We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful George Mcconnell. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with George below.

George, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?

It wasn’t actually a dollar, or any amount of money. The first payment I received for creative work was in High School when I was asked by my acting teacher to come to an English class she also taught and perform my version of the Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. I had memorized it and acted it out. She paid me a sweatshirt and a bag of peanut M&Ms. So I guess literally working for peanuts.

The first dollar I made was my first summer stock theatre contract at Tibbits Opera House Summer Theatre. I played the Prince in a version of Little Mermaid, the Evil Osric in The Princess and the Pea, chorus in Cinderella, the Cab Driver in Harvey, and Hennesy in Biloxi Blues. I don’t remember exactly what I was paid per week, but it was a nice amount for a freshman in college.

George, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started making theatre when I was in sixth grade. I had been acting since third grade, but in sixth grade our elementary school wasn’t going to have a yearly production, and I was not happy about that. So I directed, and starred in some holiday play (I don’t remember details at this point.) I made theatre, just not participated in it.

When I went to Jr. High (I am old enough that we called it that and not Middle School) there was no drama/theatre program. I started a drama club, and then organized, hosted, and performed in a talent show. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. And I made it happen.

When I went to High School, there was a great theatre teacher and she taught me so much about theatre. Here I mostly got to participate in theatre as an actor, and learn how to be a good theatre person. I wasn’t planning to study theatre in college, but my high school theatre teacher encouraged me to. And so I did.

I got my BA in Theatre Performance from Western Michigan University. The entire time I was in undergrad, I was running a student theatre company where we produced our own shows in dorm lounges that were separate from the University Theatre productions. The trend that had started all the way back in sixth grade of making my own work continued.

Once I graduated from undergrad, I moved to Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. While I was pursuing acting gigs in those big cities, I was also directing and producing my own small work. When I decided to go to graduate school, one of my undergrad professors wrote a letter of rec for me and in it he described me as a “theatrical force. He will make theatre wherever he goes.”

I earned my MA from Florida State, and I was studying theatre as an academic discipline, but still ran a small theatre company through the 2 years I worked on the degree, and then moved the company to Minneapolis when I began work on my PhD at the University of Minnesota. The company didn’t last long in Minneapolis, but it was there that I met my long-time collaborator Samantha Johns and we started making the sort of performance work that I still am making.

Sam and I collaborated intensely from 2008-2018. We use a process known as devising. And there are as many ways to devise performance as there are people who do it. The one thing that all devising processes have in common is that there is no completed script when the process begins. There is some part of the finished product that is completely unknown. Sam and I usually started with little more than a phrase–anniversary of an event that never happened–or a fragment of an idea–let’s make a show about snow and weird sex rituals. We would then lead a group of creator/performers through a content generating process and we then edit the material generated into a somewhat unified performance. While we are not actively collaborating at the moment, we still help each other all of the time with projects we are working on individually. I imagine we will work together again when the time and project are right.

Using the process I co-developed with Sam, I have continued making devised performance on my own for the last five years. Well, not on my own, the process relies heavily on co-creator collaborators. Each project follows a similar process for me, but is always different because the creator/performers who I coach add so much of their own creativity and idiosyncratic input. While all of the pieces are somewhat similar, they’re all also vastly different in the nuances. It’s like when a band releases a new album, it’ll have the “sound” of the band, but each album stands on its own.

The “sound” of my work is weird. The performances are built through a process of many voices contributing, so things don’t cohere into an easy to follow narrative. The performances are fragmented, abstract, movement and image-based. Text is used to support the movement and images instead of the other way around. The creator/performers don’t play characters, exactly. They can at times, but mostly they play themselves doing things, and sometimes the thing being done is playing a character. For example, I just premiered SUPERHERO III: YOUNG SUPERHERO at the 2023 Denver Fringe Festival. The 5 creator/performers largely play themselves throughout the performance, but there are sections when they put on a sticky mustache and now–BLAMO–they are suddenly the Supervillain! They take these mustaches off and go back to themselves throughout the performance. Last year, at the 2022 Denver Fringe Festival, my show FUCK YEAH won the #FringeAF award for “embodying the true essence of the fringe” and at the 2022 Minnesota Fringe Festival, my show swim team was referred to by several audience members as the fringiest thing in the fringe.

Without a clear narrative or characters to follow, it can be difficult for an audience to understand what the fuck is going on. That’s great. I have worked in so many different kinds of performances, and seen even more. I am drawn to the ones that don’t spoon feed me easy answers. That challenge me to not “get it” but to get something out of it or make something out of it for myself. Very few narratives are surprising. I can usually figure them out very early in a piece, so then I spend the rest of the time sort of bored and watching them play out. I like art that allows me as the viewer/spectator to engage on my terms. There might be a message that I have to figure out, or better I have to put the abstract pieces together and assemble my own meaning. I find that very freeing as a spectator, and so I like to create performances that offer that same opportunity. I like to say my work isn’t about something. It is something. It’s an experience that the spectator has to find their own way through.

That is usually not the way mainstream/popular things work, and as a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe I can tell you that I am not against mainstream/popular things. That’s just not the sort of thing I’m interested in making. To be popular, a work of art needs to appeal to as many people as possible and that usually means being easy to consume. I was never interested in being popular. I mean, in sixth grade when other boys my age were practicing sports I was doing everything I could to make myself into the nerdiest of theatre nerds. Instead of being popular, I want to be legendary. To make that thing that only 20 people every see and loved because it was so strangely moving and they talk about it the rest of their lives, and people wonder if they’re making it up. I am interested in making performance that challenges what we think performance is. And also, nothing I’m doing here is new. This has all been done before, but it just has never been the popular choice. Just because something is popular doesn’t make it better art. It just means it is art that has been seen by more people. I know so many artists who make amazing art, but they aren’t popular.

Since 2008 I’ve made, working with Sam and so many other creator/performer collaborators, over 40 original devised performances on my own terms. That sort of artistic freedom is difficult to maintain and guard. I have another three projects I’m currently in the early phases of developing. I don’t see myself stopping this any time soon. A friend of mine once said, “You know, some people have cocaine habits. You just keep making shows.”

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think that one thing non-creatives struggle to understand about artists is the amount of work we are willing to do that is not driven by making money. If you ask any artist if they could just make a living and get paid ridiculous amounts of money for their art, would they want that? I think they’ll all say, without hesitation, YES! I also think if you ask them, if they can’t make a living and get paid ridiculous amounts of money for their art, will they stop making it? I think they’ll all say, without hesitation, NO! I don’t think there are many accountants or car salespersons who are doing it for the sake of just doing it. I might be wrong, but that’s not been my experience. The only reason they’re accounting and selling cars if for the paycheck.

I think there’s also a sort of grey area with artists where this isn’t a hobby for me or for them, but I’m also not actually paying my bills with my art (I teach theatre in order to do that). I think that’s hard to understand for people who don’t practice art. There are hobbies, like the local kickball team, and there is career. Me and a lot of the artists I know would be appalled if you said our art was a hobby. We have professional skills and dedicate an incredible amount of time and energy to our art. We just don’t always see that compensated financially. Again, let me stress that this is not ideal. Ideally artists would be paid for their art. But given the choice of make it with no money or don’t make it at all, I’m choosing make it.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Pay them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.georgedavidmcconnell.com

Image Credits
Lindsey Wente Jake Hammond Alex Wohlhueter Sergio Soltero Cates Maddy Ahlborn