Aesthetic Framework

We create Theatre of the Imagination. We use visual and physical theatre techniques to stimulate the audience’s imagination, to engage their spirit of play. We combine the classical with the contemporary by making the contemporary more classical and the classical more contemporary. We distill things down to their archetypal essence. We’re interested in mythical stories, stories with size and breadth, but told as simply as possible.

Beliefs, Core Values and Philosophy

We have always made work with a woman-centered sensibility. In our re-workings of myth, we very often turn patriarchal tales of victimhood into empowering stories of and for women. We employ mostly women as designers, writers, directors and stage managers. We flip the normal casting ratios on their heads. The sort of show that would usually feature ten men and two women, in our hands will cast ten women and two men. We do this without making a big fuss. We just quietly make women-centered theatre as if it were normal, which it should be but decidedly isn’t.

Much of the American theatre around us is loud, brash and sexist. The numbers speak to a culture where women are undervalued, where only a handful ever find success. From the numbers of women on stage, to the numbers of women creating the work, the ratios continue to be ridiculously skewed to privilege the male point of view over the female. We aim to skew things the other way, with an eye toward balance. We create work which privileges women’s perspectives before men’s and which offers more opportunities for women. We work with classical stories, myths and structures because those stories are founding cultural pillars and continue to influence how we do things today. Rather than eliminating these old structures, we re-frame them, empowering women through the old archetypes.

The current climate of theatre making is one that encourages compliance and conformity. Those who want to make a theatrical career are often afraid to be honest about their experience. Women have to submerge their feminism. People of color have to accept racist roles so they can work. It is a climate of fear and top down compliance.
We’re not interested in obedient, compliant artists. We want artists who think for themselves, who bring all of themselves to the table. The theatre on most American stages is self-indulgent, privileged and dull. There is no play in these plays. We want a culture of play – a way to enjoy theatre again – for those involved to have pleasure in making the work and those watching to have pleasure in watching it. So much of contemporary theatre reinforces the status quo, we seek to re-create it with more introspection, kindness and attention. Our motto has become “But use all gently.” (Hamlet III.ii)

We seek the magic of stories, the intelligence of stories, the creativity of stories. Comparative mythology and classical theatre are our plot of earth but we sow seeds of experimental forms in choreography, in mask-work and puppetry. While working on Shakespeare we are more likely to use a Meredith Monk exercise than John Barton text analysis. We experiment and use experimental techniques to push our work in new directions. We care about story and use all of the explorations to bring a narrative to life. Everything happens for a reason in our work.

Humor is also a terribly important element in everything we do. Even stories that end tragically have a lightness of touch. Laughter, magic, imagination, visual stimulation, size, curiosity.

Sometimes people have used the work “exploratory” for our work because we are greatly concerned with ideas. Sometimes we can be like a theatrical, narrative, episode of RadioLab. Even if we’re not tackling a big idea like money or the Heart, we’re still always thinking about the bigger picture of what we’re making. The bigger picture is usually the mythic picture to us.

MESSENGER THEATRE CORP

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