The New Voices Festival: Jennifer Tarver on the value of devised creation & agency for young artists
Photo credit: John Tarver
Director and creator Jennifer Tarver stepped in to lead the Creative Performance Studies course for third and fourth years in the fall of 2021, and is now overseeing the New Voices Festival running mid February.
No one would know better about the devised creation process and interdisciplinary theatre than Jennifer Tarver. Jennifer grew up immersed in dance and music, and attended the Manhattan School of Music for clarinet performance before transitioning into directing. “The isolation of being a classical musician wasn’t for me. You spend so many hours alone in a practice room, focusing on highly technical things.”
It was in Manhattan that Jennifer first fell in love with Opera, although she hadn’t yet seen a professional Operatic production. “I became very inspired by the images that I would get from the music. It was my first inkling that I wanted to realize the imagery I saw through live performance.”
From there, Jennifer studied all over the world - from Assistant Directing in New York City, to a Banff program for contemporary Opera, to her MFA at the University of Alberta, to a year in Italy and the UK respectively. Finally, Jennifer and her wife Liz settled in Toronto.
[I began creating my her own work] because we didn’t know anyone here… I had these ideas, and a lot of them were interdisciplinary just because my background is. I would produce my own work because I wanted to be seen, and I didn’t really think knocking on doors was the way to get work. I thought, I’m just going to start doing it myself and see what happens.
Photo credit: John Tarver
The first person to produce her work professionally was Franco Boni, who she later went on to work with at the Theatre Centre. During her time as the Associate Director of the Theatre Centre, Jennifer ran the Residency program, “which is basically the new work development program.” This program was uniquely not directed towards playwrights - “composers, architects, basically every discipline came through that program in one form or another… it was for artists or projects that required space, the resource of space, in order to develop.”
Now, Jennifer brings her wide breadth of experience to fourth year students, as they produce their pieces for the New Voices Festival. The festival is a collection of pieces written, created, and devised by various members of the fourth year class. On top of creating all the work, they are also in charge of the whole production process - directing, producing, acting, and collaborating with artists from the Production + Design program.
In Jennifer’s view, the project is all about giving actors agency.
[It’s important for emerging artists to have] control over the type of work they want to do… if people are given prompts, things that inspire them, things that they can engage with in a tactile way, that can open up ideas - or a territory for their ideas to exist in - I feel that’s the importance of the class.
There are a number of unique pieces being presented at this years’ festival - from short films, to devised pieces, to more traditionally-written plays.
Fourth year student Katarina Fiallos (she/her) has been writing a piece for the festival titled Morning After. “I use the term "writing" very loosely,” Katarina shares. “I was putting words on a page but I had no idea what form this piece would take.”
Morning After is a radio play exploring several womens’ relationships to healing, grief, and loss as they navigate the aftermath of sexual assault.
I feel so grateful for our creative performance classes throughout my time here at the School of Performance. We learned and practiced how to create our own work and I was able to apply that to my personal projects. The first three years of this project was me scribbling alone in my room, a park, a coffee shop. But, this class gave me the opportunity to share my work and begin to get feedback. It provided a space for failure and growth as a playwright.
Music Composers for Morning After, Hanna Mulak (she/her) and Olivia Neary-Hatton (she/her), working in their makeshift home studio.
Katarina’s piece is paired with music composed by two of her classmates, Olivia Neary-Hatton (she/her) and Hanna Mulak (she/her). “It has been a gift to have had them on board as composers and as well as dramaturgs for the project. We also have Anna Kopecek as another dramaturg for this play and their contribution has been beyond helpful.”
While the pandemic has interrupted their plans for a live audience, it has also offered an opportunity for students to practice pivoting their work when a substantial shift arises - flexibility is a necessary skill in the arts.
“It has been a dream to be able to expand my creative process to work with other actors and designers,” Katarina reflects. “Even though the pandemic did shift our plans, I feel so grateful that this show has been given an opportunity to be shared with the world in a new version I never thought would exist. It's been super cool to direct, adapt this play as a radio drama, and to get a taste for what a live production could be like. I am so eager to learn how audiences will connect with this play, and hope this will be an insightful beginning for the journey of this piece.”