Now that Touch is up and running (with only two weekends left), we New Leafs are diving wholeheartedly into The Long Count.

For those of you new to the blog, or you long-time readers who need a refresher, a quick re-cap:  this season, we’re exploring the question, How do we build a future from a present we didn’t expect?  We zoomed out with Six Years as we followed one family through the metamorphic years between 1949 and 1973.  With Touch, we’re zooming in, looking at one man’s struggle to find his footing when his world is turned upside-down.   Our third perspective on this question is a piece that we are devising together.  As a company.  From scratch.  The seven of us.  All together.  It is, in a sense, our answer to the question.  For New Leaf, the way we build a future from an unexpected present is by venturing–together–into these uncharted creative waters.

For the last several months, we’ve been having regular “play dates,” where we gather around Nick and Marni’s dining room table, talking and eating and working and laughing and misunderstanding each other and talking some more.  With poems and pictures, in music and in metaphor, through archetypes and anthologies, The Long Count is coming in to focus.  We’ve built ourselves a little boat, and we’re getting ready to put it out to sea.

But here’s the thing:  yes, we’re writing the play from scratch.  Together.  But we’re also devising the process together.  How do seven people write together?  How do seven people cast together?  Design? Direct?  Together?  How do we draw out each person’s known strengths and hidden talents?  How do we balance and integrate our different voices, styles, approaches?

To be honest, I think the answer is to live inside these questions–to keep asking them, to keep them on the table at every step in the process.   We decided a few months ago that this project would not have a single director, in the traditional sense, but rather one person who serves as the funnel, sometimes the filter,  for all the voices and ideas going in to this piece–a Curator, if you will.

And I will.  At our company meeting last night, we agreed that I will take on this Curator role.  I will not be the captain of this boat; as we set out in these strange new seas, we’ll all take turns at the helm, swabbing the deck, raising the mast, even getting out the oars and rowing if need be.  My job would be like the navigator, if we had a map.  So maybe I’m the cartographer, too–clarifying where we are so the crew can figure out where we want to go, and then helping to set the course, so we can all steer together.

Does anyone have a bottle of champagne?  Because I think this ship is ready to leave the harbor.