Tom Maxwell

Background Statement

As a jazz musician, I am very well experienced in the world of collaborating. The entire premise of jazz rests on collaboration on the spot. I like to think of it like an improv class in acting, where every idea is accepted and added upon.

As a musician and MD in theatre, I have plenty of experience in working on shows and productions. Most of my collaborative work is with the director or choreographer. Most of the time, I’ve had to explain what is happening in the music to the director and to keep them on the right track by explaining and reminding them of the music in a certain scene so that the music is realised to how I want it to be within the vision of the director being ruined. I find it far more important and valuable to collaborate with how the person works, rather than their role or title.

There are plenty of other areas in music in Ireland in which I have lots of experience, ranging from Choral singing, direction and accompaniment to playing in bands and with singers in a more pop/contemporary music style. With my background in jazz and performing music, I find it very easy to sit down with a singer and play a song with them that we both know, and I frequently have played gigs with singers where we haven’t rehearsed beforehand and we just play. I know how to rehearse effectively and efficiently with

What I’d like to improve on is being more confident in my decisions and more headstrong in what I want to achieve by collaborating with other people. Part of that is individual, where I might have to figure out what I need to work on in a rehearsal in order to get what I am looking for. The other part is collaborating. I need to find a balance between making sure I don’t let my voice get drowned out and ensuring I’m not drowning out others in an arrogant way.

Line of Inquiry

An aspect of collaboration that interests me is developing a practice that can be taken to different contexts within music and theatre and remoulded easily to fit those different contexts where necessary.

In the many projects that I have worked in over the past number of years, from jazz to musical theatre to ‘Foinse,’ the band I’m in back in Ireland, there are constantly different roles I have to play, often multiple roles in a day depending on what and where I am playing, so having a system in which I can transition to a new role quickly and effectively is very important. What is also important to note is that all of these projects aside from one (musical theatre) involve only music, and so I don’t have as much experience in collaborating with partners who are not necessarily performing a music heavy role.

What I would particularly like to gain is an understanding of the roles that I will most likely not have to perform. I don’t think I will ever be a choreographer, a dramaturg or a director, but I want to make things as easy as possible for me to understand these jobs so that I know what I need to provide anyone in these roles in order to make the work we do more efficient.

Documentation and Reflections

On our second day together, we all put ourselves into pairs or groups of three. Using the quotes or pieces of literature that we all brought in from the previous class, we constructed something to present to all of the other groups. Some groups performed a movement piece, some a short scene. My group, consisting of Molly and David (Company and Director respectively) created a drawing. The source material that we each brought in were ‘The Magic Faraway Tree,’ (Molly), ‘Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night,’ – Dylan Thomas (David), and a quote by Ernest Hemmingway that I discovered watching the film, ‘Midnight in Paris.’ Because my piece was a little shorter than the other two, I added to mine the act of letter writing, part of my new routine that I had started since moving to Leeds from Dublin.

The drawing consisted primarily of a large tree with letters hanging off the branches, Dylan Thomas and Ernest Hemmingway relaxing on different parts of the tree, and stars in the background. There was also a meteor added in as a further reference to Dylan Thomas’ poem.

Looking at Robinson’s Working Methods (2015:95-97), the method we took to create this work was very much “Yes, and..” This worked very nicely for us in the task as the work was very light, we didn’t have much time and the endpoint of this task was at the end of the class that day. Choosing this method made it very easy to add things on top of each others’ ideas and come up with a work that was different to all of the other groups in an entertaining process.

Example 2 – Vacations Performance

In class, as a way of practicing Robinson’s working methods of organizational structures, we were put into groups, dividing up each course as equally as possible. My group consisted of Andrew – Dramaturg, Hayley and Oisin – both Company We were then told to choose one of the methods and create a 1-2 minute performance entitled ‘Vacations.’ We settled on “yes, and..” with the added contingency that if we felt an idea was subject to vote, we would vote on it. 

Our performance was all about a recent family camping holiday in Wales, where the family visited a innteractive Coal Mining Museum. We each told the story as different members of the family, with each story being a little bit different as not everyone in the family felt the same way about the trip.

After our first performance, we added more to it. This time, we changed methods to “Assign Roles.” I provided accompaniment at the piano and the other three continued with their monologues. 

There was a big difference inbetween the two performances as we spent a lot of time at the beginning figuring out which method to use. We eventually settled on “yes, and..” with the added layer of voting on ideas if we thought we needed to.

