Jeffrey Mosser: Welcome to another episode of the From The Ground Up podcast produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. I’m your host, Jeffrey Mosser, recording from the ancestral homeland of the Potawatomi Ho-Chunk, and Menominee, now known as Milwaukee, Wisconsin. These episodes are shared digitally to the internet. Let’s take a moment to consider the legacy of colonization embedded within the technology, structure, and ways of thinking that we use every day. We are using equipment and high-speed internet not available in many indigenous communities. Even the technologies that are central to much of the work we make lead a significant carbon footprint contributing to climate change that disproportionately affects indigenous people worldwide. I invite you to join me in acknowledging the truth and violence perpetrated in the name of this country, as well as our shared responsibility to make good of this time and for each of us to consider our roles and reconciliation, decolonization, and allyship.
Dear artists, this conversation with Alyssa Hughlett was impeccably timed for a lot of reasons. If you’ve been listening to the last three episodes, you know that I captured this while I was at the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on Preserving and Transmitting American Ensemble-Based Theater. There I met some amazing artists, scholars, practitioners, and blends of all three. But leading up to this institute, I was having a moment where I was reflecting on my training out at Dell’Arte International in Blue Lake, California. I can only classify the feelings around it as homesickness, where I found myself wishing I could see the wildflowers and walk to school late at night for rehearsal and pick sweet wild blackberries from along the bushes in the ditch. And it was just a magical time. I actually, to put this on record, created and performed in a piece with my fellows. That was probably the best acting I’ve ever done in my life. And it was observed only by the class. To think of this work as ephemeral is absolutely true and tragic.
If you’ve been with From The Ground Up from the beginning, you know that our first guest on the podcast was Michael Fields, former artistic director and one of the founders of Dell’Arte International. In fact, I’m going to refer you back to that first episode so that you can hear with your own ears about the issues that Dell’Arte International was facing in 2016 when we conducted that call. It was a known issue that a major funder was sunsetting, but there were also some big unknowns on the horizon for this company and school, namely a pandemic and a response to We See You, White American Theatre as well as additional financial and artistic challenges. Which brings us up to the moment of this conversation in 2023, which was six months before Dell’Arte International announced that they hit their fundraising goal. I’ll leave a link to some information about this on the show’s transcription page at howlround.com.
As I mentioned, I’ve been doing this podcast since 2016. At least that’s when I started conducting the interviews. And I love making and using all the connections to theatres across the country. But what I really love is knowing folks are out there making use of it, which was the goal all along. So if you’ve used this podcast for any purpose or if you think you’ve got a lead for what we should showcase next, please do not hesitate to hit me up on Instagram at FTGU_pod, and at ensemble_ethnographer. Or toss me an email at [email protected]. Let me know how you’ve used any of the conversations in your own practice. Please, please do.
A couple quick references that occur throughout the conversation that you might want more info about. We mentioned Judith Miller, who addressed the participants at the institute. Alyssa also mentions the James Irvine Foundation, a private foundation dedicated to California. And finally, she also mentions the Papaya Lounge, a theatre company that she is a part of.
I should mention, before we dive in, that Alyssa left her position in January 2024 and that there is new leadership in place at Dell’Arte with Kimberly Haile, Julie Douglas, and Tony Fuemmeler. The opinions and perspectives are Alyssa’s, and conditioned by the time span she worked for Dell’Arte, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions & strategies of the current leadership team nor the current version of precarity of the organization. Presently, Alyssa is now the board member emeritus, but at the time of this recording, she was considered the CEO of Dell’Arte International—an interesting title for someone in a nonprofit. All details that we will hit in the next hour or so. Okay, folks, we ready? Here we go into a conversation with Alyssa Hewlett of Dell’Arte International. Our conversation was captured on June 14th, 2023 on Lenapehoking land, now known as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Enjoy.
