Tara Khozein: Welcome to—
Martin Boross: Welcome.
Tara: Welcome to Bridge Between—
Martin: —Realities.
Tara: A podcast produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons.
Martin: A free and open platform—
Tara: —open platform for theatremakers—
Martin: —worldwide.
Tara: My name is Tara Khozein I’m a classical singer.
Martin: She’s a classical singer and a theatre artist.
Tara: And this is Martin Boross. He’s a—
Martin: I’m a theatre and filmmaker from Hungary.
Tara: But right now, I’m in Hungary and Martin’s in Brooklyn, and we’re doing this via Zoom. This is the sixth and final episode of this podcast series where we’ve documented what we’ve learned from our research project, which is also called Bridge Between Realities.
Martin:Bridge Between Realities.
Tara:Bridge Between, Between, Between Realities. The project has included many workshops and residencies and public theatre events across the United States where we explored contemporary theatre forms.
Martin: In addition to theatre workshops and residencies, we are also creating an essay series and this six—
Tara: Six-episode podcast series for HowlRound.
Martin: For HowlRound. These episodes were recorded—
Tara: These episodes were—
Martin: .—recorded, recorded, recorded—
Tara: —at each of the workshop locations in, for example—
Martin: —Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Tara: Bath, Maine.
Martin: Bath, Maine.
Tara: Philadelphia.
Martin: Philadelphia. And New York.
Tara: New York, New York.
Martin: And Budapest.
Tara: Our theme for this episode, and the impetus for this somewhat disorganized vocal improvisation introduction—
Martin: Is co-leadership.
Tara: Co-leadership.
Can you sort of describe in a few sentences our working dynamic that has happened over the last few projects over this Bridge Between Realities? Can you just kind of give an impression of what it’s felt like for you to work as co-directors for these projects?
Martin: Yeah. So, I think our collaboration as co-leaders in this project started with the grant writing, the application, because that’s always the first milestone of projects where we clarify the concept and our vision and our interests and our roles to a funder and to each other. And that was very collaborative because we were brainstorming on partners and artists we would like to involve. And co-leadership, the dynamics, changes from station, from residency to residency, from day to day, from hour to hour, because it’s part of the leadership that sometimes you step forward, sometimes you step back. And I think there were a lot of unwritten rules about our roles, because if you have a knowledge or a relationship that dates back and if you are through a couple of projects together, then it’s even without words, it’s pretty clear what are our strengths and weaknesses and in what roles we feel comfortable.
Tara: Maybe we should speak some of these rules that we discovered. What were the things that for this dynamic we ended up falling into and leaning on? The thing that comes to mind for me is that you are an excellent planner and preparer, and you have an incredible sense of how long things actually take in the rehearsal room to execute, where I’m really, that’s like a mystical skill for me. I don’t really understand how you know that. Even though somehow my rehearsal plans also happen more or less the way that I imagine them, there’s just a lot more kind of shifting and flexibility and, I don’t know, like, an improvisation. But the act of making a lot of choices in preparing for rehearsal also does a lot of clarification for the shape of the project. So, I think that’s something that I’m kind of I feel like I’m always learning from you that seems to be so much a part of your practice as a director. That’s a little bit less a part of mine.
Martin: Yeah, I agree. I think conceptualizing and planning and a healthy amount of spontaneity complement each other great. And in this particular project, I think I stepped into that role because we worked with a lot of non-professionals or first-time performers and over the course of a very few days. And to me, one way of providing safety or a safe space and accountability is to present a very clear plan what’s going to happen on each day so they don’t panic. And so, to me, it’s a tool of gaining trust that we are and show that we care and show that we are serious. In longer format works, I really love improvisation. But now it’s interesting you mentioned because now I was reflecting on it, and I often work in a devised way and devising often utilizes improvisation. But the way we do it in a rehearsal room with professionals is often that we do a free improvisation or we give some cornerstones, we develop material, and then I retreat a little bit. I go to my cave, and I edit the material and I come up with something formed.
Tara: Very often in other collaborations, I’m the less chaotic person, the more organized person, the more direct person. And I feel like in our collaboration, you’re the more direct, organized person, and I am given the space to be a more chaotic presence. And this is extremely funny and liberating for me because I don’t feel like I have to pull the whole thing together because our dynamic allows for a little bit more of me to occupy this kind of like free-floating role. Not to say that I don’t also do a lot of logistics with you, but yeah, I think that’s another thing that our co-leadership dynamic gives.
