We’ve been playing with a very hot hand this season at Women’s Project, with Kirsten Greenidge’s Obie-winning  MILK LIKE SUGAR and Catherine Trieschmann’s HOW THE WORLD BEGAN. Next up on our stage is WE PLAY FOR THE GODS, a world premiere play that has been entirely conceived and created by 14 artists of the WP Lab, a free two-year residency program for early to mid-career women playwrights, directors, and producers. It will run at off-Broadway’s Cherry Lane Theater from June 1-23.

The journey to the GODS started about two years ago, when I was told—many, many times and with varying degrees of good humor—that I was crazy. People in my circle (and in my corner) could not wrap their heads around the idea of handing over a main stage production to a group of artists that I did not know (because they had not yet been selected for the 2010-2012 WP Lab) to create a play that had no specific ideas attached in terms of content or form.

While initially terrifying, WE PLAY FOR THE GODS has proven joyously liberating.

Before I get to the liberating part, let me address the terrifying aspect. There are a lot of sound reasons why producers—especially those of the institutional variety—refuse to intentionally jeopardize the bottom line. But let’s face it: every production is a major financial risk. There is no such thing as a “sure hit,” and if there were, we’d all be producing them all the time. We’re obliged to please so many masters—boards, donors, investors, critics, artists and audiences, to name the obvious—and this sometimes leads us to make safer choices than we otherwise might. There’s no time to be self-sabotaging, and precious little incentive to be brave. All of this presumably prohibits inviting a group of unknown artists to have their way with hard-won dollars.

But that’s what we did at Women’s Project. Megan Carter, WP’s Associate Artistic Director and an exceptional collaborator, and I got hold of some dismal statistic or another showing (yet again) that women theater artists were seriously lacking in professional opportunities on our American stages. We started banging our heads and, depending on your perspective, either knocked a screw loose or knocked some sense into ourselves. In either case, we decided we could single-handedly impact the employment statistics for women theater artists—a statistic that persistently hovers at 20% nationwide—by giving a legitimate off-Broadway production credit to every Lab artist in the 2010-2012 Lab.

And that was pretty much all we had to decide. The Herculean task of creating and producing the actual show was given over to our Lab artists.

With this meaty opportunity in their hands—and by meaty, I mean a fully capitalized, professionally paid, and aggressively marketed production—the Lab artists got to work. And they stayed at work. They’re still working. And the harder they have worked, the more liberated I have become. Hey, I even had time to write this blog.

All this to say:  I’m gobsmackingly grateful for this production. I’ve been reinvigorated by these artists—by their dedication, moxie and talent. This enormous collaborative production has ironically given me much-needed time to dream up crazy ideas for future seasons.  And time to be thankful for those who gave me opportunities early on, despite my lack of bona fides, which allowed me to develop a viable career in the theater.  Oh yes, these are liberating outcomes, born simply of a determination to give talented women theater artists a chance to beat the statistics, show their mettle, and play for the gods. Perhaps not so crazy after all.

Julie Crosby has been Producing Artistic Director of Women’s Project since 2007. As Artistic Director, Julie has produced 14 plays, including Catherine Trieschmann’s Crooked and How the World Began, Liz Duffy Adams’ Or, Rachel Axler’s Smudge, Sheila Callaghan’s Lascivious Something, and Kirsten Greenidge’s Milk Like Sugar. Previously, Julie worked for over two decades on and off Broadway, and on international productions, including On Golden Pond starring James Earl Jones, Eve Ensler’s The Good Body, Laurie Anderson’s Songs & Stories From Moby Dick, Black And Blue starring Ruth Brown, and the famed musical Carrie, among many others.  Julie also produced New Faces Of ’04 at Carnegie Hall for Skitch Henderson and The New York Pops.

Alexandra Collier is a member of the Playwrights Lab

I’d like to ask you about living overseas. Has that impacted you as a writer, either logistically in terms of language or in a more spiritual way?

