Lauren Jost

The rehearsal process for object-based, non-narrative theatre is very different from the creation of a more traditionally structured play. Rather than starting with a script or a story or premise, we tend to start with a pile of stuff, or perhaps some sketches, that we find interesting. “Wink” was largely inspired by a glowing, LED juggling ball. “Under the Tree” started with the idea of a tent that looked like a tree. We start to play around, finding what these objects are capable of and what is interesting about them. What is interesting to us.

Theatre for the very young is based on the kinds of questions that very young children ask about the world around them.

What is that?

What does that do?

Can I touch it?

How does it work?

Young children are not particularly interested in a story or character arc, so neither are we. Our stories mirror the experiences of young children, exploring the world around them, making sense of new experiences, discovering how things are similar or different to other things that they already know about. Theatrically, this is achieved by creating visual and tactile moments that are familiar enough to put into a context, but that include some element that is magic, illusion, or mystery. In our rehearsal process, we focus on creating these moments or these objects that will stimulate our audience’s curiosity and engagement (and in some cases their active participation). After we have a bunch of those moments, we have to find a way to string them all together. This involves a lot of stuff. Bags of stuff. Piles of stuff. Sometimes half a rehearsal is spent just unpacking and repacking the stuff we need and making lists of what we still don’t have.

In a traditional theatre-making process, tech week is the final week before opening night and all of the props, costumes, and set arrive to complete the visual aspects of the play. In object-based theatre and puppetry, tech needs to have happened long before this point because with no set and props, there is no show. The tech is everything.

In our recent residency at the Miranda Arts Project Space, we discovered the joys of an extensive workshop-performance phase. We were able to do 12 public performances for which no tickets were sold and the whole community invited in to be a part of our process. Sometimes only a handful of people showed up, sometimes it was full. But each performance was very different and we were able to experiment with different timings, moments, effects, and objects to work towards our desired effect. Because of this process, we can now confidently head into our official premier in Brooklyn for our home audience, confident that we are on more solid ground.

We’re still developing our rehearsal process and finding the best way to develop new work. There’s a lot of trial and error and sometimes we find that we skipped a step that should have been finished weeks before. But that’s what I love about this process: it’s always new, always evolving, never perfected.

We began our first workshop performances of Under the Tree in Port Chester this last weekend. In honor of this performance, I wanted to share some of our thoughts about creating interactive theatre with very young (ages 0-5) audiences. We have to consider many, many things, and here are a few that we spent a lot of time thinking about while crafting this uniquely interactive show.

Everything will be touched. And probably quite a few things will be chewed on as well. From the cloth drapes lining the walls to the glass-bead feet of the water skimmer bug puppets, we anticipted that every element needed to stand up to intense tactile exploration by small hands. We made sure that everything that needed to stay fixed was firmly attached, and that everything that was intended to be picked up could withstand a lot of use. Our aesthetic is very hand-crafted and we want everything we have in this show to look like it is made out of familiar materials, but even though it looks slapped together during an afternoon playdate, weeks of planning and buckets of hot glue went into ensuring that our props were up to the challenge of the audience.

Teaching the rules. In any interactive theatre, the audience wants to have the rules for participation clearly defined. If you talk to the performers, will they talk back to you? Can you go on stage? Should you keep your shoes on? In theatre for young audiences, this applys doubly because not only do we have to teach the rules of participation to the kids, we also need to teach it to their adult companions. Kids are used to being told where they can sit, when they can touch something, so they are eager to learn the rules. Also, young children have much less experience with theatre, so they haven’t been trained to sit quietly and passively watch - participating comes naturally to them. Adults, however, want to make sure that their kids are not misbehaving and bring a lot of baggage into the space about what an audience member’s role is during a show. We decided that at the beginning of the show we would tell the audience “NO” before we told them “YES,” letting them know that it isn’t a free for all and that we would have certain rules about what you could do when. But after that we try to give them clear instructions (sometimes with our voices, sometimes by modeling behavior with a puppet) about how to move around the space and touch the objects. Once everyone is on board with knowing the rules of the game, it is much easier to sit back and enjoy the story.

What IS the story? Children under 5 are largely non-narrative. While they are very interested in cause and effect and how incidents fit into a larger context, they are not particularly interested in a character’s emotional growth or figurative journey. Under the Tree has a loose story of a young girl running away from home and finding a new hiding spot, but the “plot” of the story is mostly her discoveries within the new place. This perfectly matches the developmental desires of our young audience to experience new things within a familiar context and appreciate a story as it relates to their own experience. Half of our audience, however is much older than 5 and does need that narrative arc. During this weekend’s performances we discovered that we needed more solid narrative action (or at least more clearly expressed action) for the adults in our audience and are currently working on finding stronger ways to “raise the stakes” and express the character’s emotional journey.

It has been a great development phase for this play and we are learning so much from every audience we have join us “under the tree.” I look forward to sharing more about our development in the future and producing this show in Brooklyn in June!

“2012 New Year’s Resolution: next time I spend the whole week obsessing about why someone hasn’t responded to an email, I’m going to check my drafts to make sure I sent it.”  

I managed to meet that goal and also a few others (taking up running, getting wisdom teeth out, makings some theatre that I’m really proud of, getting rid of cable).  This really was the year of stopping making excuses and just getting things done.  The flip side of that is that I have had to come to terms with the fact that if there are things in my life that are NOT getting done (floors unmopped, savings accounts unbuffered) it’s simply because I don’t want it bad enough.  I don’t know if it’s possible to change everything all at once and become a whole new person, complete and without the flaws I’ve managed to develop over the years, but at least I’ve stopped giving up before even starting.  

This year I’m planning to make even more theatre that I can hopefully be just as proud of, collaborate with new people, plunge into new artforms, and perform in new places.  Combine these with my goals to keep doing yoga thrice weekly, run a 10k and maybe tackle those floors and savings, the list is getting dauntingly long. I read an article yesterday about how ““Willpower is a unitary and depletable resource: the more of it you use making one change, the less you’ll have left over to make others.” It’s too easy to say that I’m going to change EVERYTHING and then feel disappointed when I don’t meet that impossible goal.  So even though I have lofty plans and dreams for this year, I’m not going to make those my 2013 resolutions.

My 3 year old son’s goal for this new year is to “go down the curvy slide.” I am inspired by his simplicity, focus, and bravery.  So I think my 2013 goal is simply to read some new books and listen to new music.  It may not change my life, but it is a small goal that I know will make me happy.  And hopefully the rest will come along too, not just because I made a New Year’s resolution, but because I keep resolving, every day, to choose action over inaction and put my energies towards things that I can be proud of.