In the final months of the Fellowship, the 2024 TYA/USA Emerging Leader Fellows reflect on their research trips and how the experience has impacted their TYA practice.

“Let him go!” a child passionately called out, his peers clamoring to echo similar statements, as the small puppet (Cloud Man) struggled to escape a sealed shortbread jar!

These were the typical reactions to the penultimate moments of Filament Theatre’s Cloud Man which I had the joy of experiencing as part of my time spent with the wonderful leadership, board, collaborators, and friends of Filament. Witnessing the show, I was struck by the agency and urgency the young audience felt, mainly first graders in this instance, to contribute and take part in the story unfolding before them. Across two visits in January and April, and two more upcoming visits in November and December, I’m learning that this feeling of collective ownership is central to Filament’s artistry and mission.

As the Artistic Producer at Metro Theater Company in St Louis, MO, I have the opportunity to participate and support the process of season selection and the larger endeavor of curating and producing theatrical experiences that are compelling and impactful for school audiences, families, and the community at large. While this is a joy, it is also a daunting challenge. As both an artist and a producer, I enjoy sitting at the intersection of art and business. I am passionate about creating TYA that is both artistically rigorous and utilizes limited resources in a thoughtful way. I find that this curiosity also informs my artistic aesthetic, as I gravitate towards work that feels larger than life and wildly imaginative while being understated in form and structure. The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly by Finegan Kruckemeyer is a favorite of mine for these reasons.

With this challenge and passion in mind, I began my TYA/USA Emerging Leader Fellowship experience asking: How can TYA artists include young people and the community in programing selection, curation, and development to build investment in and ownership of the work?

Filament Theatre, in Chicago, IL, is one of the leaders in doing just this, steered by Producing Artistic Director Reji Simon and Former Artistic Director of Creative Partnerships Molly Bunder. Thanks to their immense generosity, my close proximity to Chicago, and dear friends from college, we were able to build my Fellowship experience around not one, but four visits to Filament. This has enabled me to experience firsthand how Filament’s programming develops and builds upon itself over the course of a season, to gain greater insight into both the range and interconnectedness of their programming.

While I was curious to learn from all their work, I was particularly interested in experiencing their SPARK Youth Curator and Artist In Residence Program firsthand. SPARK brings together a group of young people, spanning ages 8-14, to select three new TYA projects for development at Filament throughout the season. On my first trip in January, my goal was to see the SPARK curation process in action and joining a session with the youth curators was truly extraordinary. While it might be daunting to give the curators programmatic decision-making ability (for both the adults and students involved!), the program is beautifully scaffolded to empower the young curators to think critically about the applications they review and select a dynamic and intriguing
season of projects. During the session I attended, the students took turns presenting proposals to the full group, followed by questions about the proposal and open discussion. In evaluating each proposal, three poignant questions were posed to the curators:
● Is this proposal fun?
● Does this proposal reflect the diversity of the young people in Chicago?
● Is the proposal youth-inclusive, inviting young people into the development and/or production of the project?

This evaluative process and distillation of Filament’s values was illuminating to witness in action. In addition to this criteria, the curators also assessed where the proposal was in its development, using a beautiful iceberg metaphor. Sketched out on a white board, the further underwater the proposal, the more development the curators felt it needed. During a break in the discussion, students also added a Titanic ship and floating door on the scene.

When I returned to Chicago in April, my goal was to examine and better understand the second phase of the SPARK Program, which focused on the development of the three chosen projects. I took part in a workshop with Spark Artists Claribel Gross and Jeremy Ohringer for their project Clang! The Radiator Play. Together with a group of young people, we dove inside your average household radiator and, using dramatic play, created the world of the “tinkers” who lived within. This experience gave me an entirely new and expanded understanding of the possibilities of new play development and the types of play and exploration that can serve playwrights and artists in their creative process. Filament Co-Founder Julie Ritchey suggests to “be a friend to new work, not a critic.” By playing and creating more than responding or critiquing, we did just that. It was refreshing to see adult artists, Claribel and Jeremy in this case, take children’s play and imaginations so seriously, thoughtfully and joyously engaging with what the youth collaborators generated.

During this April visit, I also saw Constellation Point’s Cloud Man, presented by Filament and starring Molly. As a reviewer aptly described, this play is “a charming and poignant piece” about a cloud expert who all of her life has dreamt of seeing a Cloud Man. Spoiler alert: She does meet a Cloud Man and is faced with the dilemma of what to do when you find the thing you’ve searched for all your life. An audience member perfectly described the experience of seeing this play as like getting a massage. Throughout the gentle yet dynamic story, young audience members frequently called out suggestions, waved during a rare Cloud Man appearance, and even helped find some of Cloud Man’s belongings that had gone missing during his adventures. This play was a beautiful reminder of the power a single actor (and a very adorable puppet) can have, holding a young audience in rapt attention.

In addition to the SPARK sessions and Cloud Man performances, I also joined a Community Advisory Workshop, a Community Play Reading to support season selection, and a couple of Filament team meetings during my trips. All of these workshops were skillfully and gently led by Molly, Reji, and Krissi, which rounded out my understanding of the company and provided great tools for engaging and soliciting feedback from the community, kids and adults alike.

The opportunity to visit Filament on several occasions continues to be incredibly illuminating and energizing. As I write this, I am eagerly awaiting two more trips to Chicago to see another SPARK Project in development and the return of Filament’s beloved show FORTS: Build Your Own Adventure.

In the meantime, I’ve begun integrating my learning into my artistic practice and work at MTC. We are currently in the process of adapting the picture book, But What Can You Do?, by local mother-daughter author duo Arika Parr and Ava Johnson, into a play with music and movement intended to tour to schools and community spaces. With this project, we are proactively building opportunities into the development process for feedback from young people and community partners, utilizing many of the strategies and tools I’ve learned from Filament. We are also in the early stages of building a school partnership to include young people in the design process for the production. In my work as a teaching artist, I’ve started incorporating Filament’s workshop and education strategies, especially intentionally utilizing drama games and warm ups as a scaffolding tool for more complex dramatic play.

I’ll close by simply saying thank you to everyone who has made this Fellowship possible. Thank you to Reji, Molly, Krissi, and the entire Filament team and community for welcoming me with wide open arms, generously inviting me into workshops, shows, and meetings. Thank you to Sara, Rachel, and the TYA/USA team, for your support, mentorship, and generosity of time and spirit. And a final thank you to the wonderful team at Metro Theater Company for supporting and encouraging me in this experience. I’m filled with gratitude and love for you all.

Author Julia Hogan Laurenson

Julia Hogan Laurenson

Curation, Community, and A Cloud Man: A Year with Filament Theatre