On a superficial level, there are colloquialisms that I’ve had to adjust. But, I think it’s a bigger shift than that: That only starts to open the can of worms, which is there’s something going on which I haven’t quite worked out yet, but it’s to do with the shift in geography. It interrupts your writing in a way that is simultaneously interesting and sometimes frustrating. Sometimes the interruption is the producer voice in your head saying, “this is not produceable on an American stage. Why are you writing an Australian character?”. Then sometimes the interruption is – you’re writing an American character, but you are an Australian, so you are searching around in this weird void trying to place the person and it’s really ephemeral. It’s hard to explain, but I think what I do often as a way to solve that (in my attempt to write plays that can be performed in America, that could be potentially American characters) is that I write plays that are set in other places.

These are all the things I’m constantly dealing with. I’m writing a play at the moment for the Women’s Project that’s set in America – I mean it’s assumably set in America, we never even talked about setting it anywhere else. I’m writing these scenes and I’m thinking to myself, “hmm I wonder if this is Australian sounding?” There’s a little part of me that’s having that thought, and at the same time I think, ‘you know what? You can’t do anything about that.’ That will be maybe the wonderful disjunction between an American actor reading your words and what you’ve written on the page. Maybe that will create something new. That’s the hope – that you create something new by being an outsider – that you bring something quirky, and fresh and strange in a way that that opens up new possibilities. That’s the positive realm that I try and keep my mind in when I get too overwhelmed by this stuff.

Will you tell me, also, about the Women’s Project Lab? What’s is that experience like? Is there anything important about the fact that it’s women, or is that tangential?

The experience has been fantastic. It’s really opened up so many career possibilities for me in New York. It’s given me amazing mentors like Megan (Carter) and Julie (Crosby). And again, it’s plugging me into this community of people. Out of this experience, I got an agent and my plays have been read by more people. I’ve learned professional skills, how to pitch myself in ways I didn’t know how to do before. So, I think the lab is really invaluable.

As for whether it’s important that’s it women, I think the Women’s Project consciously is fighting against being pigeonholed as a theatre company that deals with women’s issues because they don’t. I think they have an interest in plays that are incredibly diverse, and the thing that unifies them is that they happen to be written by women. It’s called the Women’s Project and that name in some ways has limited the way other people have thought about the company, which perhaps says more about people, and more about gender stereotypes than it does about the Women’s Project.

But as for whether it’s important that it’s all women – being in a lab in a room full of women, communicating with a room full of women, is different. I can’t deny it. It’s different than sitting in a room that’s mixed gender or a room that’s more men. It is different because, although I don’t think you can make reductionist statements about gender, there is a lot of communicating that goes on about communicating. We’re more considered in the way we communicate, which can be a blessing and a curse. We’re more in tune with, perhaps, how our thoughts and feelings are received, and how other people are feeling. Someone’s going to stick me in the eye for saying all this, but that has definitely come into play in this process when we’ve been making this show. We’ve all noticed this – sometimes it drives us nuts -”Do we have to communicate about everything because we’re a bunch of women in a room?” And then other times, it’s appreciated because we understand each other.

I think there are a lot of challenges in making a group show, and one of them is that you have to work out what your common language is, and we’ve done that.

To read Alexandra’s complete interview with Cristin Kelly, visit The Australian Writers Project

Directing in the theater can be a bit of a lonely job.  At the end of the day, the actors go home, the designers plug away in their studios, and the stage manager sends the rehearsal report and puts away his prompt book. It is 2am on a Tuesday, but the director finds herself still awake, surrounded by her script, her image research, and the chicken scratch that eventually translates into notes to be disseminated and staging to be implemented. In her dreams, her morning ritual, her steps to the subway, her ride in some elevator, the wheels are still turning. Charged with the task of holding the big picture product in her head while tending to all the minutiae of the rehearsal room process, the director never clocks out. She strategizes what she hopes will be a perfect collision of the creative team’s efforts to realize a production in its most truthful and rigorous form. The director lives and breathes the play well beyond the final minutes of her rehearsals and production meetings, attempting to find the balance between pre-emptive logistical efficiency and creating space for beautiful ideas to crash and burn or break through to their greatest heights. And in the moments spent struggling with the big questions—Is this the right choice? The best choice? The safe, the obvious, the lazy choice? -  she sighs with relief when she remembers that the amazing minds of her artistic team struggle alongside her, chipping away at that illusive, unwieldy animal that is the creative act.

