The Deconstructive Theatre Project’s Managing Director Arielle Lever and I recently participated in the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York’s three-part Organizational Planning and Process workshop. Within the context of the series, I was asked to describe how and why The Deconstructive Theatre Project came to be and the relationship we hope to cultivate between our artists and our immediate community. I though it might be nice to share those thoughts with that community via this outlet.
A warm thank you to the kind Nello McDaniel for encouraging us in our work and in this thoughtful process.
Identity
When I founded The Deconstructive Theatre Project in 2006, I was looking to create a safe space in which artists from a myriad of different disciplines would come together to think about creative process. I wanted to create a playful arena in which company members might discover how the different vocabularies of performance could work together or push against one another to create dynamic theatre. I wanted the artists to find as much surprise and delight as audiences did, and I wanted audiences to understand the full life cycle of a piece of theatre.
These goals remain the foundation of the company’s activities. I hope that The Deconstructive Theatre Project will continue to serve as an instigator of questioning: how is something made? How can it be made differently? How do artists and audiences communicate both inside and outside of the performance arena? How can performance reveal process? I want The Deconstructive Theatre Project to prove the value of collaboration and to steer individuals away from a concern over individual ownership. All art is by nature stolen. The Deconstructive Theatre Project champions a collective trading and shaping of ideas and a shared ownership of curiosity, process, failure, and success. When we produce a performance, I want the collaborators to stand together and wonder where one person’s contribution ends and another’s begins.
I want our community to be an extension of this collective mindset. It is frustrating to see communities lose investment in the presence of art. It is frustrating also to be driven to seek funding for artistic process outside of the community in which the work is being made. This happens, I think, because artists and their larger communities do not communicate with one another as regularly as they ought to. There has been a lot of talk about transparency lately. I think the entire artistic process should be transparent and the community should be invited to view and partake in it. The rehearsal room is sacred, yes; but keeping it sacred is not a matter of barring the outside world from entry, but rather a process of empowering that outside world with the tools necessary to understand that sacredness and its local, national, and global value. Just as I hope The Deconstructive Theatre Project teaches artists to forsake concerns over individual ownership in favor of the powers of collective mentality, I aim to inspire the company’s audiences with that same shared investment in the failures, successes, and livelihood of our members and of our work.
The Deconstructive Theatre Project conducted its first Community Supported Theatre Committee Roundtable on November 3, 2011 at Roebling Tea Room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Committee Members (L to R): Founding Director Adam J. Thompson, Board Member Ryan J. Davis, Kaylen Ratto, Becky Leifman, Managing Director Arielle Lever, Chrissie Rouse, David DeParolesa.
Stay tuned for more information about Community Supported Theatre, The Deconstructive Theatre Project’s new audience engagement project – launching in spring 2012!
We had a wonderful, breath-ful, creative escape to The School of Making Thinking in Delhi, New York this summer, where we continued work on The Orpheus Variations. Enjoy these photos from the residency.
Managing Director
The Deconstructive Theatre Project, Inc.
Brooklyn, NY
The Deconstructive Theatre Project (DTP), a New York-based process-oriented theatre laboratory and production company in its fifth year, is currently seeking a flexible part-time Managing Director.
This new leadership position offers a unique opportunity to steer the development and future shape of a young, non-traditional theatre company with an annual budget under $50,000 and a growing profile. The ideal candidate has a vigorous enthusiasm for successfully addressing the unique administrative challenges facing a not-for-profit ensemble/devised theatre workshop and an interest in developing and executing innovative management models, non-traditional funding solutions, and cooperative production strategies which support the life-cycle of long-term process-oriented work.
Responsibilities:
The Managing Director is one half of a two-person management team. He or she will collaborate with the Founding Director to shape programming structures, and will take a lead role in administrative, fundraising, fiscal, and outreach management in the following specific ways:
Administrative Management:
Work with the Founding Director and Board of Directors to develop and implement short and long-term strategic operating plans sensitive to the company’s non-traditional workshop-oriented production model.
Work with the Founding Director and Board of Directors to expand and enrich the Board of Directors and committees.
Fiscal Management:
Develop and monitor annual operating budgets, workshop and production budgets, and other programming budgets as applicable.
Maintain accounts payable and receivable.
Provide regular financial reports to the Founding Director and Board of Directors.
Fundraising & Development Management:
Work with the Founding Director and Development Assistant to identify funding possibilities, create grant proposals, and steward relationships with current and prospective donors and sponsors.
Manage the organization’s donor records.
Develop innovative funding solutions and cooperative production strategies sensitive to the company’s non-traditional workshop-oriented production model.
Outreach Management:
Oversee all publicity efforts for productions and events including press releases, press kits, postcards, and posters.
Act as an advocate for the company at social events, seminars, and gatherings.
Education & Skills Required:
The ideal candidate is innovative, self-motivated, and possesses the flexible all-hands-on-deck enthusiasm necessary to thrive in a young company. A personable and social demeanor, a sense of humor, and superb written and oral communication skills are required. Computer, Internet, and social media proficiency are necessary, and experience with Quickbooks and FileMaker are a plus. BA/BS in arts administration/producing (or equivalent training) required, MA (or in progress) in arts administration/producing a plus.
This is a flexible part-time position with a modest annual stipend.
Please submit cover letter, resume, and two writing samples to info@deconstructivetheatreproject.org with “Managing Director” in the subject line.
The Deconstructive Theatre Project, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer.
About the Company:
The Deconstructive Theatre Project was founded in 2006 with a mission to create bold original work for the theatre that is intensely collaborative and uniquely theatrical. The company does not present a season of extant plays; rather it dedicates its resources to extended periods of collaboration toward original, interdisciplinary, visually rich productions. The company is primarily concerned with the relationship between performance structure, content, and perspective and is dedicated to the idea that theatre is the mutilation of the probable.
The Deconstructive Theatre Project inaugurated its existence with Moisés Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, and has since developed five original or re-concocted productions, including Brecht & Co., The Girlie Show, and the site-specific Lilies, or the Revival of a Romantic Drama. DTP most recently collaborated with Vermont’s Strong Coffee Stage to premiere a contemporary two-actor adaptation of Antigone, our first touring project, which will play San Francisco in June 2011.
For more information: http://www.deconstructivetheatreproject.org
Strong Coffee Stage & The Deconstructive Theatre Project
present
Antigone
an original adaptation for two actors
suggested by the original story by Sophocles
performed by Brownyn Sims & Patrick Donnelly
costume design by Kelsey Minnich
lighting design and production management by Caitlin Smith Rapoport
sound design by Steve Piteo
stage managed by Suzanne d’Corsey
and, at the Green Toad Bookstore, 198 Main Street, Oneonta
Talk-back following each performance
Antigone is an on-going work-in-progress, an exploration of a classical Greek tragedy using contemporary performance vocabularies. Please join us for this first presentation of the material prior to our performances at the Fool’s Fury Festival in San Francisco this June.
Full details:
Antigone
February 10-12
Thursday – Saturday at 7:30 PM
Saturday at 3:00 PM
The Hamblin Theatre
106 Fine Arts Center
SUNY Oneonta
Tickets
$15 for adults
$5 for students
produced in part thanks to generous funding from
the State University of New York at Oneonta
