Research & Development Lab
This summer, People’s Light will hold a new kind of “R & D Lab.” Six artists from the Epic Theatre Ensemble of New York City will lead fifteen adult artists from People’s Light, twenty young people ages 13-15 from the city of Chester and Chester County, and four artists from Citizens Theatre in Glasgow and the National Theatre of Scotland in a collaborative exploration of a classical text. This group will use Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale to investigate how their responses to this rich, multi-layered material might inspire useful projects and programs.
Supported by the Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative (PCMI), this Lab continues a multi-year process at People’s Light that will extend and deepen long-established efforts to bring together our projects in art and learning. We want the plays we present to become springboards and source material for Theatre School classes, for residencies with schools, and for workshops with libraries and community centers. Our work with young people will increasingly inform our productions. For example, we expect this summer’s Lab to lead to a future production of A Winter’s Tale. We also expect that our summer research will lead to the development of new work for new audiences, a key part of our efforts to bring young people and professional artists together in creative relationships. This structural integration will help us discover, acquire, and organize the additional financial and intellectual resources to enable more opportunities for public engagement at every level of our community.
Epic, NTS, and Citizens believe, as we do, that theatres must commit major resources to support work for and by the young people who will be our future. Serious creative work by young people in collaboration with skilled adults translates out of the classroom into their larger lives. Serious work by professional artists in collaboration with young people brings new energy and depth to their daily work. Epic, NTS, and Citizens share our values, and have developed different ideas and methods to express them. In summer 2012, Scottish artists will lead the second R & D Lab. We expect these Labs to move all of us toward new projects, programs, and productive relationships that can inspire, complement and support each other.
For more information on our partner theatres, please visit Epic Theatre, Citizens Theatre of Glasgow, and The National Theatre of Scotland.
Click here for more information on the Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative.