Interview by: Camille Pugliese, Staff Writer
This is the fourth and final installment of our Spring Lab Interview Series. We have interviewed the directors of all four labs this spring quarter to celebrate their work and learn about their artistic processes. Check out the rest of the series on our website!
Kost (they/she) is a creative from Bishop, California. They are a director, producer, facilitator, and performer who creates experiences bringing audiences out of their routine viewing. Her Theatre School credits include The Wonder Project, an interactive devised piece and Soul. Net, an interactive solo show, both produced/directed by them. They assistant-directed for Azar Kazemi for Barbeque by Robert O'Hara, Ali-Reza Mirsajadi for how to clean your room (and remember all your trauma) by j. chavez, and George Keating for A Dream Play by Caryl Churchill. She served as a producer on Prototypes, a student festival, establishing a space for her fellow peers to create their own projects. They served as a Chicago Quarter mentor for three years, creating weekly lesson plans for a ten-week course for 25+ freshmen acclimating them to the university. Interact with more of her explorations, performances, art, upcoming projects, and resume at her website. Instagram: @jordkost
On Wednesday afternoon, I sat down with director Kost to discuss their upcoming lab. It was an honor to be invited into Kost’s incredibly unique process and see for myself the joy of ensemble-based work. I had the wonderful opportunity to talk with her, but I was also able to hear some words from the whole devising team. The remaining devisers include BFA 3s Kate Revels and Laine Rogers, BFA 2s Diego Ramos and Rowen Willingham-Nowlen, and BFA 1 Emma Burkey. The members of this ensemble have expressed moments of laughter and joy, but even more so, care and support. They concluded that working in Kost’s lab is unlike anything they have ever been a part of.
Camille Pugliese [CP]: Thank you for meeting with me. I’m so excited to talk to you! When I found out you were doing a lab, I knew I wanted to interview you, because I think your brain is so cool.
Kost [K] Aw, thank you.
CP: So at this moment, does your lab have a title?
K: Currently, no. We’re getting closer and closer but I don’t want to say anything yet, because there has been no official name given.
CP: Cool! Do you think you can describe it in three words right now?
K: I would say interactive, perceptive, and hesitantly mirrors.
CP: Mirrors?
K: Mhm, mirrors.
Moments of laughter.
CP: Okay! Do you want to dive a little deeper into what your lab’s about?
K: So the lab began with this question that I have that I will continue to be asking. I’m not seeking a singular answer through this lab for the question I’m about to state. The question is “How can we blur the lines between audience and performer?” I want to blur those lines by looking at the power dynamic there but also trying to create something that is really trying to tackle that question. That question has always been at the forefront of everything I’ve done, whether it was a play that had no interaction, like if it was a very specific script with a fourth wall. I thought it was so funny and I’m going to ignore that. In my directing classes, it’s always been the guiding thing when I practice pitching or when I read scripts. I look at how the audience can be implicated in this, or are they already?
That’s where the question began, and that was the only thing I gave the ensemble beyond inspiration. When I say inspiration, I mean the art that I was consuming at the time. Everything from the music I gave them, images that I was really loving, and a lot of people’s Instagrams that I was following, just so they knew where I was artistically. Then they did the same with me so I was able to see where they were, and we could know what our influences were coming into the piece. That’s where it all began.
It’s really morphed into a way to answer that question and how to do it in a way that isn’t isolating for the audience and how is it a way to invite them in, and have a moment of “Oh wow, I really did just perform this whole time. Was I watching the whole time? Who is watching? Who is performing?” That’s where it’s coming from.
CP: Wow, this sounds just so fascinating and brilliant. How was this developed from your pitch to now, and thinking about going into performance?
K: The pitch began with a scene study, then my mentors asked “What scene?” Then I realized that you actually need a scene for a scene study, so I decided it was going to be a devised piece. I think what I meant with a scene study is that I wanted to be concise with it because I fall into this trap sometimes of thinking I need to fill a quota or a certain length to have value, maybe not value but that’s what it felt like. I really keep reminding myself and having the ensemble hold me accountable to say that it’s okay this piece is shorter. It’s meant to be. It’s meant to be a moment and I really want us to tackle the question as best we can while having fun. That’s where all of this is coming from, I immediately began doing experiments with the ensemble based on POV (point of view). We were doing moment work and exercises from different books. I have a lot of them here: Viola Spolin’s work, Chicago Theatre by Coya Paz and Chloe Johnson, and then I was taking some from Shecner. I was really looking at experiments and Mod-Podging all of their theories to create some experiments to try to decipher different ways of having points of view because that’s what I think really is at the heart of this. What is this specific point of view? Are there multiple? There are multiple! That’s what has really come from this. There are dimensions we are playing with here.
CP: I am really interested in the way you keep mentioning your ensemble as your collaborators. It seems like they have been incredibly involved this entire time. What does creative collaboration mean to you?
K: It’s very healing. That’s what it means to me. If it is very fulfilling and healing, then that is what I think theatre is. For example, at the beginning, we did community agreements, and these community agreements followed a theory that I began to form in Directing Theory, which is that I don’t call it a rehearsal room. I call it our bedroom. So we’re not a family, we’re roommates. We need to see what we need in the bedroom so we can all show up and we feel like we can begin to create it. Because essentially, for those couple hours we lived there, we established what we needed, and what came from that is a care corner. There, some were like “Oh I’d like different oils or different scents that I have” and others needed water in the space and some sort of stimuli so if they’re overwhelmed they can do something else. It’s a bag, my giant duffel bag filled with requests and those are part of the ways we needed to show up for one another and that’s at every single rehearsal. We also do an opening ritual which is a warm-up and an extensive check-in and we always do a closing, which is a candling. We passed around a candle - a fake one of course! After the last person goes with the candle and it is blown out, no more about rehearsal. Not even from me. We’re done, we close the space, and we walk out.
Those are the things for collective collaboration that I really think about. It is health and it is care. That then creates a space where you can have it. It’s hard to maintain it, and even though it’s hard it shouldn’t be the ultimate focus. That’s what I’m really trying to practice this time around. I really care about what the show is, but I really, really care about this process because I believe that this process is the show. That’s what we’re inviting everyone into, it’s the process of the actual collective creation. We’ve been trying to find a way to actively invite our audience in. They are a part of this and we are not complete without them.
CP: How has this work and this process informed the rest of your work, and will continue to shape what you make as a theatremaker beyond TTS?
K: I don’t think I can give a straight answer because already I feel like I’ve grown so much. In the first rehearsal, we were talking about the things we need and someone asked, “Can we have an ego check of some kind or a way to have a dialogue around relationships to our ego?” We talked through it, then we decided that in our candling, you say your name then you talk about what you want to talk about, or you pass it if you have nothing to say. When you say your name, that can be internally or externally to check in with “How did my ego show up today?”
The reason I bring that up is because that was a great moment where we hadn’t even started this process and already the ensemble was changing, asking, and challenging me, everyone else, and themselves to really approach this in ways that maybe we should be approaching the work or the ways that people may have been afraid to ask us to approach the work. It’s been fun, but it’s been hard and it’s mostly been exciting. I look forward to going to this space everyday. That is the ultimate goal: that everyone walks away with more energy.
That’s what I’ve been trying to learn how to do, because the reality is that we are about to enter into a world that is not a school setting. There are a myriad of things that need to be candled and cared for. It’s really difficult when you’re doing anti-capitalism work like this and trying to transfer it over to a system that relies on capitalism to do the work. It is possible to transfer it over. It’s about patience, listening, and really asking what is important here. Is it about the collective collaboration that you just asked me about or is it the product? If the answer is the product, that’s fine, but are people owning that as the answer? Am I also owning that as the answer? That means I might cut corners to get the product done, or am I going to focus on the process? That’s what I really learned here. Wow, what a great opportunity to have a process, to have work that I’m so excited by. Because I’m challenged, I continue to see that through everything I’ve learned. I see what doesn’t work. As the director and facilitator of this piece, there are certain things I’m trying to get us to rehearse, but we can’t rehearse without an audience, so it’s exciting to find methodologies and ways to rehearse this piece.
CP: Very cool. Thank you for talking with me!
Are You With Me?, a newly devised piece directed by Kost, will have performances 06/02 - 06/05 at 7:30 PM in Room 326. To reserve a ticket, visit or email the Box Office at theatreboxoffice@depaul.edu. Ensemble includes Emma Burkey, Diego Ramos, Kate Revels, Laine Rogers, and Rowen Willingham-Nowlen. Lighting design by Maday Favela and sound design by Ethan Korvne.
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