Makers Mingle #1
Our Conversation with Alicia Washington, Co-Founder of Good Company Theatre…
The rehearsal room is an ecosystem: an ecosystem that thrives by way of hospitality, community agreements, and shared values. In her book, A Director Prepares, Anne Bogart, director, humorist—more later—and co-founder of the recently-disbanded SITI Company (a theatre-making and training ensemble), compares the rehearsal process to resemble the act of making love wherein “the outside world is excluded.” Anne clarifies that the rehearsal room houses “arousal, heightened sensation, alive nerve endings, and sudden pinnacles” in a place to meet one another “separate from our daily lives.” It is truly thrilling to play in a rehearsal room where such stimulation occurs. Through a community-based approach to theatre making, the working relationships we rear and nurture in the rehearsal room are the veins for blood to carry oxygen throughout the ecosystem.
In a HowlRound Theatre Commons podcast from 2018, mia susan amir, an educator, organizer, and theatre artist, spoke on upholding shared values in the rehearsal room:
“I think it has been inviting and normalizing our ability to suspend process when the process is undermining the intention of a relationship, and when we’re being asked to do things or be in ways that are inconsistent with the value of relationship…we are humans, bodies, spirits, hearts, minds, in rooms that are in places where things are happening, and separate from other places where things are happening.”
This past April, I had the great fortune to perform in Queer the Stage: The Golden Age at Good Company Theatre, an Ogden-based theatre company founded in 2012 by two sisters, Alicia and Camille Washington, committed to staging “high quality, eclectic theatrical productions and events, forging new relationships between audiences, performers, and spaces in the process.” Queer the Stage: The Golden Age was the first of a new series at GCT that provides shimmering space for queer theatre-makers across the state to share their voice through song. I can vividly recall the range of sensations I encountered in the space:
The sound of Alicia’s giggle,
The smell of brewed coffee,
The soft and angular texture of the quilted blanket hugging my shoulders,
The menthol from a Ricola throat drop [flooding] my nasal cavity,
The reflective temperament of Alicia’s sequined kaftan,
The quick and tender tuning adjustments of a violin,
The goosebumps on my cheek hairs from listening to “Edelweiss,”
The soft and tender chatter between Camille and Colleen (mother of Alicia and Camille) as they entered the lobby,
The amusement I felt from seeing Colleen grin as I frantically tip-toed (mid-performance) through the lobby to the restroom to empty my bladder...
Queer the Stage exemplified a production process in which the intention was to gather individual theatre makers—from tremendously diverse worlds—together to share ourselves with the Ogden community and audiences beyond the municipal boundary. The efforts Alicia, Camille, and McKalle (our fabulous stage manager) made to ensure our comfort at Good Company Theatre miraculously seemed to erase the seemingly ever-present panic I feel when singing.
Our privacy was honored by way of individual office cubicles separating our dressing spaces, yet fantastically provided substantial square footage for impromptu dance sessions, wig-keeping, and (electric) fireplace chats on the velvety blue and cushioned sofa where I spent many hours conversing with my castmates. The lobby of Good Company Theatre was our shared space with audience members for post-performance gatherings with family, friends, Dr. Brian Manternach, GCT patrons, and local theatre makers—THE Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin held my hand and offered her guidance on applying for and securing grants for the future funding of KID SISTER…good people all-around. When Niko attended a performance during our second weekend, Alicia so graciously conversed and conspired with us for a good forty-five minutes about how to ameliorate rehearsal room conditions and revise the inherently broken system of producing theatre in Utah…and theatre companies that consciously conform to a rehearsal and production model which values commodification and ticket sales over the health of those working in the room. Niko and I were pulsing with fascination and curiosity that we asked to continue our conversation with Alicia over Zoom to which she generously agreed:
“We should walk into these spaces feeling welcomed. BE welcomed. During my time working in coffee shops and working with some great small business owners, and watching people’s kids grow up, and share their highs and lows, I had customers who passed away, you know, I became a part of their life where—as Good Company Theatre settled in I was like, ‘Okay. I want it to feel like people’s favorite coffee shop or local bar.’ Because we don’t get that: we’re supposed to get dressed in a certain way, we’re supposed to show up with our little dumb tickets—however they get delivered to us–and just like scan a barcode and go sit and experience this thing, and then walk out and that’s it, it’s like, ‘NO! We get to hang out before and after in the lobby, like…Okay. I only see you when you come on the second Sunday of each run, but I get to hear how your grandkids are doing, or how the business is going. That’s important to me.”
