Ask big questions – It’s the Theatre Project way
Theatre Project is a unique, beautiful and intimate 150-seat space on Preston Street. It turns 40 years old this season. The “project” is being a year-round fringe festival that showcases the best international avant-garde and experimental theater, music and dance. And you know what? Right here in Baltimore is some of the best and most provocative art found anywhere. That includes many Baltimore artists. Three of them are participating in the conversation with The Project’s Producing Director and General Manager. While those two may not be artists, they know what art looks and feels like and they want to share those powerful feelings with you.
Interviewed are:
Anne Fulwiler, Producing Director, Theatre Project
Chris Pfingsten, General Manager, Theatre Project
Roger Brunyate, Director, Peabody Opera Department, Peabody Chamber Opera
Vincent Thomas, Artistic Director, VT Dance
Naoko Maeshiba, Dancer, Choreographer, Director
* * *
Anne Fulwiler
Peter
It’s your 40 year anniversary. Congratulations. What thoughts or feelings are attached to this milestone?
Anne
I never thought that Theatre Project would make it to be honest. I was a member of the board 14 years ago. We had a board retreat and seriously considered closing the doors. We talked about it all day and realized there was a need in Baltimore that no one else was filling. That we were able to provide a space that is unique in this city. We wanted to persevere. So, I like to say that we’ve been going out of business for 40 years. Many companies last somewhere between 5 to 10 years. 40 is an amazing number to reach.
Chris
30 years ago I helped to renovate the place. Then I moved to Florida. When I left it was a brand new space. When I came back it was here, and I expected it to be. Now that I’m working here I continue to expect it to be here.
Anne
We keep booking into the future as if we’ll be here another 10 (or more) years.
Peter
What does it take to sustain such a long run?
Anne
Keep your artists happy. That’s been a huge part of our success. We go out of our way to make companies feel welcome here. They have good feelings about Theatre Project.
Roger
I can certainly speak to that both as Peabody and myself. It’s a very welcoming place, even though some of the conditions are very primitive. We can say that, it’s true.
Back to your first question…I fall somewhere in between Chris and Anne, in that I came to Baltimore 30 years ago, but had not set foot in Theatre Project for the first 10 years. I knew it to be a very sort of avant-garde presenter of companies from Eastern Europe, really out there things. For some reason it had the opposite effect on me, it didn’t have the effect that, “Oh I must see it.” It was kind of like I’m not good enough to come here even as an audience member. There was something about it, the reputation at the time that put me off. A colleague, a student at the time, whose opera I directed at Peabody…he knew somebody else who wanted to put the same opera on here. We had a wonderful meeting, and put the show on. And Peabody has been coming here ever since. It made a complete switch between intimidating and friendly. The message I got from Theatre Project was, “Of course, we want you to be a success, but if you have a failure, I want you to have a spectacular failure. We don’t want mediocrity.”
Peter
Go down in flames.
Roger
Yes. That’s been a guiding light for us (Peabody). For most of the things I’ve seen here, they’ve done something they wouldn’t try to do in other spaces. And audiences know that. And, a different space gets us a different audience. Peabody is so well bred. This place is not. Peabody involves a certain formal distance. It’s valid and the tradition, but it is not the way of engaging performers with their audiences directly.
Roger Brunyate
Peter
Naoko, what makes Theatre Project unique?
Naoko
They invited me to present my work when they didn’t know anything bout me. I remember, then, talking about the space. For me work starts with the space. And space represents theater. I was in love with the space. I wanted to create in this particular space. That was the only thing Anne really knew about me. I didn’t have a high profile. Somehow what I said resonated with her.
Peter
How do you explain Theatre Project to others?
Naoko
It’s the only space or venue that presents experimental international interdisciplinary work that are asking questions about art, about life, about what they are creating…asking bigger questions.
Peter
Why does that matter?
Naoko
For me theater is…when you create the work it’s really not the end, but actually the beginning. You just said something. And this is meaningless if the question is small. If the question is big it involves more people–the ripple effect–so it becomes a beginning for everybody, the audience, and this is very important. Asking big questions and involving the audience is how we serve them. How artists open up a dialogue with the audience. This is important for me.
Anne
It’s important to me, too. It’s why we have so many talk backs with the audience. This season is sort of a homage to our 40th anniversary and our beginning as a free theater. We’ve been doing more free performances, and more talk back experiences. Audiences want to connect with the artists and they want the more structured talk back rather than to just hang out with the artists in the lobby. People want to be invited to the table.
