I’m So Close…
Ravi Jain

In February 2010, my company Why Not Theatre was fortunate enough to spend a week at Playwrights Workshop Montreal to develop our show I’m So Close…  Why Not Theatre is an international ensemble based out of Toronto, with members from the US, Denmark, the UK, and Canada.  We were formed out of our work at the Lecoq school and are what most people would call a physically based company.  For me though, we simply make theatre. 

I’m So Close… was a project that was developed as part of the Theatre Centre Residency Program in Toronto. It’s an amazing and unique program run by Franco Boni and Jennifer Tarver in which we received development support, money, and rehearsal space. We were also part of a national exchange with a company from Vancouver thanks to Rumble Productions.  More importantly, the residency gave us a space to commit to an idea for 2 years and develop our process as artists. The show we created is much more a reflection of our growth… but more on that later…

A brief overview of the project and process:  In June 2008, we were taken to Vancouver to develop our show with support from Playwrights Theatre Centre in Vancouver. That’s where we worked with a dramaturge for the first time, who helped us distill very large ideas about the universe and time and Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, into a non-linear mash-up of ideas on paper.  For us, it was also the first time being in a room and sitting with pen and paper in hand, colored cue-cards and butcher paper. It was an illuminating experience, which got us thinking in new ways in terms of character journeys, arcs, and overall themes.  After that week, we rehearsed for 3 weeks on our feet and through our bodies, using images to find ways to communicate our story without saying it.  We were building a show to present at the SummerWorks Festival in Toronto (where we won the Spotlight Award) and the Dublin Fringe Festival in Dublin.  Over that 3 week period we worked in a way we were used to: fast and furious, physical, and looking for clever ways of telling the story.

It was fascinating to play the show for both a Toronto and Irish audience.  The response was tremendously different, and the feedback was great.  Our reviews ran the gamut from incredibly amazing to what were you doing?  In short, people were wowed by the physicality, staging, and performances, but were underwhelmed by the story (or lack thereof) and it didn’t add up in the end… though there were moments of brilliance.  Looking back, in terms of process, we had created something that was a product of our training.  Lots of short scenes that were tight, interesting and innovative, which contained arcs within themselves, but we lacked overall cohesion.

After the 7 weeks of creation, performing, and touring, we felt we were done with the show.  We were tired and ultimately couldn’t come up with a consensus on how to move forward.  We didn’t have a director and were basically all working as director.  However, because we were part of the Residency we had another year to work on the show.  This was a blessing and a curse.

How to continue to work on something?  How do you take something you have made and go further? Dive deeper into the material, cut, change and rearrange?  These are questions we were very fortunate to be able to engage with in this next phase of the process.

So we looked at all of the feedback and decided that as artists we wanted to: 1) strengthen our narrative and writing, and develop stronger characters to tell the story; 2) Improve the design elements we started playing with which people responded to and really liked; and 3) dive deeper into the material and say something more meaningful and relevant about our relationship to time in 2010.

To that end, and with grants from governments, we invited a host of collaborators to the project including a writer, video designer, costume designer, as well as the previous lighting and sound people.  And we spent the year researching and writing and developing material.

We invited Nicolas Billon on as a collaborator, as I had worked with him over the summer of 2009 and the collaboration was great.  Bringing him on board for a piece that was already created was a challenge that we underestimated.  He had seen the show and was familiar with our work so we thought it was going to be easy...  Ha! Fools.  We had a few short sessions with him in order to figure out a working process, one in July of 2009 and one in December 2009.  Through both sessions Nic challenged us a lot as a writer/dramaturge to articulate what we were trying to say with the piece, what the point was, and what the story was. This was difficult for us to do as the show was constantly changing, and the three artists involved had equal say. Oh, and there was no director to be the unifying voice.  At the end of December 2009, we were behind schedule and didn’t have much, so we decided to go our separate ways and come back in February 2010 in Montreal.  The plan was that we would go away and write a play and Nic would go his way and write a play and we would come together and make it all work.  In essence, we would commission Nic to make a play based on some agreed things (characters, what happens, the events of the story).  The red flag here that should have gone up (but didn’t, oh hindsight) is that we wanted text, lots of it, monologues and dialogue and Nic was thinking in images and not so much text.  We didn’t address this miscommunication, figuring it would all work out in the wash.

