Models of Collaboration

What makes up a successful creative collaboration in the theater?  Rules?  Freedom?  Safely?  Lack of safety? Access to deep and personal emotions that can be revealed and guided into unique artistic unity? In your profession, who knows how to do this well?

How do theater-makers find others who want to join the team?  The creation of great theater has ranged from productions led by rigorous tyrants to collective creations with no roles defined at all.  Which have resulted in the best work?   Or perhaps, which works lend themselves to being created by which means?  How are collaborative teams made – both in theater and in other areas of life?  Who does this well?  Are there guidelines for creating innovative and productive creative spaces in other professions?  What are they? How do you know, as you go along, if a rehearsal process is free and un-self-censored?  Should it be?  Our Lab this summer drew on our directors’ personal experiences: the rehearsals they have led themselves, the rehearsals they have observed and ones from the past they had read about, to explore many models of collaboration.

Lab Participants
Naser Al Sughaiyer
Ahmed Saeed Al-Aradi
Milosh Andonovski
Crizelle Anthony
Spencer Armstrong
Arthur Banshayeko
Elizabeth Bennett
Eleanor Bishop
Ronn Burton
Brenna Corner
Dennis Corsi
Sofia Courtoisie
Pete Danelski
Felien De Smedt
Sandy Doria
Jee Duman
Michaela Escarcega
John-Philip Faienza
Zoë Golub-Sass
Emily Green
Hashem Haider
Kevaughn Harvey
Luke Hereford
Besfort Idrizi
Hadley Kamminga-Peck
Nikita Kobelev
Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li
Tamara Mathiesen
Christine McBurney
Teresa Mock
Katherine Nesbitt
Callie Nestleroth
Stephen Nicolazzo
Vinny Eden Ortega
Ingrid Oslund
Hyeonji Park
Léa Pheulpin
Maria Carolina Pulsoni
Nirvania Quesada
Andros Alfredo Colcha Quintanilla
Sunandha Raghunathan
Mira Rakhmanova
Lily Riopelle
Camila Milenka Roeschmann
Amy Taylor Rosenblum
Douglas Dubois Sebamala
Jack Serio
Sifan Shao
Alexander Ming-Shiu Shaw
Bridget Grace Sheaff
Amy Stebbins
Bronwyn Steinberg
Jennifer Susi
Annie Helena Valentina
Merel van Huisstede
Renata Wimer
Renee Yeong
Katie Young


Lab Designers
Domitille Angoulvant
Christopher Annas-Lee
Reza Behjat
Adrian Bridges
Lacey Erb
Hunter Kaczorowski
Alex Moore
Jake Poser
Paige Seber

Lab Actors
James Alfred
Edward Chin-Lyn
Liam Craig
Hiram Delgado
Julia Greer
Moses Ingram
Ben Katz
Casey Killoran
James McCaffrey
Olivia Oguma
Dave Register
Mark Kenneth Smaltz
Calvin Leon Smith
Nilaja Sun
Sarah Tolan-Mee
Tiffany Villarin
Rita Wolf

Lab Staff
Lab Director: Anne Cattaneo
Lab Coordinator: Chris De Camilis
Lab Assistant: Kerry Candeloro

Stage Management
Seth Betzler
Geoff Boronda
Jonathan Castanien
Elizabeth Goodman
Katie Kennedy
Tim Love
Erin McCoy
Suzanne Milton
Adithya Pratama
Norman Small
TaTyana Smith
Priscilla Vilanueva

Master Artists
André Bishop
Ayad Akhtar
Lileana Blain-Cruz
Rubén Poleno
Ann Roth
Bartlett Sher

Master Artist Sessions
Conversation with Ayad Akhtar
Discussion with André Bishop
Discussion with Ann Roth
Discussion with Lileana Blain-Cruz
Workshop with Bartlett Sher on the directing methods of Tadeusz Kantor
Discussion with Rubén Polendo


Group Activities
Lincoln Center Theater Performance of The Rolling Stone, dir. Saheem Ali

Shared Sessions
Everybody Thinks- Ahmed Saeed Al-Aradi
Medusa Strategy- Milosh Andonovski
The Grotesque in Contemporary Theater-Hashem Haider
The Director’s Craft by Katie Mitchell- Besfort Idrizi
Alvis Hermanis’ Long Life- Nikita Kobelev
The Living Theatre’s “A Day in the Life of the City”- Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li
Everything Moves: Lecoq-based Theatre- Teresa Mock
Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed- Ingrid Oslund
The Directing Methods of Calixto Bieito- Maria Carolina Pulsoni
Gecko Theater- Andros Quintanilla
The Directing Methods of Robert Icke- Jack Serio
Exploding Moment- Annie Helena Valentina
The Directing Methods of Lola Arias- Amy Taylor Rosenblum
Second Circle- Naser Al-Sughaiyer
Traditional Tamil Theatre- Sunandha Raghunathan
Rimini Protokoll- Camila Roseschmann
Pyotr Fomenko and Russian Theatre- Mira Rakhmanova

The 2019 Lab participants rehearsed and discussed: 

Godblog by Jeanette Winterson
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
The Surrogate by Achiro P. Olwoch