Collaboration and the Sense of Play

Nathan Hurwitz, PhD

INTRODUCTION

For the last two days we have spoken about, listened to and considered the

act of collaboration as it functions in the musical theatre from a range of different

perspectives. This morning I’d like to talk about how a sense of “play” is vitally

important to a successful collaboration, and how our sense of “self” plays into this

dynamic, how we need to access our complete “selves” in play, while balancing

selfishness and selflessness. What I am going to talk about today seems self-

apparent to me, and yet I have never taken the time to examine these thoughts and

put them into words before; so please forgive me if this presentation only seeks to

elicit a small affirmative nod, rather than a revelatory “ahh.” I have never presented

a paper written so much in the first person, but the essence of what I am talking

about this morning is the necessity of being present and being personal, and so it

feels right that this paper should be present and personal.

“Self” plays into theatrical collaboration in sevral ways. This is a blazing

obvious statement, but we are ourselves. Our self is the culmination of everything

we have experienced, felt or believed; and so, as artists, whose job it is to reflect on

our shared humanity, our “selves” are our greatest tools.

What is my “self” comprised of? My neurotic fears of the dentist, of driving

across bridges, of pain or bankruptcy; my addiction to coffee (extra large hazelnut

with cream and three “sweet and lows” please), my love of my life, my wife, my dog,

my work, my parents, my step-kids and my students; my intense desire to lose 15

4/17/20 2

more pounds balanced against my love of food. When I wake and my day begins

there are thoughts, ideas, questions rattling around in my head: did I misunderstand

what my wife meant about the upcoming weekend’s plans, do I have to reconsider

and revise that last part of a paper or book, is my dog swallowing his pills or just

eating the treat they are wrapped in and then spitting them out? On the way to

rehearsal (or class) I listen to National Public Radio or read the New York Times or

Time Magazine, if I am taking the train. Little bits prick at my mind and stick, and

invariably, during the course of the rehearsal or class, I will make linkages. “Gee, I

saw a story this morning in the Metro section that talked about migration from the

suburbs back to the cities, which is EXACTLY what seems to be feeding the

characters in this scene.” OR, WHATEVER. We seem to find what is common, what is

current and what touches on the zeitgeist. This is the artistic part – allowing it all to

filter through. By bringing everything I am (my self) into the room AND allowing

these linkages to occur, by allowing myself to free-associate, or play, I open up the

opportunity for my playmates to respond in kind, and together we engage in a

playful way. I succeed in “playing nicely” with my collaborators by using my self

completely in a responsive, reactive, play-like manner. For artistic collaboration to

succeed, this is absolutely necessary.

PLAY

Just like children play at cops and robbers, that’s what we do in the theatre –

we play. Yes, it’s true, we work very hard on our technique, we work on belting

higher, louder and longer than ever before and we work to develop higher

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 3

extensions or better foutte turns. But a musical theatre based solely on exceptional

technique is no more than a rigorous display of technical virtuosity – no different

from an Olympic event or a top-notch circus. Audiences may momentarily thrill at

such displays, but they come to the theatre to see us play, to act out a story. We

must transcend technique to achieve art; we must bring our “selves” into the room

in order to discover essential moments of human truth – which is what ultimately

touches an audience, what makes them gasp with the same recognition of human

truth that Aristotle wrote about.

We put on plays; we play at being different people. For most of us, our most

successful experiences as theatre artists have been when we have been completely

immersed in a state of collaborative play. In the “pre-Angry Birds,” “pre-Candy

Crush” sense, “play” is collaborative by its nature; we play with our friends. To walk

into a rehearsal or performance and be able to play without inhibition or censor is

key to the creative act.

In the theatre we exist among an intricate web of collaborations. We work

both with and for many people, and the dynamic and nature of those collaborations

changes from moment to moment. Some collaborators are very forceful and have an

agenda (usually a vision that they are “protecting”) and some are very malleable and

giving (which can be either good or bad). For today’s purposes we will consider

these positions selfish and selfless, and each one of our many collaborations in

production exists somewhere on the continuum between selfish and selfless – and

each, for the most part, is constantly shifting. How does this point between

selfishness and selflessness effects collaborative play? Is it constantly negotiated

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 4

over the course of the collaboration or does it ebb and flow organically? The ability

to navigate these relationships with an aware and open self, while balancing

between selfishness and selflessness is vital to creation in a collaborative setting

and is ultimately what makes for a successful production.

