Creative Process

What drives cultural practitioners to experiment, discover, and create?

James Ijames, 2015 Pew Fellow. Photo by Ryan Collerd.

Fellows Friday: Q&A with Playwright James Ijames

We spoke to actor and playwright James Ijames (2015), who was recently awarded the Philadelphia Theatre Company’s Terrence McNally New Play Award for the development of his play White.

Brian Teare, 2015 Pew Fellow. Photo by Ryan Collerd.

Fellows Friday: Q&A with Poet Brian Teare

A former NEA Fellow in Literature, Brian Teare has been a resident at Headlands Center for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony, and a recipient of the Ruth Lilly Fellowship and the Wallace E. Stegner Fellowship.

The cast of Don Juan Comes Home from Iraq. Photo by Alexander Iziliaev.

Questions of Practice: Wilma Theater's Blanka Zizka on Risk in Theater-Making

Blanka Zizka, Wilma Theater's Artistic Director, on risk in theater-making.

Video still of Okwui Okpokwasili performing in Ralph Lemon’s Scaffold Room at the Walker Art Center, September 2014. Photo courtesy of the Walker Art Center.

Questions of Practice: Choreographer Ralph Lemon on Ephemerality

Choreographer Ralph Lemon talks about ephemerality in relationship to his work in the dance field, and the complexity of memory.

Sam Miller, 2015. Photo courtesy of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Questions of Practice: Arts Leader Sam Miller on Risk and Artistic Process

In 2015, we spoke with Sam Miller about the relationship between risk and artistic process.

Enno Poppe’s Speicher in performance featuring the US-based Talea Ensemble, 2015, curated by Argeo Ascani at EMPAC. Photo by Eileen Krywinski. Courtesy of EMPAC Rensselaer.

Questions of Practice: Musician & Curator Argeo Ascani on Experimentation

How can a curator approach artistic risk? Argeo Ascani, Curator for Music at EMPAC, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, prefers to use the term “experimentation”.

Mike Kelley, Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #32, Plus, a Performa commission, curated by Mark Beasley. Photo by Paula Court. Courtesy of Performa.

Act V: A Final Report: The Archive of Gestures by Jay Kirk

Nonfiction writer and 2005 Pew Fellow Jay Kirk, "creative documentarian" of critical feedback program An Experiment in Five Acts, reports on the events of the Act V session, the final installment of this series.

Untitled work by Bob and Roberta Smith, installed as part of Framing Fraktur at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Courtesy of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Questions of Practice: Artist Bob and Roberta Smith on Virtuosity

Artist Bob and Roberta Smith creates work in what he calls the "communicative realm," from hand-painted slogans to social media campaigns.

Rehearsal photo of Aaron Cromie and Mary Tuomanen's The Body Lautrec. Photo by Richard Termine Photography.

Questions of Practice: Theater Artist Mary Tuomanen on Character

"I conceive of character as my responsibility within the piece," says Philadelphia theater artist Mary Tuomanen.

Score for Lucinda Childs' Melody Excerpt. This score represented all the possible pathways that each dancer may traverse during the course of performing Melody Excerpt, along with stage measurements in feet. In this version the dimensions are 32 by 28 feet. Each dancer is represented by a discrete color. In her archive Childs refers to this as a “grid.” Courtesy of Lucinda Childs.

A Return to Simple Movement: Lucinda Childs and Judy Hussie-Taylor in Conversation

At the February launch of the Center's new multimedia online publication, A Steady Pulse: Restaging Lucinda Childs, 1963–78, Lucinda Childs and Judy Hussie-Taylor, executive director of Danspace Project, discussed Childs' career and artistic influences.