. Ego is also heard in negative, overly harsh statements used to instill fear and doubt, and to create factions. It reveals itself through being closed off, a lack of humility, defensiveness, no objectivity, obstinance, and refusal to engage in discussion. It is the virtuoso impulse.

Anyone can be guilty of having an inflated ego, which can destroy a collaborative, safe, and equitable environment; this compromises the work as well as the overall joy in creating a piece of theatre. Former university student, Broadway actor, Salisha Thomas shared that in her experience, the higher the level of the work, the fewer inflated egos she found in her collaborations:

Every room I have walked into [Broadway experiences] it has been everyone’s listening and whoever has the best idea, that’s the one we’re gonna go with. I mean there is the director, who says, I’m the director but your idea is way better, let’s do that. That kind of environment feels like, let’s put this thing on together. Because the whole point is that the product on stage is bomb. It’s not about any one person. What better way than to actually love each other in the process.

A lot of times it [school] was the push I needed. It really did prepare me. I would say moving to New York, or doing theatre outside of any academic setting, I may have been spoiled. But everybody I have worked with there is zero ego, which is like wait, what? I mean, you’re working on Broadway and you’re so humble and so nice. It feels like, I feel safe to make choices. I feel encouraged to be myself, especially if I’ve gotten the job. They let me know, we want you, what would you do? It makes me feel like I can just play and if something doesn’t work, it’s okay, we’ll laugh it off and try something else.²

Lack of time is another challenge faced by collaborators today. Time is an extremely precious commodity in the production process. Creating under pressure does not serve the work but it is a harsh reality, and with each passing day of rehearsal it becomes more precious. Rehearsal time can be the first item to be cut from the budget when a producer is looking to reduce their overheads.

There is a real tension between the artist’s need for time to create and the ability of budgets to meet that need. The largest part of any professional production budget is personnel, so time really does equate with money. In regional theatre, producers often hire non-union performers who can rehearse before the union performers arrive. The question becomes: How do we keep the spirit of collaboration alive when time is short and these inequities become the norm?

Working under this pressure can make people short-tempered and impatient, and can sometimes lead them to behave unprofessionally. Impatience might be seen as an “I need it now” mandate or “too much to do, no time for you” attitude, or mean “the answer is no” without consideration. These responses can compromise collaborative relationships as well as the overall positive working environment.

On the other hand, a great director can create the illusion of time when there is none. The director can hide this stressor from the cast and designers by somehow covering all their bases (table work, discussions) with ease, knowing that the clock is still ticking while prioritizing. It can be tough, but many directors make this happen without anyone knowing it.

On the other hand, when the “time is money” pressure pervades the atmosphere, it can squelc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Challenges and Guiding Principles: Seeking Common Ground
• 2 Defining Roles
• 3 Putting the Guidelines into Practice on a Production Timeline
• 4 Case Studies: Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark and Ragtime
• 5 Boundaries: Theatre Intimacy Education and Safe Working Environments
• 6 Culture and Collaboration
• 7 Including Students in the Collaborative Process
• 8 Past, Present, and Future of the Theatre
• Appendix 1: To the Educator
• Appendix 2: Casting in the Academic Environment
• Appendix 3: Seeing the Student and Encouraging them to Work from their Cultural Point of View
• Appendix 4: What Would We Do? (The Scenarios)
• Appendix 5: Contributor Biographies
• Index