Foundations

My aspiration with the Sustained Independent Project, the culmination of my efforts over the course of my MFA, was to create a production that also served as a community-building tool in the hopes of inspiring community action. Upon enrolling in Central’s Advanced Theatre Practice MFA in 2019, I arrived in London with one goal in mind: to find my community. Having spent a significant portion of my career working in audience services and managing volunteers, I’ve witnessed firsthand the power of a harmonized, supported community. I’ve also seen how disastrous a broken or invalidated community can be. Since the 2016 elections, tensions in America have been steadily rising. Communications between authorities like the police or government agencies and the public have broken down, and protests have organized across the country. These cries for change have been met with violence and shows of force, frequently becoming deadly, and counter-protests are not only ignored, they’ve been actively encouraged by the former president. Murmurs of civil war began rippling through communities, then became discussed on news channels, then brazenly supported on t-shirts and at rallies, until things finally came to a head at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. All of this stems from a lack of communication. Communities have raised an issue (police killing black Americans, mass shootings, climate crisis, etc.), many of which dictate community members’ survival, and the authority has refused to address the issue. This leads to a lack of trust in the authority, a shared grievance among the community, a shared intensity of emotion, and an ignition of survival instinct, which are core instigators of organized protest (Roberts, 2020). This failure to communicate would become the focal point and main inspiration for Sovereign Song.

However, beneath the turmoil and panic, a clear display of community and solidarity stabilized the nation. After each tragedy, masses of people gathered to mourn together, comfort one another, and organize to enact change. Despite protests being ignored, broken up, or sabotaged, communities continually banded together to try again. This echoed my own experience working in the theatre community. Despite setbacks, budget cuts, lack of resources, or failed productions, the theatre community continually lifted each other up in order to try again. With the covid pandemic isolating communities around the world, I wanted to highlight the importance of connecting and forming communities. I planned to make a production that would address the isolation audiences undoubtedly feel after lockdown, then ease them into working as part of a larger group in order to shift their focus from the individual to the community. The solidarity protestors displayed inspired me to create a production that would create a community of its own, and spark discussions which would hopefully lead to meaningful community action. Rather than finding my community here in London, I strove to create one.

During the previous terms at Central, I established connections and partnerships working on political pieces. Both productions I worked on during the summer of 2020 addressed political issues, with The Hive focusing on toxic corporate culture and employee exploitation, and After the Flood exploring the climate crisis and global pandemic. Working on these productions, I developed skills that would become key components of developing Sovereign Song, such as developing a specialty for creating comedic industry films from stock footage (See Appendix B), facilitating audiences in immersive settings, composing (See Appendix B), and balancing tone for political work. I also established relationships with CrushRoom, a company I co-founded with Manda Jønsson and Octavia Fox, who would become the primary collaborators for Sovereign Song. Their ethos of investigating “how [theatre] can be used to change the landscape of our new creative future,” (CrushRoom, 2020) resonated with the ambitious goals I set for Sovereign Song, and made them ideal partners. With the foundations of my community established, I set out to gain the skills to support it, and establish further connections to strengthen it.

Bibliography

CrushRoom (2020) How we work, CrushRoom, viewed 10 July, 2021 <https://crush-room.com/company/how-we-work>

Roberts, N. (2020) ‘Psychological research explains why people protest’, Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2020/05/29/the-psychology-of-protests-reveals-why-americans-are-ready-for-action/?sh=45fb7108bbbb

Appendix A

Jønsson, M. (2020) After the Flood Poster, digital image, London.

Mawer, A. (2020) The Hive Poster, digital image, London.

Romeo, D. (2021) News Coverage of the Capitol Siege, digital image, Emerald Isle, NC.

Appendix B

CrushRoom (2020) After the Flood, digital album, London, Soundcloud.