So many students (and even colleagues) get so caught up in the refinement of

technique, that allowing themselves to be present and open in the moment, gets lost

in the shuffle. Dancers are particularly guilty of this, as so much physical control is

demanded in dance – so much time spent controlling oneself, and a lifetime spent

peering into the mirror at oneself to find and correct technical flaws doesn’t help

dancers to be present and playful naturally, it is counterintuitive to their other

training, and must be developed. Of course, it is vitally important to develop

technique, to refine the vocal instrument, to build on dance technique, to define the

shape or a scene and the individual beats and transitions. But, without the ability to

transcend that, to give ones self over to collaboration, the results of training can

invariably only be dry and imitative, no matter how technically adept.

Sadly, this problem is not limited to students, rather it is endemic among

young musical theatre artists from community theatres to Broadway. I had dinner

last week with an old friend, an actor who has been in Wicked on Broadway for the

last five and a half years. We were talking about young performers and their

training, and he bemoaned the ability of the younger members of his cast to listen,

to respond, to engage, to bring much of themselves to the process, … to collaborate.

He told me he had been talking to the show’s conductor, and said: “All of these

Elphaba’s and Glinda’s and ensemble kids and understudies that we’ve seen through

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 5

the years, they all want to scream out high notes and show off. They don’t know

how to listen to each other, they don’t know how to play together, …, how many of

them do you think are going to be in the business five years from now.” The

conductor thought for a moment and said, “probably none.”

In “The Nature of Play: An Overview,” published in The American Journal of

Play Thomas Henricks considers various theories of play and concludes:

“… most theories of human play associate play with the freedom of

human beings to express themselves openly and to render creatively the

conditions of their lives. […] People at play are said to have broken free to

conjure new possibilities of being […] To play is to create and then to inhabit

a distinctive world of one’s own making.”i

And this kind of “play” is exactly the act of creating theatre. The key to

accessing creativity within collaboration, over and over in a regular and repeatable

way, lies in accessing the state of “play.”

That ability to listen and respond in a completely present and playful manner

sits at the core of theatrical collaboration; it’s what separates the talented show-off,

perhaps better served as the contestant of a reality show, and the technician, with a

tremendous instrument but nothing to say, from the “true” musical theatre artist.

While interest in the musical theatre is currently on the rise thanks to television

shows like “Glee,” “American Idol” and “The Voice,” the “reality-show, show-off”

mentality that seems to accompany it has become pervasive. We need to encourage

the rising generation of musical theatre artists to remain open and accessible

throughout the collaborative process – to bring their- “selves” to the table.

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 6

In addition, there is a dynamic tension between selfishness and selflessness,

mentioned before, that we bring with us into our collaborations. Conflicting

“selfish” goals in an artistic collaboration can lead to rich results, or be terribly

frustrating, or anything in between. A self-less collaboration might sound appealing,

since it would be the least fraught. But, conflict often leads to interesting solutions.

One powerful selfish collaborator in the room can be intimidating and become a

bully; two or more can set up an interesting and powerful dynamic.

Like a surfer, trying to stay up on the board, we need to constantly consider

where we are along that line of dynamic tension and whether it is a useful or

productive place for the work that is happening in the room. I had a friend with

whom I collaborated frequently, he as a director and choreographer and me as

musical director. On the second show we did together I had several hours in the

morning to teach music, after which he began teaching choreography. When he

came into the rehearsal room to start choreographing he said, jokingly, “Okay, if

you’re through with all of this music crap we can get to the real work.” When we

switched back to music for the last hour of the day I said, “Alright, if you’re through

with all of this dancing bullshit can we get back to something important for a while?”

We were just teasing each other, but what we learned was that the appearance of

two strong “selves” with conflicting selfish goals in the room put everyone on their

game; singers, dancers, actors, stage management, it made everyone much more

attentive, much more present in the room. I learned that day that creating a little

tension in the room made everyone much more willing to engage in actively playing

with each other.

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 7

Why don’t we all “play” all the time when seems the easiest and most natural

thing in the world? The musical theatre has too many moving parts, it is a big

machine. The more “sophisticated” the production, the harder it is to be “present”

and play. There are so many marks to hit onstage and so much to juggle in the

backstage “tracking” of a role, that it almost forces us at times to go on auto-pilot

just to hit those marks. I had a friend who played Scar in The Lion King for over a

year on one of the tours. He told me about getting notes and adjustments for being

half an inch off a mark, since the headdress apparatus would suddenly be plunged

into darkness rather than being in it’s special. The same actor told me that

whenever he felt particularly present in a performance there would invariably be

note from stage management or show captains to please “stop acting and just do the

show.” It has become too much a part of the culture of the musical theatre; so much

of the spectacle of current musical theatre seems to require a lack of presence – it

gets in the way of repeatability. This is symptomatic of how technology is stealing

presence and any ability to play from the musical theatre.

