Found Stages and Finding Ideas
The 2010s were a transformative decade for Broadway. Shows like the Book of Mormon, Fun Home, Hamilton, Waitress, Dear Evan Hansen, and more introduced new talent, new perspectives, and new audiences to the world of theater. But none of these shows would have been possible without the crews of people putting work into them. Often the bright lights and smiling faces of theater can make us forget that hard work, which starts with an idea.
Every company is different but the process for developing a new show can take about 1–2 years for Found Stages. Unlike digital painting or jewelry-making, the process is highly collaborative. Nichole Palmietto, Found Stages’ director, makes it her job to keep all the gears turning.
“My responsibility is that everybody feels heard at the table,” she said.
In finding ideas for a show, Found Stages often relies on playwrights they work with or, as with their most recent productions, they take inspiration from the past and write a script collaboratively. This beginning stage of developing ideas can be all over the place. They hold brainstorming sessions, bounce ideas off each other, and set goals.
“A lot of people see the collaborative process as throwing a bucket and seeing what happens,” Palmietto said.
She speaks to a curious aspect of the creative process- the almost graceless stumbling around for ideas. One of the biggest shows of the 2010s, Hamilton, started by chance when playwright and composer Lin Manuel Miranda happened to pick up a biography of Alexander Hamilton. Found Stages, too, followed Mary Shelley’s trail of Frankenstein adaptations and decided to put their own take on it. Looking at these two cases, it seems ideas come from the world around us.
Maybe, then, it is not so much creating art as it is finding it. Or stumbling upon it. This makes all art sound accidental, though, which it isn’t. There are endless workshops and courses dedicated to breaking down what goes into a work of art. Every discipline has its own techniques and rules that help guide its artists but there is never a guarantee that A) those techniques will help or B) we’ll even get that far.
For example, lighting designers utilize color theory and can experiment with different light filters to influence the mood in a scene, but colors can have different meanings for different people. It’s a discouraging thought enough to stop many people in their path. How do you build something with the odds stacked against you?
The answer, in theater’s case, is to outnumber the odds. Whole crews of people come together to help make a show real.
“There’s a divide and conquer element to it,” Palmietto explained.
The tasks are broken down into manageable pieces with costume designers, lighting technicians, sound engineers, producers, dramaturgs, carpenters, set designers, choreographers, and stagehands and more all working constantly to ensure the shows run smoothly. Art is not always made overnight by people working in solitude; it is crafted and developed over time with many people adding their ingredients to the pot.
“It started with four of us around my dining room table just spit-balling,” Palmietto said. For Found Stages production of Frankenstein’s Funeral, an original adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel, she worked with actors, choreographers, costume and set designers, and a local church to bring the production to life. She also stressed how important the audience is in productions.
“We try to have the audience in as early as possible because they are a character,” she explained. For Found Stages immersive theater, the audience is written into the script, bringing every spectator into the process of creating the story. Every performance is a little bit different as it is crafted by actors and audience together.
Every art form is different in its development. Sometimes it’s possible for just one person to create a work of art, like Leonardo Da Vinci’s many painting and inventions, or Gabrielle Robinson’s animations, but other times its necessary for crowds of people to unite under the idea of putting on a good show.
