Sketchbook + GARAGE = theatre of tomorrow?
Posted by Anthony Moseley on 6/19/2007
Collaboraction’s Sketchbook is currently being produced in the Garage Theatre as part of the Steppenwolf Visiting Company Initiative. We asked Anthony Moseley, Collaboraction’s Executive Artistic Director, to share his thoughts about the production on the Steppenwolf blog.
You (reading this entry on the Steppenwolf web site) are in the “blogosphere”. You use the internet to get current news, research your entertainment options, check on your plane’s departure status, pay bills on-line, and tell people “what’s up” through various portals (instant message, email, blog, etc.). You are changing the way the world does business and corporate America is scrambling to do business the way you like it, on your terms. Congratulations. That must feel great.
We at Collaboraction, have been building the ultimate theatre and art experience for you for 7 years now, and we are really glad you are ready for us. It is called Sketchbook and we are running through July 1st in Steppenwolf’s Garage Theatre. Sketchbook is a festival of 16 world premiere short plays (from over 500 global submissions), visual art and music and it is built for the kind of audience member that is leaning forward into the future looking for stories, symbols and sounds of our times. Each performance we present 8 short plays with a different musical guest each night in an environment in which the audience is free to move about and choose their viewing perspective for each play (of course, we have some fixed chairs for the more traditional audience member, we haven’t forgotten about you, are you on the Blog?).
For the past 5 years we have produced Sketchbook at the wonderful Chopin Theatre in Wicker Park, a beautiful theatre with fixed seats and a traditional proscenium stage. While we love the Chopin dearly, we have been dreaming of giving Sketchbook the room to be as free in its physical form as it is in its conceptual form. Thanks to the Steppenwolf Visiting Company Initiative we have been able to bring our festival to the Garage and see our dreams come true. We have turned the whole Garage into a public space where there is no boundary between art and audience and we have given the audience the ability to move freely from one play to the next, while the musical guest sets the sonic environment.
Now, this would all be a big waste of time, if the theatre wasn’t great. Bad theatre doesn’t dress up well, no matter how you experience it. I am happy to report that the work on display is fantastic. By coming to Sketchbook you will be able to see a collection of Chicago’s top established writer’s, directors and actors (the likes of Peggy Roeder, Steve Scott, Steve Pickering, Keith Huff) with a smattering of some prominent national playwrights, as well (Wendy MacLeod, Itamar Moses). Even more exciting, are some of the top emerging artists (Sean Graney, Seth Bockley, Kevin O’Donnell, Emily Schwartz, Joanie Schultz, Michael Patrick Thorton) whose work will be growing in front of our eyes, here in Chicago, over the next 30 years.
What will theatre look and feel like in 30 years? Well, I am sure there will still be wonderful traditionally staged productions of Shakespeare and Mamet and Letts, but there will also be places where theatre is interactive, fluid and plain ole fun and it might end up looking like what’s happening in the Garage through July 1st…or not. You be the judge.
Please consider joining us before the portal closes. We (the 180 Sketchbook artists involved) think you (you progressive blogspheric human, you) might enjoy it.