We met in Montreal with a one pager of the story that we all liked and that made sense to us and then worked through the story scene by scene creating a sketch of dialogue for us to improvise around in the room.  It was a fantastic week in which we created a story we all enjoyed, thought was interesting, and felt strongly about.  It also was an amazing week, for us to all be in the same room together, up until then we had been communicating via skype or email.  However, we were behind schedule, and at this point we wanted to have a physical script in order to move ahead, but we were happy with where we were at.

We now had 4 weeks to create the show based off of this work we had done.  A lot of ups and downs and we managed to create a rough sketch of something that we felt worked, it had a good mix of a solid text and physicality to it.  Keep in mind that again, there was no director in the room, 3 performer/creators and the writer.  10 days before opening, our design collaborators arrived.

Enter costume designer, video designer, lighting designer, and sound designer.  We do a showing for them and it feels horrible.  We have a play that we don’t know how to act, we don’t really know what we are saying and worst of all, we don’t trust it.  No one is sure why, but we got freaked out. 

With the world spinning and so many voices in the room, the three of us regroup and look back on the old piece we made, trying to figure out what was missing, what feels wrong about the story and why.  The script we had was like a pair of pants you try on that don’t quite fit and make your ass look too big, but when you go out no one really tells you.  There was something about it that wasn’t us.  So we start cutting, ripping, changing, making, no sleep until its done.  With all of the added technology this became tricky and we were fortunate to have an expert team in Gina Scherr (lights), Jamie Nesbitt (video), Mutt Dogg (sound), Kelsey Hart (costumes).  We all banded together and made something we were all proud of, but the most difficult thing through it all was the lack of cohesive vision, i.e. not having a single director.

(I just want to throw in here that it was an incredibly amazing experience and a fantastic show came out of it– truly.  Emma asked me to write about what I learned though… )

So, yeah, it was great to have all these collaborators in the room and they really upped our game, but it was a very difficult terrain for us to navigate as it was totally new.  Keep in mind we are used to making things with only the 3 of us in the room, and now there are 5 people, with strong voices all jamming together with only 8 days before opening! 

The show opened and it was very well received.  We got great reviews, though similar criticism to the previous version.  Though this time the narrative structure was far clearer, it was incomplete in the end.  People were wowed by the physicality and the integration of technology, but again the story didn’t come to fruition in the way we would have liked.  We were however, immensely proud of what we achieved, and the growth and maturity for me as an artist is a result of this process, and that is invaluable, and will be reflected in future projects.

Also I want to add in here, that it isn’t the playwright’s fault either.  When it comes to the story, he will often be the scapegoat, as it is his job to take care of that.  However, as this collaboration was so equal, and we were the one’s who ultimately didn’t trust his final text and rearranged and rewrote.

The other thing I want to throw in here is that over the last 2 years, throughout the residency, I’ve been fortunate to gain more experience as a director in different settings, and I have a better understanding of what is needed for the role.  And because of this process, it confirmed for me the necessity of such a role.  The director is the one with the overall vision.  The one who can filter all information and focus it towards the goal, which is to tell the story.  Ultimately in this collective, though we are all extremely proud and happy with the show, we all have an inside voice saying, “Oh, it would’ve been better if he’d done that, or if she’d done that...” Because we all wanted to direct it.  So the compromises lead to frustration.

I don’t think collectives work.  Of course there are always exceptions to the rule.  Let me rephrase… For me, collectives are not the best solution for creating a piece of theatre.  In collectives, where all voices are equal, the group becomes more important than the art.  Whereas the work I want to be part of, the art must always come first. 

Having a director does not mean the process can not be collaborative.  On the contrary, it structures the room in a way that  allows for more effective collaboration.  Companies I admire in Europe and here in Canada function on these models, but at the helm is one particular voice, one clear direction – and because of that not only does the art excel, but the artists themselves are at their best. There’s always someone pushing them to go further. It is what I look for in any collaboration

One final note: A big thing I learned in this process is, “What is process?  What is it? How does it work? What should I be able to do once its all done?”
It all depends on how you look at it, I think.  The process of the residency is a process unto itself, but it is also part of the longer process of the evolution and growth of this company, of me as an artist and the other artists involved.  We must be willing to take risks and keep exploring this thing called process.

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