It's out of our hands now

Thanks to all who helped edge Stolen Chair's social media proposal into the final round of the Jenzabar Foundation's Social Media Leadership competition. Here's their official announcement:

The Foundation would like to reiterate how impressed we were with all of the submissions from the 15 organizations that nominated their campaigns. The following FIVE organizations received the most votes, and thus, are the finalists for The Jenzabar Foundation Soical Media Leadership Award:

-The Stolen Chair Theatre Company

-Dream Activist

-Texas Friends and Allies Against the Death Penalty

-Forge

-The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

The winner will be selected from this pool of campaigns and will be announced by the Foundation on Wednesday, May 13th.

Announcing Quantum Poetics, coming 2010 to a theatre near you (if you live near NYC)

Surprise surprise. It seems we only get our project pitches in anything resembling articulate shape when a grant deadline forces us to. This means, of course, that the project pitch is written in "grant-ese," a special language which requires four times as many words to communicate simple ideas. Like most grant apps for new Stolen Chair projects, the ideas are at the earlist, most zygotic stage; we won't have our heads firmly wrapped around this piece until 3 months after our first retreat and our first retreat won't be until October.

Science tells us what is true. Art tells us how those truths make us feel. Science is a building's structure. Art is the wallpaper. Science, we tend to think, will eventually know so much about the universe, perhaps art will no longer be necessary to describe human feeling. Recently, however, the fundamental truths of science have been discarded faster than last year's fashions, and new discoveries in neuroscience and theoretical physics have come to paint a chaotic, pluralistic vision of an unknowable world unrecognizable to our great-grandparents, but quite familiar to artists who have presented such fractured perspectives for decades. If art tells us the truth, then maybe science confirms the truth's truthiness? Or maybe: there is no objective, stable "truth," and scientists and artists are together joined in a journey to understand an ever-shifting reality. As science writer Jonah Lehrer writes, "Science needs art to frame the mystery, but art needs science so not everything is a mystery." In QUANTUM POETICS, Stolen Chair's 13th original work, we will fuse our experiments as a laboratory theatre with the experiments of chemistry, physics, genetics, and neuroscience laboratories around the world, guided by the question: how can theatre adapt recent scientific discoveries to the stage, creating a unique dramaturgy and performance style that speaks holistically to our contemporary human experience?

Since QUANTUM POETICS will be created over the course of our entire 2010 season--virtually doubling Stolen Chair's developmental time--we're still discovering the contours of the project. What we do know, however, is it will, like all Stolen Chair pieces, be developed by our resident company in a process likened to an "aesthetic supercollider" (Leonard Jacobs, NY PRESS), a collaboration further enriched through interviews with reknowned physicists, neuroscientists, geneticists, and chemists. We hope QUANTUM POETICS, our most far-reaching creation to date, may serve as a stepping stone for dialogue between the artistic and scientific communities, inviting each to draw inspiration from the other.

Playing catch-up after playing hookie

Long time no post. Sorry 'bout that. I'd love to say that we've been playing hard-to-get or that we were off in exotic locals recharging after Theatre Is Dead's successful run (okay: Emily was!), but we've been hard at work in the lab brewing up some exciting plans for the next two years.

While we were maintaining radio silence, Back Stage's national edition published an "Ask a Director" column with yours truly. The question: "How do you deal with a cast of actors that have different processes and techniques?" Here's the tease:

"I don't really care if they're processing past traumatic memories or doing their taxes, as long as they can execute the score with precision and presence."

Thanks to Sarah Kuhn to asking such an important and provocative question.

Not content to read myself with the pesky restrictions of word counts, I was given free rein to run my mouth further in an interview at NYtheatre.com's NYtheatre Voices, where I detail, for the first time, Stolen Chair's plans to adapt the business model of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) to laboratory theatre. This is the proposal that landed us the ERPA grant we keep talking about. If you want to read even more about this, you can head over to ERPA's blog and read about the adventures that Aviva and I had visiting New Paltz yesterday and interviewing farmers.

New newsletter will be out tomorrow and we have a wee little gig on Thursday eve (Puppet Playlist @ The Tank) if you can make it.

Coolest grant ever!

Good news for the Chairs!  We've just been given permission by The Field to announce our acceptance into the Rockefeller-funded "Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA)" grant.  Here's the skinny:

Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA)

If it's broke, fix it!

ERPA grows from the premise that the traditional non-profit model of fundraising does not support the majority of performing artists in New York City. This lack of financial solvency leads to early departures from New York, early departures from art-making, and ultimately, a diminishment of New York’s vibrancy and vitality. ERPA aims to combat these challenges by asking artists to conceive dynamic solutions for financial stability, and giving them the tools, resources, and cash to help develop their ideas. As its name implies, ERPA aims to thus revitalize performing artists’ and arts organizations’ economic lives for long-term impact.

 

In 2008 more than 350 community stakeholders joined us for community dialogues (aka Invention Sessions) across New York City. Moving into 2009, The Field invests in seven artists who brought forth innovative ideas to generate new revenue streams from their art for their art...

 

Congratulations to Kahlil Almustafa, Nick Brooke, Rachel Chavkin, Connie Hall, JoAnna Mendl Shaw, Jon Stancato, and Caroline Woolard.

 

These seven artists will be paid $5,000 to research and develop their projects under the auspices of the ERPA entrepreneurial lab. In the fall of 2009 their ideas-in-progress will be presented and publicly adjudicated to receive up to $25,000 in additional project implementation funds.

 

More than 100 ERPA applications were received and adjudicated by a panel of veteran arts and business leaders, including: June Choi, Shawn Cowls, Corey Dargel, Trajel Harrel, Jaki Levy, Kristin Marting, and Heather Rees. ERPA projects were selected based on their potential vision, impact, relevance, and viability.

And here's my proposal: 

Jon Stancato/Stolen Chair proposes a way to adapt the business plan followed by most Community Supported Agricultures (CSA). Like the CSA model, Stolen Chair hopes to build a membership community which would provide ‘seed’ money for the company’s development process and then reap a year’s worth of theatrical harvests.

You can read about the other thrilling proposals on the ERPA website.  We have an exciting 9 months ahead of us.  Please contact me if you'd like to hear more about the proposal or jump on board and help make this crazy idea a reality.  And...um...watch this space for further updates as plans begin to take shape.