Entry Points

We are currently deep in development with our tenth full length production, axes, herbs and satchels. We first started with an investigative lab in the summer of 2022. Formal development began in early 2023 with the arrival of our inaugural anthropologist-in-residence, Dr. Haile Eshe Cole. So when I received the following text message from our former intern, Eva Moschitto, it was a great opportunity to get some perspective. Here's my exchange with Eva.

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EVA: Do you have any questions you always ask when approaching the text or a specific system?”

MELISSA: I love this question!

When we first set out to do a project, we may or may not be starting with a piece of text - it might be an image, or usually it's an event. Once it was even a Kickstarter campaign that a white guy from Virginia started in order to establish his “own” Kingdom in Africa.

Regardless of what the instigating source material is, our starting block is a provocation - the question inherent in the seed of the project.  

What question is the text asking or pointing to?

Nearly all of our work is set against the relief of the present tense: why this story now? Whether we are delving into historical archives or scientific data, can it help us look at what is happening today in a different way? Can it offer us a different framework or point of view? 

That is often an entry point for the storytelling.

My friend Brian Herrera uses the term “history’s rhymes” which I love - we always seem to be bumping up against those. 

The next question that typically comes up is: what’s my personal stake? What do I have to gain by telling or making this story? Since we are a collaborative theatre company, this is closely followed by: who else needs to be in the room telling this story with us?

Once we are together, in the rehearsal studio and making the number one litmus test is: is this sticky? Meaning: is it calling us? Is it weird and enticing? Is it provocative? Does it make us uncomfortable? Is it challenging our previously held beliefs? 

The devising team of axes, herbs and satchels, in rehearsal. From left to right: Nazlah Black, Brianna Johnson, Jayda Jones, Asha John and Jalissa Fulton.

We are also trying to figure out - through experimentation and iteration - what form the story wants to exist in.  

Over our 16 years of making work, we’ve hit upon a system. It looks something like this, though it’s rarely linear; we’re often looping back around to revisit a stage in the process.

1. Provocation: articulating an anchoring question or statement. In other words: what is this source material helping me to do or answer? What can it be a conduit for?

2. Research: collecting source material. Branching out from the initial seed -- be it a text or an image -- what else can be gathered? We look for other primary sources, images, objects. We increasingly have challenged ourselves to look for sources that fall outside of the official “sanctioned” or intellectual archive. Get associative! Eventually you’ll have to start defining boundaries for yourself, but in the early phases, we go broad.

3. Investigation: interacting with the source material in the rehearsal process. From a writing POV, this might look like a joint writing session. Key concepts to lean into: being generative and associative. We use source material to generate physical language or choreography, ideas for scenes, characters, etc. In the early stages, the goal is to create as much content as possible. We compile a Content Dictionary, a spreadsheet that tracks all of the moments created which helps us to start to see a structure or narrative or simply records what we’ve created so that we can refer to it more specifically later on.

4. Workshopping: then we move into the workshop phase which is designed to experiment with narrative structure, character, visual storytelling, and design concepts. We often return to research after one of these workshops, once we’ve started honing in on our idea for the overall piece. 

After this, we begin scripting, using our devising process as a blueprint for storytelling. Along the way, we find opportunities, both formal and informal, to share the work with an audience. For us, live feedback is critical.

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Which of these steps resonates for you? Which do you feel skilled in and which feel like a challenge? Have you defined an artistic process for yourself? Let us know in the comments!