Well, hey, listen, thank you for doing this. Thanks for chatting. You’re thinking a lot about transition. I just want to capture the moment that we’re in and the moment that you’re thinking about and how you’re planning on bringing it back to Dell’Arte and what you want to be doing with it. But also, I just want to capture some things that you’ve noticed about the institute as well, and maybe we can start there and just…
Alyssa Hughlett: That sounds good. Yeah. There’s a huge history. There’s a lot of history that I feel like I’ve been passed a torch and now I’m the person who holds this fire. And when I put that flame up to these places, it’s really surprising what I don’t know. That I feel like there’s a lot of new information, and I’m very interested in a word that has come up in our institute of today, I think it was, or maybe it was yesterday, around thinking about these things in a prismatic way. Because so much of what I do know are these bigger, broader brushstrokes that have been told through all the stories, all the oral stories. At Dell’Arte, all these stories have these legend like tone to them. Like you don’t know how to separate truth from fiction, and it’s just one big familia. And I think for maybe a lot of people in some ways felt like it’s just this dysfunctional family too.
But there are things about the way that people want to settle on certain people in that history. And when I’m holding that torch, and also… Now I’m actively doing this because I realize there’s more to it that I understand. It’s suddenly reveals all these people. I’m like, “Oh. What about this person? This person has been there for all these years and I want to talk to them, or I want to get an interview with them.” Anyway, so I think there’s this looking back that we’re doing as an organization, of course, because we’re trying to ask the question of how do we go forward? Do we go forward? Do we wind things down? These questions. And depending on who you talk to, there can be either great optimism or there is cynicism.
And the place that I feel like I live between is I just feel like I live between those things and I’m listening. Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that some of the things that have come up for me in this institute have been just so inspirational. It’s also just reminded me that that cynicism, some of those things of like, oh, yeah, well, I think we should just wrap things up. We should just maybe call it. That’s such a narrow way to think. And so I feel really good about maintaining this hope. Guarding this hope that I felt over the last three years through all of this crazy, rocky… Navigating all the change and having to really work through that.
And on a practical level, I also feel like I’m just connecting with people and able to be like, “I want to bring you out. I want to bring you out.” Or just getting in these ideas and just madly writing about these… Okay, this is what we should do next summer. So anyway, on a practical level, there’s meeting people, so crossing hairs with people, and then there’s also getting to be in the room and do some of these exercises that are based on artistic questions and just getting all these different ways to bring that back and reignite the work again. It makes me feel like I’ve been trying to-
Jeffrey: Bellows of some…
Alyssa: Yeah. Bellow.
Jeffrey: Right. Is that it? I don’t know.
Alyssa: Yeah. So I feel like I’ve been at the bellows. I’ve been trying to keep some passion alive, or I was trying to keep some sort of a drive, a reason to keep going. So it just feels good to step away from the bellows and realize that, oh my God, there’s all this brilliant work that been done out there, like rich scholarship, rich thinking, writing, and ensembles that have been just doing all manner of work and just realizing like, oh, yeah, we don’t have to be so precious about this moment anymore. We can go forward and be like, let’s experiment. So anyway, it’s been very affirming.
Jeffrey: Yeah. So to clarify, so you are doing your… So everyone at the institute is doing a presentation on a ensemble in the country, in the United States. And so you are doing Dell’Arte. Yeah.
Alyssa: Yeah.
Jeffrey: So where you’re holding your torch up to presently.
Alyssa: Yeah. This has been an ever-evolving question. My questions have really been this little bug around that torch. Just try to catch it and be like, oh, well, there’s another one. That I have about this. There’s another one. And then just be like, well, too many questions swarming at me. What I will just present on in the end is going to be a fifty-year glance back at the organization. And taking a page from the book of Judith Miller and some others and be like, what I’m not going to present on is it’s so easy to go into the stories of all these people because the people can be so fascinating. At least for me, that’s a very fascinating part of the story. And so instead, I think I’m going to go back and just look at the ensemble and look at the work and look at the things that are significant posts along the way through each decade. I think bringing in this question of how are we moving forward is what I want to put into that presentation as well.
So I’ve waffled back and forth of talking about: Do I then present on the folks who are there now and really talk about what our values are, which is really pertinent? Or do I shed light on the precarity of the situation that we’re in? Because that is also something I feel like should be stated at this institute and in a case study way. You know what I mean?
Jeffrey: Yeah.