Martin: I think to me, it can shift hour-by-hour because I think you were super organized when we were in New Mexico, which is your home, and you were not only aware of the artists’ work that we collaborated with, but you knew to which, I don’t know, ticket sales company to involve, which newspapers we should send our press material, what is people’s culture, consumption, habits are. So because of the local knowledge, I think you took more producorial roles, unlike in Maine or in Philadelphia, for example.
Tara: Yeah, where we split them much more. We gave them to our collaborators where we’re doing the producing work.
And co-leadership, the dynamics, changes from station, from residency to residency, from day to day, from hour to hour, because it’s part of the leadership that sometimes you step forward, sometimes you step back.
Martin: Yeah. But I think on the aesthetical level, we have a lot of overlap as well. And I remember a number of instances where, for example, I started to build the light design with our technician and then suddenly I had to leave for, I don’t know, put out some fire with a scene.
Tara: Fire extinguisher.
Martin: Yes. And you took the lead on finishing on the light design. Or I started a choreography and then you finished and other way around. So, I know two guys in Hungary who have been co-directing since they were eighteen for, I don’t know, ten, fifteen years. And I think they declared in the beginning of each project to the team, and I think it was like a re-confession every time that one of them is more strong in dramaturgy and the other likes more directing the actors. And it was like in some kind of a long-term relationship or marriage where they split the roles. So, by the declaration, it becomes part of the identity of the project.
Tara: It’s interesting because, of course, teams build theatre, like teams build productions. And generally, if you’re working with a big team, it’s more efficient to work within pretty strict boundaries of what your roles are. And in those cases, you call the different people on the leadership team different titles, then you have a dramaturg and a staging director or something. What we were doing, I guess because we were often kind of passing the ball back and forth very often, passing the same task back and forth very often, or working on something as a staging director/storyteller/dramaturg/musical director, and then needing to do something else, and then the other person would step in to give feedback, and we didn’t really have a lot of boundaries around whose piece was what. And I think there are probably as many ways of being co-directors as there are of being a director, but I think that one of the reasons that we didn’t feel the need to have separate titles was this, that we were really doing the same work in tandem. And I think that takes a lot of trust between two collaborators.
Martin: Co-leadership is already a very intimate, sensitive, fragile kind of partnership. And when these partners are life partners as well, it’s especially charged and there are even more layers to it, both pros and cons when it comes to trusting each other or deep foundational care, curiosity, or even the love to each other, but also the ability to put politeness behind or carefulness and probably in many cases we can be more unfiltered. There’s this image that’s often used in activism or when it comes to collective work and sharing responsibilities, and this image came to my mind about geese, when a group of goose, I guess it’s called geese.
Tara: Geese, yeah.
Martin: Yeah. When they move together from place to pace and they regularly switch roles and responsibilities and particularly rotating leadership in a V formation to avoid fatigue. And when a goose at the front gets tired, it moves to the back of the formation and another goose takes its place to lead, ensuring the group’s progress and not hindered by one bird’s fatigue. And I think it’s something that works in a two-person partnership as well in a work because of course in every theatrical process or every creative process, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and support doesn’t only happen through comforting the other or, I don’t know, ego boost, but it can happen through just, “Let me take your place now.”
Tara: Yeah. I mean, I remember in Albuquerque, but we did also in Bath, where we were both kind of assigning things to each other where I felt like you were a better person to talk to one of our participants. Then I was kind of like, “Hey, could you please go talk to them about this?” And I remember even one instance where I was like, “I think this person needs to speak to a man.” And you were like, “Okay, I’m happy to go do that. Could you please deal with this person that really, really needs to edit down their five-page text to one paragraph?” Which is where maybe I was a better person to do that in a way that required a lot of gentleness and patience. And those are sort of like very, very gendered examples that I just gave, but I think that there were a lot of times where we just kind of had an instinct about like, “Could you please check on this person,” or like, “I don’t feel like it’s easy for me to connect with this performer. Could you please talk to them?” So, I really liked those moments that were not decided, not scripted, but just happened because of kind of instinct, that passing off of responsibility.
