Through exploring uncertainty, we become better equipped to fight against it.  Like recognizes like. And what once caused feelings of anxiety, fear, or paranoia can now transform into a kind of inner knowing. When faced with the unsettling energies of our time, we must have the courage and experience of working with and understanding these destabilizing energies. If we have practice with them, then we will be strong enough to counter them with something new.  


Agency comes to those who have not looked away from what they feared. And wizened agency comes to those who are not reckless as they react to what it is that they see. I don't think bravery is a sprinter. Bravery, I believe is a long distance friend, who calmly draws conclusions, over time. We don't need to be sprinters, we need to be long distance runners, jogging alongside bravery, pacing ourselves for this very long haul. 


The Indeterminacy Festival offers a way for community members and artists to externalize and work with instability. Whether it is through movement research, music, design, film, poetry, or visual art, the intention is to create a context from which we can turn our anxieties inside out. Once toxic energy will release and become a space, like breathe, for clarity and change. 


To do this, I invite all participants to join me in a process, in which we drop into our bodies and out of our minds, for a time. In which we let go of binary logic as a means to knowing our present and future, and instead allow, at least for a little while, to slip into a state of feeling.  In this state, we're more vulnerable and this openness might be dangerous. So its important to practice, in places where we can trust each other and our surroundings. The process of creating The Indeterminacy Festival as well as the two week festival itself, is concerned with this space for practice. To train ourselves in a vulnerability that can then re-align with tough instincts to handle difficult situations when they arise. 


I often find, that when things get really bad, if I can just remember to let go, and release all of the tension that has built up over time, that I discover a strength, which rushes in, like a troop of protectors, called upon, they arrive, in a suddenly enforced, because practiced, relaxed state. If we can learn to be with indeterminacy, I believe we will be so much more powerful. 
​
Stanzi Vaubel 
Director of The Indeterminacy Festival ​
​

In an aggressive, capitalistic society, collaboration flies in the face of many unquestioned values. It contradicts our belief that maintaining an orderly world where each person has their own territory is the assumed goal. In a world like that, collaboration doesn’t make a lot of sense. In the aforementioned article, the writer outlined a situation which sounded less like collaboration and more like forcing people to compete while paying lip service to the idea of working together. Like a three-legged race, collaboration is a bad idea if your only aim is to win first place.

But what if collaboration is asking us to imagine a different system entirely?

I remember first coming face-to-face with my own fears of collaboration. Susann and Thom had welcomed me, a loner artist with little classical training, into the community of ætherplough with wide open arms. Sitting on the back porch one night, music reverberating from the basement, I feverishly rattled off a list of self-doubts that had bubbled to the surface in the unfamiliar heat of creative vulnerability.

Working intimately with a team of artists I both respected and feared, I was asked to give up control, to stop oscillating between feelings of grandeur and worthlessness and instead to step into trust, replacing comparison with the assumption that each person’s vision contained the potential for beauty.
​
In a world organized into hierarchies where someone is always at the top, collaboration feels like getting away with something forbidden and wild. Collaboration doesn’t imply the absence of leadership; there are still final decisions to be made and roles to be clarified. But if we’re concerned about a situation where a small number of people have complete, unchecked power over everyone else, then we need to admit that collaboration is a part of the alternative, that it is necessary in every forum from classrooms to research hospitals to theaters.

Collaboration asks us to forfeit our illusions of total independence, to reinvent our fantasies of keeping a safe distance from anything that could touch us and therefore hurt us. Collaboration means rethinking our addiction to the autonomy that feels at first like a refuge and later like a prison. It means admitting that creative thinking is a sham if the only goal is to make something and place it behind glass.

Collaboration asserts that creativity is actually a ‘way of being’, not an outcome – an ongoing editing process between the past and the future when, if we’re lucky, others will witness our work and experience it in ways we never intended. This is to be celebrated.

