Producer Sonia Friedman and actor Hugh Jackman have launched a brand new firm devoted to creating “intimate and accessible” dwell theater. Known as Collectively, the corporate, its founders say, “can be pushed by a dedication to providing audiences an opportunity to expertise theater in a contemporary and interesting manner.”
Working alongside director Ian Rickson, Collectively will stage quick runs of totally rehearsed, full-length performs, together with readings, panel discussions and different occasions within the US, UK, and elsewhere. The main focus can be on collaboration, ensemble, equal pay for actors, and shared artistic credit score.
The announcement states, “By stripping the totally rehearsed productions right down to their necessities, with minimal décor, Collectively goals to have a good time the uncooked energy of storytelling — getting again to what usually makes theater so compelling within the first place.”
Performances will happen in small venues, the place established actors will carry out “simply toes from the viewers, creating an intimate, elemental expertise and heightened sense of group.” Above all, the announcement continues, Collectively s dedicated to holding its productions genuinely reasonably priced for a big proportion of the home and open to as many individuals as attainable.
In a prolonged joint assertion, Friedman and Jackman mentioned:
“With director Ian Rickson we needed to create an organization the place actors, writers, and administrators may experiment, discover, and take dangers, away from the pressures which can be usually related to the business theater world. Collectively is about going again to fundamentals, rediscovering the straightforward, thrilling essence of dwell efficiency.
“On the similar time,” the assertion continues, “this isn’t about our stepping away from Broadway or the West Finish—it’s about supporting and coexisting alongside them.
“We have now at all times been drawn to theater due to its uncooked vitality—the joy of a primary studying, the enjoyment of getting into an surprising position, that sense of a shared expertise. With Ian, this firm is our manner of sharing these moments with audiences, making them a part of our course of.
“We additionally need to embrace flexibility—whether or not that’s by way of various efficiency schedules throughout the week or staging performs in repertoire, permitting productions and concepts to evolve in a spontaneous and natural manner. By eradicating among the typical constraints, we hope to create an area the place the productions can really feel contemporary, alive, and ever-changing.”
