Compelling New Work at Northwestern’s Wirtz

It has become exceptionally difficult to create completely new works in this day and age of outrageous cost. Devised theatre works which enlist an entire ensemble in fleshing out and creating the entire piece are particularly expensive in time, space and people and may struggle in a capitalistic productivity focused economy. And as in days of old, who pays the bills determines who gets to make a piece in most of the theatrical world. Who pays to experiment with ideas and performance works that may or may not succeed? Who pays for the failures and false starts, who pays for those risky experiments that may yield wild new ideas? Who supports the priceless humans who investigate what it is to live and die and make art? 

Originality of ideas and the time consuming engrossing process of devising a performance piece is exactly what we need in the age of the internet replicating itself and calling it intelligence. 

And so I headed over to Northwestern’s Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts on the Evanston campus to enjoy the new work in progress The Beyond, being birthed by Jessica Thebus, often a director at Chicago’s most eminent theatres, and Julie Marie Myatt, a playwright and artist– with both women credited as directors The inspiration for this production began with a painting: The Beyond, considered Georgia O’Keeffe’s last unassisted painting as macular degeneration inexorably changed how she saw the world, and if she saw anything. The journey from that abstract painting that says everything about contemplating how one has lived life, about aging, about what lies next, to a live theatre theatre piece about the woman, her history, how she saw herself and the people surrounding her in her final years has been a fascinating one.  The women enlisted a team of creators ranging from two professional actors to play the aging O’Keeffe: Cheyenne Casebier who has the ability to age herself in a simple posture and Chloe Johnston who plays Vision, O'Keeffe’s alter ego and a kind of younger self and narrator, as well as choreographer Jeffery Hancock who coaxed movement out the devisers The final creative team member, Harrision Lewis, created a score that that surrounded and nurtured this reflection on life and art and how you navigate the end of all that and the newness of what you are still working with.  Georgia needed help around Ghost Ranch and was known to have an entourage of young acolytes and assistants, which gave Northwestern students an opportunity to help make the piece and participate in this rendering of the tale. This is a remarkable aspect of the project and the education in theatre, a living breathing evolving art form, that Northwestern can provide. 

We also have to credit the Alumnae of Northwestern who awarded this idea an Academic Enrichment Grant providing the resources, the rich soil as it were, to grow this piece. Without that kind of commitment to the kind of research that creating a new work entails, the project could not have happened in such a fully realized way

I was given the gift of being able to speak to Ms. Thebus and Ms. Myatt along with Tanya Palmer, a kind of midwife to this work.  I got to ask, what is this story you are telling? The answer is that the artists collaborated to imagine this experience of one of our most important artists, a true pioneer, and see in it how the artist (and anyone) begins, how one moves forward through tremendous obstacles and how one finds a next way through when life closes off where you had been going.  This work represents historical fiction as a live event, but it also challenges an audience to ponder large themes in community with other audience members. 

The Art Institute recently hosted a show of O’Keeffe’s early work and noted she had deep Midwestern roots. I like to believe that those roots gave her the strength to grow her own way. This was a character that dug deep into herself to find her distinctive path through creativity and living. As we open up our eyes to women artists who are far underrepresented in museum collections and art history, looking at O’Keeffe as a person, as a thought leader,  is a dive into the humanity of all artists, and particularly women who have struggled with a world that does not value or “see” them. 

This work in progress does not shy away from mentioning O'Keeffe's complicated past with her husband Alfred Steiglitz, but it does not center that relationship in her concerns and her story. This is Georgia herself, wrestling with the limitation of human existence. At the end of her life in her beloved Ghost Ranch studio, she was not alone but she was distinctly herself, on her own contemplating what comes next. 

I cannot wait to see what happens next with this work.  It represents a special experience as an audience member to see a piece in its childhood as it learns what it is.  To learn more about the work go to https://wirtz.northwestern.edu/the-beyond/

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