New Work and Why I Can’t Get Enough

I thought I might share some thoughts about why it is I love new work and refuse to do anything else.

I tend to work very collaboratively, and I get the most joy out of crafting a play with an ensemble of creative thinkers. I’ve found that the most collaborative place is a room full of people trying to crack open a new work. If you are lucky (and I am in this instance) you have a solid, trusting, creative relationship with a playwright, and for me there is nothing for satisfying than being allowed to act as a sounding board for that artist as they chart a path for a new piece.

Martyna and I met last winter through Red Tape’s Fresh Eyes Project which I now produce. It’s an incubator series designed to give a playwright a month of focused development time for their work. I had the extreme fortune of falling into a directing slot with the festival last year and work-shopped this new play called MOUSE IN A JAR. I say fortune because as I’ve often said, Martyna’s style and approach to playwrighting completely gels with my own aesthetic. From that first adolescent draft I’ve felt that I know what to do with this play in an intrinsic way that I sometimes have to work for in other scripts.

I’ve learned a lot about artistic process through our many script revision meetings, and workshops. What I can say for sure is that the number one goal for a revision or a set design or casting or blocking or whatever, is to help the playwright write the play they are writing, or to help the playwright realize the vision they are envisioning. I never consider a play to be my work. I consider it to be a carefully crafted expression of the writer’s words, that I have the extreme fortune to safeguard.

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