Tickets & Events

Working: Artist Professional Development Series, Project Management

KST Presents

Wednesday, February 19
6:00pm – 8:00pm

KST’s Alloy Studios
5530 Penn Ave

Pay What Makes You Happy!

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Working is a professional development series for artists, built to equip attendees with project management skills, industry specific knowledge and out-of-the-box tools to advance their careers. Each session focuses on a different aspect of the administrative side of being an artist. From project management to fundraising, compliance, and storytelling, we’ll talk about the business of being an artist. Join us every third Wednesday from January to May to learn and share with industry professionals and artists at all stages of their careers.

Wednesday, February 19, Project Management
Led by KST Senior Producer Ben Pryor and Pittsburgh theater artist Adil Mansoor, this session will cover the basics of project management for the creation, development, and touring of evening-length dance and theater works. How do you take an idea for a performance, a dance, an installation, into a practical and logistical realization? We will talk about timelining, building, and resourcing a budget, and what it takes to bring your project to fruition. We will look specifically at case studies from Pryor’s background as a producer for choreographers Miguel Gutierrez and Ishmael Houston-Jones as well as projects in development by Mansoor.


ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Ben Pryor is a curator and producer working across independent and institutional contexts. Pryor has produced over 150 performance engagements of 22 evening-length dance, theater and performance works by artists including Miguel Gutierrez, Trajal Harrell, Ishmael Houston-Jones/ Dennis Cooper/ Chris Cochrane and Deborah Hay (among others), realized with 83 museums, performing arts centers, festivals, and cultural institutions in 54 cities across 16 countries. Pryor created American Realness, an annual festival of performance and discourse, to call attention to the proliferation of choreographic practices transcending the historic notions of American dance. For the past decade, the festival has served as a launching pad for artists entering the national and international performing arts field. Pryor has curated programs for Centre National de la Danse (Pantin, France), Théâtre Garonne (Toulouse, France), Les Subsistances (Lyon, France), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna, Austria) and Hollins University MFA Dance program (Roanoke, Virginia). Pryor is currently Senior Producer for Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. tbsp.info

Adil Mansoor is a theatre director and educator centering the stories of queer folks and people of color. He directs new plays and creates original performance confronting memory, systems, and care. He is a founding member of Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective and has directed many projects including Reasonable Assurance, a performance connecting undergraduates and adjuncts to unpack the economic realities of higher education and Driftless, a series of performances inspired by court transcripts, interviews with folks impacted by fracking, and the bible. Other recent directing projects include Gloria by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Hatch), The River by Jez Butterworth (Quantum Theatre), and Dark Play or Stories for Boys by Carlos Murillo (Carnegie Mellon). Adil also directed Chickens in the Yard by Paul Kruse as the inaugural project supported by Quantum Theatre’s Gerri Kay New Voices Program. He has served as a dramaturg for choreographers Staycee Pearl and Dahlia Nayar. As an educator, Adil has worked with Middlebury College, The Mori Art Museum, The Warhol, and was the Programs and Artistic Director for Dreams of Hope, an LGBTQA+ youth arts organization in Pittsburgh for over 5 years. His next project, Amm(i)gone, is an adaptation of Sophocles’s Antigone as an apology to and from his mother. Adil is currently a Point Scholar and pursuing his MFA as a John Wells Directing Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. adilmansoor.com


Check out these additional Working sessions…

Wednesday, March 18, Compliance
Being an artist means running your own business. And being in business means having insurance and filing taxes. This session will look at the basics for being an artist in legal terms; fiscal management, tax compliance, and liability insurance.

Wednesday, April 15, fundraising
From foundation grants to individual giving, we will dig into the various realities of fundraising, build the beginnings of a grants calendar and look at planning a crowdfunding campaign.

Wednesday, May 20 , Storytelling
How do you tell the story of yourself as an artist? How do you highlight your practice, your projects, and your life in between. This session focuses on telling your story through contextual platforms that can frame your work.

Photo by Mariane Rae