(posted by Moe, written by Sam)
Hey all!
My name is Sam Silbiger, and I’ve been with Target Margin as an intern and production assistant since late May. I am a recent transplant to New York City, and am finishing my undergraduate degree in Dramatic Literature and Performance Studies at NYU after spending two years at the University of Virginia, where I studied Medieval Literature and Art History. This summer has taken me all over the city, from an internship at The Bushwick Starr, to stage managing Hazard Rep’s Cliff in the New York Fringe Festival, to designing the gallery and artworks for This Is Not a Theater Company’s remount of Readymade Cabaret at Judson Church and the 2015 Figment Festival with director Erin Mee. I am also finalizing development on a production of Antigone that I will direct in the coming months.
Working with TMT has been an exciting process. I came on at the beginning of the second round of the Stein Lab in June, at the Connelly Theater. I worked on the run crew for Jessica Brater and Natalie Robin’s Yes Is For A Very Young Man, as well as a production assistant for Jesse Freedman’s staging of the poem?/play?/word-experience? called Paisieu. Sitting there during Jesse’s show, on stage, donning indigo tights and reading Stein’s insane language over a mic to the actors on stage, I felt deeply grateful to be spending my time with such an inclusive and genuinely ambitious group of people.
As a director, I am interested in the agency given and taken away from those who attend a theatrical event. We always choose to enter the theater, but almost never do we autonomously choose to exit. I take pleasure in manipulating this and other theater-going etiquette as a creative tool, which usually involves a certain level of confrontation with audience expectations. That (friendly! artistic! generative!) antagonism is difficult to wield, and only useful when everyone working towards the completion of a work is active in communicating with the audience, our necessary collaborators.
That has been my biggest take-away from working with TMT. Office hours are nice (there’s really solid Middle Eastern take-out right around the corner), and near-constant exposure to Stein has irreparably altered what I’ll call an experimental text for the stage. But, understanding how the company operates from an inside perspective has definitely given me a benchmark by which I will judge the quality of my future work as a director, designer, manager, and theatremaker. The entire room needs to feel on-board if you are going to make something that legitimately confronts accepted practice. The creative process must be inclusive, and the experience of all those involved (from actors to house staff) will be reflected in the final product. In terms of how to conduct myself as part of a quality artistic team, I feel lucky to have met people during my time with TMT who I will certainly emulate for many years to come.
Mecka-lecka-hi, mecka-hiney-ho,
Sam Silbiger
TMT Intern