Peter
Anne, how do you put a season together?
Anne
Season planning is a combination…it starts with continuing relationships. The first things that get booked are Peabody opera and the High Zero Festival. These are people we’ve been working with for 10, 15 years now. I also look at new work that in some ways pays homage to some of our past. There’s a way to continue our tradition with artists of long standing, but always keeping it new. I’m also open to proposals. I’m looking for passion when an artist is proposing something that they want to put on here. One of the first things I say is, “why is Theatre Project the right place for it?”
Peter
What are you looking to hear in the answer?
Anne
That they understand it’s a place where they can take a risk. And that they understand that there’s an audience out there that is willing to see something sight unseen. Virtually everything we do here you’ll never have a chance to see anywhere else. In some cases, I accept proposals for scripts I know haven’t been written yet, just because there is a belief in a particular artist.
What people, who have never been here, need to understand is that it’s a beautiful facility. You hear the word avant-garde theater and not only is it scary because you might think it’s going to be inaccessible, but you also wonder—are they going to have heat? Am I going to sit on hard folding chairs? How will I feel? We have 150 very comfortable seats.
Peter
Anne, are you comfortable with the idea that maybe you’re the through-line to the Project, to the many diverse disciplines and forms that land on this stage?
Anne
I consider myself the Curator of the space.
Roger
You’re also a Curator of a tradition. His question is a very interesting one. I find I don’t think I have to get it by, Anne Fulwiler. I think I have to fit it into the Theatre Project concept. I’ve always regarded Anne as a Curator of the concept. I think she is speaking for something bigger than she is. Anne is somebody with a very flexible ego. It’s not about her, but is this right for Theatre Project.
Peter
What does avant-garde give us that traditional forms do not?
Anne
I think, it give us artist-created work as opposed to the more traditional theater form where a playwright sits down and writes a play. Our tradition comes more out of work that grows from an ensemble coming together, or an artistic director’s vision for his dance company. I’m not necessarily a great big thinker about this. A lot of this I do with passion and emotion and intuition.
Chris
And sometimes it happens through serendipity.
Peter
Roger, how would you describe the Theatre Project concept?
Roger
It gives you permission to try things you otherwise would not try. Most of the work that we’ve done here tend to be things that are written, but pieces written with a non traditional concept in mind. One of my last opera productions here was an opera about Freud. There’s a scene in it in which all the men and women are saying. “What does a woman want?” while there is a woman on the table and they’re stripping her clothes off. I had bought rather elaborate body stockings for the two students doing it. And they said they wanted to be naked instead. Here, I don’t even have to think about it. It was artistically necessary and we wanted to create that impression and we could. There is integrity in that choice. The thing is, here were two young women who were quite prepared to take a risk in front of their peers, and nobody was stopping them.
Peter
Vincent, how would you describe the Theatre Project concept?
Vincent
What it offers spatially…what can be done here? And it’s openness. Theatre Project is a risk taker in what it produces.
Peter
If Theatre Project is the solution, what’s the problem?
Anne
From a pragmatic point of view, a dance company doesn’t need its own performance space. It would be a ridiculous overhead to have anything more than a studio. An ensemble theater company that takes 2 years to create a piece doesn’t need to be maintaining their own venue. And we want to be here so they don’t have to worry about paying utility bills.
Chris
They don’t have to make the rent for the 40+ weeks they’re not performing. So, for artists the solution is to create art and focus only on the art.
Anne
Iron Crow and Generous Company don’t want to be maintaining buildings. We would like them to become known for performing at Theatre Project, that this is their home.
Chris
It’s always nice to have regulars because that’s how you build the audiences…people know that Peabody is going to be here, that High Zero is going to be here. And hopefully, Iron Crow and Generous will be here, too.
Chris Pfingsten
Anne
Vincent has been a real driver in us picking up the ball on doing more dance presenting in town. There are very few places that do. The BMA has a bigger stage, but also a much bigger price tag.
Vincent
I can’t say that it’s a much better stage. I think it has some things that are better—
Anne
-We weren’t necessarily drawing very well with dance and the realization was we better not do it at all or we better be doing more of it and better. So, we started out the season with a couple of free dance concerts, we had this great Fall dance mixer, another free event, and we invited every dance company in town to come. We had 7 of them to do 7 minute long pieces, so the dance community in Baltimore can see how strong it is. Two weeks ago we had the Collective here, they did two performances and they had Open Marley Night another inexpensive way for local choreographers to have their work to put on the stage.