Martin: And I think having a different cultural context and having different lens was something that benefited us at a few moments because we had more universal themes and topics or personal stories like about memories or about home. But when it got a little bit more political, I think it was important that we have someone in the room in the leadership who has more context about American history, for example.
Tara: In the case of these collaborations, we were kind of coming in as a pretty self-contained team. We kind of came in with a concept, we had really clear ideas about the requirements for our ensembles, we knew what form we wanted to work in, and we came in with like a rehearsal plan and a performance state. And so, there was not so much like on the ground collaboration with our hosting artists in terms of like the shape of the piece, but we still had to sort of function as a team within the context of these other organizations. And this is something that’s like, in the past has been a really tender subject for me and maybe for you too, where because we’re a couple and because we obviously see each other as equal artistic partners, but it’s not always easy for the institutions to recognize that I think especially when you’re a couple.
Martin: Yeah. It can be a stigma because the first thing that comes to people’s mind instinctively is that these people are working together because they’re a couple and because it’s easier logistically to be in the same project than being in two different projects rather than these are two artists who have something to do with each other and they respect each other and they’re curious and they are inspired by each other’s works. So, I definitely experienced the pressure to prove that we are both legit and we are legit for a certain project and that this constellation between the two of us is what this project requires, and it’s not just a comfortable necessity that we work together. I agree that there is a pressing stigma that comes with coming into a foreign place as a couple who are also artists or leaders in the same project.
Tara: Yeah. And it’s often just because of bias against women, I think, I mean, or a combination of biases or just the fact that like most institutions have been founded or are built on the patriarchy. And so even, no matter how sensitive and how good listeners the leadership is being, are being, there’s a lot of bias there that you kind of have to encounter. And I’ve had experiences where I really wish that my partners had stuck up for me. And I felt like that’s kind of one of the essential parts of what co-leadership needs to be successful, that when someone has a bias against one person—either because of gender or because they’re from another country and speak with an accent or because they’re new in a place or whatever—that the other is really there to kind of listen and keep coming back to this principle that we’re a team and that we’re two hands holding the same project, or four hands, I guess, depending on how many hands you have.
Martin: Yeah. Don’t discriminate against people who have three or four arms.
Tara: Yeah.
Martin: So yeah, I agree that being co-leaders comes with an extra package and extra responsibilities too towards our own collaborators because I definitely feel even if people are super polite or when people are acting professional, it’s on everyone’s mind. What is it like to be in this relationship for them? Or what are their actual dealings? Who brought whom into the project? What’s behind this collaboration? And it’s just on people’s mind and I think—
Tara: Who’s the real leader?
Martin: Yeah. Who’s the boss?
Tara: Who’s the boss? Who wears the pants in this co-leadership?
Martin: Yeah. And I think we do a good job when we can make people forget about these, not taking on too much responsibility about this because definitely patriarchy and old traditional forms and biases have a big part of it. And we cannot take credit for all this, but I definitely think we have an important role in validating and acknowledging each other’s inputs, not because of playing roles or show a good example, but somehow to set the culture of each given project in a way.
Tara: Yeah. I know that something that’s really important to you and something that you think a lot about both in the content of your pieces and also in the leadership structures that you’ve worked in theatre is democracy and how to make the process more democratic. And I know it’s also something you wanted to talk about on this episode. I’m wondering if you have any thoughts about that.
I definitely experienced the pressure to prove that we are both legit and we are legit for a certain project and that this constellation between the two of us is what this project requires and it’s not just a comfortable necessity that we work together.
Martin: I don’t know if it’s a question or a thought or an open-ended idea, but I think it often comes up in conversations about theatre: How do we think of theatre or an artistic process and art making space as a democratic versus a non-democratic space? And I don’t think I have like a final answer to that. I have an answer to myself for this, for today. And also, there are different forms of democracy and different elements of democracy that can be and should be included in the process. And the decision-making itself has to be accountable but doesn’t have to be democratic per se because being an artistic director is not an elected position and there is no voting on the artistic choices we make minute by minute. But still it’s a consensual voluntary participation based on all available information on the participants’ ends and based on a good understanding who the leaders are going to be.