In a culture mostly focused on developing the work of playwrights, it is rare to find a forum in which directors get together to talk about their work, let alone have the opportunity to work alongside each other in a shared creative process. Enter the Four-Headed Director Monster, a term affectionately coined to describe the four directors co-directing the upcoming Women’s Project production of WE PLAY FOR THE GODS. As we head into rehearsal, we embark upon a unique opportunity to see what happens when the visions and aesthetics of four very different directors talk to each other inside one singular production. Our process isn’t foolproof. Case in point: In this incarnation, that 2am brainstorm you had with yourself is now a meeting that must accommodate the conflicting schedules of four people with four very different opinions trying to collectively hash out the best solution. We four have had glimpses of directing by consensus together. Since last June, we’ve been developing the play from scratch with the playwrights. We discovered through our several workshops together that the Four-Headed Director Monster that is Mia Rovegno, Sarah Rasmussen, Nicole Watson and Jessi Hill, has an uncanny ability to finish each other’s sentences. We immediately found a short hand to define the creative process we’re pursuing. Most importantly, we were energized and inspired by each other’s unique approaches and ideas. So not only do we get to tackle this production as a team, but we also have the luxury of stepping back to watch each other direct every day in the rehearsal room. And in this stepping up and stepping back, we hope to create something that none of us could possibly dream up by ourselves at 2am on a Tuesday.

Mia Rovegno is a Brooklyn-based director, playwright, and puppeteer who devises, adapts and collaborates with living playwrights. Selected directing: Christina Anderson’s Good Goods (O’Neill Playwrights Conference), The Tenant by Dylan Dawson, Bekah Brunstetter, Tommy Smith, Paul Cohen, Sarah Burgess, Steven Levenson (Associate director, Woodshed Collective), Exquisite Corpse (Clubbed Thumb), The Civilians’ Pretty Filthy II (Joe’s Pub) and The Divorce Tales Live (WNYC Greene Space), Joshua Elias Harmon’s Love in the Time of Channukah (Ars Nova and Hangar Theatre), Dan LeFranc’s Origin Story (Hangar Theatre), Diana Fithian’s Girls on the Clock (Summer Playwrights Rep). Her plays Apartment, Kill The Keepers (co-written with Dan LeFranc), Darleen and Trent Go To Raj Palace and hoisington, kansas have been developed by P73, Culture Project, New Georges, Perishable Theater, and foolsFURY. Founding artistic director of HummingbirdWORKS, she has performed with Redmoon Theater, Shadowlight, Bread and Puppet Theater, Intersection for the Arts, foolsFURY and others. She has developed new plays by Erik Ehn, Kate E. Ryan, Kim Rosenstock, Jon Kern, Nick Jones, Michael Mitnick, Susan Stanton, Megan Mostyn-Brown, Mary Hamilton, Sam Marks, Jon Caren, Carla Ching, Mia Chung, Alexandra Collier, Martyna Majok, Joe Waechter, and others for Soho Rep, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Partial Comfort, The Civilians, New Dramatists, Dixon Place, A.R.T., Lincoln Center Directors Lab, The Tank, and Brown University/A.R.T. Institute Bakeoff.  She is a recipient of the P73 Yale Summer Residency, MTC’s Jonathan Alper Directing Fellowship, SDC Directing Observership, and 2010 Ockrent Directing Fellowship nominee; Alum of the Drama League, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and Lincoln Center Directors Lab; Member of The Civilians R and D Group and The Jam (New Georges Affiliated Artist); Former teaching fellow and guest lecturer at Brown University and adjunct faculty at New College of California; currently Assistant Professor in the Hunter College Theatre Dept. BS: Northwestern. MFA: Brown University/Trinity Rep Consortium. Upcoming projects: Burnt Umber by Erik Ehn (LaMaMa), nothin’s gonna change my world (Civilians R&D Group).

A few months ago I started calling our director team “the friendly-4-headed-director-monster.”  It still feels like the most accurate description of our team to me. We are all striving to be of one mind about the direction of the play each time we receive a new draft, but the concept of having 4 directors equally controlling the creative process can seem frightening and maybe even like a recipe for disaster to any outside eye.  There is, of course, a lot of risk involved as this experimental set-up, but I think the challenge is something that excites and whets our theatrical appetites.

Our director collaboration will demand constant communication so the actors and design team consistently feel like we are a unified front. So far, what’s been a real surprise to all of us, is that we are not only open to experiencing what it will be like to fully collaborate as directors; but that we have already been able to experience the joys and benefits of having 3 other directors eyes on every moment – we all see something the other may not see. And when we disagree we have been able to have challenging and fun conversations without taking anything personally.

