AMERICAN THEATRE | The Process Itself Can Be the Revolution 

More. More theatre. More from theatre. I don’t need theatre to occur to me.  I wish to make theatre occur.

This eager for artistic company is what first led me to the Tectonic Theater Project’s Moment Work, a technique of devising theatre that locations energy within the palms of its makers, created by the award-winning firm that has introduced the world Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, The Laramie Project, and Here There Are Blueberries.

I had simply shared this want with my profession and mindset coach, Melissa “PK” Tonning-Kollwitz, who had already signed up for Tectonic’s Summer Intensive. They nudged me to hitch. First I bought Moment Work: Tectonic Theater Project’s Process of Devising Theater, devoured each web page, and introduced Moment Work workout routines into my appearing lessons at Miami Country Day School. My college students jumped in feet-first. Their pleasure confirmed what I felt; Tectonic’s course of is perhaps the “more” I had been trying to find.

Around the identical time, I used to be invited to hitch City Theatre Miami’s Homegrown Playwriting Cohort. Suddenly I used to be making theatre each professionally and personally. The synchronicity was inconceivable to disregard. Were all these kismet moments main me to the “more” I used to be in search of? I needed to discover out. So I joined PK and signed up for Tectonic’s summer time intensive.

Tectonic’s Moment Work is designed to make theatre from the bottom up by constructing “moments” with theatrical parts like mild, gesture, sound, prop, and structure earlier than including narrative. It’s an ensemble-driven, collaborative strategy to creating which means. Now, a couple of weeks after finishing the week-long coaching—5 days within the Professional Development Intensive for Teachers, adopted by a two-day Devising Intensive for Theatre Educators—I’m nonetheless unpacking the influence. Guided by longtime firm member Leigh Fondakowski, chair of the Moment Work Institute and head author of The Laramie Project, and superior instructing artist Scott Barrow, we immersed ourselves in Moment Work not solely as an inventive methodology, however as classroom technique and as a philosophy of studying.

As an educator and an artist new to this technique, I used to be notably drawn to Moment Work’s emphasis on scholar company. I’ve spent greater than 20 years serving to college students discover their voice, onstage and off-. I educate them how one can interpret textual content, sure, but additionally how one can create their very own. Traditional strategies typically go away some college students behind. Moment Work confirmed me how one can attain them.

The Tectonic Summer Intensive affirmed this reality: We’re not simply making ready college students to carry out theatre. We’re making ready them to form the world. Devised work empowers younger artists to create deeply private, inquiry-based theatre grounded of their lived expertise. At its greatest, devised work invitations younger artists to create deeply private theatre, rooted in inquiry, and reflective of the world as they expertise it.

What I discovered contained in the theatre lab was a imaginative and prescient of schooling the place course of is sacred and which means is co-created. Surrounded by beneficiant, passionate educators, I noticed what’s potential once we worth curiosity over product.

Day 1-2: Why Devise?

I’ve by no means skilled such a big selection of individuals multi function place: grad college students, professors, center and highschool lecturers, skilled actors, and designers, all within the room, able to play. Though the primary 5 days have been known as the Professional Development Intensive, they consisted of copious quantities of foolish play punctuated the dialog round pedagogy, and an countless quantity of wildly mental dialog.

We established group agreements, together with “Listening to inform, not to condemn,” and cultivated an “Idea Garden,” an area for “thought seeds” to develop. No hierarchy, no fastened outcomes. Just a room of educators and artists dedicated to discovery.

We centered on one factor at a time, reawakening our childhood curiosity, and questioning: When did we cease asking questions? Why did we abandon our investigative creativeness?

“It occurred to me just how much I’ve let go of this key tool in my toolbox as I transitioned from child to adolescent and then again to adult: my ability to investigate through imagination,” mirrored Adithi Chandrashekar, third-year fellow on the University of Texas at Austin’s Michener Center for Writers. “Moment Work helped me look at world-building through the eyes of my inner child.”

Moment Work inspired us to think about motion with out narrative, sound with out dialogue, a prop that calls for consideration. This strategy doesn’t embellish with theatrical parts; it prompts them. In workout routines like “I begin, I end,” we embraced impulse, silence, and juxtaposition. Everything grew to become about “dehabitualization,” i.e., seeing with curiosity. No solutions. More questions.

Lighting grew to become a language; sound grew to become a setting. Architecture within the room formed relationships. As we layered on every theatrical factor, moments of narrative emerged organically. Story emerged, however not a script. The emphasis wasn’t on storytelling simply but. 

Day 3: Simple Addition

A brand new mantra took root: “Your job is not to make a play. Your job is to make a moment.” We have been challenged to carry off the editor, to remain in generative mode.

