Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work

But the directors and actors who are part of the People’s Light

resident company, like engineers at Sun, have become accus-

tomed to working in their particular way. Such heavy reliance

on emergent processes may seem like an odd way to produce

a product under a firm deadline. Yet the artists at People’s

Light do it successfully again and again.

The People’s Light Way of Working

There are several things to notice about Adams’s approach.

First, she intentionally avoids preconceived notions of the play

as she enters the process of making it. Rather than trying to get

the production to conform to a preconception, she orches-

trates the creation of a play that ...