Alicia, also a volunteer for the YCC Family Crisis Center in Ogden, did not get much sleep the night before our meeting; she was on call at the hospital from 12 to 4 in the morning. Niko and I were gobsmacked by her tremendous transparency with us on topics concerning the conception and maturation of GCT, the immense fatigue of operating a theatre company out of the pandemic era, and how she maintains her lifelong partnership with theatre.
“I inherently knew that I could put up shows. I may have never done it outside of a university setting at that point [post-undergraduate school at Weber State University], but I knew the basics that you needed for a show, and I was committed to providing all of those from the lighting which I borrowed from places…to have built up, at the time, a big enough community to go to people and be like ‘Hey, can I go through your stock to pull costumes? I have zero money, but what I will do is that I will make sure it is returned clean, or dry-cleaned, and on hangers and restocked.’ As big as my love is for my mom and my sister, my love for theatre and my trust in where the theatre will take me was always present.”
I agree with Alicia. The trust I have in the theatre and the trust that Niko and I share through our efforts of exploring a more inclusive, accessible, curious way of making theatre is how we forge on. Our glorious mentor, Alexandra Harbold, often reminds Niko and me of “connessione,” or “systems-thinking” and a “hunger for synchronicity,” from How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael Gelb. Niko and I have come to understand synchronicity, in the context of KID SISTER, to denote shared agreements and values among creators and players. Making theatre by way of an ensemble-based approach is a nourishing process. We have been fortunate to gather generous theatre-makers from our respective University cohorts and friends from the fine arts community in Salt Lake City. How do we continue to expand our efforts to the larger community? We asked Alicia about where she has found success in gathering forces:
“I remember meeting with a group of now-known theatre-makers, my peers, at a gallery up in Ogden. It was available and opened on the tail end of my time studying at Weber State University and, on top of that, Tracy Callahan (the directing and acting professor) started to work with Viewpoints [developed by Anne Bogart and Tina Landau from the work of choreographer, Mary Overlie] and Suzuki. And so, we were able to go down and have this new-to-us space, students, and to be able to work in this new space and be so hyped-up about this new method of training. So much so, that I applied for an undergraduate research grant from Weber, received it, shot for the fucking-Jupiter, and I’m like I’m going to go to the now-closed Skidmore Summer Intensive that SITI Company put on. I had the money, I had the vision, and I just had to have them say ‘YES.”
(Co-Director Commentary:) The research grant Niko and I received to play and evolve with KID SISTER this Summer has revealed the vast realm of possibility at all twenty of our toes. APPLY FOR GRANTS! THERE IS SO MUCH MONEY EAGER TO BE SHARED TO EXPLORE YOUR PASSION AND PLANS TO BETTER OUR COMMUNITY!…I digress.
“I received a solid no from my application and had to turn down this money I had received. The following year, I’m like ‘Okay, I am going to try this again’, and I saw that SITI Company was doing a smaller intensive in Chicago–and I have always felt this huge pull to go to Chicago, and I was feeling all of these things. This was back in the day when you had to find a place to stay on Craigslist if you even know what that is–I am from the 1900s. It was such a monumental experience for me because I put myself out there in a way that no one really said that I should, or encouraged me for more training, in something that I knew that was going to be a part of my life forever, which was theatre; it mostly came from my mom and my sister. They were like ‘Yeah, go stay with this guy that you found on Craigslist, and do this program where it looks like you’re just stomping everywhere. Sure, go to a major city by yourself sounds great.’ I went, and then I started to take that into the community and we went down to Universe City, which was what that gallery was called, and I was like ‘We can do this. We can put up shows.” And as people went on to pursue different parts of their career, and left college, I’m like ‘Hey, let’s keep doing this. Let’s keep doing theatre. What does this mean to us?’”
