To New York’s Theatre Company CollaborationTown, “Life is a Collage”

by Emily Rose Herzlin
– USA –

“Theatre is ephemeral,” proclaims Geoffrey Decas as he waxes philosophic and waters the plants on his terrace in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Cars whiz by on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway as the smell of marinated tofu wafts into the apartment from the grill on the terrace. “I’m a vegetarian so I get to decide what people eat,” Geoffrey says mischievously. “Which means the rest of us have to eat vegetarian since he’s cooking,” chimes in TJ Witham.

TJ and Geoffrey are two members of the Artistic Core of CollaborationTown, a small but daring theatre company in New York City. The Artistic Core of CollaborationTown is comprised of eight young, dedicated theatre artists: Jesica Avellone, Matt Hopkins, Geoffrey Decas, Terri Gabriel, Jordan Seavey, Boo Killebrew, TJ Witham, and Managing Director Lee Ann Gullie. The Artistic Core is responsible for pretty much every aspect of the company, from performing to directing to marketing to grant-writing. Among some of their most recent shows are Townville, “365 Days/365 Plays,” 6969, The Deepest Play Ever, and They’re Just Like Us. Six members of the Artistic Core met last week in Greenpoint to plan for their newest show, inspired by the Beckett play Waiting for Godot. What’s their new play about? I don’t even bother to ask. I know from working with CollaborationTown last summer on “365 Days/365 Plays” that they won’t have an answer for me…yet.

Like many New York theatre companies, CollaborationTown scrambles to get money, supplies and space. Their company office: someone’s living room. Their rehearsal space: wherever they can find it. Someone works for a theatre company – they call in a favor. Another person knows a guy – that’s how things get done. They cook for each other, they refill each other’s wine glasses, hang out on the weekend, and joke as if they were the oldest of friends, which, in fact, they are. The Artistic Core of CollaborationTown, mostly in their mid to late 20s, met nine years ago in college in the Theatre Studies Program at Boston University, a program that teaches students to create new theatre from scratch.

Terri Gabriel explains, “Working collaboratively allows us to come up with things that no one person would ever be able to come up with on their own.” They brainstorm, share ideas, images, music, anything that comes to mind for inspiration for the project they’re working on. However, they try not to label anything too early on so that they can leave lots of room for change.

“And there’s a safety in that,” Terri explains. When a group of creative people get together who are all on the same page artistically, there’s a support system that allows for more artistic risk. The Manifesto on their website reads rather poetically:

We believe that multiple heads wearing multiple hats result in multiple creative options and allows for constant change and inspiration.

These “multiple heads” are the different people involved in the project, and the “multiple hats” are the variety of strengths, weaknesses, and life experiences they bring to the table. The conglomeration of all these experiences creates a theatrical superpower, ready to tackle even the most challenging of projects.

I was lucky to be able to witness CollaborationTown’s unique creative process when I worked with them briefly last summer on the Suzan-Lori Parks project “365 Days/365 Plays.” Over the course of just a few rehearsals at a dance studio in Williamsburg and the Access Theatre in Manhattan, CollaborationTown took on the intimidating task of using seven of Parks’ challenging plays to create a performance piece. Each play was short, generally under a page, and had almost no visible connection to the next. It was up to them to find it – I like to think of them as artistic detectives.

The fifteen-person acting company split up into groups, read over each play, talked about them and discussed any themes, images, or sounds that they got from the pieces, and then jumped to their feet to see what would happen. Then they traded plays and did it again. And again. They would sit in silence, crawl around the room, scream and bang trash cans in the hallway, play with bright lights to create shadows on the wall, dance, touch, choreograph movement sequences, anything and everything to create an emotional and visceral experience for the audience.

“We’re not concerned so much with what it is, but how it is,” says Matt Hopkins.

What came out of this process was a vibrant collage of scenes, music and text that was tied together thematically, if not neatly, into a performance piece that was even timed to the New York City sunset.

