CONSENT was a new kind of thing I call a “theatre lab” in which I (and an ensemble, of course) tackle a single theme and tease it out into a series of scenes followed by a discussion between ourselves and an audience. It’s similar to a showcase, but the main difference is that a lab doesn’t necessarily need to go on to become a show, and the discussion is about the theme, rather than about the content of the show.
As I’ve been talking about (if you’ve been listening to the audio updates, you’ll have heard me going on about this), my work has been getting more and more collaborative over the years, so it’s getting a lot harder to pin down what my role on any production is. I frequently do things that a traditional director, writer, and producer would do, but the ensemble has quite a bit of influence on all these things– sometimes more than me. I also am a performer on some shows (as I was in this one) in addition to designer, audio guy, mentor, teacher, student, technician, etc. And I like all these roles (although I’d like to be doing fewer of them on each show; since the pandemic it’s been getting a little ridiculous how many hats I wear on each show. Consent was no exception. It was supposed to be a very pared-down event, with very little in the way of production values, but the show grew as the ensemble grew and our ambitions grew. (It just goes to show that you can’t necessarily tell a project what its final form will be; sometimes it tells you.)
In any case, I was very proud of this little production.
2023-12-02 – Consent Performance Photos