Alyssa: This is what happened prior to the pandemic. This is what was happening. This is in some ways how the pandemic really just exacerbated all of the challenges that we were already facing. And in trying to go forward, here are the things that are really hindering, or here’s what we’re involved in doing. Because my mind has been at ground level dealing with things like scaling down. All of the physical details of that process. So being able to take a step back and do this big picture thinking is really difficult. And artists need to be able to do that. We need to be able to co-create the way forward.
Jeffrey: Just for clarity and for audiences who may not be up on the precarity that you mentioned, can you name a few of the things that came out around the pandemic? What’s led to this big question in your head right now?
Alyssa: Absolutely. Dell’Arte since the 1990s was… Well, since its very first NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] Grant, they’ve had just been extraordinary at being able to write … As an ensemble they’ve been able to write and write grants and get grants to do the work. Since the 1990s, the James Irvine Foundation, pretty big, California Private Foundation has really funded Dell’Arte in ways that has been really great and has helped sustain. We saw a lot of that funding really grow and expand in a big way in the mid 2000s. And then in 2017, 2018, the Irvine Foundation announced that they were divesting all of their arts portfolio. So not just Dell’Arte but many, many, many other state theatres, museums. So that was a big deal. Also, what was happening is then there’s also trends in the way people are funding. And all of that was also just shifting.
Locally our own foundation in Humboldt County did a similar thing during 2019 in which they basically created a new strategic plan that very much did not really take into account culture and arts. And Humboldt County is a really rich community of artists. Especially when you think about it being a rural region as well. So then generational shifts. I’d say that the other thing is that the big baby boomer retirement was a big deal. This is everybody from your finance director to the artists. And I think that even being in a county where we have poor healthcare, also artists not having the best healthcare either, there have been health issues. But the pandemic was a moment where people said, “Okay. It’s time for me to get out.” And I think that Dell’Arte before the pandemic was trying to problem solve how to go through succession planning, which some people were more comfortable with and others not so. There were just dilemmas. There were dilemmas. It’s hard. It’s really hard to transition plan. So yeah, generational shifting. Shifts in funding structures, and then enrollment, which is the other big key for us, which as a company and school, as a nonprofit organization… So we’ve got grant funding and then tuition. And those two things really play a big part in our budget.
So enrollment had really been in a decline since 2014, and we could see that. And the organization was trying to work through, create these strategies to figure out how to mitigate that. But none of it was really like, oh, we should change our programs. It was really around, we should come at recruitment in a different way, or we should maybe lean on alumni, or let’s do workshops in other places. So there were things that we were doing differently, different tactics. The pandemic also just threw open the door of uncertainty. Nobody knew if we were going to have relief funding, and then okay, a month in, all right. We’re going to have this PPP [Paycheck Protection Program] loans, okay. We can keep people on.
But okay, this is only going to fund three months or a quarter’s worth of employees, so what are we going to do after that? And so we’re just constantly in this waiting. Just like, okay, we can do this and then waiting. And I think that also the other major thing to state and acknowledge is that We See You White American Theatre also played a major role in, nationally around holding predominantly white institutions… Really bringing up accountability and bringing up race and equity. And this played heavily into what we were also working with at that time in 2020. And there’s a lot of shifts in the way that we’re seeing, and there’s social reckoning, and there’s paradigms that are shifting. And I think that we really went into, okay, let’s reflect on and really figure out how we’re going to make some fundamental changes and commit to looking at our mission, looking at our values, looking at our practices and our approach with a lens of critical race and through a lens of inclusivity. And that has been a big game changer.
We created a big strategic plan to get us through the pandemic, but right now, we’re in a place where we are having to scale. We’ve scaled down. And now that we’ve… This corporate term that came into my vernacular through a friend: rightsizing. Now we’re like, oh, okay. We’ve really got to rightsize now. And so those corporate words are things that… I don’t know. Feel very sterile to me. And that’s why being here, it feels like I’m getting the tools and I’m getting to be in a part of a bigger conversation that is really helping me just push away all that corporate crap. It’s about the artists. It’s about this field. This field is a field. It’s not some fake thing. It’s not something that we just tell ourselves at the end of the day, like, oh, I do ensemble theatre. I don’t know. It’s a profession.
Jeffrey: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for-
Alyssa: Sorry.
