During the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic, I found an online class being offered by arthaus berlin and taught by my guest for this episode, Ariel Gutierrez Torres, who is a member of their faculty. The class was called Manifesto, and we explored that concept both in terms of the history of the manifesto in many art forms and in terms of our own artistic practice and how we talk about it. I loved this class so much I took it three times.

In this interview, my prompt about actors standing in a circle brings to Ariel’s mind a performance of Il libro delle danze (The Book of Dances) by the Danish theatre company, Odin Teatret, on the outskirts of a village in the Peruvian Andes in 1978. This is a well-known image for Odin Teatret, which was founded by Eugenio Barba and with whom Ariel has worked repeatedly.

​From this image, Ariel riffs on horizontal and vertical arrangements as they show up in theatre devising, considering everything from whether a group of actors needs a director to how funding affects choices made by theatre companies and schools to notions of the collective in political theory and grassroots organizing in Europe and Ariel’s home continent of Latin America. He even throws a skipping stone across theatre history to touch on the horizontal and vertical in dramaturgy. At one point he reminisces about hearing Jerry Grotowski lecture for six hours at a time in Paris. I think he shares Grotowski's gift for eloquence; I whittled this down to under 90 minutes, but could easily have listened to him for six. He’s one of my all-time favorite teachers.

Some people/topics Ariel discusses: 
arthaus berlin (formerly LISPA, the London International School of Performing Arts)
Eugenio Barba, Italian founder of the Danish company Odin Teatret and formerly apprenticed to Polish director and theorist Jerzy Grotowski
Jacques LeCoq
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Henri Bergson, author of Matter and Memory
Tadeusz Kantor, Polish artist and theatremaker (see The Dead Class)
The Frankfurt School of critical theorists: Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin
Buffon (French: bouffon), the jester, satire, sacred madness
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rose Burnett Bonczek joins me in this episode to talk about the book she co-authored with her colleague David Storck, Ensemble Theatre Making: A Practical Guide. Rose directed the BFA acting program for over 20 years at Brooklyn College/CUNY and is the producing artist director of Gi60 US—the one-minute theatre festival. She works as a director and theatre consultant in addition to being an educator.

A conversation with Fern Sloan and Ted Pugh, both actors and longtime teachers of the Michael Chekhov technique. Studying with them has been one of the great experiences of my life, and I feel fortunate to have taken two five-week immersions at the school before the COVID-19 pandemic changed the possibilities for in-person classes. You can learn more about them, the school's offerings, and the technique on the website of the Michael Chekhov School, which offers classes online and in the area of the ancestral homelands of the Mohican people, also known as Hudson, NY. Also be sure to check out the searchable Michael Chekhov Archive. Below, I am flanked by Fern and Ted in Ted's light- and book-filled living room.

For a while, I've been thinking it would be fun to talk to various people who have taught me, inspired me, or with whom I have worked about ensembles. It feels like a fundamental aspect of acting that we cultivate a "sense of the whole," as Michael Chekhov referred to it. We tune in to other actors onstage but also to crew members and anyone who happens to be watching. I've been enjoying these conversations and I hope you do, too.

​Podcast theme music by Alexi Action.