Time is theatre’s most valuable resource and this is particularly true in the world of new plays. Developing a script can be an extensive process with many phases of writing and sharing work in service to fine-tuning a piece. A script can take years to be ready for a production and longer still to be produced. Even when a new play does get staged, a creative team having more than three weeks to rehearse is rare. Time is finite from the onset of each process, but time is a necessity of this medium.

On November 20, The Public opened the high school epic, INITIATIVE. The world premiere play is a tender tribute to young adulthood as a new millennium begins, written by Else Went and directed by Emma Rosa Went. 

With a runtime of around 5 hours, we get to spend real time with the teens of INITIATIVE. The script, in no small part because of its length, has a distinctly natural and observational way of illuminating its young characters to us. We see first loves bloom, friendships form and fade, DnD campaigns play out, and so many other tiny intimacies of life unfold, unhurried, over a few years in the character’s lives. The scope and duration of the piece would be challenging for any team to navigate in just a few weeks, but fortunately the company of Initiative didn’t begin their work together at The Public. Most of the cast has been in development with the piece since its first public reading in 2016 and will be making their debuts on The Public’s stage.

As an actor myself, this trajectory is rare. It’s also the element of the piece’s development process that I've found most intriguing as a writer and critic. Generally speaking, actors are shuffled around or recast during the process of development; that’s an understood, albeit difficult, part of the industry. So, when I got the opportunity to observe the full team in rehearsal, I was curious to see if I could get even a small sense of what effect time has had on this piece. 

I joined them on only their fourth day of rehearsal at The Public, but you could sense that this team has been able to begin their work in a more developed place. Only a single script was even on stage with the actors during rehearsal, but it was rarely referenced. Actually, in a conversation with Else and Emma earlier this month, Emma mentioned that the team hasn’t had a true table read since 2019 and they began this iteration rehearsing on their feet.

Mimicking the tone of the play itself, the room felt unhurried but never languid. There was a fluidity as the creative team moved easily between conversation and scenework. Even as a video crew and designers joined or left, the room maintained a conversational sense of ease, while also brimming with the engaged, potential energy of artists who have developed and are speaking a shared language with each other. It was just the briefest glance into what this team has created, but the mood stuck with me long after I had ducked out and back into the flow of the city. 

When a company is able to transform into a community, something falls into place and while I don’t think time accounts for all of the chemistry the cast of Initiative has, time does have the potential to transform performers who, in turn, are able to unlock something unique in each play. It also creates a container for the process to be a conversation between the artists and the art, one that only deepens with each opportunity they have to return to it. 

What I'm describing is a bit esoteric, forgive me, and I know this isn't something an audience is always aware of or can name. But I think that when this quality is present, that it’s felt. Its texture. It can't really be created, or generated, by anything other than time spent.

In this particular moment of theatre making, movie star studded casts are driving the industry, a trend The Public isn’t excluded from. So it’s heartening to see an institution of their size commit to a full team of emerging theatre makers and offer a platform to them as a collective. As a result, audiences will get to feel what nearly 9 years of development and collaboration can create. That kind of texture isn’t something we see on stage often, but maybe it should be. Especially now, when so many of our resources as theatre artists are being encroached upon. Collectively, we seem braced for what frightening thing could be coming next and our institutions might serve their audiences in this moment, and American Theater at large, by opening their doors to and giving a platform to the many many artistic communities, not just singular artists, that have already been hard at work on making meaning of it.