Today we’d like to introduce you to Some Bodies Theatre Collective.
Can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today. You can include as little or as much detail as you’d like.
Some Bodies Theatre Co. (SBTC) is an artist-led collective. We are not a theatre company nor a production house—in fact, the structure of our group is something much less formal. We are a family of like-minded artists from a true motley of differing backgrounds, artistic styles, and cultural experiences. Our through-line—the glue that holds us together—is a mutual respect for our individual processes and a great curiosity about each other and our work.
SBTC got it’s name after we found ourselves continuing to work together and realized we were becoming an entity. Organically and voluntarily. We met working on a “Shakespeare in the Ponce” play at RoleCall Theatre, and then a few of us branched off and worked on smaller projects, including Love Is Not Enough, a very personal play by Odelia San Diego directed by Jennifer Boutell starring Connor Lyons, Odelia San Diego, and Seth Zane Robbins; A Mad Woman’s Breakfast written and directed by Jennifer Boutell and starring Rose Mancuso, Kristen Taylor, and Dylan Ruggiero with music by Kelly Jo Hart; and a production of Jane Martin’s Beauty, directed by Dylan Ruggiero and starring Kristen Taylor and Sierra Christensen. With these smaller pieces, we inherently allowed, invited, and supported the exploration of our own voices and processes. We rarely said “no” to anyone’s offerings and we openly accepted each other’s varying lives, time, efforts, ideas.
Why “some bodies”? We find the best and most experienced instruments we have are our bodies. So we’re using them. The sure thing that we bring together are our own beings, our own instruments, our expertise, and it’s all housed in our bodies. Never letting go of that human element seems to lend humility and compassion to our work. It informs how we approach each other and the artistic community as a whole.
We have great respect for the process, not only the goal. Others are here to workshop original material as well. We’re here to play-to-train and experiment, or to grow a new personal technique, while also being a group that produces work and brings projects to life. Like participating in developing and performing What Big Teeth You Have (written and directed by Louis Kyper in collaboration with Some Bodies) a “F***ed Up Fairytale” series commissioned and presented at RoleCall Theatre.
For our production, 4 The Love of Love, we developed four short plays based on four types of Greek love presented in a Valentine’s tangent “Lupercalia Festival,” hosted by our fictional Master of Ceremonies Luperci (played by Dylan Ruggiero.) With the help of Luperci and our Aphrodite (played by Kristen Faith Taylor) we took our audiences on a journey through Agape, Philia, Eros, and Storge love featuring premier and original works including A Loose Cat (written and directed by Jennifer Boutell, starring Jason Collett and Tom Rhoads), Sweet Citrus (written by Jennifer Boutell, directed by Rose Mancuso, starring Jennifer Boutell and Tom Rhoads), and Storge love in Ground Control to Baby Tom (written and directed by Emily McClain, starring Elyse Davis and Rose Mancuso.) The original event was streamed and scored by Music Director Dave Redditt.
In June, we were invited to collaborate with producers Sparkle Trauma at Flicker and presented short works including On Your List (written and directed by Jennifer Boutell, starring Jason Collett and Kristen Taylor) as well as projects exploring Micromanners gestures and body work directed by Dylan Ruggiero and starring Mustafa Slack and Rose Mancuso.
Later this summer, Morgan Wellans, owner of Frame Worthy gallery asked us to perform at MINT in her event un/seen. Some Bodies performers included Jennifer Boutell, Kristen Taylor, Talanya Starr Brooks, Alyssa Burrows, Rose Mancuso, and Dylan Ruggerio. The show featured short works directed by Kristen Taylor, Amarillo written by Jennifer Boutell and directed by Dylan Ruggerio, A Sister’s Letter conceived and directed by Rose Mancuso, and Ground Control to Major Tom written and directed by Emily McClain.
