LEADERSHIP, POWER, CONTRACT

“There is no question of the actor having to do what the director proposes. He must realize that he can do whatever he likes and that, even if in the end is own suggestions are not accepted, they will be never be used against him.”
Jerzy Grotowski, 1967

When I joined a project with choreographer Sara Shelton Mann in 1985 I was a determined anarchist critical of unearned entitlement and assumed hierarchies. Mann is a complex leader, simultaneously dependent on the mutual inspiration of collaborative work and yet attached to a particular singularity of both vision and status. I agreed to work with her, in the company that became Contraband (version 2), under the conditions that I had veto power over what I did in performance, understanding that she, as artistic director/conceiver/and funder of the project, would be instigating most of the work and having final say over the structure and content of the performance. Sara reads energy more than language, and I don’t think she thought much about what I said. So she agreed. I at least had something to tell my anarchist friends who asked whether I was in a collective or not. I would say, not really, but we act like a collective and I have maintained a kind of personal autonomy within the group and in relation to the choreographer. I continued to work with Sara & the wondrous evolving ensemble/family of Contraband until 1994. When I left the company, the power dynamic between Sara and I had deteriorated and the collective feeling had not been sustained. Maybe at 34, with a growing reputation of my own, I could no longer be in a company that seemed more and more to belong to Mann and not to me or us. With distance, it’s clear that my biggest artistic influence, among many, occurred during those nine years.

Since that time I have worked on several projects as a choreographer-director (as well as conceiver and funder). Now I am a complex leader. Like Mann I am paradoxical and ambivalent within the interwoven roles of boss, teacher, mentor, artist, director. How can I extend an anarchist, non-coercive process to the people I work with? To clarify my relationship to performers, and to distance myself from coercive and controlling leadership styles, I have revisited and even formalized the contract that I made with Mann in 1985.

The contract specifies that I am the director and will make all final decisions about what happens in the performance. It also states that performers can veto any suggestion or request that I make. The contract also addresses the issue of intellectual/artistic property and guarantees the artists that I will not own or profit from their work after the contracted performances. The contract attempts to nurture the psychic and psychological environment for mutual trust and collective inspiration, which I consider crucial to collaborative creation.

Especially when working with young people, young artists, I am aware of the ongoing mentorship and training embedded in the making process. In this school of learning-by-doing, the boundaries between topics blur, just as disciplinary borders blur in the creative work. Different people in the group are interested by different aspects of the process. I am and we are being observed and studied when making decisions, spending money, scheduling and shaping rehearsals, sharing the creative work, supporting each other to experiment and create, promoting the work, interacting with the press or presenter, and commenting on the performances. The presentation of the contract includes reading it aloud with the whole group, taking questions to clarify what it means, and inviting suggestions to change it. For some of the cast this is one of the most memorable or educational moments in the process.