In one pivotal train, we layered mild, sound, and a single line of textual content. It was gorgeous to see how easy addition shifted the whole lot. We then discovered how one can rating our moments, analyzing construction, stress, and sequence. How lengthy ought to a second final? What adjustments once we take away sound? How does lighting focus consideration or evoke thriller? These structural selections elevate devised theatre from exploration to craft. That’s a lesson I’ll carry with me as each a trainer and a maker.

“As educators, we’re often trained to lead with text or analysis,” famous Jason Peck, director of theatre on the Benjamin School. “But this process reminded me that story can live in stillness, in the angle of a light, in the friction between bodies in space.”

We studied the Organizing Principle, outlined because the central query or impulse behind a chunk. Moments don’t must “say” one thing instantly; they reply to that precept and evolve alongside it. The Organizing Principle is a thread we comply with.

At the tip of day three, as we gathered to mirror, Scott stated that as educators, we’re answerable for giving college students the instruments to make their work. At the school stage, actors ought to go away with marketable abilities. Helping them create work is significant in constructing company as an artist, quite than ready for another person to create work and rent them. 

Moment Work may also supply a means in for a lot of college students who don’t see themselves mirrored in conventional theatre. Said Nick Erickson, a professor at Louisiana State University, “Teaching theatre artists a Stanislavsky-based method toward their craft is still essential, but it is not enough. Actors also need to know how to be theatremakers as well. There they can find autonomy, confidence, grounding, and a sense of self. They find their voice.”

Day 4: Virtuosity and the Collective

By Day 4, we have been not only a cohort. We have been an organization. We had begun to construct a shared language via our moments, and now the main focus shifted to one thing extra profound: discursive energy. Every factor onstage, from lighting to a prop or a gesture, has the potential to “speak.” The query now grew to become: What is being stated, and how is it being stated—not solely via textual content, however via the entire theatrical vocabulary?

We explored how which means may be constructed throughout moments, and the way the chronology of these moments alters the story. Change the order, and also you don’t simply change the narrative—you generate new content material. That’s the magic of devised work. Structure is just not fastened; it’s an energetic, evolving resolution that shapes understanding.

“In Moment Work, you are not trying to do anything, to be smart, or sophisticated, or funny,” stated Fondakowski. “You’re simply trying to play and allow yourself to observe and be delighted or surprised. It is amazing, especially, to watch young people who might be feeling peer pressure or self-conscious in front of their classmates give themselves over to the task at hand. What can this light or costume piece do that I didn’t know it could do?”

A spotlight of at the present time was the Virtuosity train, a expertise stock during which every of us shared a novel talent or “virtuosity” we introduced into the room. One trainer created a second by praying a decade of the rosary in two languages in below a minute. Another might match their total physique via a wire garments hanger. One carried out magic card methods, and yet one more did a yoga headstand. The room lit up with risk. This train launched the sense during which a person is an thrilling and important a part of the collective.

As Jason Peck famous, “I’ve already seen how much more present and curious students become when they are given that kind of ownership. They stop waiting for permission and start following their instincts. It opens up something deeper.” The virtuosity train did simply that: It confirmed us the facility of giving an artist room to deliver themselves into the room.

Day 5: Following a Hunch

Our artistic muscle tissue now warmed, we moved into extra superior territory: constructing towards narrative. But not within the conventional sense. Narrative didn’t start with plot. It started with a hunch. A stress. A curiosity. We have been every given an obituary for an unnamed particular person, from which we pulled themes and created moments. Text got here final.

From the obituaries we learn, we constructed organizing rules out of seemingly disconnected details, then created three moments every, incorporating textual content. (We didn’t discover out till a lot later that the obituaries we got have been all for a similar man.) Then we sequenced and re-sequenced our moments, watching as totally different combos yielded totally new meanings. It was an exciting reminder that type can drive which means, not vice versa.

As we layered, contextualized, and sequenced, we started to see how a play may emerge not from a single creator’s imaginative and prescient, however from a collaborative investigation. That’s what makes Moment Work so highly effective in schooling: Artists are not ready for somebody handy them a play. They are populating the room with concepts, shaping narrative from the within out. 

While it was thrilling, this work was not straightforward. It felt irritating, even. As exhausting because it was for me to struggle my must construct a story, we have been reminded that our job is to not know upfront however to check out a second—simply put it out into the room. As we created moments, we might encourage one another. We created our room’s collective language via second work, one second at a time. 

The room grew to become an archive of which means.

