Le Pigblog

One of Stolen Chair's favorite companies, Philadelphia's Pig Iron Theatre Company, recently launched a blog, giving a very in-depth look at their fascinating collaborative development process.

Pig Iron's three artistic directors were all Swarthmore alums, so when baby Stolen Chair was still a gawky undergraduate there, the company's work was influential in opening our eyes to the possibilities of live performance. By experimenting with some of their techniques of collective creation (which, in turn, draw inspiration from the Open Theater, Lecoq and Theatre du Soleil), Stolen Chair has been able to develop our own unique approaches to collaboration*.

So, check out the blog and go see their work whenever it hits your home city.

*Since we started writing on the blog 3/4 of the way through the development process for Kill Me Like You Mean It, we've only touched a bit on the final stages of the rehearsal process, but haven't really discussed how we develop work from the ground up. We'll be starting something new in about a month and it's going to be great to have the blog as, well, a web log of our thoughts as we move through the rollercoaster of ecstasy and agony that I ride whenever our creative family welcomes a new theatrical life into this world (mixing metaphors like it's my job!).