AOA Season 5 Ep 1
Molly: Hello and welcome to a podcast about creating experimental art in trauma-informed and sustainable ways that support artists, our communities and the organization as a whole. I'm your host, Molly, and you're listening to Any Other Anythings.
In this season, we are focused on the latest project being produced by Grey Box Collective. It is titled Positive Ruminations. So this is an event that will feature four new works and each episode of this season of Any Other Anythings will feature conversations from the creative teams developing the new work, and we are really focusing on capturing the process and sharing out the things we find interesting along the way. Hope that you enjoy the season of Any Other Anythings.
Alright. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the first episode of season five of Any Other Anythings. I'm your host, Molly. I am also the founder and creative producer of Grey Box Collective. And I feel like I just need to name first, like the elephant in the room.
I said that there would not be another episode of Any Other Anythings that was just my voice and here we are you get my voice again. And I'm just here to do a quick like transitional episode so that you know what to expect in season five of Any Other Anythings because it's like very similar, but also very distinct for what we have done in previous seasons.
So we've done a lot of one on one interviews with creatives of Grey Box Collective in the other seasons of Any Other Anythings and that part is what stays the same in this season, but we're actually going to be talking with each creative team as the process is unfolding like in real time I think all of the other episodes have always been like we do the interviews after we finish the projects I think it's a little vague for me.
But this one we're doing like in real time, which is cool. We get to kind of capture where we are at three very distinct places in the rehearsal process and so wanted to name that as like kind of the structure of what this season will bring and also talk a little bit more about what this project is?
And so the piece itself, or the event itself, is called Positive Ruminations, and it's an evening of newish work, and I'll talk about that in a moment. Alright, so Positive Ruminations will feature four newish, multidisciplinary performances that address topics around mental health, climate change's impact on our body minds, transformative grief, busy culture and empathy\compassion fatigue. And so the newish refers to the iterative nature of how we develop performances and how we are returning to pieces in development that were set aside during Covid. With the overarching title being Positive Ruminations like each new work will not only address the stark reality of these topics, but also offer ways of engaging in responsible action, cognitive restructuring, radical hope and reframing to encourage audiences and artists to really stay connected to these topics directly impacting our humanity.
And I also just want to note the timing of this event, especially if you're not listening to this as we're rolling them out. The event itself is going to take place roughly 10 days after the 2024 election in the U. S. And this to me, I won't get on my whole soapbox about it right now. But to me, it's part of like meeting this moment in our history.
And I think that's one thing that's really important to me with Grey Box Collective and arts organizations as a whole, I really think it's important to be thinking about like, how are we meeting these moments? Because the world needs us to meet these moments. And so believing that engaging in this practice of Positive Ruminations around these common ground topics, I really feel that it's going to foster a sense of belonging, connecting with dignity and standing in our integrity as a community.
And so I'll talk a little bit more about the four pieces that are being developed. And of course, you're going to hear a lot of this over the course of this season. But just. You know, planting those seeds now so that you can start to familiarize yourself with what we are doing. so, let's see, I think I'll actually do these in what at this time of recording on October 1st, what I anticipate being the show order.
So the first piece is called EMP_T_Y. And just like for visual purposes, it's actually the word Empathy with the A and the H removed. Right. So there's like dashes where those letters should be. So EMP_T_Y explores how exposure to chronic external stress leads to empathy\compassion fatigue.
And it's asking, how can we replenish ourselves when constantly we're being inundated with disturbing media? Okay. So that's EMP_T_Y. And then. I'm being actually indecisive about which one of these shows I want to go next, but I think it's going to be Finger Painting [for grown-ups], and let's just have a moment for Finger Painting [for grown-ups] because Grey Box Collective would not exist if it was not for the ensemble that created Finger Painting [for grown-ups] back in 2014.
And this is actually the first time Finger Painting [for grown-ups] is officially listed under Grey Box Collective as, like, a piece we produce, which is exciting. Alright, so anyways, nostalgic moment, and we're back. Finger Painting [for grown-ups] examines how busy culture robs adults of the joys of play and creativity due to being in a constant state of urgency.
And it looks at the impact of burnout and how we can return to living creatively fulfilling lives. The next piece is PAUSE… and also, if you've listened to Season 4 of Any Other Anythings, you've heard me talk about all of these pieces so far. Because EMP_T_Y, PAUSE…, and Finger Painting [for grown-ups] have all existed and some way, shape and form.
Previously, PAUSE… was actually something that we did most recently and developed during COVID. And so now developing it and starting over without being in the midst of COVID. So PAUSE... looks at transformative grief as a change agent in our lives and ask how to live with the roller coaster journey of loss.
The last piece is the brand new one and It's called Solastalgia. So Solastalgia focuses on the impact of climate change on our body and minds and how to manage eco grief and distress. And just naming that Solastalgia is a word, like think of it as like the word, right? Sol is sun. And then the nostalgia coming from like nostalgia and Solastalgia is that desire to go back to a place we can't anymore due to how environmental changes have happened.
