Principles of Collaboration

This might be a long post.

I've spent a lot of time, lately, looking back on graduate school, and looking forward to what will happen next. Thinking about why I came, what I've learned, what I'll take with me. I think one of the most important reasons I came to graduate school was to learn how to collaborate. I worked with lots of people before I got to grad school, of course, but as often as not it was at cross-purposes rather than to a common purpose.

I don't think a person can collaborate effectively until she knows what she BRINGS TO a collaboration. "Energy and heart and a willingness to work together" doesn't cut it. What are your SKILLS? What are the TOOLS OF YOUR DISCIPLINE? What are YOU going to carry, where can you say "Don't worry, I got this -- you gotta worry about that other thing." So the first tool in a successful collaboration is a deep commitment to and understanding of your own craft(s). The more skill you bring to that, the more you earn your place in the room.

The second thing you need to collaborate effectively is a familiarity with, and healthy respect for, the other disciplines in the room. I don't "speak lighting" (yet) but I'll ask questions, and if a designer has a concern, I will work with them and work with them until I understand the problem enough to help trouble-shoot. I don't need to get up on stage and act every time (even if that IS one of my skills), but it's my job to know enough about an actor's work to to be able to speak to them effectively about what I need from them, and what, in return, they need from me.

PART of the above is an understanding of the CONCERNS of each discipline. I've learned to listen for the key words I hear from different theater-makers. When I listen to any tech person, I hear "safety" and "let's not make extra work" over and over. With designers, it's some variation of "what are we trying to say with this choice? It isn't enough that it's cool..." etc.

But it isn't enough to know the concerns of each discipline...a good collaboration begins with those broad understandings, and gets more specific. How does THIS director communicate? What are THIS designer's concerns, both in general and in this piece? What experience, and what corresponding baggage, does each person bring with them?

Really good questions to ask, at the beginning of a collaboration, are "what was your best work experience? What was your worst? What's your nightmare for how this will go? What are the three things you don't want us to fuck up?"

It's important not only to ASK these questions and listen hard to the answers, but to answer them for yourself. Often our knee-jerk negative reactions in a collaboration have less to do with the situation in front of us than with the spectre of some past situation where we feel like we got burned. If you can separate the past moment from the moment you're in, you can be more effective.

When I studied Contact Improvisation, one of the first thing we were taught is that "you are responsible for your own body." Contact Improv is all about the giving and taking of weight, about connection and creative movement with other people. It can get fun, it can get fast, it can get gravity-defying -- and you're okay until the minute you don't own your own safety. Nobody else can be in your body for you. So, too, in collaboration. You CANNOT control your collaborators. You CAN do your damndest to communicate, be generous, earn trust, and master your own craft.

Two more: CURIOSITY...true just for being an artist in general...but it's only by asking questions that you can build a working relationship. And WILLINGNESS TO ASK FOR HELP. You will fall down. You will fuck up. You will take on more than you can handle. The measure of a successful collaboration is not what you do when things are going WELL, but in how you react when they're NOT.

Did I learn a lot of this through experience, through working with Marie, Syd, Mary, Mark, Chase, Harrison? Did I learn a lot of it the hard way, by fucking up on occasion? Yes and yes.

Did I learn a lot of it from Dietz? Also yes. I laughed, yesterday, thinking about this -- Dietz, from day one, has said "your life, your art, your spirit is NONE OF MY BUSINESS." He insists he is here to teach us CRAFT. But, as I said about a year ago, we are the same playwrights we are people -- we are the same artists we are people. He and Suzan have taught me most of the lessons above, either in coversation or by example.

What is a relationship, if not a collaboration? Friendships, and romantic relationships, are ALSO collaborations. And all the principles above apply to life as much as to the work of theater.