Jeffrey: No. No. No. Nothing to be sorry about. And so it’s really fascinating to hear where you’re at now. I thank you for being so transparent with all of that. That’s no small task. So many other funding sources just drying up or changing or re-examining mission statements. It’s all so fascinating. This world of funding.
Alyssa: Yeah. Michael [Fields] and I talk about this occasionally, and I’ve started to get to know some of Dell’Arte’s longtime supporters and fan base who are just lovable people. They’re like, “Yeah. I think we just don’t know you.” And it’s that sense right now in the community of we’ve always known these people, and the pandemic, of course shuts everybody down. We can’t do in-person stuff. It was very hard to work on succession planning or introducing another ensemble into that time when you just can’t do that. Really just practically can’t have that exchange. And so there’s a little bit of this re-introducing ourselves to our community that’s happening. I just feel like I’m…I’m like, yeah, let’s do that. Let’s reintroduce ourselves, or let’s introduce ourselves. That feels like a really simple and down to earth thing. It’s like, let’s have dinners. Like, okay, we’re going to do this thing at the Grange, or we’re going to host a dinner at Dell’Arte, or we’re going have a big carnival for kids out on the lawn. The other thing is, it’s about those relationships, right?
Jeffrey: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I was going to say, so much of funding is a relationship. It’s like, who do you know? How did I know you and how do I know you now? So that’s fascinating. That is changing right now. When we first met, you talked a little bit about how you’ve got a pendulum of action that happens, and I’m wondering if you could talk about that a little bit more. Particularly, I remember you saying it’s a pendulum between we’re a school, and we’re a theatre company, and we’re a school, and we’re a theatre company. Can you talk about that and maybe as that relates to your present circumstances too?
Alyssa: Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the things that I feel like I was hearing or seeing in some ways was an enthusiasm to, okay, let’s get in the room and let’s all make some work. Okay. We’re all teaching, but let’s find some time when we’re not teaching to get into the studio and just do these things and work and create. And then feeling like, okay, well let’s not endgame here. Let’s just really truly connect and try to find the juicy, compelling stuff that we want to make. But over some years, it never really came to a fruition. And I think some ways it was like, we still had these big figures at Dell’Arte who were there and organizing work and being like, yeah, okay, well, let’s do this play then.
And then there was also just this whole thing of some people not having that time or some other people doing work. Doing a massive amount of other administrative work. And nobody was seeing really eye to eye. So I think in some ways it’s like there’s an enthusiasm to get together to be a next generation of the Dell’Arte company, but the lack of time as a resource. And we then pour a lot of attention into the school. And the school takes an enormous amount of resources. This is another thing that we had to really look at the true cost of our programs and say, okay, wait a minute, this program really takes everybody’s attention. It’s just really going to pull everybody’s attention to it. So yeah, of course, if we’re going to be this company, which is a part of Dell’Arte’s identity, is it’s a company and a school. Our actions speak louder than our words.
But then there’s also just the idea of the company and the school has just changed over the years. And like Michael said, there’s this pendulum. And something that I’ve realized in looking back is that the community really sees Dell’Arte as the work of the students and as the company of the Dell’Arte players company. The actors who they see on the stage. So our student ensembles go out a lot in the community because we have a very place-based pedagogy. We require community service. The school used to tour for two weeks in the company without any faculty. It was just like, students, you’re going to go out and they’d do the tour and they take the van. They all learn how to do the tour thing. Setting up and being the van drivers and all this stuff. And when they went out on those tour circuits, that was Dell’Arte coming. That was a Dell’Arte company coming.
So what we have is we do have this situation where the students are the Dell’Arte company too. And so there’s this enmeshment that goes on. And the impetus, the impulse for it all was to have a place where it was multi-generational. Here’s the company where these older artists… We’ve cut our teeth out there as artists. And so they’re going to have a group of students who are going to come and train, and then we’ll also have this summer stock thing or this repertory thing, and they’ll get up on the stage too with us. So it really is a big family. It’s just a big family. And when you’re there, you’re a part of the ensemble. And I think that that really did morph over the years. The school and the company, they tried to pull away and identify themselves separately. But even if you look at the curriculum, the third year of the MFA program was to intern with the company. So it was to come in together and do a holiday show and tour. And Michael Fields directed those a lot. And so they got this great opportunity to work with Michael, who’s an exquisite ensemble director. He’s so good at that.
