Durham Exchange – Day #3
Downtown Milton (NC)
Day 3: Saturday (Downtown Milton, NC)
************
At times, it felt like we were in PearlDamour’s production of Our Town.
************
It was really wild to lure our relatively new friends, Haymaker, out to our screened porch at the Oliver House in Milton, NC. Day #3 was “our turn”, a chance for us to share our past work with Haymaker and to try and describe the creative and administrative process for MILTON. It was interesting, weaving back and forth between sharing bits of writing, and then talking about budgets and planning — a good way, actually, for Katie and I to assess where we are in this project, essentially at the midway point. In the middle of talking, Dan offered some really amazing suggestions for funding sources for our tour, things we never would have thought of on our own. And it just made me realize how shut in / shut down one can get when you are worrying all the time…about how a project is going to take shape, how you are going to fund it, etc. And it was so nice to have an outsider tap you on the shoulder and go, hey, what about this? After sharing, we all took the one block walk to Aunt Millie’s Pizza and – BAM! – the Haymaker world was suddenly intertwined with our new friends in Milton. And the evening took on that incredible, flexible, rural North Carolina pace …. leisurely, with surprises at every turn…..
– Lisa
************
Katie and Lisa shared their work with us today. They spoke about their working history and their progress on Milton. For someone who is incredibly impatient for her own story to play out, it was equal parts jealousy-inducing and inspiring. There is so much work ahead of us as a company, and so many shared stories and adventures. Katie and Lisa shared that they make a “creative contract” with each other early in the creation process. They discuss the five things that are important for their working method on this project and their artistic goals both personally and for the project. I’m excited for the possibility of starting this tradition with Dan and Akiva. While we often communicate about these things at the start of each project — and randomly throughout the course of our work — to create a contract that we all have to sign that states out-right the goals and scope of a piece requires me to be patient and to think about what my needs are for a project before I dive into it. Exchanged!
– Emily
************
The last thing that happened in this summit was me running after Haymaker through a parking lot in Roxboro, NC holding half of a german chocolate pie. The first thing that happened was Dan standing by the side of a road in Chapel Hill waiting to flag us down as we drove by. Comings together and partings… flagging down and chasing after. We gathered in an overly air conditioned rehearsal room at UNC, an un-air conditioned raw space being turned into a performance space in Durham, and a has-air conditioning-but-it’s-broken tiny house in Milton. We sat on 2 porches, one screened in and one not, and we ate at 2 restaurants and shared many snacks. We shared some work, we talked about things like how to reach audiences and how to roll with (or even understand) the complicated experience of being a collaborative company. Lisa and I spent some time alone talking about something I said back on day 1: my feeling a responsibility “to the grant” to stay on topic about exploring audience disconnect. Lisa felt very strongly about the responsibility not being to the grant, but to ourselves. In some ways, it’s semantics (we wouldn’t have written the proposal if we weren’t interested in the question)– but also it made it clearer that the responsibility I feel is really towards myself, and my own interest. So to put it a better way: I want to make sure to take advantage of our times with Haymaker to keep trying to figure out this question of work-meeting-audience; I am getting a lot of satisfaction out of providing a kind of mentorship to a younger company; I am appreciating the opportunity this first exchange has given PearlDamour to take a step back and look at ourselves; I appreciate the opportunities for networking that Haymaker has already provided us in their town; I also am learning something from them: their work, their process, their struggles, their growth. I am looking forward to the next phase of the conversation continuing on this blog.
– Katie
************
We were sitting in an Italian restaurant in Roxboro, North Carolina (as one does at the end of a great exchange weekend), and Lisa wished us more recklessness. As much as we spent the weekend talking about our work and showing each other our work, the most important part of the exchange for me was the example of how PearlDamour works. A company can work together even if the members live in different cities. A company can completely reinvent its style on every new project. A company can survive personal problems. A company’s work never gets easier, but it doesn’t have to get harder. I want us to take on more of the surprise and recklessness they’ve brought to their work; I want us to be harder on the art we make, and easier on ourselves and each other. Katie and Lisa have a real joy in what they make together, and I want more of that to infiltrate Haymaker.
– Akiva
Hello Audience 