Who We Are: People on a Stage
People on a Stage is a performance ensemble gathered by Artistic Director Alexa J. Rittichier in September 2012 as she began her thesis work at Columbia College Chicago. The ensemble is made up of Lydia Feuerhelm, Jenny Garnett, Emily Rose, Courtney St.Clair, Michael Chad St. John, and Don Widmer. The performers come from various movement and artistic backgrounds. Primarily interested in how experience accumulates in the body, People on a Stage makes interdisciplinary performance work grown from the experience of being together as a collective through time. The process of making performance work each week is a form of artistic cross-training with a physical activity: examples include acroyoga, rock climbing, Butoh, modern dance, and cardio weight lifting.
The ensemble has dedicated itself to nine months of working together to develop their debut performance Collecting Ourselves: Bone Stacking. The commitment to participate in a collective creative practice encourages participants to think about otherness or to think about the self in relationship to others. It is a social revolution. It is a spiritual discipline
What We Are Doing: Performing
Our performance Collecting Ourselves: Bone Stacking has been accepted to be performed at PSi19: Now Then: Performance and Temporality! (https://psi19.stanford.edu)
Collecting Ourselves is a collaborative creative process, a performance and a book. It is a frontier in thinking and acting. Collecting Ourselves addresses our cultural obsession with individualism and fosters a collective cooperative lifestyle that builds harmony and addresses creativity as a group process. The artist book that accompanies the performance is a compilation of the writing and imagery produced by the group. This document is a concrete representation of the ephemeral time and space spent together in the rehearsal and performance.
The Performance Studies International Conference 19 will be held June 26-30, 2013, at Stanford University in Stanford, California (early registration ends March 31). This is an amazing opportunity and honor for us to not only attend the conference but present as well. As we are based in Chicago, Illinois, the journey for us will not be inexpensive. As recent graduates and current students of Columbia College Chicago, we are in need!
People on a Stage is fully invested in this project and has already given six months of time, energy, and money to this project. Each ensemble member has donated rehearsal time to this project without compensation and Alexa has put her own money into workshops, costumes, props, and media elements for this project.
What We Need: Travel Funds
To be able to attend PSi19 in June, we need to raise travel and registration funds for the ensemble. We estimate it will cost us a total of $7200 for the seven ensemble members to attend the conference.
Budget Breakdown:
- Flights: $425 x 7 ensemble members= $2975
- Food: $125 x 7 ensemble members= $875
- Early Registration: $200 x 7 ensemble members= $1400
- Van Rental= $550
- Lodging= $1400
- Plus extra to cover Indiegogo's fees
Total Proposed Budget= $7500
We believe this conference is extremely important for us to attend and will use all funds we raise to get us to California. If we don’t raise the full amount through this campaign, we will pursue other fundraising options to be able to travel to the conference.
Why We Are Doing It: The Impact
The opportunity to present our project is not only amazing for us, but we see this work as challenging and important to others as well.
There are cultural, political and social implications for working the way we do. It is a resistance to the disembodied communications of texting, facebook, twitter and electronic communication, yet it does not deny their usefulness in our culture. By integrating live-ness and remote-ness seamlessly, we become an example of the infinite creative potential of ensemble. We believe the active embodied practice of our ensemble is hope for our sustained progress.
Other Ways You Can Help
So you can’t contribute monetarily? That doesn’t mean you can’t help!
• Spread the word! We need help spreading the word and making some noise about this campaign. Tell your friends! Tell your family! Shout it from the rooftops... or your facebook page! (For your convenience, you can like use the Indiegogo share tools!)
• Come see us perform! Collecting Ourselves: Bone Stacking will debut at Columbia College Chicago on April 26 and 27. More info at www.alexajrittichier.com/CollectingOurselves