When you’ve trained for two years being in this non-hierarchical training model of trying to figure out how to be an ensemble, it feels so refreshing to move into a process with the Dell’Arte company with Michael, to then understand how we can still be an ensemble, but we can work with a director. So you learn through that. And then there is the internship that happens in Bali with Joan. It’s mistaken identity. This pendulum swinging. There are many years where it’s really a lot of student stuff. And then the other thing is that we have a situation where… I am the product of this. But where the faculty are Dell’Arte alum. So now it’s another generation. It’s almost a second or third generation of folks who are coming back to teach.
I know that one of the reasons that… And I put this on my application in coming here. Was that I really have felt just like this insular echo chamber effect. And just realizing, oh man, before actually I came to Dell’Arte, there was a whole world of stuff that I was doing and that existed and want to get back to that. And I think it’s time to open up the windows of the place. Open up the doors of the place and let new life breathe its way into the organization. It feels really great to be in a moment where it’s like, yep, we can do that. At the same time now, we can also really care for and attend to the amazing amount of research and legacy in all the companies that have been there. We can actually really care for that and preserve it and make it a base where people can come and toss their ideas out there and experiment again.
So in terms of that pendulum, I think what I feel like was being noted explicitly in the last five or six years, seven years maybe, who knows? It could have been longer. In my glimpse of this time, what I feel like had been really actively noted was that there was a desire amongst students and the student ensembles that they wanted to… There was this idea that our ensemble values and what we taught at school was what we practiced at large in the institution, in the organization. And then I think slowly it emerged that that was not in fact the case, or that it just did not look the ways in which the students expected it to look. So we talk about non-hierarchical ensemble collected creation. And when you form up to be a nonprofit or when you form up to be a company, these hierarchies emerge. And yes, they emerge because of things like, okay, your strength is to do that. Your strength is to do this thing. And so then we have our place in the structure of the thing.
But they also emerge because of power dynamics. They also emerge because of privilege, because of gender, because of a number of factors. And I think that that created a dissonance. There was some dissonance that started to get generated between ensembles of students and students forming ensembles saying, you’re not really living the values. You’re not really living up to what you say you’re doing. And in some ways, I don’t think that was ever… I feel like the company in the organization was just like, well, then go and make the theatre that you want to do out there. Go do it. Yeah. Fuck us. Go do your thing. Get out there. And now I think that we’re in this place of change. That is something that it’s really conscious. It’s a really conscious thing that we’re doing right now is to examine that whole aspect of ensemble artist led organization, and then the way that that’s transmitted into our training programs.
So yeah. That is my dangling thought around the pendulum has to do with the questions I think that have really come up. Especially like I said, the company and the students were indecipherable to the community. You know what I mean? It was like, oh, those were students, but they’re the Dell’Arte company. But then internally you’re like, well, the Dell’Arte company actually really means this set of people and not necessarily this set of people, but we’re all just one big thing together. So it became this thing that people needed to unpack. And then I think that there were problems that came up around that.
Jeffrey: Yeah.
Alyssa: Yeah.
Jeffrey: No. Thank you for that. Yeah. So your title has changed. Is that right? You used to be managing director. Is that right?
Alyssa: Yes.
Jeffrey: And you’re moving into… Well, you’d said there’s some… Your current title might change again.
Alyssa: It’s complicated.
Jeffrey: It’s very complicated. But what’s your present title? Sorry. Not to …
Alyssa: Present title is CEO and president.
Jeffrey: Yeah.
Alyssa: It’s big.
Jeffrey: Does that lean into the corporate world, as you’ve said, a little too much for you?
Alyssa: It does. Well, it’s funny because that title was the result of me really collaborating with the board on my job description. And in this weird way, settling on that title was like, yeah, I’m a CEO. Okay. Yes. That’s what I’ll be. It’s weird when you introduce yourself to ensemble community of artists as a CEO of a place. Like what? But in the community and at the time, I think that position… And I don’t know. I’m going to answer this in a really weird way I think. It grew out of a necessity. And I guess I’ll say this way. I am the kind of person who I’ve always believed that good leadership for me personally is not about me being visible. I feel like good leadership is invisible. It’s a ground up thing, it’s listening. But in the last two years, there really needed to be significant changes and decisions. And it’s really difficult to navigate certain situations where there are certain power dynamics at play.