So, I think the first step is to be transparent about who we are, how we work, what’s our record, and introduce ourselves so people have an actual decision to make if they trust us with their time and with their inputs. And there has to be some kind of legal protection and respectful environment and safe space. But yeah, to me, when it comes to decision-making, there’s one way among the project leaders or initiators or facilitators and there’s another between the project leaders and the participants. And when I worked with leaders I thought were good or people I trusted, or when I felt that I’m part of a leadership that’s credible for my terms, there were certain aspects of the work where we were consulting about and others that we should have consensus on and there are definitely calls that you have to make as leaders. And I think a healthy proportion of these and a healthy way of like reporting to your team where in which stage you are at is kind of a key.
Tara: Yeah. It’s like, I mean, we, of course, a theatre production, it also happens in a pretty limited amount of time generally. These pieces that we made were made in maximum a week or like, I think, maybe in Bath we had nine or ten days or something, but two of the days were half days or something like this. And so, there’s also not always time for, I think, an ideal democratic process because it takes time to make sure that everyone has been heard and that their concerns have been represented. But I guess something about what you were saying about like choice or safety makes me think about like, how do we make a creative space where people don’t feel like they’re being forced to do anything or like where they still feel like they have enough autonomy to step out or to shape something in a way that feels authentic to them. So, democracy in theatre doesn’t have to be that like everybody says their piece necessarily in a forum, but it just has to be that everyone inside of the work that they’re doing has a structure that supports them to shape it or step out.
Martin: Yeah. And probably for someone who doesn’t know us, it’s important to say that we are mostly talking from the perspective of devising work and not really talking in the name of 90 percent of the actors across the globe who freak out when they need to improvise or when they don’t want to make decisions because one of the reasons why they are actors is because they want to hide or because they want to just play and want to be instructed in inspiring ways.
Tara: I don’t know. Ninety might be a little high. I don’t know. But I’m also quite sheltered. Mostly I’m working in kind of more, I don’t know, less institutional settings and with, and I guess you are too, like with a lot of people who aren’t doing acting as their central practice.
Martin: What I’m saying is that when you speak to, I think, the majority of theatre workers across the world, like some people wouldn’t even—it wouldn’t make sense what you’re talking about how this should be a democratic process. What are you talking about?
Tara: Right. Right. But I guess when we’re… because maybe it’s even helpful because I don’t know how much we’ve even talked about this in the other podcasts, but we… So our basic process, the structure that we made for these workshops was that we created a group of artists from different disciplines, some of whom have had performance experience, some of whom did not. There were also community members who don’t do art as their central practice. And we basically just made an ensemble, or we tried to make an ensemble, that felt like the place. And then we had a theme. We asked everybody to bring in a kind of seed idea, a central kind of instigating vision or problem or arc or story or object that they wanted to work with over the course of the workshop. And then we helped them build pieces of performance from those seeds. So, in the design of the process itself, there’s a lot of opting in or opting out that’s necessary. You kind of have to be quite autonomous and quite a good advocate for your idea. So, I guess this is how we kind of built in democracy into the creative process and then it’s somehow easier to encourage that through the leadership style.
Martin: One thing I would like to highlight is that in each of the residency workshops, so throughout the process, to me some of the most important and most inspiring parts were when we sat down in the end of a day or in a morning and we were selecting the ideas. We connected, merged them or split them or simplified or added extra layers, somehow making more complex with multidisciplinary approach, and then create a rehearsal plan based on those ideas. So, it’s not a script in a traditional sense, but it’s a structure of a piece where we appoint roles to the participants and make them part of each other’s works. And I think co-directing doesn’t necessarily happen in a room like we did our intro for this podcast, that we constantly talk over each other or take roles in instructing the actors. It’s not at all how this works. The way it works is that we have a script, an idea, and a common understanding of the overall goal, and we both act accordingly.
Tara: But I would argue that the way that we did the sort of collective introduction happened after we recorded the first one in a very proper, clean way, and then we agreed together to make an overlapping, somewhat improvised version. So, we did have a score that we followed.
