Metacaucus

The random friend-making today has been inspiring.  This morning, going from the big TCG sessions to the even bigger NPAC opening session, I felt rather thoughtful and in-my-head.  Lots of folks are here with other people from their institutions, and lots of people know lots of other people.  It's not like I didn't, on the first night, run into a playwright I worked with on The 24 Hour Plays and the director who helmed the single weirdest play I ever acted in when I was in college, but I started the day rather as a loner.  Not necessarily a bad thing - like I said, it put me in a thoughtful place.  But starting with the caucus meeting this afternoon, things changed.  My table (42!) featured an exciting mix of folks (including the president of the arts telemarketing company I worked for my first summer in NYC), and our conversation was invigorating.  Bonus: as we left, one of my tablemates, a professor at Baruch College in New York City and producer of a jazz concert series, asked for my card - I'd mentioned that I love jazz, but never know where to hear it live, and he said he insisted, assuring me it was "in a purely professional way," to take me to a jazz concert.

Shortly afterwards, at the NPAC opening party, I ran into a woman I'd met at Tuesday night's TCG mixer, the Artistic Director of what sounds like an awesome theatre in Austin, Texas.  On the intensely packed line for the bar, we started chatting, and ended up hanging out for most of the evening.  Turns out we were both going to the same performance tonight - Jigsaw Nation - so we split a cab.  But not without adopting another person heading that way, the Producing Artistic Director of a great regional theatre.  (I overheard him saying, at the end of the party, that he was looking for one of the TCG staffers with the 'Ask Me' buttons.  I was, too - it turns out I needed the address of the theatre we were going to, which he had, and he needed to know the best way to get there, which I knew was by cab.)  On the way back to the hotel from the theatre, our entourage was joined by a recent grad of the Yale School of Drama.  Turns out he's just moved to New York, so we talked neighborhoods and subway lines.  

Of course, it was also a day of talking marketing, arts in education, community building, audience demographics, artist support, interdisciplinary crosspolination... Community-building has many aspects.

posted by Jaime Green.