by dave brown | Feb 10, 2016 | featured post
I’m Dave Brown. Welcome to the second blog from The PaperBoats Platform. The PaperBoats is an international partnership platform for performance makers interested in pioneering new ways of connecting and creating. If you missed my first blog, please check it out before you read this one. Where to Begin? It’s a question often asked by performance-makers. I’d known for three years that I would leave Patch Theatre Company at the end of 2015. By December 2014, I had conceived all the performance work I needed to complete before I left the company. 2015 was about doing the work and handing over. Suddenly, I found that I was alert to the need to sniff out my next project. Alert is right! Alarm is probably more accurate!! It came over me in a wave of panic! WHAT’S NEXT! “In 2016 I don’t have a project!!!” I love my creative life so much I couldn’t conceive of not having one. I’m one of those people who needs a compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning! It comes from a deep yearning. I simply love being led into creative activity fed by insatiable curiosity and the pleasure of collaboration. Is this a familiar feeling? The Seed: I had been speaking with Dr. Brant Pope and Megan Alrutz from the University of Texas in Austin and Nat Miller from ZACH Theatre in Austin about doing a project. Their interest stemmed from them wanting to engage their artists in theatre-making processes for early childhood audiences. Over my 20 years at Patch, I’d developed my own philosophy and practice of theatre-making. Like most artists, I’ve been so busy “doing it” that I’d not pulled the ideas together in a comprehensive way. It would be fun, I thought, to conceive...
