The Innovation Studio

    There is an ongoing categorical error happening across the field of theater and performance. This error often finds a home in questions around the survival of live theater. A constant equivocation with its health, its sustainability, and its longevity is further exacerbated by the ever-interweaving role of technology and media in our everyday lives. And so, we ask, how will theater survive? What we are forgetting is that theater as a form is nimble, resilient, and boundless—it always has been. It is not confined by walls, economics, politics, or resources. It responds to a society’s concerns, aesthetic grammars, and social frameworks. It celebrates or interrogates the contemporary moment. What we are forgetting is that theater is inherently innovative. 

    If as theater makers we are able to conceive technology as a tool that amplifies the desired impact, we begin to shape a different relationship with it— a collaboration with technology. Perhaps most excitingly there is the opportunity of re-interrogating our idea of what “live” means. What is the essence of liveness. Is it a principle? An aesthetic? What does it bring to the table and why do we care? Because we do care. Technology can mediate liveness in visible and invisible ways.

    Something to further consider in this conversation is the incredible access and inclusivity that technology can grant audiences. It can blur geographic and monetary lines in astounding ways. A work can now make an impact across the globe, engaging a range of views, embodied experiences, and histories— all of them sharing in one unifying experience. 

    And so, how do we make theater now? How do we think about theater now? How do we train for new models of theater making? How do we collaborate in these new models? These are the core preoccupations that have been driving my work with my company, Theater Mitu, and my pedagogy. This is the driving force that has shaped Tisch Drama’s Innovation Studio—a drive to investigate, interrogate, and—above all— innovate.

-Prof. Rubén Polendo, Studio Director

The Innovation Studio is a theater research laboratory. The studio’s rigorous training disrupts the inherited processes of collaboration and theater making. Engaging technology as a central collaborator, the training views theater as a transdisciplinary arts practice strategically blurring the lines between performance, direction, management, scholarship, and design. Aligning with Tisch Drama’s mission and reflecting NYU’s research goals, the studio interjects physical training, technology, scholarship, and art making towards innovative practices that expand the limits of the field to shape theater making for the 21st century.

Engaging theater as an inherently physical and interdisciplinary art form, the training disrupts traditional modes of storytelling, image making, collaboration, and theater making. Framing dramaturgy as the consideration of structures and their impacts, the studio centers dramaturgy of disruption to investigate a range of dramaturgical approaches for process, collaboration, architecture, space, and performance. The work will examine dramaturgies across art forms and geographies and situate them in theater practice. This training engages students in a detailed approach of Theater Mitu’s somatic training methodology of Whole Theater. This demanding physical training will lay the foundational discipline to garner successful models of artistic, explorative, and creative processes. This studio proposes disruption as a path towards innovation and a richer understanding of what it is to be an artist and a human.

THE INNOVATION STUDIO INVITES ALL RIGOROUSLY CURIOUS STUDENTS TO APPLY. NO PREVIOUS TECHNOLOGY SKILLS REQUIRED.

THE APPLICATION PROCESS FOR SPRING 2025:

STEP 1:

• Request an application from John Dietrich at jd363@nyu.edu
• Students will submit the written application. Application is due by Noon on Friday, November 15th to John Dietrich at jd363@nyu.edu
• Once you submit your written application you will be scheduled for a Group Work-Session.

STEP 2:

• Required attendance to one Group Work-Session.
• After the Group Work-Session a number of students will be selected for interviews.

STEP 3:

• Interviews (These will be scheduled individually)

APPLICATION REQUEST AND DEADLINE:

• Please reach out to John Dietrich jd363@nyu.edu to request an application
• Application is due by Noon on Friday, November 15th to John Dietrich at jd363@nyu.edu

DATES FOR REQUIRED GROUP WORK-SESSIONS:

• Session 1: Monday November 18th/6-6:45pm 
• 721 Broadway/ 12th floor/ Room 1210

OR

• Session 2: Tuesday November 19th at 6-6:45pm
• 721 Broadway/ 12th floor/ Room 1210

TO REQUEST AN APPLICATION OR FOR ANY QUESTIONS PLEASE CONTACT: John Dietrich at jd363@nyu.edu