One of the Catalyst Grant projects we’ve been watching most eagerly has been the initiative from People’s Light & Theatre to integrate more strongly their educational and their regular stage programming. The project has many components, all designed to bring the energy and creativity of PL&T’s highly-regarded educational programming, particularly involving teens, into contact with the artistic staff producing main stage productions. To do this, they have sought help from two theaters in Scotland and one in the U.S.: Citizen’s Theatre of Glasgow, the National Theatre of Scotland, and Epic Theatre from New York. The first major component of the project was a “Summer R&D Lab,” which took place this past July and August.

The R&D lab mixed together adult artists from all of the participating theaters, including 20 adults from PL&T, with 19 young artists who had been handpicked out of their youth programs. Over 2 weeks of day-long sessions, the group, led by artists from Epic Theatre, dug deeply into Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale through collaborative, sometimes experimental exercises. PL&T intends to produce The Winter’s Tale  on their main stage in the 2013 season, and these sessions are designed to help fuel the initial work on the play.

The “catalytic” potential of this grant was seen in the possibilities behind connecting the education and main-stage components of PL&T’s work in a meaningful and sustainable way, with the hope that it could help drive the energy and creativity of the main-stage work, while also facilitating the organization’s ability to experiment with their planning and the administration of their overall program. People’s Light reported great success with this first R&D Lab; another is scheduled for next summer. They’ve found that the collaborations with the other theatres have already shown the promised catalytic effect in the way the organization thinks about teaching and community, as well as how the organization thinks about, and plans for, education and regular programs.