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Understand that rehearsal and collaboration are works in progress. It should be a safe space. You should be working in a space where you can grow and learn without fear. Collaborators should speak from their experience and acknowledge that not everyone shares that same experience. Speak in draft! Respect how everyone else may be learning in their own ways. Be open to receiving as well. Creating a list of meeting agreements with your collaborators that have some of these ideas written is a good way to practice and keep up with these statements.

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I truly enjoy collaboration most of the time. I think it might stem from earlier in my acting career. I was very young and a lot of directors would take the approach of telling me every little thing to do on stage. I still had many good directors, but I think I noticed this approach when I was working under my high school theatre director. It was not a good collaborative relationship. When I got to college, being around very like minded people made me very open and interested in collaboration. I think that a group of young people collaborating on a project can lead to very good and very innovative ideas.

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"Risk, trust, and vulnerability. Best practices for creative collaboration"

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"Risk, trust, and vulnerability. Best practices for creative collaboration"

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

If you've ever been involved in a collaborative project, if you've ever co-created work with another artist, then this conversation with interdisciplinary musician and artist Wendy Spitzer is for you! Get your notepad and prepare to let it transform the way you make work. Wendy Spitzer outlines the framework for safe collaboration, describes best practices, and gives examples of co-creating with other artists. We also discuss two of her local projects that involve co-creation between artist and audience-participants. (See below for the one coming up!)

upcoming!
SEEK Raleigh program at Dorothea Dix Park
Dix in Sound in Situ: Incorporating original music, interview snippets, hotline recordings, narration, and found sounds, Dix in Sound in Situ is a new traveling audio installation by Felix Obelix (aka musician and interdisciplinary artist Wendy Spitzer). Visitors to Dix will listen to the installation on headphones as they walk a one-mile loop through the park, experiencing the collapse of time and history, and connecting them to the artist, to the place, and to the sounds themselves. Opens May 31, 2019 ***

Wendy Spitzer
Photo credit: Ilme Vysniauskaite

Wendy Spitzer is an interdisciplinary musician and artist with a diverse output spanning music composition and performance, visual and community artmaking, writing, research, and modes of participatory inquiry. Her projects have been funded by Raleigh Arts; Downtown Durham, Inc.; the Durham Arts Council; the Orange County Arts Commission; the Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology; and the Strowd Roses Foundation.

Under the moniker Felix Obelix, she has released two albums of original compositions: The Tick of the Clock, the Beat in the Chest on the Pox World Empire label (2010) and The Ringtone Album on the Potluck Foundation label (2013). Other experiences have included a time capsule project, the organization of a genre-bending music festival, original scores composed and performed live to silent films, studio session work, a choir commission, theatre and soundtrack scoring, as well as solo and group visual art shows.

Wendy Spitzer has a Bachelor's of Music in Performance from UNC-Chapel Hill and a Master of Music in Creative Practice from Goldsmiths College, University of London (UK), which culminated in a final thesis entitled, Trust Them With Your Weird and Strange Notes: An Arts-Based Research Perspective on Vulnerability and the Social Dynamic in Creative Collaboration.

This episode is brought to you by the Soapboxers, the official patrons of the Artist Soapbox. If you like these episodes and want more, get on the Soapbox! Artist Soapbox theme music by Bart Matthews. Additional audio editing by Merrybelle Park Productions. This episode was recorded at the ASBX home studio.

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questions for wendy

VULNERABILITY & TRUST & THE SOCIAL DYNAMIC

You have provided a beautiful umbrella for our conversation to shelter under today. And that is your graduate research on Creative Practice, more specifically your exploration of "how the social dynamic and issues of risk, trust, and vulnerability play out when people collaborate on creative projects." Let's start by talking about this more broadly and then dig into your framework and best practices for artists who work collaboratively. The title of your dissertation is Trust Them With Your Weird and Strange Notes: An Arts-Based Research Perspective on Vulnerability and the Social Dynamic in Creative Collaboration.