Though we each come from different backgrounds and approach our processes in different ways we all seem to share many of the same aesthetic tastes and truly trust and respect each other.  We are eager to put the unified front we’ve built to the test in the rehearsal room and see how our process evolves.

Looking forward to bringing the 4-headed-director-monster into the rehearsal room in a few weeks!

Jessi D. Hill is a theatre director and recently named Associate Artistic Director of terraNOVA Collective. Recent credits include: Sladjana Vujovic’s The Tender Mercies (One Year Lease at Teatro Circulo, NYC), Mia McCullough’s Lucinda’s Bed (Chicago Dramatists), Alena Smith’s It or Her (soloNOVA Arts Festival at PS122, Berkshire Fringe Festival, 2010 Frigid Festival Audience Choice Award, NYC) Jeff Grow’s Creating Illusion (terraNOVA Collective, 2 New York Innovative Theatre Awards, NYC),  Johnna Adams’ Angel Eaters (Flux Theatre Ensemble, 6 New York Innovative Theatre Award Nominations, NYC), The Children’s Hour (Astoria Performing Arts Center, NYC), as well as many new plays in development at The New Group, The Lark, The Playwrights Realm, Red Fern, Diverse City, among others.  She has been Staff Repertory Director for The Acting Company, a Director-in-Residence at Ensemble Studio Theatre, an Affiliated Artist of New Georges and a guest director at Fordham, NYU/Strasberg, NYU/Tisch and Long Island University.  Jessi is a transplant to NYC from Chicago where she lived for eight years working as a freelance director and Artistic Director of Stage Left Theatre, an ensemble based company dedicated to developing and producing new plays.  Jessi is a recipient of the Denham Fellowship from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation and was recently named a finalist for the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors. MFA: Yale School of Drama.

What has struck me about this journey is that new play collaboration might be analogous to having a child. When the subject first comes up, it’s scary, exciting, and new.  The decision to actually do it is heady and fraught with doubt, but buoyed by hope and the idea of making something beautiful together.  The child’s conception—the messing around, the playing with ideas—is fun and passes all too quickly. It’s followed by the gestation process, which conversely feels like self-imposed isolation.  (In this creative process, I’m referring to a period when the writers go off to work, apart from the rest.) And then finally, the birth occurs—the moment when the writers release the work into the hands of all of the collaborators, which for this project includes the directors and producers.  The product is out there for those who took part in its conception to witness.  It is out there in all its ugly, screaming glory: the first draft.  After a short while, the ugly baby grows into itself a bit more. It becomes more refined and defined. Everyone starts to provide feedback on how best to raise it; everyone wants what’s best for the child. We are now the collective custodians of a communally conceived child.

We run into obstacles that typical parents run into; we don’t always agree on how to raise it, but because we can’t stop it from growing (which it is doing, fast), we do the best we can and hope we aren’t mucking it up. Sometimes, there are impasses. The things one parent is doing might bump up against something quite different that another parent is doing; and the two, alas, can’t co-exist or the child would go crazy. Who’s to say which way is better?  It’s emotionally easier to allow each collaborator to do what she wants. But it isn’t practical. So after a few rounds of push-and-pull, of holding-on-then-letting-go, after actually quite a lot of discussion, we agree on certain key decisions about our child’s future. And the idea that this is really a single, unique living being that has a little bit of each of us in it, starts to emerge. Now we’re at the point when we’re showing close friends (i.e. designers), and asking for their experienced input in raising this child.

It’ll be exciting and scary to see how it’ll do when, seemingly far from now (but actually it’s right around the corner), it faces the world on its own, on the first day of school.

Melisa Tien is a playwright whose plays have been developed and/or produced by The Wild Project, Rising Circle, New Dramatists, Theater for the New City, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Theater at Riverside Church, Second Stage, 59E59, Manhattan Rep, The Tank/Collective Unconscious, Adelphi University and India’s Mumbai University, among others. She has presented work at the Women Playwrights International Conference and the Great Plains Theatre Conference co-founded by Edward Albee; she was a 2007 Winner of the Theater Masters MFA Playwright Award and a recipient of a 2011 residency at Byrdcliffe; and she has taught playwriting to kids via 52nd Street Project, Q Up, and Center for Talented Youth, and to undergraduates and grad students via Columbia University. Melisa holds a BA in English from UCLA, an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University, and a Culinary Diploma from the French Culinary Institute.

