{"id":10849,"date":"2022-04-08T15:03:10","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T19:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/?p=10849"},"modified":"2022-04-21T09:40:29","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T13:40:29","slug":"collaboration-intentionality-and-cultural-dramaturgy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/fr\/2022\/04\/08\/collaboration-intentionality-and-cultural-dramaturgy\/","title":{"rendered":"Collaboration, Intentionality, and Cultural Dramaturgy"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Scout Rexe<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

I had the honour of spending last week with dramaturg Fatma Sarah Elkashef <\/a>(she\/her) and cultural dramaturg and performer Liam Zarrillo (they\/them) at an invited residency at Playwrights\u2019 Workshop Montr\u00e9al (PWM) to work on my play with music, O Death.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

O Death <\/em>is a nuanced exploration of trans and queer identities, accountability culture, and the impact of our cultural icons. After being called out by a fan, trans musician James and his queer sister Caddy must reckon with pressure from their family, the media, and the public whilst launching their musical career in the shadow of their rock legend grandfather. Generations collide as James and Caddy discover their grandfather\u2019s corrupted legacy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The play is dark and funny. Intimate family conversations are punctuated with a series of surreal mindscapes that offer playful, non-linear access to James\u2019s inner life. I worked on the songs in the show with musicians Susil Sharma (he\/him) and Hayden Siemens (they\/them) who composed the music, bringing an authenticity that feels essential to the play\u2019s characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This project has gone through a rich and deeply collaborative development process. I first met Sarah in 2018 after moving back to Montreal with two small grants from Buddies in Bad Times and Nightwood Theatre to write O Death. <\/em>I instantly connected with Sarah. We have both been committed to a deep investigation of both the play and our process, and our shared commitment to this has meant we\u2019ve spent a lot of time figuring out how best to create it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early on in the project, I identified the need to work closely with an actor with lived experience to play the role of James\u2013someone who could work with me as a cultural dramaturg, and be properly compensated for that labour, in addition to working as a performer in the development process. When we couldn\u2019t find the right collaborator in Montreal, Sarah and PWM secured additional travel funds for someone who could be brought in from another city in Canada. We couldn\u2019t find the right person, and ended up canceling our workshop at PWM in 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, I moved to Manitoba, and Sarah introduced me to Brian Drader (he\/him) who is a playwright as well as the Executive Director of the Manitoba Association of Playwrights. He read a draft of O Death <\/em>and connected me with Liam, who is fiercely intelligent, and considerate, and a gifted actor and dramaturg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liam and I started working together right away, with PWM hiring them on as a cultural dramaturg on the project. We worked intentionally to develop a safer space within each other and our work process, and in so doing, started to form a really meaningful friendship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our dramaturgical conversations lead up to a 16 hour workshop with PWM in 2021 with a full cast. Because of the pandemic, we ran the workshop on Zoom, allowing Liam to join from Winnipeg, me to join from Brandon, Kate Hammer (she\/they) from Scotland to play queer femme musician Caddy, and Chip Chuipka (he\/him), Jane Wheeler (she\/her), Julie Tamiko Manning (she\/her), and Sarah Elkashef (she\/her) from Montreal. That workshop was incredibly generative, and I continue to feel closely connected to this particular group of performers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I spent a few months re-writing the script based on the feedback from the workshop before joining Liam, Kate, and Sarah again as a Collective in Residence at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre for 40 hour residency in which we brought in musician Hayden Siemens and focused on the music in the show: the dramaturgy of the music, the creation of new songs, and the creative relationship between the queer sibling characters. As seems to be the case any time I join a group to work on this play, our time was enormously productive; we seemed to do months\u2019 worth of work in just a few days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since that residency, Liam and I have continued to work together dramaturgically with support from the Manitoba Arts Council. We decided to take the week at PWM to focus on James’s trajectory and the ways in which the play can be a healing journey for him: a story of resilience and of coming into oneself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a queer artist, I seek to make work that is as complex as the communities with whom it is in dialogue with. Throughout our process, we\u2019ve worked continuously to create more trauma-informed spaces. We structured this residency with check-ins, scene-by-scene read throughs, robust dramaturgical conversations (which inevitably involved cue cards taped to the wall), and check outs. We took long lunches. We allowed ourselves shorter days, and time to stretch. All of this might sound trite, but as an artist with a full-time job in education, the days I have to make theatre feel precious and urgent. It\u2019s my tendency to push. And so too it must be my practice to build out space for myself and my collaborators to be well\u2013to be as safe and self-determining as possible throughout the entire creation process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PWM offers a space for artists to create outside of the pressures of imminent production. This is vital, as is their practice to support artists holistically over time. My ongoing relationship with the artists I\u2019ve met through creating O Death<\/em> has been hugely impactful. I will continue to work with Sarah dramaturgically for as long as she\u2019ll have me; in addition to O Death, <\/em>I\u2019m working with her on my new project Cult Play. <\/em>Since meeting Kate, we have become writing partners, working long-distance from Canada to Scotland on our TV series called Make It<\/em>. And I can\u2019t imagine working on another play without Liam\u2013someone whose collaboration and friendship has completely opened up the possibilities for me as a theatre artist and human being; I\u2019ve often walked away from our dramaturgical meetings feeling that not only the work, but I, have been transformed in a meaningful way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t wait to be in the room with these brilliant artists again. In the meantime, the next step for me is a writing residency in Riding Mountain National Park for two weeks in the summer. Since O Death <\/em>is set in a house in the woods, I can\u2019t think of a better place to hide out and finish the next draft.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Scout Rexe I had the honour of spending last week with dramaturg Fatma Sarah Elkashef (she\/her) and cultural dramaturg and performer Liam Zarrillo (they\/them) at an invited residency at Playwrights\u2019 Workshop Montr\u00e9al (PWM) to work on my play with music, O Death. O Death is a nuanced exploration of trans and queer identities, accountability … <\/p>\n

