Artistic Statement

As a musical theatre performer who has trained in acting, singing and dancing most of my entire life I believe collaboration is one of the most important parts of this industry. Not only is it an essential part of theatre making but it can provide more job opportunities such as self made work. Delving into collaborative practise teaches us the necessary components of forming a collaborative group to produce our own work especially if there is a lack in the industry. As much as this can be a competitive industry that drives ego I believe it is a warm and welcoming space where there is no such thing as a bad idea. I think creative collaboration works so well because no two minds are alike, we have all had a range of different life experiences, come from different cultures and have our own imaginations full of the weird and wonderful and all of this is included in collaboration. 

I am driven by a number of things but a big part of my inspiration comes from my identity. I was born in Ireland and was always brought up to be proud of my nationality and all the things that make me, me. I love to sing traditional Irish songs both in Irish or English , my sister is the most talented fiddle player I have ever met and we grew up singing and playing at any family event we could attend or just for fun after dinner in the kitchen. Most of my younger years were spent Irish dancing and competing in feises all around Ireland which is where I get my love of dance from, being a part of a team was always important to me from early on as I saw how special it is to have a support system that cheers for you from the crowd even when you get it wrong. I am in the middle of writing a couple of different things that all link to my identity either geographically or influenced by beautiful folklore stories I heard from great aunts as a child wether it be the banshee of inisherin or the latoon fairy bush, this is another example of how collaborating can educate everyone involved while creating something meaningful and honest.

There are many different types of collaboration however I feel I have mostly taken part in complementary collaboration, as during my training for the last 3 years I was working as a company to create theatre pieces. When working towards a certain show, everyone is given their own tasks based on their skill set to create the outcome which is the show. Collaboration thrives when people from different backgrounds with a wide range of skills and knowledge in different areas come together to produce something new drawing inspiration from their past life experiences.

Line of inquiry

An aspect of collaborative practise i am interested in is the idea of leadership and if there should be one main leader role or more of a collaborative approach. I support the idea that if there is no one in charge, there can be chaos and a rivalry of whose idea is best, however to oppose that if we have one leader making all the big decisions, is this truly collaboration?

Documentation of collaborative practise

A form of complementary collaboration I took part in was a theatre show titled “The memory of water.” I took part in this show as part of my undergraduate degree. We had a smaller group of collaborators working on this process which resulted in multi rolling, I performed the character of “Mary” aswell as helping costume design, advertise and make artistic choices when our director wanted the company to improv and see what happens when we play with a scene. We faced a lot of challenges and rewards during production of this show. Sometimes it is hard to Collaborate with people who don’t always see eye to eye. In the industry we meet a lot of different people and we don’t always agree professionally. During this performance. It was hard for the cast to see eye to eye on the vision of the peace, a lot of us had different ideas about how we wanted the performance to be portrayed. This was something we had to sit down, discuss and compromise. We offered up suggestions and feedback to each other making sure the others wanted to hear it while creating an environment where we all felt safe and listened to.

Icp lab

At the beginning of term we found ourselves in groups trying to create a brand new piece of work. This was based on things we felt passionate about, in my group, we all went around in a circle and listed things that were important to us in society. A big theme that kept coming up was politics and current affairs. We all felt passionate about how the media can change certain things and use censorship to cover up real life issues. We thought this could be a good plot line for our piece. We also wanted to incorporate musical theatre into it so we decided it would be entertaining to create a satire cabaret where the audience gets to choose what goes right and what goes wrong. The audience has the ability to make real life decisions there and then that forms how the rest of the cabaret plays out. We decided to focus on the voting system and how many people believe the electronic voting is inaccurate, therefore if we asked the audience a question and they voted for yes we might change the answer to no to show they have no real power to mirror society.

My Icp lab group on our first day of our workshop

A snipped of music by Lara Brown inspired by “Tomorrow” from “Annie”

Further research and analysis

As I delved into further research about collaborative practise I found it interesting how many methodologies there were. I wanted to use these methodologies in my practise inside and outside of classes at the conservatoire, as I feel now I have a clearer structure. One article I found helpful was Jo Butterworth’s “too many cooks.” Even though this article is primarily dance based i can see how i could interpret it into my own practise and draw influences from it. “the model puts forward a series of roles for the choreographer in relation to the dancer participants and identifies shifts in skills, methods and interaction. The elements are placed into a flexible, working framework, organised in such a way as to demonstrate the value of approaching some aspects of choreography from a directed “teaching by showing” approach.” Again, even though this is set out in dancer terms i can see how I could use Butterworths example in my practise. To me this is saying everyone has different approached to learning as well as different skillets and interactions with learning, therefor in order to collaborate successfully we must first find out everyone ideal ways of learning, communicating and sharing ideas and skill sets to ensure everyone feels valued and all ideas are heard. This is something i may not have considered before as humans we sometimes automatically assume we all think and do the same, however as i stated earlier no two minds are alike and we all think and interact differently.

Another practitioner whose work helped me develop my understanding of collaborative practise was Linda Candy’s “Reflective collaborative practise.” “Collaborative creative practice is a fluid and dynamic process that undergoes change depending on the type of work, the ethos of the group and the different roles of each participant.” This reiterates that each person working collaboratively brings a different skill set and work ethic to each project, some groups will work great together and some won’t, this is something I learned through Candy is normal and as long as everyone remains professional, focus on the work created the best outcome.

Bibliography

Butterworth, J (2009), “Too many cooks? A framework for dance making and devising” [online] available from https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203124918-21/many-cooks-framework-dance-making-devising-jo-butterworth sited 7/11/25

Candy, L. (2019) The Creative Reflective Practitioner: Research Through Making and Practice. 1st edition [online] sited 7/11/25