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Homepage: http://jahennrikus.wordpress.com

Slowing Down

By Julie Hennrikus

Slow food. Locally grown. Sustainable. Creating new economies. Cultivating a new palate. Invigorating a community based appreciation for food on many levels.

The slow food movement is about creating a community based approach to food so that people will think about locally grown, and go out of their way to support it. Parallels to theater are obvious. And exciting. And inspiring. And challenging. Once you start to explore the parallels you understand the complexity of the issues. Because slow food may be more expensive. More difficult to find. Not the current taste. So the paradigm needs to shift. You can’t ignore these issues. You have to address them.

And then blow past them.

Boston Theater is changing. Morphing into something bigger, and broader. Its own slow movement. We can toss around words like locally grown and sustainable. We can count the number of theater related jobs, both direct and indirect, and graph their impact on the economy. And we can project into the future. Or can we? Because while we make the case for locally grown and sustainable, and we talk around community, but we need to stop and pause. And talk about what all that really means. What is sustainable mean for a company, or an individual? Is it measured economically, or by satisfaction? Does the satisfaction of theater artist mean as much or more than audience satisfaction? What does that mean, anyway?

There is concern about the viability of theater. Of course there has been concern about the viability of theatre for the past hundred plus years since more forms of entertainment have become part of the lexicon. And while these concerns are valid on the one hand, on the other hand isn’t that part of the challenge? Why do we need to justify our viability as an entertainment option? How about if we show, rather than tell? We shift the paradigm by helping everyone buy into the idea of a slow theater community.

Framing the Boston Theatre Conference around these ideas, and unpacking what they mean to us is a great opportunity for discussion. Motivation. And change.

About Julie Hennrikus

Julie Hennrikus is the General Manager of Emerson Stage at Emerson College, which is the producing arm of the Department of Performing Arts.  She is also the Communications Director for Performing Arts and Emerson Stage.




Diane Ragsdale and Conversation Starters

Ideas are an amazing thing. They seem to live in the ether, and collect when called. When the Boston Theatre Conference committee started to discuss ideas, we were inspired by conversations around the parallels of the slow food movement and theatre. Peter Sellars had been in town, and talked about bringing Michael Pollen to his class. We looked into the philosophy, and liked the conversations that came up, and decided they were worth exploring on a community level.

This summer we found a series of videos that spoke to some of these ideas. Here is one–we hope it helps frame the discussion. And inspires you.

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