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  1. Art Inspires Theatre Inspires Art Thursday, January 21, 2010

    Garry Posey is the Founder and Producing Artistic Director for the Ensemble Theatre of Chattanooga. He brings us this update on MIXED MEDIA, a uniquely Chattanoogan arts event.

    Thomas Spake and I, both SpringBoard graduates, have teamed up to present an evening of original art, visual and performance. I approached Spake in the fall of 2009 with an idea I had for a project, a project that I thought would bridge the gap between the artists and audiences of different artistic disciplines. The premise was create a piece of art, use elements of that art to create original plays, then orchestrate plays and the piece of art into an evening an theatre.

    Tomas was instantly interested in the project. His interest set us on task to put together a unique performance unlike Chattanooga—and dare I say most of the Southeast—has seen before. Tomas used the month of October to design the art piece, working in his medium of metal and glass. Once he had completed the design, he put together three short documents discussing his actual process for constructing the piece, his inspiration for the piece and then an artist’s statement about the piece. With those three documents and a sketch of the piece, I then contracted four out of town playwrights to each write a short play based on one of those four elements, without any knowledge of the other three. The playwrights took the month of November to complete a first draft.

    In December, the Ensemble Theatre company convened with the four rough drafts in hand and filmed a reading of each script. Accompanied with feedback from the readings and the actors, the playwrights took the rest of the month formulating final drafts of the plays. Once the new drafts arrived, I realized that I could take this project one step further by involving four more visual artists to create a piece based on each of the four plays. Just like the original piece from Thomas, all four of these pieces will also become part of the staging in some special and unique way. Creating a project that is cyclically inspirational among different disciplines of creative expression.
    As January speeds into February, the shows have been cast and are in the midst of rehearsals and the art pieces are in various levels of completion.

    As I finish out this post, I wanted to introduce you all to fifteen artists involved:

    Visual Artists:
    Thomas Spake, Chandra Morgan, Matt Dutton, Shaun LaRose, Cathy Collier

    Playwrights:
    Derek Van Barham (IL), Rob Smith (IL), Anthony Garcia-Copian (NC), Peter Macklin (NY)

    Theatre Artists:
    Garry Lee Posey, John Thomas Cecil, Ryan Laskowski, Mark Edward Murray, Christy Gallo, Brenda Schwab, Ellen Poole

    We have named the project MIXED MEDIA, as we are truly mixing artistic media.  Stay tuned for another blog post about performance dates and times and an introduction to the work. Chattanooga becomes more creative when we work together. I can honestly say that this project has endeared me even more to our amazing and supportive community of artists.

    Posted by Administrator in Arts in Culture