SBTC has performed at RoleCall Theater and was previously in a generous residency at Active Space Atlanta. We’ve also been invited for a year’s residency at Mixdeity Arts, which provides rehearsal space and resources for our continual development. Some Bodies has more projects on the horizon slated to debut in the fall and winter months ahead.
We’re grateful for all of the support we’ve received from our audiences and fellow artists so far and look forward to future experiments. Here’s to more Bodies!
Has it been a smooth road? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
That’s the wonderful thing about this group—we all have our own personal relationship with the Collaborative as a whole. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s ‘for the long haul’ or you’re just joining us for one event. Artists come and go and participate in order to serve their personal mission or that of the work. It’s the give and take that feels fruitful and authentic and positive for everyone involved as long as we are treating each other and our work with respect.
Like any broad community, we’re each facing daily challenges that can become part of the group or the work. And we do our best to stay open to helping each other achieve our goals embracing our differences and challenges, even if sometimes we do our work in spite of them. Are any roads worth the journey? That’s up to the explorer.
How do you define success?
Success for our Bodies is individual. As a collective, success seems to mean we showed up, used our bodies, and created together with respect for each other as individuals.
We consider our collaborative work experimental. Sometimes our shows are raw and exploratory, often very human, even beautifully grotesque. Not as a rule or style but as a process. We support each other wholeheartedly in exploring new forms. Often this means laboring on our fellow Bodies artistic endeavors, or striving to be involved in each other’s growth both artistically as well as personally. We’ve created a community within our Collective and that can mean different things to different members. The shared aspect is that it’s positive, it’s nurturing, challenging, and performative. We’re more like an organic gathering of like-minded work ethics rather than like-minded creations.
Many of our core members have a particular interest in what our bodies mean to us, what is stored in the body, and movement art such as dance, theatre, and expressive gesture. For instance, Jennifer Boutell is a founding member of Some Bodies as well as a theatremaker, teaching artist, actor, and published playwright. With Mad Woman, Jennifer was able to develop a process/technique she calls ‘Micromanners’ that involves exploring experimental somatic work and gesture as an added layer of communication to the story. She brought this to us; it’s her creation and her personal brainchild, and there is a symbiotic relationship here where she can workshop her Micromanners style with Some Bodies while we also inform our own work by being a part of that process.
Not only Micromanners, but the entire artistic process behind Mad Woman ended up greatly informing our general approach and our shared Some Bodies philosophy. We were able to workshop a new approach to our work that can be boiled down to an extreme openness and willingness to give and take, to channel whatever was being brought into the room each day by every member of the production. It was a far more collaborative and experimental process than any of us had dared to participate in before, playful and risky in equal parts. There was a discovery made: that by giving yourself the ultimate freedom to experiment and try new things, you also accept the possibility that you may fail spectacularly. After passing that threshold of realization, you can truly play—you’ve come to peace with the fact that pass or fail, it’s going to be spectacular. We have a lot of different kinds of projects coming out of Some Bodies, but this philosophy is present in all of our work.
It’s special that all of our Bodies come from different backgrounds, cultures. We’re varying ages, differing beliefs, educations, training, skill sets. Some of us are career-driven artists who make our art for a living. Some are independent artists, some newly discovering their passions, and some who have limited time or means to create but show up to the boards anyhow. The value we bring to the group is within ourselves. Our work, as well as our collective work, is us. We babysit for each other, we pick each other up at the airport, we have birthday parties together, grieve together, help each other find jobs and apartments… We share our lives, not just as friends—that’s lucky—but, also, we do it in order to be more able to create together. Taking a village, and all. For some, this is our greatest success—being a part of a group of individuals who simply come together to learn, educate, question, and celebrate. Some of us keep coming back to each other and so some of us continue to work with each other. We’re just a varying group of some bodies. Making art.
Contact Info:
- Email: somebodiestheatre@gmail.com
- Website: somebodiestheatre.com
- Instagram: @somebodiestheatre
- Youtube: Some Bodies Theatre Co