Why did you make this your focus? How did you pursue this study?

Would you take us thru your framework?

What are the factors involved in developing trust? What are the risks?

What is vulnerability for creators?

What is an 'ideal' collaborative/co-creation state? What are the benefits? What does it look/sound/feel like?

Best practices?

CO-CREATION AND COLLABORATION LOCALLY WITH AUDIENCE-PARTICIPANTS

There's a spectrum of co-creation and collaboration. We can do this artist to artist, and we can also do this with artists and audiences (or participants, if that's a better word for the people who come to experience the creative work). I'd like to touch on two local projects that you engaged in that have an interesting collaborative/co-creative experience for the audience.

First, let's talk about Portraits in Common.

From Wendy: "Portraits in Common - part of Downtown Durham, Inc's Public Space project last year. With my collaborator Douglas Vuncannon (photographer), we paired up strangers at a Third Friday artwalk in Durham's downtown last August. Participants were tasked with finding the most unusual thing they had in common. They wrote this on a board and had their portrait taken. I made a video of all the portraits and scored the music to it. A community/participatory project that exceeded my expectations for it."

What did you witness when the strangers came together? What surprised you about this experience? How did these concepts of risk/vulnerability/co-creation come up?

Second, let's talk about your upcoming project for the SEEK Raleigh public art program at Dorothea Dix Park :

"SEEK Raleigh is a temporary public art program that engages artists to use unique, non-traditional interiors, structures, and outdoor spaces for site-specific, performative, and participatory installations and experiences. These temporary, experimental projects are designed to introduce the public to new, diverse, and thought-provoking experiences as well as create opportunities for artists to extend their creative practice. Through these experiences, both the artist and the community will find novel ways to learn and share the stories of our City. This spring, the Raleigh Arts is working with community partners to launch the SEEK Raleigh program at Dorothea Dix Park, one of the City's most important historical sites, as a broad stage for performance, installation and experimentation while the entire community's focus is on the site. Future iterations of the program will activate parks and other public places across the City of Raleigh, bringing art to new and unexpected places."

What inspired you to develop a project like this? I'm interested in the ways you are setting yourself up to be inspired by 'outside' forces like the history of the place, the soundscape of the location, the responses of people who call in - can you say something about that and whether/how it feels collaborative?

WRAPPING IT UP

As an artist, you have an incredibly diverse output - loads on interdisciplinary projects and collaborations, you work in multiple media yourself - so in some ways you defy categorizing (which I Iove). You've mentioned that occasionally this diversity make it difficult for you to present a concise narrative for your work. So my question is - what do you think ties these different projects together? What makes sense about it to you?

Anything else?

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075: Risk, trust, and vulnerability. Best practices for creative collaboration with interdisciplinary musician Wendy Spitzer ⋆ Artist Soapbox

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If you've ever been involved in a collaborative project, if you've ever co-created work with another artist, then this conversation with interdisciplinary musician and artist Wendy Spitzer is... Read more "075: Risk, trust, and vulnerability. Best practices for creative collaboration with interdisciplinary musician Wendy Spitzer"

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First Form of Collaboration and Something That Came Into Mind

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First Form of Collaboration and Something That Came Into Mind

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Television Becoming the Production Level of Movies

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Television Becoming the Production Level of Movies

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Who doesn’t love a little lower budget show or some reality television? However, something that has been exciting me recently has been the amount of intricate, high quality productions and stories being produced as television shows. I think a lot of it has to come from streaming services becoming more popular. It’s super interesting to see how film-like stories get interpreted over something like a mini series. It’s interesting because I feel like one gets invested more in the story, characters, etc. because one gets to experience a longer and more intimate time with the show. The Crown and The Queen’s Gambit have been recent favorites.

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Treat Others How You Want Others to Treat You

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Treat Others How You Want Others to Treat You

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I really, really try hard to treat others how I would also like to be treated. Especially when it comes to someone’s time, respect, process, etc. Being in creative spaces is both being in a safe space, yet a vulnerable one. I come prepared! I show up to rehearsals! I am present! I believe that with a good attitude and some positive manifestation that the world as well as the people around you will bring that same energy back.

