Pretty much every theatre artist has a slightly individuated story on the origins of our art form. Elders sharing enacted wisdom with their people? Check. Citizens gathering to contemplate their collective community myths? Check. Mortals pursuing clarity around the nature of fate by embodying it? Yup, that too.
But the common denominators in all theatrical origin stories are a gathering, a performance of sorts, and a story.
In our present moment, we’re being challenged to think of all of those elements in new ways. Rather than gathering in live assembly, we are learning to gather virtually. Rather than artists performing in one unified and literal space while an audience watches in another unified and literal space, we are all taking and making space on shared screens.
And the story?
Well that’s the cool part of this moment.
Playwrights – who are writers, who are poets, who are sages and griots and civic barometers – write stories. And while we call them scripts and they typically live first in 3D form in the hands of actors and directors and next in ephemeral form in the witness of audiences – well those scripts are lovely and malleable things. They can, and should, be read by anyone with a hankering to do so. And we’re hoping you’ve got that hankering.
Through our SWEAT Play Club, we’re going to wrestle and dance with the brilliant words of Lynn Nottage. Sometimes by reading in solitude, sometimes by discussing in community, sometimes by witnessing those words’ enactment. All of those parts have the potential of adding up to something that might feel a whole lot like theatre.
Maybe this is the 21st century origin story to add to the rest.
Visit our Sweat Play Club landing page for more information and to get involved.