Target Margin Theater (TMT): Give it a Go is your first collaboration. How did you meet and what brought you artistically together?
Catherine Brookman & Lisa Fagan (CB&LF): We met through mutual artist friends and after running into each other a million times! At first, we were just each other’s big fans (still true) and a very deep friendship has grown many years since. The first time we ever hung out was over a cheese plate in a mutual friend’s apartment in Crown Heights- we were both more interested in each other than the people we arrived with. I think we both saw a lot of what we hoped for in our own work in the work of the other, and so it seemed natural to find out what would happen if we combined forces.
TMT: You describe Give it a Go as an idea that started as an idea between friends, which later grew into a series of ideas that now “drips from seven brains working in tandem.” Can you explain how your collaboration has expanded beyond your partnership and how your collaborative core was formed?
CB&LF: We have such an enormous, deeply sincere trust and respect for everyone working on this show. Initially, we just wanted to gather some of our favorite artists, who were also our close friends, and see what happened when we spent time in a studio together. It really was an experiment at heart. The trust and admiration was already there. We think everyone in this piece is a genius, and we wanted to see what would happen when everyone’s ideas were put into conversation, discover the moments where they would align, clash, conflict and harmonize. It is a totally wild and messy process, but the most important thing is that we continue to love each other and be intensely, profoundly inspired by each others’ brains. And that happens pretty effortlessly.
TMT: Interdisciplinary collaboration manifests itself in unpredictable, hybrid forms of expression. When did you know your work was a “soft gentle empathetic flexible pop explosion of songs and dances crashing into each other?”
CB&LF: We already had a pretty well-seasoned sense of each other’s artistic sensibilities going into this project, and we love that those sensibilities are often very different and distinct. What you so seldom see is collaborations between artists with different styles, where those styles both get to exist in full, without dulling the other. The difference creates contrast, surprise, unexpected compositions that we love. So it did feel a bit like “crashing into each other,” but always with the intention of upholding and celebrating the other, never wanting to quiet down or dilute anything. It’s a loud show!
TMT: Give it a Go seems to awaken and bring people together in light of today’s troubled times. Are you responding to any specific issues or events in the room?
CB&LF: That’s still a big part of where we are right now- unearthing what we’re all trying to say here. I think we are often responding to the important – the critical, vital necessity – of togetherness. On a more radical level- the refusal to dilute the experience of each other, and the coexistence of every part, and the need to sit inside the terror of togetherness in order to access the real, life-sustaining force inside friendships, love, communities. Letting our actual love and friendship inside this group be visible (and hopefully, be felt) feels a bit like a radical act.
TMT: What questions are driving your Target Margin Artist Residency? What questions do you have for us for your Artist-in-Residence showing on Sunday, December 15th?
CB&LF: We’re looking towards this idea of “the goblin” which is a useful term inside of rehearsal (we’re not actually trying to portray fantastical creatures) and the emergence of “the goblin” as a result of excess and deceitfulness. The goblins come out when we “pop the pustule” (more on that later) and gain access to this looming STUFF that’s been literally hanging over our heads the whole time. We’ll be curious to see if this transformation registers. We’re using the format of a dinner party repeated in multiple iterations to examine this new idea and we don’t know what’s going to happen yet!
Photography by Suzi Sadler