“365 Days/365 Plays” exemplifies CollaborationTown’s process and their willingness to dwell in the uncertainty of meaning; the product was not conventional storytelling. On the CollaborationTown website, the company’s Manifesto proclaims:

We believe that life is a collage, and therefore our art will be collageic.

“Collageic?” TJ asks as I stumble to pronounce the word. “Did we really write that?”

“Yeah, that sounds like us,” agrees Terri.

The point of their art being “collageic” has to do with another goal of CollaborationTown, which is to create a purer emotional experience for the audience that is honest and true to life. Terri and TJ explain that since life is not made up of a truly linear story that always makes sense, their art should reflect this. “There isn’t always a beginning, a middle, and an end that’s clean and easy to follow,” says Terri. “There’s a series of vignettes that just happen. Life is made up of stories. That’s what people talk about, that’s what people remember, that’s what we laugh about, those are the things that people love to share.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with Hairspray, that’s just not what CollaborationTown is trying to do. There’s theatre for entertainment, theatre for education, theatre for exploration. CollaborationTown accomplishes all three, but their pieces are not simply meant to entertain. They’re meant to involve the audience emotionally, sometimes even inviting audience members to contribute a personal story beforehand for them to incorporate into the performance. Unlike a lot of entertainment, CollaborationTown doesn’t fill in all the gaps in a story, giving the audience room to derive their own meaning. However, this genre does not appeal to all theatergoing demographics. CollaborationTown tends to appeal to young, bohemian artists with more avant-garde sensibilities.

CollaborationTown is quick to create a healthy balance between art and the business of making art. In their creative meeting last week, six core members crouched around Matt’s laptop, chomping on Geoffrey’s homemade delicacies while laughing through the videos of their “response pieces” that they created to the theme of “waiting” in Godot. These pieces were site-specific, filmed in different areas of the Watermill Center’s breathtaking landscape in Southampton, Long Island.

The Watermill Center was a welcome refuge for CollaborationTown this past winter. Founded in 1992 by internationally acclaimed director Robert Wilson, the Watermill Center’s competitive residency program gives artists the space for intensive art-making. CollaborationTown was the very first company to ever be asked back to Watermill, which is no small feat considering how new and selective the residency program is. The Center is a beautiful space designed by Robert Wilson himself, with dramatic shadows cast by statues and buildings, forests, tall grass, and art pieces scattered throughout the property. Watermill allowed the core members of CollaborationTown to get away from the city, their jobs and their personal lives, to concentrate solely on creating their art for two solid weeks. The residency gave them the opportunity to try out new things and develop the idea for their next piece.

“That’s the fun part. The more difficult part,” TJ explains, “is the business stuff, which we’re getting the hang of.”

Aside from the normal difficulties of running a theatre company, all of the founders of CollaborationTown have day jobs: TJ Witham works as Executive Assistant and Special Events at the Byrd Hoffman Watermill Foundation; Terri Gabriel teaches music to young children and their families for Music Together; Jesica Avellone is a grant writer for the Pearl Theatre Company. The members of CollaborationTown are extremely committed to their art – with rent to pay, families to see, appointments to make, and all the craziness that characterizes a life in New York – they would have to be. But it’s because they are so devoted that they’re able to make it work. Learning how to coordinate took a long time. “We had to grow up a lot,” says TJ.

“Whenever we don’t have a show going on, people get very down. It’s the passionate part of our lives,” Terri says. “You can get up and go to work when you know that you’re going to get to do this later.”

TJ agrees, “It keeps you excited about everything in your life.”

At their five-year anniversary, CollaborationTown is a long way from where they began. Since their days at Boston University, they’ve had two Watermill residencies, nine productions, and countless creative meetings and rehearsals. CollaborationTown is looking into their future with open eyes and open minds. They’re certainly moving forward and gaining recognition, even if, as TJ says, “the future isn’t 100% clear.”

Naturally, Terri reasons, “I guess it’s okay not to know.”

– You can explore CollaborationTown at www.collaborationtown.org