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Ariana Grande - just like magic (official audio)

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Theatre helps us see different perspectives from our own. We get to see motives incorporated into life’s conflict and resolutions. Artists get to put themselves into emotional and intellectual situations that we might not even known before. Theatre has been evolving more into taking risks and advocating for new and diverse voices. We are sharing experiences with other actors on stage and audiences. It has said that people come to the theatre to experience real human connection because we get little of it in our own lives.

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Theatre, film, and the arts is a vital tool in promoting social and political discourse. It can help create a dialogue in communities and help society examine itself in the mirror. We can present real life problems then attempt to create solutions. The arts explore a lot about self, gender, racial, and sexual identity. The arts can also be used as a way to amplify different voices. I believe that even though our country has tended to silence these voices in the past, recently there has been a shift. Slowly, but surely we have started to make these voices accessible to various types of art forms and with that, allow spaces for these marginalized voices to become amplified.

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I hope that in the future, my work as an actor/artist will impact people in some way. Whether it be impactful because it is purely entertaining/entertainment to watch, because it touches upon an issue in society, or because it helps guide someone through a certain something in their life. I hope that it’s mostly through being on screen or film. I feel like growing up I could relate to film more and that it is a very intimate internal experience between the story and audience.

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I try not to think that I have all the answers. However, I think that there is a difference between not knowing and not trying or not being willing to be flexible. I am always adapting. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, theatre and the way we present theatre has been changing. It’s always important to not resent trying new things! A lot of it requires experimentation and it’s okay not to know all the answers! I am always attempting to not be afraid of trying new things or experimenting with new platforms.

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What Will the Future of Theater Look Like 'Our Artists Are Going To Lead Us'

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What Will the Future of Theater Look Like 'Our Artists Are Going To Lead Us'

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Oskar Eustis, artistic director of The Public Theater in New York, knows firsthand about the coronavirus. Eustis was hospitalized with COVID on March 10, and by the time he was released five days later, everything was shut down. "I came out into a world that had no theater, and it's a different world," he says.

Eustis has recovered, but the Public, like theaters all around the world, is in critical condition. After the theater shut down on March 12 management tried to keep artists and actors on salary for a month, but "by the end of April, we had to end all those contracts," Eustis says. By July, he had to furlough much of his staff.

September is when newspapers and magazines would usually publish their fall theater previews, but this year, there's no fall season, at least in any traditional sense. So, what is theater going to look like, when the pandemic is over?

The Public Theater has produced some online content. "Just because conditions are hard, it doesn't let us off the hook; it doesn't free us of the obligation to try to fulfill our mission," Eustis says. "So we've done serialized radio plays. We've done Zoom plays, we've commissioned two movies. We're doing everything we can to continue communicating and making our art form viable."

Eustis loves reaching audiences far beyond New York - he says he's received emails from people enjoying the Public's online content in Kazakhstan. "I'm not likely to want to give that up when we come back," Eustis says. "That's exciting to be able to reach that many people."

But even with that global reach, the only activity at the Public has been when it recently opened its lobby to Black Lives Matter protesters, offering food, drink and bathroom breaks. Eustis sees America facing a "binary" choice right now: "Are we going to embrace with a new fervor our diversity, our democracy, our desire for equity? ..." he asks. "I know what side the theater needs to be on, and we need to prove that we mean it. ... We have to become more diverse. We have to become more anti-racist. And we have to let more people tell their own stories."
'We're going to go to you'
At Baltimore's Center Stage, artistic director Stephanie Ybarra says she knows it's going to be a long time before audiences return in person. But she hopes that when they do, stories will be told in simpler ways, with fewer sets and costumes.

"In Shakespeare's time it was, 'Let's go hear a play,' not see a play," Ybarra says. Audiences listened closely. "My ideal version of that sentence today would be: Let's go experience a story together."