We’ve done something crazy here at WP and invited a bit of chaos into the room; we handed over a coveted main stage spot to our Lab of brilliant but relatively unknown writers, directors and producers and asked them to create new work in a way that challenges traditional, institutional theatre-making.

We have been building up to this for a while. In 2006, the WP Lab, which has been around in some form since 1983, functioned as a sort of satellite to the theatre. It has always been a talent-filled and often cohesive group, but the group existed outside the central activities of the theatre (much like many other wonderful playwright and director groups around the city).  Then Julie Crosby, in her first moments at the helm of WP, did something genius – she added producers to the Lab, creating the third spoke in the wheel. We began the 2006-2008 Lab for Playwrights, Directors and Producers and, in the course of just a couple meetings, discovered the mother lode. We realized that this Lab could and should be the engine of WP, not a side program, and we have illustrated this by putting the playwrights and directors of previous Labs on stage in the majority of our productions and by allowing for major collaborative projects for the current Labs.

After producing two successful, highly collaborative, short-run, site specific shows with the 2006-2008 and 2008-2010 Labs, we have upped the ante with the artists of 2010-2102. WP’s mission is to produce and promote women theatre artists, and here is an opportunity to showcase 15 up-and-coming women (honest-to-goodness, they’re going to take over the world in a few years).  So with a few thematic prompts, a full main stage budget (and all that it entails), plus almost 18 months of development, we have charged the 2010-2012 WP Lab with the collaboration of a lifetime – creating a large-scale piece of theatrical art with 7 playwrights, 4 directors and 4 producers.

All over America, in cities large and small, individual theatre artists are finding new methods, new ways into process, and new avenues to getting their work seen. Institutional theatres, for varying reasons, have often been slow to embrace new methods: this is how you pick a play, this is how you develop it, choose a director, choose a creative team, this is how you market the play, this is your audience….

The systems that exist in these institutions create efficiency and, often, smoother roads for artists But theatre needs a little chaos. WP, because we are a small institution, possesses a certain nimbleness in the way we produce, but we also have institutional systems in place. Can we use those systems (and the stability they provide) to create a container for new ways of making work? That’s what we’re doing.

We are letting the rough edges of creative process cut through, letting the chaos in, and embracing the messiness that occurs when you put a lot of artists in a room together. Of course, in working this way, we may end up with a hot mess, but we’re more likely to end up with something of soaring, indescribable beauty, something that we can’t easily define, something that changes the people who create it and the people who see it and ripples out far beyond its initial impulse – which was to raise the stakes of collaboration, to challenge ourselves as an institution, and to promote and produce this group of rising stars.

Megan Carter is the Associate Artistic Director of Women’s Project. Select New York credits include Freshwater by Virginia Woolf; Aliens with Extraordinary Skills by Saviana Stanescu; Sand by Trista Baldwin; Burial at Thebes by Seamus Heaney; Mac Wellman’s Sincerity Forever and Harm’s Way. Megan has collaborated with Tea Alagic, Anne Bogart, Lear deBessonet, Katori Hall, Carson Kreitzer, Daniella Topol and at such companies as Intiman Theatre, ACT Theatre, and Classic Stage Company. She has an MFA in Dramaturgy and Theatre Criticism from Brooklyn College/CUNY.

Seven playwrights, five directors, and four producers walk into a room…

It’s not so much the set-up for a joke as it is the beginning of a fifteen-month collaboration that will ultimately manifest itself through an Off-Broadway production featuring the creative machinations of sixteen New York artists (including yours truly), otherwise known as the Women’s Project Lab—a two-year program serving playwrights, directors, and producers through a combination of artistic and professional development opportunities. When Producing Artistic Director Julie Crosby asked me to take the role as lead producer in the culminating show of the two-year Lab residency, I sat there with my mouth open for a moment, and then I said yes.