Collaboration says: let yourself be altered. Get out from behind the glass, or maybe press your body against it just to see what that feels like, fog it up with your breath and write a message in the steam. Collaboration is about worshipping something other than productivity – curiosity.

​

​​by ​Britta Tollefsrud
ætherplough
Asst. Managing Director

For months I would look into the sky at the planes that flew overhead knowing that one day. I would be aboard a similar vehicle carrying me miles from the comforts of the home I knew. What scared me most was that I found myself in a beautiful network of creative collaborators who pushed me artistically while creating a nurturing environment. I had no idea what world I would be entering and if I would be provided with the same support system.

Upon my arrival to this “small circus”, as we lovingly call the Kattaikkuttu Sangam, the place I now happily call home, I gradually found another community of creators and collaborators who have travelled from all over the world to share their delight of theatre, dance, and music. Here I learned that collaboration transcends cultural boundaries, language barriers, and geographical lines. Collaboration happens when one person leaps and another is ready to catch them.

​The Kattaikkuttu Sangam (KKS) is an NGO in Southern Tamil Nadu that works to marry their Kattaikkuttu Young Professional Company (KYPC) with their Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam (KKG). The Gurukulam is a residential school that offers comprehensive education from 3 rd -12 th standard concurrently with professional artistic training. What these kids can create is mind blowing and watching them perform as professionals of the KYPC shows their maturity and love of their art.

The art of collaboration is readily apparent daily at KKS. Of the 26 years since its inception, KKS has collaborated with various artists and professionals from all over the world, each bringing their rich cultural experiences to share. These students are like sponges and their interactions with these volunteers from all over the world have inevitably broadened their entire scope of the world and their artistic vocabulary!

Currently there are many workshops happening here at KKS with the students. Collaboration is apparent amongst the students’ artistic endeavours as well as the facilitators, who band together over a good idea. For instance, I and two other volunteers were talking one evening about facilitating a girl’s workshop. Our shared goal was to create a safe space, using creative tools of expression, to share their experiences of growing into the women they are becoming. The workshop was intended for one weekend session but has now grown into a weekly event and we are now collaborating with three acrobatics from a physical theatre school in Switzerland to create a movement piece featuring the girls in a strong, powerful role.

We also have a storyteller from the UK who is creating three variations of The Little Prince with the students. Although he had a base structure for his workshop before arriving to India, the forte of his creative process relies heavily on the input from his students. Through their collaboration he is able to create something with them that is touching and raw.

I myself am working with the students as we compose music together paired with movement. We also write scripts together, and tell stories together. Like the UK storyteller, I work to elicit creativity and thoughtful creation from the students. Together we walk away with a piece of art that is owned by our collective force. Collaboration is beautiful in that sense, it is not owned.

“Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you” said a certain Winnie the Pooh. Collaboration is opening yourself for the Poetry and Hums of others in spaces that are safe for mistakes and nurture you to try again. These are the most comfortable homes, the most beautiful spaces, and house the most beautiful people.

​Collaboration is in fact often one of the deciding factors of not only the type of shows/projects that appeal to me or that I choose to get involved in, but also the way in which I prefer to work once there,
but it wasn't until I started writing this, that I really looked at the patterns of collaboration in my life & have to come to the realization that it isn't a coincidence that of the 100 plus plays & projects I've been a part of - an overwhelming majority of them are premieres, new works, or often shows that are built from the ground up by a strong ensemble. 
The epiphany from just doing that math, is that not only is it my professional belief that the act of working together in a safe & positive environment towards one creative goal is optimum, but that same belief of collaboration has extrapolated into my personal life & also shapes the basic tenants of my philosophies on how to live my life & just be in the world.  

I'm not sure which inclination came first; the way I was raised?
or the choices & theatrical  preferences I've developed over time?
But that is the nature of collaboration, is it not?
A blurred line of  all potentialities resulting in an ultimate outcome that is stronger, deeper & more exciting because it is borne out of an exchange of collective truths,
not just a solitary perspective.
-besides I'm sure it is an escalating combination of both.

