Flynn Center for the Performing Arts :: 2009/2010 Season

Visit the FlynnBlog to follow Margot through her process!

Margot Lasher, writer and licensed psychologist specializing in the human-dog relationship, is the recipient of the Flynn’s Winter/Spring N.A.S.A. Grant Award. The author of And the Animals Will Teach You and The Art and Practice of Compassion and Empathy, Lasher draws on her background as an experimental theater writer, actor, and dog lover to create and develop Other Minds—a play exploring the close connection shared between humans and canines.

Other Minds is performed as a conversation between a human and a dog, discussing their connection and their life together. The project attempts two ways of bringing the dog on stage—different combinations of the characters Dog and Voice of Dog, with two actors and a real dog, will be explored to see how these combinations affect our response to the character and to the scene as a whole. Second, because dogs are non-verbal beings, movement is a natural way for them to express their inner world. These movements will be incorporated into Lasher’s process and used on stage in hopes of expanding upon the content of the play’s text. Lasher will work this spring and summer in the Flynn studios to develop the project, working toward a movement/theater piece in which the dog becomes an interesting, insightful character; the relationship between dog and human revealing itself as one that is close, complex, and deeply meaningful.

The next N.A.S.A. application deadline will be Monday, August 24. Visit the Flynn website at www.flynncenter.org/nasa.html for more information. The Flynn Center N.A.S.A. Grant provides Vermont artists the opportunity to create new work in a setting that is conducive to working deeply and exploring new territory. N.A.S.A. Grants are open to individual artists or a group of artists for projects in theater, dance, and music or a combination thereof. Awards include six hours of creation time per week for approximately 10 weeks in either the Chase Family Dance Studio or the Hoehl Studio Lab and culminate in an informal public showing of the new work in either of the two FlynnArts studios or FlynnSpace. Grants are awarded twice annually.