HERE, There and Everywhere
HERE Arts Center’s ‘Made HERE’ series starts small—but it has big designs
By Eliza Bent
The first episode of MADE HERE's second season on Vimeo.
Elizabeth LeCompte, artistic director of New York City’s seminal Wooster Group, isn’t a very good director. She says so herself in “Staying Power,” an episode of “Made HERE,” HERE Arts Center’s web series that details the trials and tribulations faced by New York City–based theatre artists. “I’m a good theatre artist,” LeCompte maintains from behind blue-tinted glasses while sitting next to a cluttered desk above which hangs a sign that reads “Liz’s Desk.” “But not a great director. So maybe I could become an intern with a really great director.”
Though her tongue is firmly in cheek, one senses that there’s something simultaneously serious about LeCompte’s self-evaluation. This is the just the kind of candid comment that offers a juicy glimpse into the inner workings of artistic minds in “Made HERE,” now in its second online season and airing as interstitial programming on NYC Life, the official TV network of the City of New York.
Made HERE grew out of HERE’s Artist Resident Program (HARP), a flagship program for mid-career artists. “There was the opportunity to apply for a Rockefeller Cultural Innovation grant,” recalls producing director Kim Whitener. “Our general manager at the time, Karina Mangu-Ward, had a strong interest in video documentary work. We thought that doing a video project about the challenges of art-making would really broaden what we do with HARP in terms of the services it provides for artists, while also reaching a larger community.”
Enter producing/directing team Tanya Selvaratnam and Chiara Clemente, who had worked together on such film projects as Our City Dreams and What’s on Your Plate. Whitener was well acquainted with the duo’s work (Selvaratnam is a performer and producer; Clemente’s expertise lies in documentary film). Once the Rockefeller grant of $250,000 was secure (additional funding was acquired from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts), the group set about to design the series. Together with 13 cultural organizations from New York City’s five boroughs, the HERE team, along with Clemente and Selvaratnam, drew up a list of issues they wanted artists to talk about.
“At the top of the list is always space and money,” observes Selvaratnam. “That’s not just true for artists in New York, but for artists everywhere.” The themes for various episodes have included creative real estate, day and night jobs, family balance, activism, technology, identity, creative practice, life work and home. Each theme has three different subset categories, which round the series out at a total of 21 episodes.
Who were the artists who would best speak to these issues? “That was a lot harder to figure out,” observes Selvaratnam. “It wasn’t just that we wanted amazing artists—we needed them to really be able to speak to the specific challenges we were outlining.” A list of 400 possible interviewees came out of the first meeting, but budget and time constraints cut that figure down sharply, and 40 artists were ultimately interviewed for season one and 20 for season two.
Thematic questions were created alongside questions that relate directly to the artists themselves. For example, in an episode called “The Family Business,” director, playwright and actor Ain Gordon talks with his parents, choreographer/director David Gordon and dancer/actor Valda Setterfield, about growing up in an artistic home as well as collaborating artistically as a family. “He’s much more patient with me,” Setterfield says of her son, “than, say, him”—she jokingly elbows her husband. The episode hones in on the trio being interviewed as snippets and stills of the work they have created together flash across the screen.
Clemente, who conducted the interviews, establishes a warm and intimate feeling with her subjects. “The interviews lasted about 40 minutes to an hour-plus per artist,” says Clemente. Usually subjects are shot in their home or a workspace with a personal link.
Big Apple references abound, which is to be expected from a series so locally rooted. However, Clemente rejects the notion that “Made HERE” runs the risk of being solipsistic or too New York–centric. “At the end of the day, it’s about passion. I think a businessman or female broadcaster could easily relate to the drive these artists have. When you make a human connection with someone, the process really opens up and becomes much more universal.”
Selvaratnam agrees. “We’ve had 16,000 unique visitors to the site, and it’s been viewed in 94 countries,” she says, pointing out that the challenges artists confront in New York are similar the world over. It certainly helps that the series boasts high production values and a hummable opening tune along with its intriguing and diverse roster of interviewees from New York City’s five boroughs.
Consider the episode “Creating Opportunities” in the section “Day and Night Jobs.” Kuang-Yu Fong, executive and co-artistic director of Chinese Theatre Works in Queens, warns performers, “If you have a nice life in China—don’t come. If you’re not so healthy, don’t come. Life here is tough.” Still, many do come (Fong’s company has more than 40 performers). As the struggles between art-making and money-making persisted, Ying Zhang, a Peking opera performer who came to the U.S. to accommodate her husband’s job, suggested that Chinese Theatre Works should own its own business, thereby employing performers and giving them flexible schedules. “It’s difficult when there are performances on the weekend, because that’s the busiest time at the nail salon,” Zhang admits. “But I understand because I am a performer too.”
A series about artistic challenges in New York City could easily sink in a flood of depressing statistics, or it might opt to ignore reality and fashion itself as a promotional public relations piece. “Made HERE” does neither. It allows a surprising amount of hope, inventiveness and pluck to mix with bleak truths in each episode. Viewers leave each episode feeling inspired—but also cautious about the mechanics of pursuing a career in the arts.
According to Whitener and Selvaratnam, a third season of the series is being discussed. Funding is key, but enough leftover footage already exists from seasons one and two to create a third. Though “Made HERE” has focused on NYC as mandated by its grant, Whitener hopes to spread the model across the country. While the Internet holds intriguing possibilities for disseminating art, it’s also a rich medium for sharing compelling stories about the human beings who make art—no matter where they reside.