Home Is Where The Art Is

“Home Is Where The Art Is”
by Jackie Rivera

 

I suppose it is apropo that my first blog entry for The Syndicate would be about home. Since The Syndicate has become one of my coziest and most recent artistic homes.

But when I was invited to join this company I technically had no home. I was living with my aunts in Park Slope, saving money to purchase a short school bus or shuttle bus to convert into a home on wheels.

It’s a thing. People are doing it.

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Finding the Right Words -a conversation with Another Jungle playwright Kristin Idaszak

Elle: I want to start with a story I’ve heard you tell before, about seeing a play- I think you know the one I’m talking about?

Kristin: Yes. I do. I don’t remember where I was in the process of writing Another Jungle. Somewhere in the early writing phase, I think. I went to see a play that received a lot of acclaim, and in the play a woman gets punched in the face. I saw the play on the first or second preview, and they hadn’t quite landed the fight choreography yet.

Look At It Again

“Look At It Again”
by Janouke Goosen

A friend asked me right before I moved to New York to study at SITI Conservatory: ‘What do you think The Theatre will look like in the future’ . I told my friend I would tell him when I got back, when the Conservatory ended. I still haven’t answered that question – it might be time to follow up with him…

How many more miles will I need to walk to get you to sleep?

“How many more miles will I need to walk to get you to sleep?”
On being an artist and a new mom

A conversation between Emily Tieger and Megan Paradis Hanley

HOW I WORK

“HOW I WORK”
Or, The Syndicate: We’re Working On It.
(With Thanks to Lee Breuer)
by Alanna Coby

Recently some people have asked me how I work. Well. Here’s how I do it these days.

I am working on a play. The play is called Tiny Errors at the End of the Millennium, and it is about a dancer obsessively working to correct the mistakes she makes while participating in a competitive dance show in 1999. It is also about the million small and human mistakes Western societies have made in the first 17 years of the 21st century that have landed us where we are today.

What Is Our Work Worth?

“What Is Our Work Worth?”
by Ellenor Riley-Condit

When I ask myself questions about the monetary value of work in the theater, particularly as an actor, I tend to get kerfluffled really quickly. Sometimes it feels like artists who make physical objects may have a more streamlined process for figuring out their worth. Whether you’re a painter, a baker, a whittler, or an artisanal cat toy maker, if your art form results in a physical object, perhaps you can figure out slightly more easily how much that object should cost? Obviously that’s an extreme generalization on my part, but it feels like a grass-is-greener type of thought process: Maybe if I used my labor to paint paintings instead of make plays, I would be more clear about how much money my labor is worth. Questions of value feel more confusing (and even more dangerous for self-esteem) when I, the actor, am thinking about myself as the product.

Story of A Body

“Story of A Body”
By Leigh Hendrix

My body and my voice are my tools and material as a performing artist. They are also what carry me through the world even when I’m not on stage, how I am seen and heard. There are a lot of expectations tied up in bodies – signs and signals we use to assess people and make judgements, organize people we encounter. A lot of these expectations are gendered, racialized, coded for class distinction, designed to tell us who has power and what kind and how they are allowed to wield it. Last month, Megan wrote about the body being hyper-visible in Suzuki training and the wonderful opportunity some of us had to be a part of Transformation through Training at Skidmore with SITI Company family and the Suzuki Company of Toga in May. I want to pick up that thread around personal relationship to Suzuki and Viewpoints training and making work in the world as a Queer person, moving through the world in the body of an artist.

Show Me: Acts of Transfer, or that time I met the members of the Suzuki Company of Toga

“Show Me: Acts of Transfer, or that time I met the members of the Suzuki Company of Toga”
By Megan Hanley

This summer, after studying their work and training with SITI Company for the past 7 and a half years, I finally had the chance to meet the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT).

 

“Discover Love”

“Discover Love”
by Ellenor Riley-Condit

In September of 2009 I was spending time in my hometown of DC waiting to head back to college. My boyfriend at the time had an internship at one of my favorite theaters, giving me even more of a reason to hang around. I had just turned 20 and had a crazy summer traveling and working on plays. I may have been an emotional train wreck, but I had a renewed sense of purpose as a theater person. I felt I understood how to make plays and why. I was hopeful and energized, due in no small part to having close to zero responsibilities, living on my parents’ dime, and spending most of my evenings watching theater. An exhausting life of privilege, to be sure.