With our chosen method, ideas came slowly at first and were tough at times to develop. Since we had a very limited amount of time, we spent too long figuring out an idea for the performance and had to improvise it when we performed it in front of a group. While it worked out alright and we each knew roughly what to do, it wasn’t the smoothest work we had ever done.

For the second part, we changed method to “Assign Roles,” and that made things far more efficient. Andrew, Oisin and Hayley remained as performers and I became the accompanist for the performance, behind the piano. There were times throughout the second half of this work where the work was not always equally divided during the creative side, due to our new roles. This performance was far more polished, more confident and overall a more enjoyable experience. Preparation was also much more effective as we actually used all of the time we had for preparing our work.

Example 3 – Five Micro-Workshops

Another exercise we were given in ICP was to create and present micro-workshops in groups to each other. The group I was in had 5 workshops, with three of them music-focused and 2 of them non-music focused.

Firstly, Jason’s workshop was about story-telling. He took us all through ‘The 12 Stages of The Hero’s Journey,’ and we created a story based around Dan, another member in the group.  It was stimulating, entertaining and a very clever way of introducing storytelling to those with little experience in storytelling.

Next, Lara taught us all a Nigerian folk chant in 3-part hamony by ear. I love group singing of any kind, especially when I’m being exposed to a culture I’m not familiar with. It was a nice change of pace having to learn music in the traditional way, without sheet music and completely reliant on call & response and your ear. Even Tonicha’s dog couldn’t help but enjoy the music!

After this, Andrew provided a different sort of singing experience, – barbershop, with some dramaturgical thoughts. He taugh us a phrase that was short and easy enough that we could focus on the barbershop sound and performance. Following this, he showed us how he goes about thinking dramaturgically about this short piece. We collectively described this as a “Calibration of collaboration and an adaptaion of harmonisation.” Everyone was able to fit into their parts and it was taught very clearly.

Dan was next. His micro-workshop was about non verbal communication. This involved conducting and humming in response. Everyone took turns conducting and whichever way each person moved their hand dictated the pitch and volume that everyone else would hum at. He later added to this opening and closing the hand to show when to hum and when to swap to an “Aah” sound. Everyone was able to take turns leading the group, including Tonicha on Zoom. The skill Multitasking made this a good challenge and it was a great introduction to leading, following and responsive awareness.

Finally, I showed my workshop on creating a Virtual Choir. I recorded myself playing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ on the piano and then recorded everybody else singing to it, one by one. I then stitched everything together on Logic Pro and we ended with a wonderful choir singing a classic Lullabye. Everybody said tha they found the experience accessible and that everyone doing the same task was a positive leveller.

Comparison and Analysis

What I discovered when comparing all of these exercises was that it was easier to use more relaxed methods of collaboration when the work was less demanding and there wasn’t as much of a time crunch. With the tree drawing, there was no stress or worry at all about not finishing on time and so we were able to explore every idea brought to the table. By comparison, when working on the ‘Vacations’ performance, we didn’t have nearly as much time as we wanted to put together a live performance, so trying to explore every idea at once without a clear plan slowed us down a lot and meant that we basically improvised the first performance of it. Once we established roles, it was much easier to set out a structure, a good, clear idea for what we were going to do and the process was more enjoyable and polished.

Something else I found interesting when thinking back to these micro-workshops was finding where I would place the roles of the leader and the participants of each workshop within Jo Butterworth’s “Didactic-Democratic framework model”(2009:90)

In the three music-focused workshops (Andrew’s, Lara’s and mine), the role of the leader had to be more didactic as the musical parameters required that. There wasn’t any improvising in these musics and so the participants had to sing what they were told to. Whereas with Jason’s storytelling, which was very contributory, and Dan’s conducting, in which everyone humming still had some license to determine pitch and volume providing the contour of the conducting was followed, was more down to interpretation than instrument.

Conclusion

The difference between the music and non music workshops has taught me a lot on when it works better to have a leader in a collaborative process, and when it is more effective to leave the process more democratic and allow every idea to be explored and mixed with the other ideas already suggested. These new ways of approaching collaboration will help to make my own processes of creation, rehearsal and preparation more efficient and enjoyable.

Bibliography

Butterworth, J. (2009) ‘Too many cooks? A framework for dance making and devising’, in Contemporary Choreography. Routledge.

Robinson, D. (2015) ‘Organizational Structures’ in A Practical Guide to Ensemble Devising