Ybarra is not sure if this is a brand new chapter, or a return to a time, she says, when theater relied "exclusively on a really good story, incredibly talented actors and an audience that was willing to go along for the ride."

Ybarra has no idea what will happen after the pandemic, but she hopes the theater of the future will tap into our collective imagination. "We will rely less on the stuff of the stage and more on the physical bodies of the performers and the words they speak or sing and the movement of those bodies," she says.

Before she moved to Baltimore, Ybarra ran the Public Theater's Mobile Unit, which brought Shakespeare, with small casts and simple sets, to neighborhood parks, shelters and prisons. That sort of creative thinking is going to be necessary when theater comes back, says Oskar Eustis.

We're not insisting you come to us and get into these small, crowded spaces. We're going to go to you and give you a chance to celebrate and enjoy and feel the solidarity of being in an audience again.

"I think one of the first things we're going to need to do is not ask people to come to our home, but for us to go out to them ..." he says. "To go to where the people live as a way of saying, we're not insisting you come to us and get into these small, crowded spaces. We're going to go to you and give you a chance to celebrate and enjoy and feel the solidarity of being in an audience again."

Change is taking place internally at Center Stage as well. Ybarra is adjusting work rules to make rehearsal periods more humane. Playwrights will be paid during rehearsals. Six-day weeks will change to five-day weeks, and 12-hour technical rehearsal days will be scaled back to 8 hours.

It's not just about making theater accessible, Ybarra says. "It has a lot to do with transforming our arts and culture institutions into arts and culture and civic institutions."

Though she remains uncertain about the future, "I have a sneaking suspicion that our artists are going to lead us toward something we none of us could have imagined," she says.
'Cultural institutions are the amplifier'
Nataki Garrett runs the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which mixes classic plays with freshly-minted dramas. Garrett believes that the theater of the future will need to take issues of environmental justice into account - including the carbon footprint of the audiences traveling to productions.

"The only way you can get to OSF right now is by some sort of carbon emitting device," she says. "We really do have to think about the impact of being a destination theater in a destination state."

Seventy five OSF employees recently lost their homes in the Almeda Fire. Garrett says OSF, and Oregon should both be thinking deeply about their carbon footprint.

Cultural institutions are the amplifier of the way that society is moving. ... I want to be an organization that uses that positively.

"Cultural institutions are the amplifier of the way that society is moving," she says. "And that could be used in a positive way and it can be used in a negative way, and we've seen both in history. I want to be an organization that uses that positively."

Seeing the Black Lives Matter uprising occur in the midst of a global pandemic, Garrett says, "You know, if you can't hear that, then you were never trying to listen."

Garrett, who's African American, and Stephanie Ybarra, who's LatinX, have been working explicitly to make their organizations anti-racist, as has Oskar Eustis, who's white. Recently, a document called We See You White American Theater, was published online with a list of demands for change. Ybarra says there's still pushback from a lot of theaters.

"We are not at a place where we can wrap our heads around what it looks like to be a collectively liberated field," she says. "We understand the word anti-racism now, but we are not yet at a place where we could imagine an arts sector or a theater field that was wholly and completely racially just. And it's a failure of imagination that keeps us from that future. Nothing else."

But imagination is the theater's engine.

"It's our job to try to make the future a better place," Eustis says. "It's our job to try to make the theater more democratic, more inclusive, more accessible, more anti-racist. That's what we've got to do. And so, I'm optimistic that we'll be able to continue doing that."

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What Will The Future Of Theater Look Like? 'Our Artists Are Going To Lead Us'

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Oskar Eustis, artistic director of The Public Theater in New York, knows firsthand about the coronavirus. Eustis was hospitalized with COVID on March 10, and by the time he was released five days later, everything was shut down. "I came out into a world that had no theater, and it's a different world," he says.

