To have a weekend with allocated space and time to play freely for the purpose of disassociating from white-centered ontologies requires a suspension of disbelief, though a wealth of realities revealed themselves skimming just under the surface. For example, although people talk about the COVID-19 pandemic in the past tense, COVID testing was required. A small stack of COVID tests were placed on the table next to name badges, and each person was required to test and email the organizers a photograph of their results each morning before entering the building. Buttons for “fist bumping ok” and “hugs ok” were also options, an acknowledgement of both COVID precautions and a larger effort to respect others’ boundaries.
The economic catastrophes of the past few years marked the local geography. The surrounding area of Portland has experienced an uptick in homelessness, and Sarah Jane Hardy, artistic director of Northwest Children’s Theatre and host of our final day of presentations, reminded us that the theatre was just starting to produce again after three years. Some of the enduring questions that often arise in conversations amongst Latinx theatremakers arose again, including the discussion of what it means to organize around Latine/x/o identity and the requisite conversation about which term to use to describe ourselves. The problematic homogenization of the term “Latinidad” was parsed anew, as was the conversation about who gets to portray whom onstage and participate in the theatre-making process offstage within the broad scope of Latinx identities (e.g. Cubans portraying Puerto Ricans, a Mexican director asked to direct a play about Argentina, etc.).
What happens when artists curate spaces for artists?
Creating Space
My role of moving between the groups illuminated the importance of spaces in the collaboration process. During Colaboratorio, multiple spaces functioned simultaneously to create the opportunity to reimagine the design process.
The first space was the physical location of each of the groups. Each group was assigned a space within the Portland State University building, and everyone requested a tour of the building to get a sense of the larger space and to see where their colleagues would be working. One group had a top floor room with ample space, where the sounds of a brass instrument summer camp bellowed intermittently throughout their meetings. Another was given the costume shop, so their discussion ensued with fabrics, sewing machines, and a range of colors as their surroundings. Another had a dance room with no chairs; shoes had to be removed before entering the space. They used the yoga and stretch mats and moved around the bright space with its floor-to-ceiling windows and ballet barre. Another was in the black box theatre in the basement, which was also the site of our large group meetings. Noel Nichols, whose group was situated in the music classroom, used the white board with a blank musical notation on it to visually convey their design for sound. And another group was in a design room with high-top worktables. Each of these physical spaces shaped group communication. These are the spaces of design: theatremakers often talk about rehearsal spaces but not the spaces of the design team, and during the Colaboratorio, these spaces were in the limelight.
The second space that shaped their convening was the physical theatre space that each group designed with in mind, including the Portland Center Stage mainstage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Angus Bowmer stage, Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s outdoor Elizabethan stage, and more. Models were made for each group, so information about the space was available in the hand-held material mock-up and through information found online as well as, in some cases, personal experience with the space. Although each group designed into their space, only one group mentioned the theatre space they were assigned during the final presentations, signaling that the emphasis on process is not heavily weighted by the physical theatre space.
