The Terror Cottas is an experimental playwrights collective based in Chicago.
Mission:
To build audience and performance opportunities for experimental playwrights by sharing resources and networks among member playwrights and associate artists, applying for funding, and educating and welcoming audiences with radical hospitality.
Vision:
To be a producing theater company with an established fan base for the experimental work of member playwrights.
Values:
- High Artistic Standards — Our definition includes artistic courage to experiment with forms that challenge the mainstream. It champions diversity of voices and perspectives.
- Inherently Theatrical — Things that can’t be films or TV.
- Antiracist
- Gender Inclusive
- Working Class — Supportive of artists from the working class even if their career paths are non-traditional.
- Green — Taking responsibility to reuse, recycle, and limit greenhouse emissions in the creation of our art.
- Playwright-Driven — Playwrights are the artistic decision makers.
- Ensemble — Building an artistic home for all involved.
- Mutual Support and Self Care — We’ll support each other and keep the scope of our work doable, so that neither we nor our collaborators sacrifice our health for our art.
- Resisting Capitalism – We value art that challenges the conventions of Capitalist cultural production. We operate in a Capitalist system, but realize not all needs can be met by market-based solutions. We offer value and communicate effectively in our marketing, and don’t resort to manipulation.
Rationale:
A fully market-driven world produces more entertainment than we need, but there is not a market motivation for challenging the status quo. Experimental theater artists have to create their own opportunities to reach audiences and make work that is truly new or subversive, and have creative control.
Experimental theatre 1) challenges audiences to think about life and themselves in a different way, 2) expands the possibilities of the medium to keep it fresh and effective, 3) speaks to audiences of their particular moment in time in a way that artistic work from the past cannot, and 4) nurtures the audience’s ability to experience their present reality aesthetically, as opposed to experiences approved for inclusion in museums or histories.
There is a strong director-driven experimental theater movement in Chicago, New York, Europe, and elsewhere, but often playwrights are explicitly and intentionally excluded. Conversely, playwright-centered theaters are often conventional in style, serving as career stepping stones to television and film, and playwriting and those art forms are seen as one. What makes The Terror Cottas unique is that it is experimental, theatrical, and playwright-driven.
Like our performance-oriented counterparts, experimental playwrights envision plays that are thrilling, inexplicable, and destructive; that actively resist the television model, subvert the norms of Capitalistic cultural production, disrupt realism and illusionistic well-made plays, and generally challenge what people are used to, in order to awaken their senses to new ways of perceiving the world. The fact that we start with writing does not make our work less experimental, or inherently realistic. Our work isn’t served by actors and directors trained to interpret scripts naturalistically, OR by “experimental” ensembles that devalue or misunderstand the function of the playwright.
The purpose of The Terror Cottas is to produce the work of experimental playwrights so they can engage directors and performers who are the right fit, and build an ensemble that serves their work.
The Terror Cottas begins with the need of one playwright, Wendy A. Schmidt, to produce her own work, and the expectation that we will encounter other playwrights with similar needs and sensibilities, who will enter and exit as their artistic needs dictate. In contrast with 13P and other playwrights collectives that were the inspiration, The Terror Cottas is not starting with a line up of writers, or a plan to disband. If you are an experimental playwright interested in producing your own work and want to apply, please email TheTerrorCottas at gmail dot com. A similarity of purpose and sensibility will be the deciding factor of whether we should work together or not.