Continuer la lecture de « Collaboration, Intentionality, and Cultural Dramaturgy »<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":10909,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"ub_ctt_via":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[197,24,199,198],"class_list":["post-10849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-blog","tag-dramaturgy","tag-process","tag-scout-rexe"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Blog-Post-PWM-Header-Scout-Rexe.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Playwrights' Workshop Montr\u00e9al","author_link":"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/fr\/author\/legacy\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Blog-Post-PWM-Header-Scout-Rexe.png","yoast_head":"\nCollaboration, Intentionality, and Cultural Dramaturgy - Playwrights' Workshop Montr\u00e9al<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Blog post by Scout Rexe about their residency at PWM, with Liam Zarrillo and Fatma Sarah Elkashef, and dramaturgy of their peice O Death.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/fr\/2022\/04\/08\/collaboration-intentionality-and-cultural-dramaturgy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_CA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Collaboration, Intentionality, and Cultural Dramaturgy - Playwrights' Workshop Montr\u00e9al\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Blog post by Scout Rexe about their residency at PWM, with Liam Zarrillo and Fatma Sarah Elkashef, and dramaturgy of their peice O Death.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/fr\/2022\/04\/08\/collaboration-intentionality-and-cultural-dramaturgy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Playwrights' Workshop Montr\u00e9al\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/PlaywrightsWorkshopMontreal\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-04-08T19:03:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-04-21T13:40:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Blog-Post-PWM-Header-Scout-Rexe.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2880\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1620\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@PWMontreal\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@PWMontreal\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/fr\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/fr\/\",\"name\":\"Playwrights' Workshop Montr\\u00e9al\",\"description\":\"Nationally-mandated theatre development centre\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/fr\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"fr-CA\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/2022\/04\/08\/collaboration-intentionality-and-cultural-dramaturgy\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"fr-CA\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.playwrights.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Blog-Post-PWM-Header-Scout-Rexe.png\",\"width\":2880,\"height\":1620,\"caption\":\"Graphic image of the header for Scout Rexe's blog post. 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