Vincent
This is a prime example of how Theatre Project is a solution.
Roger
There’s also a chicken and egg thing, or rather the egg giving rise to the chicken. You can think of a presenting house as being the ultimate receptacle for new work that already exists, but the existence of the presenting house actually changes the way of thinking in the people providing. Because once Peabody established regularity (at TP) then we started to look for new works, works we would not do elsewhere, and our curriculum changed for our students. It became important—something that makes us unique—to have a high concentration of chamber opera that does things in more unusual ways.
The existence of Theatre Project has shifted the whole curriculum, rather broadened out other wings of the curriculum that are, to my mind, actually more important, or certainly equally important. That would not have happened if this space hadn’t existed.
Peter
Wow.
Vincent
This space does inform what you’re thinking artistically, and how to program your creative process as well.
Roger
Vincent, you used the word open about the space and a word I always use about the space is intimate. It is amazing standing on the stage and seeing the audience. And amazing sitting in the audience and seeing performers right there. It really is theater in your lap.
Peter
You’re doing a show here, now. We’re sitting on your set.
Roger
Yes, it’s an opera called Postcard from Morocco by Dominick Argento, which runs Thursday February 9 through Sunday February 12. It’s an old piece, 40 years old, written on an abstract script which is really a set of theater games set to music. It’s based around the idea that everybody conceals their identities, truths and feelings behind something. It’s a wonderful piece based on a work shop concept.
Peter
Vincent, what’s next for you?
Vincent Thomas
Vincent
Shadows…which explores essences of masculinity or manhood through shadows of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I’m engaging audiences through “table talks”…a way to bring people in to discuss a “hot topic.”
Peter
Your show’s idea?
Vincent
Yes.
Peter
Ideas to develop the piece, as well as audience development?
Vincent
Exactly. Hopefully the audience gets buy-in and a deeper understanding about the work. And I gain a deeper understanding of the work.
Roger
Two weeks before your show? You’re flexible enough to take into account something that happens now and put it into a show two weeks away?
Vincent
Yeah.
Peter
That’s impressive.
Roger
Very impressive.
Peter
Naoko, what’s next for you?
Naoko
I have a solo show here at the end of May. I don’t really know exactly what it is yet, which seems fine with Anne.
Peter
How did you pitch that?
Naoko
I think I said I want to do a one woman-solo show.
Anne
And I said, “Yes!”
Peter
What do I get when I walk into Theatre Project to see a show?
Anne
A “wow” moment! First the venue…an 1880’s lecture hall.
Then they’re going to find themselves sitting through something they never expected, or expected to like if they were brought here.
Peter
Who is looking for “Wow’?
Anne
Someone looking for adventure, something different…you’re going on a journey.
Peter
Naoko, how would you describe what Theatre Project promises?
Naoko Maeshiba
Naoko
Somehow to change your perception, of life or the idea you already had about life.
Peter
Anne, what’s the difference between your approach and Phil Arnoult’s (the Founder)?
Anne
He saw everything before it was brought here. He traveled. Then the mission statement said that every show is seen by Phillip Arnoult before it is brought. He’d go the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. That’s how that aesthetic was imbued. When I took over, my children were small. I couldn’t travel. But, Philip’s vision lives on. That spirit of adventure lives on, that spirit of nurturing the artists. That’s what Philip gave this place and what I still try and do.
Peter
Besides the satisfaction of being a venue that takes risks and nurtures talent, what’s in it for you?
Anne
I get to see a lot of great art. In a way it’s an extraordinarily selfish thing. I get to present what I want to see. I make myself take risks too. I’ve stretched. I’ve learned to love new things. That’s the Theatre Project way.
* * *
A couple of years ago, Anne insisted that I come see, or rather experience, Paraffin, a dance theater work by freelance choreographer Naoko Maeshiba. I did. It was strange, beautiful, disturbing, and unforgettable. All of my assumptions about art, life and the Baltimore art scene were rendered useless. I still think about it. I’m helpless to describe it to people so I just shake them and insist—like Anne did to me—that they must experience Naoko’s work! This probably happens to somebody with every Theatre Project show. Let it happen to you.