Okay. So Positive Ruminations is the overarching theme for this event. And then we've got these four pieces that then dig into very specific things with each of the topics. All right. So that's a little recap on or just a little overview. There we go of what you'll be hearing about this season in Any Other Anythings.
And for those who are local or happen to be in Arizona on November 15th and 16th 2024. We hope that you are able to join us in Tempe, Arizona to witness the latest iterations or the new iterations of these pieces. I'll just talk a little bit about kind of the iterative way that we develop work through multiple phases, and also how we develop work and we call it crumbs, nuggets, and muffins.
And there may or may not be an episode somewhere in either Any other, Anythings or trauma-informed creative practices about this. We can link it in the show notes for you if you are interested in hearing more about it. So we develop work under the framework of trauma-informed creative practices, right?
And there's a whole podcast and I've got all kinds of like writing and recordings and replays available if you're interested in like really doing a deep dive into trauma-informed creative practices. We use that framework to develop work like being in process, right? So that's like the things that we're doing on a daily.
And then in terms of like the words that we use to develop the work which is tightly connected to that Trauma-Iinformed Creative Practices framework and also echoes some of like, tectonic theater companies moment work we call it crumbs, nuggets, and muffins. And there's, of course, the whole story with how crumbs, nuggets and muffins became a thing that we say. We have a lot of, like words and phrases that we've developed over the years that just kind of stuck and crumbs, nuggets and muffins is one of those. So we start our development process by really creating the smallest possible crumbs of creativity, right? Itty bitty. And the purpose of that is like the scaffolded approach, like how can we be really intentional about these tiny little moments?
And then we start to piece those moments together. And they eventually become nuggets. And then the nuggets get pieced together to become muffins. And then there's also like cupcakes and that's a whole other thing that I'm not going to get into right now. But we've got crumbs, nuggets, and muffins.
So we're slowly developing bits and pieces of this work and putting it together. And if you're a visual person we typically will use post it notes very often, and every crumb gets a name, and it goes on its own post it note, and it can go up on the board, and then we start rearranging, like, okay, how do these things happen together?
How can they come together? How can we rearrange them? All those things. So we have our post-it notes, and we organize things from there. But everything is created very separately. And that being said, sometimes, you know, you'll go through one crumb and be like, oh, I have an impulse to add this onto it.
Right. So it's, it's fluid. It's a flexible model, but something that we use. So you might hear some of that language in this season. So crumbs, nuggets and muffins. And then in terms of bigger, like, that's how we're developing each of these pieces in terms of the bigger picture of it all. All of these are what we would consider phase one.
So we do three phases to development. And this is a model that we had pre COVID and of course COVID screwed that model up. So it's exciting to get back to it. And so we develop work in three phases. The first phase is typically about 10 minutes. The second is about 20. The third is about 30. And then after our work goes through those three phases, it becomes an evening length, about 45 minutes to an hour, maybe longer work and it, it gets its own, its own thing. But we develop it in these slow ways. And part of that is like, do we want to, right? Like before investing all this time and energy resources funding into a piece, we like to figure out, is it worth it? Is it sustainable to dig into this? How can we like slowly go through this process?
Right. And I think that's also a structure that allows us to exist and process a little bit more instead of always focusing on the product. Like, let's stay with just 10 minutes. Like, can we find something that is really like juicy something that we want to sink our teeth into longer. Do we want to spend more time with this work or is it overwhelming? Or is it that the audience isn't really up for receiving it? Right. So it's a way to slow down the overall process of creating full length work. It allows us to spend some time and allow for shifts. And I think there's something also about like, it's this greater ebb and flow where we are able to bring some closure to each project.
Yeah, I think that's all I'm going to say about it. So it's phase one. It's not going to be a full production. It's not going to have all the like bells and whistles and not that we're also about bells and whistles per se. So. There's not a lot of spectacle and it allows us to really be in practice of showing up as humans, staging ourselves as humans.
I'm not really interested in performance or performativity. I think there's a lot of it in the world. And so can we just allow our humanity, our humanness to show up in a performance type setting and yeah, it's a practice. So that's a little bit about Positive Ruminations and our process that you're going to be hearing about in the, over the duration of this of this season of Any Other Anythings.
And I'll probably I'll be popping into each episode just to kind of guide us through. I might also do some like filler information or provide some context as needed. So my voice is still present. I'm still here still around, but I'm really excited that y'all are going to be able to get to know the creatives of Grey Box Collective this season and specifically with this project Positive Ruminations.
Alright, so thank you all very much for listening. I appreciate it. Take care of yourselves and each other until next time.
Hey, listener. Thank you so much for taking the time and energy to check out another episode of any other anything's greatly appreciate your presence. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to find out more about this podcast, the speakers and Grey Box Collective. You can also go to greyboxcollective.com/podcasts for a full transcript of this episode. Thank you again for listening. Thank you again for being here. Greatly appreciate it. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Comments