EXTRA CRITICUM

RT Action Network Member: Jennie Redling

In early 2020 I began an experiment in mutual cooperation and career accountability. I'd noticed that many of the creative folk in my workshops had to contend with a lot of fear, uncertainty, indecision and isolation and that all these were undermining what should have been a steady forward momentum in their careers. These were seriously talented people who more often than not found themselves slightly paralyzed by not knowing which next steps for a given project made the most sense. I've always believed that when we form coalitions when we offer help to friends we respect and enjoy, everyone benefits tremendously. So I started the Roland Tec Action Network. Based on the simplest premise: going it alone is ten times as difficult and feels lousy too. Each month the 9 members of RTAN meet for a Saturday morning accountability and business brainstorming session. Members are encouraged to share whatever's challenging them most that day. And a couple weeks later we gather on a Friday evening to share work and further bond as artists. Now, the accountability part of this equation has a new home online in a private forum that allows members to post project goals each month and solicit the input of colleagues. In April, RTAN celebrated its first year of existence. And I decided to ask the current members what the Action Network has meant for each of them.

For the next few weeks I'll be posting some of their answers. 
- Roland Tec

Jennie Redling

RT Action Network has been specifically valuable in discriminating participant choices for connection. Having a group of writers carefully selected with compatible energy and process share and respond to my work and the opportunity

RT Action Network Member: William Ivor Fowkes

In early 2020 I began an experiment in mutual cooperation and career accountability. I'd noticed that many of the creative folk in my workshops had to contend with a lot of fear, uncertainty, indecision and isolation and that all these were undermining what should have been a steady forward momentum in their careers. These were seriously talented people who more often than not found themselves slightly paralyzed by not knowing which next steps for a given project made the most sense. I've always believed that when we form coalitions when we offer help to friends we respect and enjoy, everyone benefits tremendously. So I started the Roland Tec Action Network. Based on the simplest premise: going it alone is ten times as difficult and feels lousy too. Each month the 9 members of RTAN meet for a Saturday morning accountability and business brainstorming session. Members are encouraged to share whatever's challenging them most that day. And a couple weeks later we gather on a Friday evening to share work and further bond as artists. Now, the accountability part of this equation has a new home online in a private forum that allows members to post project goals each month and solicit the input of colleagues. In April, RTAN celebrated its first year of existence. And I decided to ask the current members what the Action Network has meant for each of them. For the next few weeks I'll be posting some of their answers. 
- Roland Tec

William Ivor Fowkes

Having a monthly meeting at which we were held accountable for taking the steps we committed to at the previous meeting

This year has been less about my work and more about my audience.

Pandemic Pause tossed us all up in the air and landed us in one of two worlds -- the world of the family marooned in their home stuck with each other all day all night and the world of the single person stuck with the nightly question: do I face East, North, South or West as I eat my dinner? While one could say I've spent these past several months working hard to provide online venues for the work of beloved writers who are not me, although I've loved the work and getting it on its feet and hearing it come to life, I have a confession to make. And perhaps it won't surprise many of you.

Much of my focus has been and remains squarely on the audience. And on my participation in the formation of audience. Pandemic isolation has given me new reverence for that mysterious alchemy by which many become one. We bear witness together and somehow without really even noting the shift we coalesce around something profound.

And when human beings bear witness, we make noise. To cut off or MUTE the spontaneous exhalation, giggle or gasp is to rob the dramatic event of its meaning. I am in dialogue with my audience. And these past 12 months or so, it's been an honor, a pleasure and a miracle finding myself a key player in the ancient essential act of taking it all in and freely responding. 

Here are a few videos from this year of romancing the monologue. Each speaks, I think, to something essential in this handshake. They come into the room, the lights dim and we shake on it. They'll sit quiet enough to hear and to be moved and we'll spin something for them that ultimately involves them because it reflects a part of them.

RT Action Network Member: Janet Kenney

In early 2020 I began an experiment in mutual cooperation and career accountability. I'd noticed that many of the creative folk in my workshops had to contend with a lot of fear, uncertainty, indecision and isolation and that all these were undermining what should have been a steady forward momentum in their careers. These were seriously talented people who more often than not found themselves slightly paralyzed by not knowing which next steps for a given project made the most sense. I've always believed that when we form coalitions when we offer help to friends we respect and enjoy, everyone benefits tremendously. So I started the Roland Tec Action Network. Based on the simplest premise: going it alone is ten times as difficult and feels lousy too. Each month the 9 members of RTAN meet for a Saturday morning accountability and business brainstorming session. Members are encouraged to share whatever's challenging them most that day. And a couple weeks later we gather on a Friday evening to share work and further bond as artists. Now, the accountability part of this equation has a new home online in a private forum that allows members to post project goals each month and solicit the input of colleagues. In April, RTAN celebrated its first year of existence. And I decided to ask the current members what the Action Network has meant for each of them. For the next few weeks I'll be posting some of their answers. 

Roland  Tec

Janet Kenney

When the Roland Tec Action Network was an exciting new endeavor for Roland, it was a terrifying new one for me. I had done a long-term project, a memoir, and was out of synch with  my theater craft and career.

Zoom Theatre May Have Left Us Some Important Gifts. Don't Miss the Rare Opportunity That's Arriving.

We can hardly contain ourselves with the glee that stems from the idea that our current way of life may possibly be coming to an end... or at least a kind of optimistic pause 

In the meantime, those of us who make plays. films, musicals, operas, ballets, etc. etc. find ourselves stuck in the same boat: not 100% seaworthy, overcrowded, and possibly not even sailing in one discernable direction.

The Most Basic Questions:

Will Zoom Theatre continue even after we've all stopped needing to construct approximated lives via our laptops?

When will theatre lovers, for example, not hesitate for one moment when lining up to purchase tickets for shows that pack us into houses with the cool efficiency of one of our major commercial airlines?

Will the type of work that audiences clamor for have changed in any fundamental way as a direct result of a steady diet of talking heads in screens? 

And has more than a year of making theatre happen within the narrow confines of the Zoom Box somehow helped us all to see some of the ways in which the traditional rules of how theatre gets made and who gets to make it don't necessarily need to be renewed without question?

What Have We Learned? Surely a lot. No?

COVIUSbe sure there's nothing we'd like to carry with us into the future, a future that's anything but certain for the performing arts.