That’s because Schrock is a spectacular facilitator, who handles children with extreme sensitivity and respect, and engages the audience from the moment they enter the theater.Įveryone was encouraged to participate in “recess games” (hide ‘n’ seek, hula hoops, trashketball, Monkey in the Middle). This worked amazingly well at the performance I attended.
The students (or, in the case of the public performance, the children, parents or other observers), are invited onto the stage to assume the role of a character and to roleplay an action that would create a better result for the central character. Audience members are then invited to imagine a better choice that could have been made in that moment. The actors begin the play again and audience members are given the opportunity to simply say, “STOP!” when they wish to change the action in the play. Inclusion is a major theme of a good deal of their work, which last year featured “Hall Pass,” a large-scale, interactive work that was part of the La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls (WOW) Festival and a 6-month residency during which they presented short, site-specific, immersive plays at various locations around the San Diego airport. As Schrock puts it, there’s “an open-handedness and inclusion about how we lead.”
But their non-hierarchical organizational structure provides opportunities for everyone to contribute to the creative process. Her co-founder, Blake McCarty, is Director of Artistic Development. Schrock serves as Director of Community Development. We seek out issues, communities and types of theater that are often in the Blindspot.” They chose Blindspot for their name, says co-founder Catherine Hanna Schrock, “because our work seeks to capture the issues, people, groups and modes of theater that may not be in the center of our vision and on our main platforms. The 3½-year old Blindspot Collective is a nonprofit theater group that produces what they call “radically inclusive programming at the intersection of advocacy, education, and entertainment.” Their focus is “community-engaged theater that spotlights unheard voices.” Photo by Peter SchrockĪ collective is a cooperative enterprise. A scene from “Safa’s Story” at Blindspot Collective.
0 kommentar(er)
