In-depth artistic development and creative collaborations that expand an organization’s capacity are vital elements of the projects we fund at The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Collaboration takes time—to experiment with new processes and techniques, establish strong communication, and solve problems. We encourage our grantees to stretch their creative thinking through project grants that support the progression from research and development to public presentation. 

Collaboration has been integral to two new Center-supported theater projects: an experimental work about a mystic painter at The Wilma Theater and a transcontinental retelling of an ancient Hindu story, presented by EgoPo Classic Theater. With both productions premiering this month, we talked with artistic leaders at both companies for a peek into their creatives processes.

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The Wilma Theater

HILMA

The Wilma’s contemporary opera HILMA explores the life, work, and spirituality of abstract painter and mystic Hilma af Klint. Premiering June 4–23 (and available to stream online June 24 through July 21), the experimental new work has been devised by director and Wilma co-artistic director Morgan Green, composer Robert M. Johanson, librettist Kate Scelsa, choreographer Lisa Fagan, and the Wilma’s HotHouse Acting Company. Inspired by the historical details of af Klint’s life, the performance pushes the boundaries of opera and traditional biography, contemplating the implications of the artist’s visual and philosophical work and the forces that drove her spiritual quest.

As the director of the new work, Green understands time constraints as well as anyone, tasked with mapping out how the team allocates their rehearsal time. 

“We've chosen to do an epic choreographic gesture throughout the entirety of act two, which is 20 minutes long,” Green said. “So I knew from the very beginning of rehearsal that we need to work on this every single day and just chip away at it, because it's really hard. It's really challenging for the performers to get into their bodies. I could have chosen to use my time in rehearsal focused on something else. This is one of the things that directors do that people don't really always know about. You're deciding what's important to focus on inside the show itself and how to use the time.”

It’s also Green’s job to foster a collaborative environment where everyone can contribute openly. Communication among the creative team is critical. “It's a constant navigation,” Green said. “Everyone who is working on this project is quite experienced in giving notes. There's a right way to do it, and there's a right time to do it. A lot of the time, we'll ask each other, ‘Is this a good moment for this conversation, or should I save it?’ A lot of the best conversations happen at the bar after rehearsal over a drink, which feels just a little more relaxed and open and a better position to reflect on what it is that we're making.”

It helps that collaboration is already baked into the Wilma’s process through its HotHouse ensemble, a team of devisers who have developed methodologies together over a decade or so. It’s part of the legacy that earned the Wilma a Regional Theatre Tony Award this year for displaying “a continuous level of artistic achievement contributing to the growth of theatre nationally.”  For Green, who joined the Wilma officially as co-artistic director in 2020, the ensemble’s existing chemistry has been a valuable resource.

“They have built up a vocabulary of training,” Green said. “You feel it click. Their agility is astounding, and they just have a great attitude. I think that the environment of a company, of feeling like you have a community and a place to train and keep your artistic practice as an actor sharp, really contributes to what they're able to bring into a rehearsal space. They're incredible performers and delightful people. I wish that more actors had access to this company model, because it's kind of dreamy.”

Agility has been a requirement for everyone on the creative team during HILMA’s development. The music was first written for sixteen musicians, but HILMA’s band only has eight. Costumes have grown more elaborate—and more labor-intensive. Other collaborators have come on board, like a vocal coach and co-producers from theater organization New Georges. “This type of production, new opera, musical theater, there's a lot of people involved,” Green said. “There's been a lot of scaling up and down in terms of what we expected, what we were dreaming of, and then what's reality. We would not be able to do a show of this scale at the Wilma or otherwise without the Center’s support. So totally enabling, incredible.”

EgoPo Classic Theater

Ramayana

EgoPo has collaborated with two Indonesian theater companies, Papermoon Puppet Theatre and Kalanari Theatre Movement, to present a new interpretation of the ancient epic poem Ramayana. Blending contemporary and traditional puppetry, dance, music, and theater, the companies will premiere this contemporary retelling at Philadelphia’s Navy Yard June 12–16, accompanied by a weeklong festival of Indonesian food and culture.

The story of Ramayana concerns an exiled prince and the cultural exchanges and collaborations he and his family undertake before Prince Rama’s eventual return and ascent to the throne. Intercultural cooperation is at the heart of this rendition’s development, too. The seeds were first sewn nearly 30 years ago, when EgoPo artistic director Lane Savadove spent a year as a resident theater director in Indonesia. He met several performing artists there, including Javanese dancer Mugiyono Kasido (who performs in the upcoming Ramayana), and began working on a version of Ramayana. As he visited again over the years, Savadove connected with Kalanari and Papermoon to begin working on the piece in earnest, blending the traditions and theatrical modes of the three companies.

For Savadove, it was important that his creative team spend time in Indonesia, where they developed the piece in their collaborators’ home environment for five weeks before the three companies returned to Philadelphia for four more weeks of preparation. “The project doesn't happen without this R&D time,” Savadove said. “It was incredibly impactful for the twelve Americans to experience Indonesian culture and to work on their turf. It is their story. We're more like a character in their story, and so we needed to really breathe in and meet the story on their turf. If we took on the Ramayana in a short period of time, a traditional three-week or even four-week American rehearsal schedule, that's where you get into the danger of cultural co-option, because it takes more time than that to stand on equal footing in a cross-cultural collaboration. You can't do it rapidly. If you try to, the power structure is going to rear its head.”

The longer rehearsal time is more akin to what Indonesian performers are accustomed to, with time and space to experiment and develop the work. For typical performances, EgoPo has about three 30-hour weeks of rehearsal. “It means you have to work incredibly efficiently,” Savadove said. “There is a sense of time stress from the very first moment of working. If I fall behind, there's no catching up. In Indonesia, the rehearsal process is usually spread out. Sometimes over many months, sometimes even over years. They'll maybe work intensely for a week at a time, or they'll meet weekly. It's unusual to condense everything into three weeks, and that's all that your life is. Part of that is that they're always working on multiple projects simultaneously, and so there's a different kind of cross-fertilization going on. It's a very different process and a much deeper artistic process as a result. We could build patiently, and thus we built deeper.”

Savadove said the change of scenery helped put everyone into a more collaborative and open mindset. “We arrived in Indonesia with a 125-page script and plopped it down on the floor, and that was very new for the Indonesians,” Savadove said. “Ria [Sulistyani, Papermoon artistic director] said, ‘We've never had a script longer than eight pages before.’ So a big part of the process was letting go and daily, if not hourly, work on beginning to shrink that script, like, ‘Oh, here's seven pages of excellent dialogue. But you know what? That dance could do everything that seven pages of dialogue does.’”

“Letting go” has been a somewhat new experience for Savadove, but he’s found the approach surprisingly valuable. “It sounds a little too perfect, but the very DNA of the Ramayana is about letting go,” he said. “It's about not clinging to preconceptions. It surprised me how much I can enjoy and can benefit from sitting back and letting other people work. I literally sometimes imagine that there is a piece of tape on my lips in rehearsal, and I sit down. For 15 minutes minimum, I just can't speak. Really great things emerge from that.”