So for me, being female, white woman who is in these situations where there are decisions that need to be made or there’s power dynamics that are at play, it also felt necessary to be like, yes, I am a CEO. Yes. I’m going to be accountable and responsible. And because I have that responsibility, I’m going to be making decisions with people. And it sounds weird, but there’s a lot that I’ve really figured out. There’s a lot of double standards with especially women being in leadership positions and needing to have a title that identified me to the business community in a way that that was really necessary.
And so now that we’re out of this… I really am like, I do not want to be called a CEO. I always thought that was a really temporary thing. I did start off as the managing director, the interim managing director, and was a managing director for a year. And then, like I said, had this negotiation with the board and what I was doing. And now I’m moving into being a producing artistic facilitator. That’s the title that we’ve decided on. And that feels really good to me. It means for me that I am going to step out of a lot of operational business, corporate care taking, and move into a place where I’m caring for the artists and the work that we’re putting out up on our stages and all the things that honestly, I just want to get back to doing again.
Jeffrey: Right. You also have your own company as well. Is that right?
Alyssa: Yes.
Jeffrey: Will you tell us a little bit about that?
Alyssa: Yeah. So it’s Papaya Lounge Productions. We decided to be an LLC because it was like, we’re not going to do the nonprofit thing. The work that I’ve been making with another grad who came out of Dell’Arte with me… Her name is Sarah McKinney. And we started the Papaya Lounge in 2016, I think it was. The description that we use is that it’s Absolutely Fabulous meets Pee-wee’s Playhouse. It describes the whole thing. It’s also a little bit Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as well, layered into that.
Jeffrey: Amazing.
Alyssa: It’s a female, it’s a female trio. And we are just after pure physical comedy. And we have these really big characters in some ways. And this stuff is so stupid. We do such stupid shit. And we recently had this comment that someone made. They were praising our work, which was nice. It was a compliment. And they were like, “This is so smart,” is what someone said about our work. And we were like, “What? This is the dumbest stuff we’ve ever…” Literally, we make a decision about what to do based on how dumb it is. But it’s three characters. One, two, three. But we blend a lot of cabaret and also just really raunchy. In some ways, very, very flawed like characters. And then we also like to just do things like weird, surreal sequences. We work with a band, so we have, The Enthusiastic Consents is our band. We sing and we have dance stuff. We do dance parties after our shows. We do a lot of game interactive stuff. And we’ve been doing it since 2016 and we’re still continuing. So it’s fun. It’s a blast.
People get very intoxicated at our shows. We sometimes wonder: what monster have we really created here? But it’s a lot of fun. It is a part of what has kept me going through this time and through the years. And so yeah I’m definitely going to keep on. Honestly, if I hadn’t had that trio and that show, I don’t think I would’ve made it through my work at Dell’Arte. I told people, yeah, I absolutely have to do this show and never let the work get in the way of that.
Jeffrey: Yeah. It’s so great when you find collaborators who you’re going to do the stupid thing with and be like, yeah, this stupid thing is so stupid. It’s stupid. Let’s do it. Right.
Alyssa: Yeah.
Jeffrey: And I think it was today even that you said something along the lines of, in an ensemble, finding the people who are your family, or I’m probably paraphrasing what you said.
Alyssa: I don’t know what I said.
Jeffrey: We were catching ourselves talking about ensemble is a chosen family.
Alyssa: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Being on this thought train earlier this morning, because early on last week, Allen [Kuharski] would do this thing where he’d be trying to move us from being chatting in the hallways to moving into the session. And he’d be like, inexorable forces are pulling you into the room. Inexorable forces. And so this morning I’ve been on this thought train of like, oh man, it is those inexorable forces that I feel so… That’s so compelling to me, is like, why do we all suddenly meet and now we’re here? And Dell’Arte, the thing is there’s no class about ensemble. There’s no class that you’re taking to learn about what ensemble is. You just get thrown together with all these people who are extremely different, and you have to negotiate those every week. And yet, there’s something about these concentric circles of forces that are bringing us together and for a time to create something. And yeah, I was reflecting on just my own relationship with my family and how that has brought me to an organization like Dell’Arte, which if you look at the stories of the founders and of a lot of the people who really kept that place and really started the place, there’s a lot around family and the search for a new family.
