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Working with
a Playwright
The following are observations and descriptions of how exactly the
process evolved while working with our playwright Sarah Ruhl.
Sarah Ruhl
Her plays include: Passion Play, Melancholy
Play, Eurydice, Late, Orlando, and Chekhov: Shorts. Her
plays have been heard at the Sundance Theatre Lab, New York Theatre
Workshop, New Dramatists, McCarter Theatre, the Flea, Ohio Theater, New
Georges, Children's Theatre Company, Trinity Repertory Company, Annex
Theatre, Chicago Dramatists, and Victory Gardens. Her plays have
been supported by commissions from McCarter Theatre, Actors Theatre of
Louisville, and the Piven Theatre Workshop, as well as by residencies at
the Millay Colony, Ragdale Foundation, and Ucross Foundation. Melancholy
Play can be seen on-line, and an excerpt from Passion Play can
be seen in American Theater magazine. She received her M.F.A.
from Brown University and now lives in Providence, RI.
Collaboration
- face-to-face
meetings
This
was the only effective way we found to collaborate on this project.
We discuss ideas much more efficiently. Almost all of the play was designed
in our
two meetings with Sarah.
- Interaction
vs. Story
- As
expected, the main "conflict" in collaboration was interaction
vs. story. We wanted stronger interactions, while the playwright did not want the interactions
to detract from
the text.
- Goal:
create a play in which the technology and script strengthen the other,
not hinder it
- Compromises
were made on both sides in an attempt to keep this balance
- Our design order
- Theme
-
- Interactions
Interfaces - holding hands, biofeedback, mapping faces
- Script
- Specific
Interactions
- Collaboration
Summary
- In
seven weeks and 2 face-to-face meetings we did the impossible
- "Theme" and "Interaction Interfaces" were excellent
starting points
Politics
in theater
- We
survived theatre politics.
- Theater has a new vocabulary for technologists to learn.
- Technologists have a a new vocabulary for theater to learn.
- Theater is filled with people reluctant to embrace technology.
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