For me one of the most important reasons to create theatre, see theatre, share theatre is to expand one's own take on the world so our perceived boundaries are farther out than they would be otherwise, 
& that our terrains of self are larger than we initially thought they were.

As the origins of the word Collaborate in Latin promise anyway......
 
col = together   +   laborare = to work

and just by the sheer act of you reading this we have in our own way embarked on our own collaboration

w/ us working together in trying to understand  the nature of collaboration, 

we got this, or does it have us?

And maybe that's the point.

​When I think of collaboration I think of being vulnerable. Putting your “thought-babies” out to be either integrated or dismissed. Having courage to express what is truly yours and being willing for it to be misinterpreted, revised, edited to unrecognizable dimension... allowing it to no longer be “yours” but to be “ours.” I think of having to walk through, speak, sing or dance things I'm not really into, but to do it in a way that honors exploration and greatness as opposed to honoring my judgment or bruised ego. 

I think back to all of those failed attempts at group projects in middle school; where either no one wanted to do their part, and someone was left dragging the dead weight across the finish line… or there was that one kid who wanted to control it all so no one COULD do their part, in fear of “doing it wrong.” 

I think of the struggle of control. How to guide as opposed to instruct. How to follow and trust.
Letting go of needing to be “right.” Reveling in being “wrong.” Learning how to take criticism less personally, to keep my ears open when my ego is bruised. Allowing you to be “wrong” too, because you are my teacher, you are a human being, and it is so fun to watch us stumble into “right.” How to let go of the result, but still aim for something specific… allowing for happy accidents beyond my wildest dreams, but still heading toward a common destination.

I think of being generous… Seeing, discussing, trying something I could never think of on my own... having a gift given to the group, feeling it come alive in your own body in the way that only it could come alive in you. Or watching someone else connect the missing dot, and make it into a complete idea out of the original inkling.  Being supportive and adventurous; understanding that everyone around me is doing this for the first time too. Collaboration is unique to space and time. 

And that moment of collaborating is not about making Kirstin feel good, it is about creating something that IS good, or rather GREAT, and thus making me feel good about being an artist. And that means sacrifice, that means standing up and participating, that means being vulnerable and expressive. That means trust. That means doing my own work before i show up so we can do our work together. 

I think of friction, only my belly grows through being comfortable and complacent. I like my raw, untrained edges, but I want to be polished by rubbing up against the things that scare me, the things that inspire me. I want to refine by chipping away at what i can see and what i know to reveal something that  i had no idea was under the surface. And I need YOU to do that. I need you to be honest, and strong and vulnerable and present for us to do this together. I promise to do the same. The alchemy is unique and fortifying. Forever changed by each time I say yes. 

For the past 8 years I have been blessed with the collaborative partnership of Thom Sibbitt, my co-founder of ætherplough: a tool for cultivating performance. As Thom has said, when we invest in love relationships we invest in learning about ourselves. Collaborating is this. Whether that learning is a startling epiphany or a gentle nudge towards self-knowledge, collaborating – like love – is how we grow.

Collaboration expands my humanity; collaboration enlarges my capacity for joy, sorrow, terror, and wonder. A sure way to a broken heart. And a precious path towards compassion. With every deep collaborative encounter, I learn myself, make myself, give myself to the creative expression of an imagination beyond me. Collaborating with Thom has enriched, humbled, confounded, and remade me. We had stories we were compelled to tell and are indebted beyond words to the truly amazing artists who gave their time and talents to labor these stories into life.

After a year hiatus to focus on home, family, and new career-paths, Thom and I are proud to pass on this invitation to collaborate to Wai Yim and Britta Tollefsrud. Our hearts are full for them! May they grow together in their fullness as collaborators - grounded in the work, soaring in the imagination. That is ætherplough!