Allow me to rewind six months and provide a little more context:

Last year, Julie and her Associate Artistic Director Megan Carter sat down with the sixteen members of the WP Lab to discuss our second year culminating project, now titled We Play for the Gods. In the past, this project has often been site-specific, short pieces from playwright-director teams facilitated by creative producers performed in addition to WP’s main stage season. But this year is different. This year, Julie and Megan handed over one of their three season production slots to the Lab. And I really do mean handed over: they gave us a question to consider as a point of departure—and then let go of the reins. The product and process are ours to decide. Moreover, We Play for the Gods will not be the one-week-only production of past WP Lab projects, but rather a full-tilt Off-Broadway production at the historic Cherry Lane Theatre. Now, that’s what I call putting your money where your mission is.

Six months later, on the last day of our final retreat, and at the end of a summer of incredible collaboration with my fellow WP Lab members, I breathed a sigh of relief, downed a couple of margaritas (rocks/no salt), turned on the Indigo Girls (don’t judge), and confessed to myself that I had been unusually insecure for the majority of our time together. I’ve spent most of my theater career working in one of two models: the standard playwright-writes/director-directs/actor-acts model, and the check-your-title-at-the-door-because-everyone-is-everything-here model. But Women’s Project is asking for something different—for innovation, not just in content but in process.

Several months into the development of Gods, is it exciting? Absolutely. Is it fear inducing? Of course. Is it a professional challenge like no other that has led me to actively question the common assumptions of artistic collaboration in theater? Yup. That too. And therein lies the source of my summer-of-insecurity: a deep anxiety over collective assumptions about how a “collaborative” room is supposed to run, and the ways in which the WP Lab isn’t following the rules.

This article is the first of a series, which will capture the collaborative process between now and next June when we begin performances for We Play for the Gods, written, directed, and produced by the 2010-2012 Women’s Project Lab. So, in the spirit of confession—and collaboration—I thought I’d share a few of my takeaways.

Paradox is Bliss
Every collaboration needs leadership. There, I said it. Groups of individuals driving toward a common goal need a pilot, and an artistic process is no exception. And I confess that, at least in the case of We Play for the Gods, the process leader is not a playwright, or a director, nor an actor or a designer. It is a creative producer. And when we started this journey six months ago, I was uneasy in my role as a leader because a producer should never exert power over a creative process, right? That’s what I used to think too.

The thing is…leadership is not the same as power.

I quickly realized one of the most important contributions I can make to this project is to lead by constantly shifting the power dynamics and turning the assumed hierarchy on its ear. It’s a bit of a paradox—the idea that one must redistribute “power” in order to lead effectively—but (in my opinion), this is the role of the creative producer in our art form. Our entire job is to facilitate the creative process by assessing needs and aligning the human, logistical, and financial resources to match. The key word here is “facilitate.” The facilitative leader harnesses power and uses it to guide everyone in the room toward the best possible outcome.

Last May when we began our process for Gods, I stood at the front of the room and asked of my collaborators, “Where do you want to go?” and “What is most important to you?” Then, I proposed, “This is how we will get there.” But in order to do the getting, I needed to have—and ultimately give away—power. For the last six months, my fellow Lab producers and I have held in trust the collective vision of these artists, driving toward the best possible version of We Play for the Gods. Part of that trust means knowing when to let someone else drive, and when to take back the wheel.

Feedback is the Key
I will once again reveal my anxiety over introducing potentially foreign substances into the artistic process. Yes, creativity, resources, and room to fail are all excellent ingredients for a collaborative process, but I think well-facilitated feedback is chief among the list of needs not being met in the rehearsal room. I don’t mean feedback on the play, design, or the acting. I’m talking about feedback on the process itself.

During our weeklong retreat for We Play for the Gods, every session ended with a feedback session. I stood at the front of the room with colored markers in hand and listened first to what the artists felt worked about the day and about the process. Comments ranged from “I loved doing the composition work together. It helped build a common vocabulary,” to “Thank you for sending out the text in advance.” All the good stuff got written on one side of our poster paper for everyone to see. On the other side of the poster paper were—no, not complaints, but rather, “Proposals for Change.” Comments ranged from “I would like to have more time to revise the work,” to “It’s cold in here. Can we do something about the temperature?”

