What Will It Look Like?
An outline of how Infinite Spark’s LIRIOPE LABORATORY will work.
Starting in early 2026, The Liriope Laboratory will meet every two weeks, for sessions that will last between 3 and 4 hours each.
The pilot program of the Liriope Laboratory will last for one calendar year. The hope and plan is to make it the long-term engine of our creation process.
To support natural cycles of “invention>development> presentation”, our development processes will likely go through “rotations” lasting between 3 and 6 months each, before beginning new cycles of material to develop.
(Scheduling note: Participants are not “locked into” the entire cycle—for more on this, see “How Can I Take Part?”)
What kinds of theater pieces will be worked on?
The Liriope Laboratory will develop:
o Devised pieces (i.e., original, “built from scratch”)
o Adapted pieces (i.e., based on pre-existing material, whether theatrical or not)
o Short-Form pieces (i.e., original or existing Scenarios, one-acts, fragments, etc.)
o Full-length pieces (i.e….plays!)
Each cycle of material that gets developed will roughly follow these 5 steps:
1. Rachel & Jon will welcome participants and establish everyone’s area of interest.
(I.e., to develop an idea you already have; to generate an idea to develop; to be a collaborative performer; all of the above; or, “I don’t know, I’m just curious to be here!”)
2. Pooling of Ideas: the proposal of, or generation of, ideas to develop.
3. Experimentation: practical exploration and embodiment of ideas and inspirations.
4. Formal Shaping: gradual crafting of each piece for performance.
5. Performance!
Short pieces will be collected into Infinite Spark’s once-or-twice-annual Anthology series.
Full-length pieces will be produced as they are developed.
The Lab will use body-based, collaborative, and ensemble-based approaches to do its experimentation and work.
This means two things:
· One, everyone who is in the room has a collaborative voice in the process—even when one person leads the guiding vision.
· And two, the focus of Lab work will not necessarily be on the writing process as it’s understood in traditional playwriting terms.
Of course, written texts may emerge from the development process, and many types of texts will be used as source material. But the goal of Laboratory-work is to discover what each piece is in action—in its movements, rhythms, shapes, and plastic expression—and then to shape text & language to fit that, rather than writing a text first and then trying to fit the embodied expression to it.
Those are the basics of what Liriope Laboratory will look like. To learn more and to get involved, click HERE and HERE!