She continued:
“I was working around the valley in different professional houses, but in very particular, and specific ways that weren’t as fulfilling as what I thought they would be when I got there. So, I started to wonder how much more fight I had in me to be told ‘No’ for stories and parts that I wanted to have the opportunity to play. Coming back, I started to gather people that we worked with on stage together from professional houses to, at the time, start up theatre companies. I brought us all to Universe City: dancers, actors, singers–you name it–playwrights, and I was like ‘we have enough people, we have enough resources, we have the space, let’s put on shows’ but no one wanted to produce shows in Ogden; no one believed that any type of success in theatre could happen in Ogden. If you start looking into the history of Ogden, it has a rich history of the arts, because of the railroad. I’m not the person to say ‘no’ to, because I knew I could do it, I knew I just needed to put the puzzle pieces together.”
Alicia’s dedication to her community in Ogden as an advocate, activist, and artist is a mystical and humbling phenomenon to those with whom she collaborates at Good Company Theatre. Her kindness and generosity transcend her brilliant and witty skills as a performer and director. Theatre-makers must support each other's endeavors. We do not live in the scarcity economy many of us were reared to operate under in the context of limited opportunity. However, there are forces of prejudice that obscure what is deemed “successful” in the Western theatre-making realm: a rigid rehearsal structure, ticket sales, sold-out audiences, empty spectacle…vanity? How do we make the theatre we want to see? How do we cultivate the spaces that nurture audience members, production crew, and players alike?
“I knew, because we didn’t have any type of budget, even though it was important to me because of my lived experience with other start-up theatre companies that the first thing we did was we always paid our actors–even if that was 250, even if that was 500, we have paid our actors since our first reading and rent always comes last. That was an important thing to establish.”
…and…
“Things that I found successful, as part of that process [At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen, 2023], was working with the cast on when they wanted to hold rehearsals. I think that ownership of what the schedule is, is important from the bottom up…Something else that was very successful, that I feel that is probably part of your process–because of how new it is on the scene–but the discussion of TIE [Theatrical Intimacy Education] and having an intimacy coordinator in the room. Having the text in front of actors and having that to reference to, because again with people…it was standardized at the top of every rehearsal, regardless of how much time we needed–and this comes in from my trauma-informed work at the YCC–to allow space for the time needed to warm up, integrate those practices–that boundary work–into rehearsal, but also to tap out or check out with each other: that we know that’s the structure of our rehearsal.”
It is vital to ensure each individual in the rehearsal space is heard and valued for them to reduce inhibition and encourage acting on their curiosities. Like Alicia and the company of At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen, Niko and I seek to establish a common language with our collaborators—much of which is attributed to the research of Theatrical Intimacy Education—as a means to fully acknowledge how each person can communicate in the room through language and movement. Niko and I value individuality in ensemble collaboration. Uniformity is a tool, not a structure. We hope to devise with anybody, trained in theatre or not, who wants to play with us. Alica spoke on her collaboration with her sister, Camille: co-founder of Good Company Theatre:
“You know, Camille comes from the visual arts world. She was studying to be basically like a curator, working in galleries. She learned arts administration in a different way than what I was exposed to…There’s a completely different process with visual artists. They get to knife out or scratch up or toss out a piece of work that they’re not jiving with and start over, in a sense. Her [Camille’s] vision of what it is to fail, or to see those rough edges, was entirely different from me which was like, ‘Shit has to be ready by opening night come hell or high water; come my health or sanity–’ was my school of training at Weber State.”
We were so grateful to chat with Alicia. To recall our pal Anne Bogart, Niko and I went on an invigorating journey, like unto our rehearsal room ventures, to be recognized and spoken with as a fellow theatre company and feel welcomed to ask questions and develop a new perspective of what it means to make and produce theatre in Utah. Her generosity has opened gates to pathways that Niko and I never imagined to be possible in our second year.
What values does KID SISTER share and, as Brené Brown counsels, “live into?” Nurturing our community of ensemble members, mentors, and audience members is integral to our process by engaging in practices that ensure equitable, inclusive, and accessible opportunities for all. We value the harmony between innovators and creatives in “synchronicity.” However, our shared value of community and the relationships within inform how we interact in space. From utilizing Google Forms to rolling out ten feet of brown paper for doodling wonders to engaging in a group boundary check-in and collective movement practice, we continue to develop our approach to caring for our ecosystem to inspire JOY in the process…together.
Cheers!
Camden
