The First Day of the NET Summit

On Wednesday I arrived in San Francisco at the Network of Ensemble Theaters Summit... it is a festival of dialogues, sharing of best practices, performances and break-out groups to discuss the sector known as "Ensemble Theater".  I've been here for two days... staying in the dorms of the University of San Francisco.  Ah.... memories of dorm life.

The Summit is wonderful, as expected.  Breakfast/Lunch in commissary and then off to the city for dinner and a show.  During the day, sessions from 9am-5pm including one called Collisions, where artists who want to participate in a lab together can do so, bringing a small piece to the stage on Sunday (3 rehearsals, basically).

As always the artists here are inspiring and diverse. They are driven by their passion for the theater (be it dance, text, movement, whatever) and they all are highly interested in knowing and understanding the ensemble-theatre making of everyone else. 

Wednesday was arrival day. Caught up with a friend I hadn't seen in 10 years. 

Thursday we warmed up as a group in the morning with some physical-work. We went to a welcome session where we saw a few performances including SF Mime Troupe, which I had wanted to see for a long time.  They turned 50-years-old this year.  Wowzers.  Commitment.  Then lunch, and then a session with Arts Presenters where we broke into smaller groups to explore various issues pertaining to the sector. I was able to contribute information about SOSE's partnership with CTG to the conversation about how Regional Theaters and Ensemble Theater can collaborate and support each other's goals. Russell from Critical Mass also was in my group and talked about working with CTG and Portland Center Stage on Apollo.  It was exciting to share our unique partnership and here about theirs, in the hopes that more could come of it down the road! Then, off to my 1st day of Colission, where we began work on our piece... on the topic of "Revolting."  (It's hard to describe the work in the room, of course. For now I'll just say that we did some basic ensemble games and then some story-based improv.) Then, off the dinner and the show.

I'll blog more about the show(s) we saw last night another time. So far the process has been wonderful and the people, as always, are superb.  NET knows how to throw a conference!  What fun!  

As has been the case in the past,... I wish more SOSE members could be here with me. Our summer intern Ashley Steed has come with and we are having a great time. She will also be posting her experience, so it'll be nice to hear from someone other than me about what's goin' on up here!

More to come tonight or tomorrow morn.