And it’s really messy. It’s extremely messy stuff. And yeah, it’s dysfunctional. There’s breakdowns, there are fights, there are people coming back after you fight, and yet it’s like, you are my chosen family, but nevertheless, you’re my family. And we have this commitment to be in this ensemble. And so it’s that commitment to each other. And I learned this from Michael that I think is what really separates an ensemble from a group or an ensemble from just a cast of people. The family thing is a really fascinating thread to pull through the whole history of Dell’Arte. One could really weave together a very eccentric and beautiful and varied chaotic looking family quilt you could say. We could make a big family quilt and it would just look so fascinating. I don’t know.
Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah. There is something about how we are all destined to like cross paths and find each other, and inexorable forces pulling us all together to Philadelphia to where we are now. And even just now I realized that I’m going out to dinner tomorrow night with someone who I met at Dell’Arte way back when too, and she’s in town here now too. And I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” I honestly just put that together now. I was like, “Oh, I’ve known her for so long that I don’t remember how I know her. I know her from this.” Are you kidding me, Jeff? Just think for thirty seconds. Yeah. And it’s just wild how we are in each other’s orbits. And being here is really lovely to be among so many like-minded folks who are aiming to put some language and effort around this idea of ensemble-based and devised theatre. And I’m wondering, is there something… To me… I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth. But to me this is a really important institute to be having at this point in time. And I’m wondering if you feel it’s important, and if so, why do you think this is an important institute to be a part of right now?
Alyssa: That’s a really good question. It’s absolutely essential right now. Feels really important to be connecting because we just came out of this period where we were isolated. So I think there’s something about also the isolation factor of the pandemic and just showing us how much we really need each other. And then the other way I feel like it’s a really important and essential thing is that I think it does have to do in some way with documentation. Like I said, what I think is amazing is hearing about all the ensembles that have been around for so long and have been doing their thing for many years now. And this thing of the baby boomer generation. There’s generational shift. And as we shift into another generation, it’s time to look at the people who’ve been erased or have been made invisible or have been marginalized or who are coming up, or to honor those folks who were doing that work for so long.
It’s really important to be building up this field of ensemble-based physical theatre as a field that has a very big place in the landscape of American theatre, in the landscape of theatre in general across the world. Because I think the world wants to tell us otherwise, I don’t know. It’s like the message is that many of us receive all the time is that it’s about the individual, that it’s about the single author, that it’s about just the playwright, it’s about just this director, or this actor. Or it’s important to illuminate all the ways in which that’s a myth.
Jeffrey: Yeah. Is there anything I didn’t give you a chance to say out loud that you’d want to say or get on the record? Or is there anything you’re looking forward to? Either at this conference or Dell’Arte. What are you looking forward to?
Alyssa: Yeah. I’m looking forward to seeing my family again, for sure. What I feel like is interesting is the body-mind, the embodied cognition work, and also the work with bringing a lens of race into everything. Because there’s this… What I feel like I’m hearing and listening and seeing is that we’re not afraid of seeing problems now in what we’re doing. You know what I mean?
Jeffrey: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Alyssa: I’m feeling so in love with the fact that I feel like this group of people can say, what are the problems to that exercise that you just did? What are the problems that you’ve encountered? This is so big. To be able to talk in a real way about the problems that we have in our practices and our pedagogy and our thinking in the way that we… Yeah. All of that is such a great… Yeah.
Jeffrey: And in the problems … I’m sorry.
Alyssa: Yeah. Yeah.
