We Have So Much in Common, It's a Phenomenon

Have you been here?



The Fringe Creation Lab. It's the best. I spent the weekend there, mostly workshopping a little something with these guys, watching a friend work on a new piece and giving some feedback, a bit of Modern Loving there tomorrow, and today a Next Stage meeting with all the other companies.

I love this place! Every time I go there are friends! One time I was rehearsing and next door were these guys, another time it was these guys. You get to rehearse for ridiculously low rates, and when you get bored of your play, you can go and rehearse the play next door! And then you walk down the streets and run into other artists going there for whatever reason!

It's a pretty incredible blessing for all the emerging companies that don't have a home and can't afford a ton of expensive rehearsal space. It makes the idea of playing around possible. It's cheap enough that you can go and workshop a piece in the very beginning stages of development, you can do a little showcase for friends and get feedback. Plus the rooms are beautiful and the staff is great so it is fun just to be there.

At our meeting today, the Next Stage staff talked to us about how much they want the various companies to band together, to help each other with resources and promotion, and people immediately started offering suggestions, started making connections and reaching out. It's a pretty amazing way to look at things: that instead of a group of companies that are all fighting for an audience, we are all parts of one festival and we can be stronger as one force.

ISN'T THAT A BEAUTIFUL IDEA?

Because I am a mean and petty person, and I guess because I don't have a company, or even an agent, and I am fighting for myself, I feel so competitive a lot of the time. I want to be able to be happy for others' success stories, but I worry they come at the expense of my own career. It's a ridiculous and really unhelpful way to think. I think there's a way to keep the competitive edge, but to feel that I'm not fighting against other artists, we are fighting to get more people to go to all of our shows, fighting the government to keep funding us, fighting to get new exciting work everywhere. It's much more fun to think of things that way, but it's very hard as well. I'm working on making this switch. Constantly. Oy.

This weekend made me feel like I was a part of something, which, truthfully, is really why I do theatre to begin with.