Meet Emma Mcglashen

We recently connected with Emma Mcglashen and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Emma with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

It definitely helps to love the work that I do. There’s very little that’s more exciting to me than getting together with my team to generate ideas — brainstorming how to express concepts, tell stories, and make concrete positive change. It’s a privileged position to be in, to be able to read the incredible plays that are submitted to us, to see the work of the talented actors who volunteer to work with us, and to get to show that work to an engaged audience; I feel like it’s our job to honor that privilege.
Plus, I think there’s some really great momentum happening right now that I want to make sure we keep up with. Independent theatre is having a real moment in New York right now; so many exciting things are happening and a ton of really smart people are organizing and, I think, changing the industry for the better.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Murmuration Theatre Company is a new independent theatre collaborative, dedicated to empowering and platforming new creative voices while serving our local community. We’re passionate about telling contemporary stories that raise essential questions, start discussions, and make positive change.
In an era where creative projects can feel like they exist in a bubble; where the atmosphere for performers can feel intimidating, cliquish, or inaccessible, we’d really love to be the group that tries to create a welcoming space: where actors don’t have to have paid a lot for training & materials, where they don’t have to know industry norms before they audition, where rehearsals are a community space where we can exchange ideas and get better together, and where audiences can access affordable tickets & leave having genuinely connected with the piece.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The three most impactful concepts for our development were likely:
– Taking big swings — by starting with a few projects that were ambitious, we stretched our skills and learned where we needed to improve. It helped us find out where we needed to add to our team with collaborators that added particular expertise. We also learned how to set exciting objectives and then edit them back into a manageable space. The spirit of “even if it’s a little intimidating, let’s try it” also spurred a lot of our community outreach, which led to some great partnerships with local organizations (The Audre Lorde Project, The Lesbian Herstory Archives, The Bridge, and Project Renewal).
– Asking for feedback and really listening to each other — creating a space where everyone feels like they have the right to join in the discussion has been integral to our process. We’ve heard some great feedback/advice from our team and from collaborators about logistics (how to improve our accessibility, things in our rehearsal process that felt inefficient, what venues are good and which might be tricker to perform in) to creative ideas (tweaks to a script’s language so it can flow more naturally, interpretations and approaches to characters that feed the actors’ creativity, proposals for physical jokes that totally leveled up a scene…).
– Learning to set really clear expectations from the jump — every project is different and every one has taught us something new that we can clarify early in the process. Making an SOP or a template or a checklist can feel corporate, but it is hugely helpful to make sure everyone’s on the same page and that we’re getting ahead of questions that are, in retrospect, obviously things teammates will need to know.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

We’re always looking to collaborate! This is such an exciting time to be connecting with other creatives — high-budget, high-spectacle shows are, in my opinion, showing themselves to be an increasingly bad profit model. There’s a real opportunity there for an off-broadway / off-off-broadway community that’s new, scrappy, and more interconnected to make waves. New York City is a hub of sharp and driven people, and I’m confident that the more production teams talk to each other the more we’ll make optimized, ethics-driven, imaginative, and financially sustainable theatre.

Plus, our team is always SO excited to hear from new talent — playwrights, directors, designers, actors…we’re always available at [email protected], or on Instagram / Facebook at @murmurationtheatreco.

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