Jeffrey: In the problems are the opportunities. There’s just the opportunity to do better, to be better, to find more inclusive, and expand the circle of what we actually know in this field or in this practice. Yeah. I love that. Thank you for bringing that up. There’s a problem with that. Yeah. There is. So what do we do to fix it? Or what is it? And I think it goes to what you were saying earlier about your funders. It’s not to shut it down. It’s not to make it more myopic. You blast that aperture wide open. You say, okay, let everything in and see what works now. Maybe not. Maybe I’m…
Alyssa: Yeah. And invite people in. That’s something that was said a few days ago. It’s like, yeah, when you have a problem, you don’t close the doors. You invite more people in. You don’t get rid of people. And yeah. I think it’s just been great to hear people interrogate in the ways that they do. I constantly feel like I need more models for… And need to hear more language and ways that people articulate. And I’m sure that you’ve been picking this up too when you talk to people, but I think one of the great things about this institute too, has been talking about writing and how that does not need to be this intellectual exercise. It can be this embodied poetic engagement. And so hearing and reading different people’s work and just hearing how they deliver their work and all the wonderful ways that they do that is very productive for me.
Jeffrey: Yeah. And to me, hearing the embodied playwriting and the idea of that, all of that to me spoke to the actor-poet, and to the Dell’Arte process as well. Being like, yeah, we are creators, we are doers. Yeah. I think that just is such a great ethos to have is we can make it up and we can do it, and we can practice it, and we can make it real. If I can imagine it, if I can act it on stage, or if I can create it on stage, or even in the rehearsal hall, I can make it real. And I think if we keep trying to make things ourselves, we can make it real. So I think that’s a really great thing.
Alyssa: Yeah. There is one more thought that is coming to me.
Jeffrey: Yeah. Hit me.
Alyssa: I did take some time to just write a couple of thoughts down about… So this came up at the beginning of the week last week, and it had to do with Lecoq, which is the lineage that Dell’Arte comes out of as well. And it was that he really wanted to create a pedagogy, that… It was an approach to giving actors and creators a way to create the theatre that they wanted, and not to replicate what had been before. Not to merely replicate what has happened. It was like, how do we create a pedagogy or a teaching or a way of being together that allows for something that we’ve never seen to be and to come forward and something that lives. So this is the thing is in all of the last two or three years, I’ve just felt like, all right, yeah, we should do things different. And then it’s like, okay, guys, how do we do things different? How do we do things different? And then the ideas just look a lot like the thing that we have been doing or we’re doing. And it’s like, wait, that’s not far off of what we’re already doing so how are we doing things differently?
This has been a good touchstone to come back to. Has been this understanding that I came to this work to wrestle or with something that I didn’t know, or to push myself into areas I didn’t know and to pull up the floorboards and see what’s under there and put that up on stage. We don’t want to replicate, we don’t want just to simply be in this pattern of replication and reproduction because in some ways that is a pattern of just perpetuating harm. And this has been a really great experience to help intentionally move us in a direction that is ultimately about having just the courage and the wherewithal to step into the unknown.
Jeffrey: Yeah.
Alyssa: Thank you.
Jeffrey: Alyssa, thank you.
Alyssa: Thank you so much.
Jeffrey: This has been so great.
Alyssa: I appreciate your podcast so much. I appreciate your interviews. Yeah. I constantly go to HowlRound and have your stuff flagged in our archives. It’s been-
Jeffrey: Awesome.
I very much appreciate what Alyssa had to say. While the detail of their financial crisis might be at the heart of this conversation, though it has since passed, it’s still interesting to hear how they dealt with it and how the board moved in to set it up as a reintroduction of the company to Humboldt County. I like what she had to say about how people identify the company with the school and vice versa. That’s Dell’Arte coming. A hard thing to differentiate when it has become so enmeshed in a community. Reintroducing that company when the founders have stepped back is such a hard transition to face, and I’m glad that Dell’Arte International has been thinking deeply about it. At the end of the day, this work is about partnership. They are a big part of the cultural fabric in a rural community. So how do they keep this work mutually beneficial? An important thing for them to hold onto constantly. Alyssa was vulnerable, honest, and diplomatic throughout this entire interview, which I really respect. So thank you so very much Alyssa for sharing as much as you could with me.
Okay. My next guest will be Deb Margolin, another participant I met at the Pig Iron Institute. Deb is a writer, a performer, and a major part of the development of Split Britches, a feminist collaboratively creative company. She’s also a damn delight and hilarious. She’ll be taking us through the company’s development and how she grew as a writer beyond Split Britches in the eighties. Come find out why she thinks desire is the same thing as talent among so many other brilliant kernels on the next episode of From The Ground Up.
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