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"Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" Reunion Table Read

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"Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" Reunion Table Read

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'Scott Pilgrim vs. The World' Reunion Table Read | Entertainment Weekly

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I’ve been thinking a lot about actors who play real people that exist or have existed in real life. That must be extremely hard but also extremely rewarding if one does it justice. I know a lot of research goes into a character like that and I would love to hopefully get to play a role like that someday. I just think there’s so much to learn about playing someone like that and as an audience member it is powerful when you’re watching someone that can make you feel a connection to this real life person that exists that you don’t even know. The movie “Judy” comes to mind when thinking about this idea.

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I would like to feel more confident in my creative ability and process. I would like to learn more about design aspects besides for being onstage. I want to be able to work more collaboratively with others and create bigger and better things. Hopefully one day in the future, I can really create and grow a larger scale project that I am passionate about and very proud of. I just think about how people have that “this is my baby” attitude towards a project of theirs. I have done good work before, I’ve never felt something exactly like THAT.

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Someone That I Aspire to Have Their Career

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Someone That I Aspire to Have Their Career

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You know about Reese Witherspoon's production company, Hello Sunshine, right? No? We need to talk.

Were you obsessed with Big Little Lies to the point that the only GIF you used was Renata screaming, "I will not not be rich"? What about The Morning Show? Admit it: The Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston team-up was the only reason you subscribed to Apple TV+. In fact, I'm betting you're already wishing Hulu would drop all of Little Fires Everywhere this Wednesday, March 18, instead of just the first three episodes before shifting to a weekly schedule. We're all kind of on lockdown right now, after all.

Moral of the story: Witherspoon's production company is behind so many shows you love. Founded in 2016, Hello Sunshine is focused solely on telling women's stories. Here's everything you need to know.

Despite producing the film Wild (2014) and the series mentioned above, Witherspoon doesn't star in every Hello Sunshine project. Let's play a game: I'm going to list their notable projects by Witherspoon's production company, and you check off which you've seen:

Plus, there are plenty more TV shows and movies still to come:

That means a ton of your favorite celebrities have worked with Witherspoon and her production company. Laura Dern, Nicole Kidman, Zoë Kravitz, Shailene Woodley, and, famously, Meryl Streep might be the first that pop into your head thanks to Big Little Lies. However, there's also:

Women are at the center, onscreen and off: Each Hello Sunshine project is written, produced, and starring women. Witherspoon serves as executive producer, of course.

"Women have been silenced from a lot of the traditional storytelling process," CEO Sarah Harden has said. "We saw this connection between authentic, beautiful stories that show up on a screen where someone is going to take the time and say, 'Wow, that story, it feels like they understand me, that this was made for me, it reflects my experience.'"

Oh, and they also have a book club. Hello Sunshine is kind of famous for adapting books to screen, so it's worth checking out Reese's Book Club. What the woman in charge is reading may just become your next big binge.

Unfortunately for all of us, there are currently no plans for a second season of Little Fires Everywhere or a third for Big Little Lies. At least we suddenly have time on our hands to get reading.

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Reese Witherspoon's Production Company Is Behind So Much More Than 'Little Fires Everywhere'

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You know about Reese Witherspoon's production company, Hello Sunshine, right? No? We need to talk. Were you obsessed with Big Little Lies to the point that the only GIF you used was Renata screaming, "I will not not be rich"? What about The Morning Show ?

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Spark Magazine Issue No. 15: Amuse-Bouche

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Spark Magazine is a student-run fashion publication at The University of Texas at Austin.

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Reflection for Dance Lip Sync Movement - Spazz

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Reflection for Dance Lip Sync Movement - Spazz

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Collaboration - I thought that it was very easy to work with one another and we all got to pick parts that we liked. We were able to communicate very well. I feel no ones ideas where shot down but instead, we took ideas and crafted them to what we all wanted them to be.

Craft - I liked working on something a little more high energy and creative. There was a lot to work with and develop. Trying to figure out which pieces went where especially over zoom was challenging but I think we figured it out well. There were a good amount of "drafts" created before the final piece.

-Nicole R