SELF

What are you working on? How are rehearsals going? How’s the show?

These are the questions with which we greet each other, and by which we define

ourselves. We are theatre artists, and we rise or fall on the successes or failures of

our latest show or audition. We put our selves on the line every day that we work,

and worse, every day that we don’t. It hurts our egos (our “selves”) to be rejected

from a job, to get a bad review, to have a show close, even to have an idea shot down

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 8

in rehearsal; our “selves” are fragile and need nurturing. Dancers live their lives

staring into the mirror, singers and musicians spend their lives listening to

themselves, assessing and refining their sound, the rest of us are constantly

monitoring, looking for the false note, the unmotivated cross, the unclear cue or the

mis-timed moment. We judge ourselves and hold ourselves up to the most stringent

standards. We have to have a fairly strong sense of self in order to be effective and

successful in the theatre.

As artists, particularly interpretive and performing artists, our sense of “self”

sits very near the surface. We bring to our collaborators our willingness to play and

our selves. Audiences are moved by the recognition of an essential human truth in a

performance, not just by virtuosic displays of technical ability. So our ability to find

within a text, the essential human truths within ourselves and bring those to the

stage, is how we create a moving performance. The more expansive our sense of

our “self” is, the more hues we have in our palette, and the more expressively we are

able to do this.

Writers, actors, singers, dancers, musicians, designers, and directors – we use

our selves deeply and daily in our work. And then, ironically, we turn around and

define ourselves by the work we produce (the reviews, applause, length of run,

praise of our friends and colleagues); and so our fragile sense of self sits very close

to the surface – we carry our “selves” around like precious Fabergé eggs.

Visual artist and author Gloria Hopkins has defined three categories of artist

that are often perceived as selfish: THE BUSY ARTIST (who is consumed with the

development of technique and craft, and so perceived as selfish), THE SOLITARY

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 9

ARTIST (who, spends a lot of time thinking about their selves and their art, and so is

perceived as selfish) and THE RESERVED ARTIST (who keeps some part of

themselves as a reserve, a private part of themselves that they never share). ii

Our self-focus or “self-fullness” can lead us to a kind of tunnel vision and

selfishness, and we grapple daily with the need to put our egos (our “selfishness”)

aside, to subjugate it to the project at hand. Selfishness is not always a bad thing –

strong, vibrant clashing goals can lead to rich results. For Stephen Sondheim,

Sweeney Todd was a chance to give the audience a good scare, an homage to his

favorite horror movie, Hangover Square, and the composer of its score, Bernard

Herman; to Harold Prince it was “a metaphor for the dehumanizing effect of the

class system and the industrial revolution on the human soul.”iii The dynamism of

the conflicting visions of the show was invaluable in shaping one of the greatest

accomplishments of the musical theatre.

It is the need to protect ourselves, that all too often can get in the way of our

ability to collaborate, to achieve a playful state and offer our selves up to the

moment of creation. And this all boils down to fear: fear that our ideas will be

rejected, that we will be “found out” (since, let’s face it, we are all “faking it,”

improvising from moment to moment). But THAT (improvising from moment to

moment) is exactly what creativity is, and acknowledging those fears allow us to

move past them into a more effective creative state.

3) COLLABORATIONS – DYNAMIC AND UNIQUE

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 10

Some collaborations are more successful than others. Many of us have

experienced theatrical collaboration at its best, when it is magical; and most of us

have also experienced the opposite. How do we set up conditions that facilitate

more of the former and less of the latter?

Collaboration is working together to create something; usually something

greater than the sum of its’ parts. Our goal in the theatrical collaboration is to get 2 +

2 to equal 5, to create something not completely anticipated.

Collaborations are dynamic, unique, … like snowflakes; no two are alike. Not

only is every collaboration unique; but also roles are constantly shifting. Are you, as

a director, trying to get your collaborators to realize a singular vision in your head,

or do you willing to see your ideas expounded and expanded upon, developed.

Allowing something greater than you originally conceived to develop might mean

giving up autonomy and control. As a designer, actor, and musical director do you

enter the room with your own vision to share, integrate and fight for with all the

other visions in the room, or do you opt to support and help realize the visions of

others in the room? How playful and “self-open” are you with the other members of

your department? With other departments?