As a creative producer and facilitative leader, this feedback was critical to keeping the lines of communication open, building trust, and once again handing over the power to the people who should have it. It also provided a controlled, safe space for voicing concerns, which was invaluable to preserving productive energy. But part of building trust is being responsive to feedback, so each day came with a slightly tweaked agenda that addressed as many concerns as possible. And in the case of the temperature of the room, there was nothing to be done (finicky air conditioner), so the notes that night contained a warning for everyone to dress in layers.

It seems so little—dress in layers. But in the same way that the little annoyances can build up to a boiling point, so too can the little positive things build up to huge amounts of good will and trust. And throughout the week the feedback sessions became shorter and shorter. We were learning and adapting as a group. I have no doubt that those feedback sessions were the most effective way we built trust and unity in that rehearsal room.

A Producer’s Place is in the Room
Generally speaking, I’ve been taught to leave the art to the “artists.” And generally speaking, I’ve actively rejected the notions that a) a producer is not an artist; and b) should therefore stay out of the room and out of the way. But, for all my rejection of normative beliefs, there is still a part of me that proceeds with great caution when I walk into “the room,” or when it is time to make a decision that has artistic implications. That is as it should be. I should pause for a gut-check and consider the artistic consequences of my decisions, intended or unintended. But, I continue to learn that the more time I spend in the room, in conversation with my fellow artists, the better I am able to serve the project and the artists involved. This lesson has never been more salient than with We Play for the Gods.

One of the most immediate challenges of the piece was that my fifteen collaborators were saying loud and clear that chief among the priorities in this joint venture was that our group of individual voices come together as a cohesive whole. With a relatively short amount of time together over the summer, we four producers sat with Julie to strategize a structure that could house a polyphony of voices in service of a single story.

Walking in to our next full Lab meeting to tell a room full of playwrights and directors that four producers had just decided the structure of their next play was terrifying and uncomfortable. I thought we would be chastised for not being collaborative, for imposing a concrete decision on an artistic process without first getting on our feet and exploring (don’t worry, that part comes later). I felt guilty and insecure. That is, until the incredible playwrights and directors with whom I have the pleasure of collaborating said that they trusted us enough to go along for the ride.

Don’t get me wrong: they were not without their own questions and doubts. But each of these extraordinary women had enough faith in the process (and in their producers) to engage in a rigorous exploration of the structure we suggested, its opportunities, and its challenges. My experience continues to affirm that being physically present is critical to developing trust among any group of people. Thankfully, my fellow Lab members agree. They have never questioned the presence of the producers in the room. Not once.

I am not a Unicorn
It was not long ago that I felt completely alone in the world of American theater. I thought for sure I was the only one feeling caught between the “artistic side” and the “business side” of theater, and wanting desperately to use each to inform the other. Turns out, I’m not special at all. I’m becoming less unique every day. And I’ve never been more thankful to say that. This breed—the creative producer—is growing rapidly throughout the country and I confess I am thrilled by the trend. I continue to meet like-minded producers such as Julie Crosby, Megan Carter, and my Lab producer colleagues, Roberta Pereira, Manda Martin, and Liz English, and I learn more about our craft from each of them.

Julie has put us—creative producers—back in the room with playwrights and directors, where we belong, at the nucleus of the artistic process, and I believe our field will be healthier for it. I am only six months into what will be a fifteen-month process, and I have already grown immeasurably as a theater professional. Sitting inside this uniquely open collaborative process (which we are frankly making up as we go along), I know better how to facilitate and serve the creation of theater, though I am still nervous about what is to come. Will these facilitative tactics hold up through the entire process? Will the playwrights and directors continue to trust, and feel safe in our rehearsal room? Will the project succeed?

My last confession: a gut-check on all these questions tells me yes, yes, and yes. I truly believe Dominique Morisseau, Alexandra Collier, Andrea Kuchlewska, Kristen Palmer, Charity Henson-Ballard, Melisa Tien, Stefanie Zadravec, Nicole Watson, Mia Rovegno, Jessi Hill, Tea Alagic, Sarah Rasmussen, Liz English, Roberta Pereira, and Manda Martin, a.k.a. the seven playwrights, five directors, and four producers of the 2010-2012 Women’s Project Lab are on the best path possible. I also have no doubt that we will encounter artistic, emotional, and logistical challenges throughout the year. For me personally, I am looking forward to continuing to push on the assumptions of how we make art, and there isn’t a more perfect place in which to do that then this production process.