Martin: Yeah. And the making of the score is exactly what I think part of the core of the core leadership was in many cases, rather than communicating the idea to the actors or talking to the collaborators. I personally felt very comfortable when you did 90 percent of the talking. So, one thing that comes to my mind is when we presented our structure to the participants or when we described what is going to happen in the workshop. And sometimes when there are other people around and when it’s a tiring work, I tend to slow down in speaking, especially when it’s not my mother tongue, and we know that. So, you just took the lead and said, “Okay, I’m going to present now the structure because Martin talks too slow.” And then no one thought that I’m not a part of this and I felt comfortable to chime in whenever I need to add something, but it didn’t really matter who presents the ideas.
Tara: We just needed to get the information across in the most efficient way. Yeah. And I think in Albuquerque, when I did that, I made a big deal about like, “We made this structure together, but I talk faster, so I’m going to go through it with you right now.” So yeah, that’s also somewhat democratic, I guess. I’m just the speaker of the house.
Martin: Maybe another example. We were in a massive delay before one of the performances and it was a long day coming together, talk through the final structure, run through technical setup, lighting, sound, et cetera, and prepping the space before the audience enters. And I remember that we had one scene, we called it “the cardboard box scene.” And in the morning, you and I were dealing with different things. You were mostly working with the actors, and I was mostly in charge with the light design. And when we were doing the run through, something was going differently than what we earlier agreed on. I think it was a different cast, or I thought someone forgot their cue.
And I started to give instructions to, I think, to kick a cardboard box because that was my understanding that that’s what we are doing. And then you just briefly said, “No, no, no, it’s changed.” And I had no clue what was going to happen then, but I was like, “Okay, you changed it and it’s going to be new to me. We’ll see.” But I was sure that you know what’s happening before the scene, what’s happening after, what that person, where that person is supposed to be minutes later, and so on and so how it influences the big picture. So, because we decided on the foundations together and in a sense, so many details don’t matter, just have to be either way. It doesn’t matter where and when it comes from a certain idea. You just have to serve the overall goal. And I think we were on the same page about this.
Tara: Yeah. It happened very often in these rehearsal processes that we sort of agreed on a basic vision of something, but then, like as anybody who’s ever done devised work or even like made a skit at camp, you can know if you have an idea and then you try it on its feet, sometimes you realize that the idea is not going to function as well as something that you find together in the rehearsal space. And so, I think that that was kind of like a basic understanding that we had with each other that made the work a lot easier. I’ve had universally worse experiences, I think, as a director than I have as a co-director. So, I don’t have a lot of pros. I much prefer to work in this dynamic where I feel like I have at least one person who’s like really my better half inside of a creative project. But I’m really curious to hear if you have an argument against co-direction or when there are times where it really, it doesn’t make sense to share that role.
Martin: I don’t know if there’s a rule for when to share that role for me. Put it simply, it’s definitely sometimes slower or takes compromises, and you have to take conflicts, as opposed to being left alone and being the lonely director type. But slow is smooth; smooth is fast. So, I don’t know, but I know for sure that I don’t want to go into my next theatre project as a single leader, maybe because I’m finding something that I’ve been losing in Hungary. And part of why I changed, I relocated and part of why I changed sort of professional and I’m now focusing more on film is because I was pretty burnt out in theatre. And now this project, Bridge Between Realities, gave me a lot of new perspectives and hopes. And I’m sure a big part of it is too not needing to carry a project alone and share responsibilities. So, all I know that it felt right and I’m curious to carry on.
Tara: Yeah. Sounds like a good place to end.
Martin: The podcast, you mean.
Tara: Yeah, the podcast. Thank you.
Martin: Thank you for listening to Bridge Between Realities out of Brooklyn and Budapest.
Tara: You have made it to the end of our six-episode podcast series. Thanks for sticking with us.
Martin: Earlier episodes focus on themes that were core elements of our workshop series, immersive theatre, site-specific work, devising, community involvement, and ensemble work.
Tara: This podcast is produced as a contribution to HowlRound Theatre Commons. You can find more episodes of this show and other HowlRound shows wherever you find podcasts, including on non-commercial open-source apps like Anytime Podcast Player and AntennaPod.
Martin: This project has been made possible thanks to the support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding. If you like this podcast, please share it with your friends.
Tara: And you can find a transcript for this episode along with lots of other progressive and disruptive content on howlround.com. Bye.