Meghan Biro, CEO of TalentCulture Consulting Group, writes about

collaboration in a business setting in a recent Forbes Magazine article:

“Collaboration isn’t about being best friends, or even necessarily liking everyone

you’re working with. It is about putting all and any baggage aside, bringing your best

self to the table, and focusing on the common goal. […]Collaboration isn’t about giving

up your individuality. Quite the opposite: it’s about realizing your potential. It’s about

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 11

bringing your many gifts to the table and sharing them in pursuit of a common goal. It’s

about bringing your ideas, your passion, your mind, heart, and soul to your leadership.

[…] What it isn’t about is an inflated ego, a thin skin, a closed mind.”iv

She suggests that the most successful collaborations occur when the

collaborators put aside individual goals for a “common goal,” suggesting that the

best collaborations are informed by self, but essentially selfless. But while

unbalanced selfishness can certainly stifle collaboration, selfishness can also

sometimes stimulate collaboration. Managing VP for Gartner Research, Andrea Di

Maio has blogged that “The Essence of Collaboration is Selfishness.” v Di Maio’s

stance is that sometimes, conflicting selfish goals can create a set of tensions that

result in a uniquely fruitful collaborative environment, volatile but fruitful. The

successful collaborative artist, which is what we all are in the musical theatre, must

navigate this tension remaining open and self-awareness, and balancing selfish and

selfless objectives in collaborations.

Discussing collaboration on a panel, director Anne Bogart said, “In this

country, we have a misunderstanding on the concept of collaboration, [which] we call

the disease of agreement ... There’s nothing worse than everybody agreeing.” Bogart

said she tries to cultivate an open culture that encourages disagreements. vi

In Collaboration in the Theatre, A Practical Guide for Designers and Directors,

writers Rob Roznowski and Kurt Domer say, “Collaboration implies a meshing of

ideas to us. A production team is comprised of separate individuals who indeed

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 12

cooperate with one another, but also inspire and affect each other to produce a

creative production.”vii

Roznowski and Domer’s point is that, while we need to bring our un-

censored selves into the process, there must be willingness to both talk and listen, to

convince and be convinced.

CREATIVITY - A GOOD DEFINITION

In his book, Human Emotions, Dr. Robert E. Franken, Professor Emeritus at

the University of Calgary defines creativity as the ability to “view things in new ways

or from a different perspective,” adding that this is , “linked to other, more

fundamental qualities of thinking, such as flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity or

unpredictability, and the enjoyment of things heretofore unknown.” viii Unfortunately,

what we are calling selfishness can lead to exactly the opposite, to inflexibility,

intolerance of ambiguity and out of hand rejection of things heretofore unknown.

The strong personality, the selfish goal can serve the collaborative process, but only

up to the point that it needs to step aside for the better idea in the room.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CREATIVE PERSONALITY

Creative individuals are filled with contradictions. Psychologist Mihaly

Csikscentmihalyi [Me-high Cheek-sent-me-high], author of From Creativity - Flow

and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, has identified ten characteristics of

the creative personality.

1. Creative individuals have a great deal of energy, but they are also often quiet

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 13

and at rest.

2. Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time.

3. Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or

responsibility and irresponsibility.

4. Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy ant one end,

and rooted sense of reality at the other.

5. Creative people seem to harbor opposite tendencies on the continuum between

extroversion and introversion.

6. Creative individuals are also remarkable humble and proud at the same time.

7. Creative individuals to a certain extent escape rigid gender role stereotyping

and have a tendency toward androgyny.

8. Generally, creative people are thought to be rebellious and independent.

9. Most creative persons are very passionate about their work, yet they can be

extremely objective about it as well.

10. The openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to

suffering pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment. ix

Young artists sometimes believe that they need to leave their sense of “self”

at the door and be a deferential collaborator, but we need to enter with our “self” –

with all that we are on that day, in that moment – so that we can respond fully, but

in an uncensored manner to whatever happens in the rehearsal room. As a college

student I studied directing with Jack Garfein, a protégé of Harold Clurman’s. we

always used to joke that we knew what was going on in Jack’s life by how he

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 14

approached a scene in class. When he had money problems, money seemed central

to every scene, when he was having relationship problems every scene seemed to be

about that, and so on. But what we took as fixations and used to joke about, I came

to realize in later years, was Jack being present. Jack brought himself, with all that

he was at that moment, and came into the room ready to play, to apply himself to

the work/play going on in the room, in a manner that was simultaneously self-less

and selfish.

PRAYER – CREATED RITUALS

Where do we begin in trying to achieve the balance between selfish and

selfless? One important step towards achieving balance is to articulate the problem.