This was our final day working with Scott Barrow. He left us with a problem. As he put it, “I am thrilled to think about the forms and the new plays that the next generation of theatremakers are going to be creating. We are demanding that our students think outside of the box and create new forms and new ideas. That’s the legacy of Moment Work: We’re giving young artists the tools to create exciting and innovative work that we can’t even possibly imagine.”

It is as much as us, their lecturers, to domesticate that curiosity. 

Days 6-7: On the Hunt

The remaining two days have been led by Leigh Fondakowski, whose management introduced depth. “The content is the ‘what,’ the form is the ‘how’,” Fondakowski reminded us. In Level III work, we shifted our focus from exploration to authorship. Research itself grew to become generative. Inquiry grew to become technique.

We brainstormed like confetti, tossing out concepts, trusting one thing would stick. Moment Work grew to become a mode of investigation. We discovered to “mine” for which means via guided questions and writing workout routines. Leigh emphasised analysis as a artistic act—not simply gathering details however finding entry factors.

“In an era where it is nearly impossible to have all the students focused at the same time, Moment Work also becomes a tool for mindfulness, precision, and attention,” Leigh famous.

We discovered that Level III is filtered via the maker. The playwright in me felt at residence as Leigh led us via an train on selecting a topic. We labored in teams to collect sources to mine articles, books, interviews, and so on. At this level, concepts started to emerge organically from the collective. We have been reminded to take heed to the place the textual content would take root. We have been on the hunt.

By Day 7, we weren’t simply theatremakers; we have been theatre investigators, shaping efficiency via each expressive software at our disposal. We additionally explored the steadiness between desk work and studio work. In our desk work, we recognized matters that piqued our curiosity within the analysis and mirrored on them as a bunch.

“If we give time to exploring the forms, the time will always pay large returns in theatrical magic and innovation and delight,” Leigh noticed. “We’ll remember why we love the theatre and how to ensure best that the theatre as an art form continues to grow.” Once we have been up on our ft, we might take a look at these concepts bodily.

I need to admit this was my favourite a part of the method—a lot in order that I undoubtedly would have liked to have spent extra time with it. 

In Conclusion: Power to the Process

I found one thing important via this course of: To empower story makers, you will need to first empower their lecturers. Tectonic’s Moment Work sits on the intersection of pedagogy and artistry. It presents a platform for company, collaboration, and truth-telling. As educators, we frequently ask: How will we assist our college students turn out to be higher performers, vital thinkers, stronger collaborators? What if the reply lies not solely in instructing current performs however in giving college students the instruments to make their very own?

Theatre educators are known as to do greater than stage performs. We are known as to construct platforms. To create areas the place younger folks can creator their truths, problem dominant narratives, and reimagine the world. Devised theatre, notably via strategies like Moment Work, presents a radical pedagogical software: It locations artistic energy straight into younger folks’s palms.

“Even within our abbreviated schedule, this experience shows that it takes time to form an ensemble, build a shared vocabulary, and create new work,” mirrored Patrick Mark Saunders, a theatre artist and educator at the moment within the theatre and efficiency research PhD program at University of Maryland, College Park. “Moment Work challenges us to embrace process.”

Affirmed Jason Peck, “Teaching students how to look, how to hold discomfort, and how to bear witness feels more urgent now than ever.”

“Moment Work has challenged how I think about theatre, how I make theatre, and now how I teach it,” mirrored Melissa “PK” Tonning-Kollwitz. “It’s imperative that we remain self-reflexive and continue to question what we have inherited.”

As somebody who has spent greater than 20 years serving to college students discover their voices onstage, I discovered this expertise transformational. I now carry this work ahead with renewed objective. I’ve all the time believed that theatre belongs to everybody. But now I see extra clearly how the method itself may be the revolution. It can ignite a scholar’s sense of voice. My classroom will now embrace extra questions, extra moments, extra freedom to fail, and extra methods for college students to be seen. More theatre!

This work isn’t straightforward. It requires rigor, persistence, and belief. Tectonic Theatre Project’s work reminds us that devised theatre isn’t nearly what we make. It’s about how we make it. And, most significantly, who we make it with.

And so we start.

Cristina Pla-Guzman is an award-winning theatre educator, author, director, and performer whose work has been acknowledged by the Tony Awards and Carnegie Mellon; Stephen Schwartz and The ASCAP Foundation; and Stephen Sondheim, the Kennedy Center, and the Educational Theatre Association. She is a fellow of the O’Neill Theater Center’s NCI and a TCG Rising Leader of Color. She has her Masters in Special Education, and a BFA from FIU. Pla serves on the board of trustees for the Florida Theatrical Association and is an endowed chair at Miami Country Day School.