Why on earth would you pay money to leave the security of your couch?

I believe the key to the future of theatre lies in better understanding what made theatre successful at its peak of popularity, Commedia Dell’arte. Commedia lives in improvised scenes based around familiar situations and characters. Improv theatre is arguably the most successful theatre at engaging young audiences. However, as playwrights and theatremakers, we are not utilizing this in meaningful ways.

Theatre I create focuses on the “liveness” of theatre. I stand in opposition to the adage that a Thursday night audience should see the same show as a Saturday night audience. My theatre may start in similar places every night, but the journey is built anew every night, ideally due to randomization or relationship with the audience (or both).

Improvisational Theatre succeeds in one other arena that traditional theatre fails; the power of the audience. The advent of electricity brought about the dimming of the house lights on the spectator and with it the enforcement of theatre etiquette. Audiences were required to sit silently starting around 1900. Before then, the theatre was loud and rowdy. Crowds would shout and call out, much like we nowadays see at football games and concerts. This castrating of the audience into the “silent observer” is what began the elitization of the theatre, and we have been in a steady descent since then. Do we dare give audiences back their power?

In order to reach a younger generation, I seek to meet them where they are. Currently, the theatre sees the technology and culture that has permeated youth as something to fight against. I disagree. Stop forcing them to put away their phones; dare your actors to compete with them. Obstacles are only in your way if you see them as such, but with a change in perspective, we can see that these obstacles are simply leaping-off points for a new direction.

This obstacles-into-opportunities approach is the foundation for my directing style. Having been trained in Viewpoints at Atlantic Theatre and the SITI company, I make theatre through spontaneous creation and inspiration as a reaction to the artists in the space, not by forcing humans into the box of my limited imagination.

As a director, I am drawn to plays that embrace the ephemeral nature of what we create, such as Branden Jacob Jenkins’s Everybody. As a theatremaker, I have sought to create works that rely on the audience, not to come onstage and act, but to vote, make choices, and mold the story in their own right. Empathy Experiment is a catalog of scenes where the audience votes for what is performed every night. Romeo vs. Juliet: Grudge Match boils the familiar characters and plot of the Shakespearean classic into tropes and improvised situations in an improv competition death-match.

We get off the couch to come to a place where our presence in space matters. To be reminded that we do, in fact, matter.