While working on a project in Portland, OR over a decade ago, theater-maker Aaron Landsman accepted a colleague’s invitation to attend a city-council meeting. In between moments of boredom typical to such meetings, Landsman, who had made a career of making works of theater in a variety of unusual settings, glimpsed inherently theatrical moments. The clincher came when a well-dressed sixtysomething by the name of Pete Colt, clearly well-known to and barely tolerated by the city councilors, testified about the drug-related paraphernalia that littered a children’s park in the city. At the end of his testimony, to make his point, he dumped the contents of his briefcase — the very litter he'd railed against — on the table in front of him.

Thus was sown the seed of what would become “City Council Meeting,” a participatory theatrical event that Aaron — along with his collaborators, director Mallory Catlett and theater artist and visual designer Jim Findlay — mounted in several American cities, including New York City, Tempe, AZ and Houston, TX. Just this past summer, University of Iowa Press published Mallory and Aaron’s “The City We Make Together: City Council Meeting’s Primer for Participation,” a thorough and galvanizing examination of their process that is sure to inspire a new generation of artists looking to engage communities in the intricacies of making democracy.

Since “City Council Meeting,” Mallory and Aaron have continued building their remarkable and eclectic careers. Mallory is now the co-artistic director of the legendary Mabou Mines theater company and is developing several new operas, and Aaron is artist in residence at Abrons Art Center in New York and is preparing the premiers of “Night Keeper,” a new work commissioned by The Chocolate Factory Theater, and “Trouble Hunters,” a performance created in collaboration with artists in Serbia.

In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Mallory, who studied dance as a high schooler at UNCSA, and Aaron describe how they developed their unique theatrical viewpoints and esthetic and how throughout their careers they’ve succeeded in hewing to their iconoclastic artistic passions. 

https://mallorycatlett.net/

https://www.maboumines.org/

http://www.thinaar.com/

https://perfectcity.org/