I was conducting a production of “Big River” for the Pittsburgh Playhouse in 1993,

and at the half-hour call on a preview performance the actor playing Jim asked if I

would like to join the prayer circle onstage. I am probably the most un-religious

person I know, but being respectful and open, I accepted. Onstage many of the

actors were gathered. We joined hands and bowed our heads. “We would like to

thank God, Jesus, Jehovah, Vishnu Ganesh, Mother Earth, Gaia or any other

manifestation of God that anyone here in this circle holds to for allowing us to be

here today, for allowing us the opportunity to come together to tell this beautiful

story to the people who have come here tonight to receive it. Please help us to leave

the baggage and angst of our day-to-day lives in at the stage door and focus on

listening to each other and responding from our hearts, and on playing the play

together and telling our story to the audience. Amen.”

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 15

It was a beautiful prayer, and I have to admit, seemed to help the gathered

cast, crew to be fully present without dwelling on the minutiae and annoyances of

the day, to play nicely together.

CONCLUSION

At the end of the day, we are the sum of all we know, feel and have

experienced. And THAT is all we have to bring to our work, ourselves. The more of

ourselves we are able to bring into the room with us, the better we are – always. My

opinions and beliefs about God, international trade, global climate shift,

unemployment, this years model cars, the stock market, the price of gas and dairy

products, public schools versus private schools, teenage use of marijuana, this years

fashions and the state of the Obama administration, all of these and more make me a

more engaged and interesting person and artist, and ultimately allow access to my

humanity. Squelching or repressing any part of myself will never serve me.

In terms of selfishness, however, ones personal goals or desires for a project,

we have to be in a constant state of judging whether our goals are balanced against

those of our collaborators. Seeking the balance between selfish and selfless is a life-

style. It DOES become easier every day, more second nature. But I continue to take

conscious steps towards this balance – starting the day with the radio or newspaper

so that there are a couple of things rattling around in here to resonate against

whatever I come across in the days rehearsals/performances/classes is one thing I

do. I have shared Stacy’s prayer on those occasions when I thought it was

important. There are people, I am sure, who consider me a bit of a “smart-ass,” but

this has more to do with my willingness to respond honestly and immediately to

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

4/17/20 16

whatever occurs in rehearsals or performances. I urge you to do the same, there are

worse things than being considered a smartass.

In the same way that acting requires the ability to really listen, so does

collaborating. It is our responsibility to not just argue and fight for what we believe

in on a production, but to really listen to our collaborators, to give ourselves over to

trying to grasp what they are saying and even what they are not saying; to attune

ourselves to the level of passion in their discourse. If you hear whimsy in

someone’s argument, it is easy to be whimsical in return; and before you know it,

you are “riffing” on an idea. “Keeping the ball in the air” is a fairly cheesy metaphor,

but an apt one. Give yourself over to a mode of play, it is as contagious as laughter –

and it will ultimately lead to a much more fruitful project.

Collaboration and the Sense of Play

 i
Thomas Henricks, “The Nature of Play: An Overview,” The American Journal of Play, Fall 2008,
accessed online at http://www.journalofplay.org/sites/www.journalofplay.org/files/pdf-
articles/1-2-article-the-nature-of-play.pdf accessed June 10, 2014, p. 159.
ii
Gloria Hopkins, “The Selfish Artist,” GloriaHopkins.com, web,
http://www.gloriahopkins.com/selfish_artist.html accessed 19, June, 2014.
iii
Harold Prince, quoted in “The Prince-Sondheim Legacy”, The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim
Studies, Robert Gordon, editor, Oxford University Press, June 2014.
iv
Megan M. Biro, “Smart Leaders And The Power Of Collaboration.” Forbes. Web. March 3, 2013/
Accessed June 1, 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2013/03/03/smart-leaders-and-the-
power-of-collaboration/.
v
Andrea dD Maio, “The Essence of Collaboration is Selfishness,” The Garner Blog Network. Web.
http://blogs.gartner.com/andrea_dimaio/2012/06/28/the-essence-of-collaboration-is-
selfishness/ 28 June 2012, accessed 17 June 2014.
vi
Ying Chang, Columbia Daily Spectator, “Renown Theatre Directors Discuss Creative
Collaboration, Artistic Process,” web, October 24, 2102, accessed June 2, 2014,
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2012/10/24/renowned-theater-directors-discuss-creative-
collaboration-artistic-process
vii
Roznowski, Rob, and Kirk Domer. Collaboration in Theatre: A Practical Guide for Designers and
Directors. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. p. 1.
viii
Robert E. Franken, Human Motivation, 3rd Edition, Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2006. p.
394.
ix
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Harper
Perennial, 1997. pp. 58-73.