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Creative Collaboration has been a buzzword in recent years within the performing arts community. Webster's unabridged dictionary defines 'collaborate' as: "working jointly, especially with one or a limited number of others, in a project involving composition or research, to be jointly accredited". Indeed, collaboration of one sort or another is essential for the performing arts to occur at all.

Let us differentiate two primary categories of collaboration: Technical and Creative. Of course, in practice, these are not mutually exclusive, yet of the two, Technical Collaboration is the most commonly experienced. It is the sort of collaboration where a group of people collect, or are collected, and set to the task of realizing another person's idea-whether that be under their tutelage or as one form or another of adaptation. In this instance, they need to be able to work together technically with clarity and precision within their chosen modality of expression. Any contribution they bring creatively to the composition is not usually jointly accredited and the fundamental creative concept is not theirs, or in the case of adaptations, belongs to no one in the group.

The Creative Collaboration is a very rare beast. Creativity, by definition, demands that something be made from nothing for the first time. We see a great deal of Inventiveness that is confused for Creativity - Inventiveness being the manipulation of existing known elements into imaginatively different arrangements of expression. There is a degree of newness here, to be sure, yet not enough to meet the criteria for Creativity.

The demands that are placed on both the individual and the group, in the case of Creative Collaboration, are uniquely challenging. Each individual needs to be well practiced at meeting the unknown within themselves, as well as have a good understanding of their working behavior and response patterns within social interaction. An individual needs to have established a strong ability to focus their attention in the present, with committed action, in the face f an unpredictable outcome. Perhaps, most importantly, they need to have come to an awareness of their own Will and Intention for entering into the creative process at all. These elements require an individual to mindfully research themselves to gain an understanding of their own foundational allegiances-that core structure of personal perspectives and ideas that shape their identity and decision-making process, and eventually are represented in whatever they create. Without a conscious, vigilant, and brutally honest investigation of this sort, a person can easily fall under the illusion that they are being creative when they are actually depending upon formulas already existing on the present cuItural shelf. This is an essential process for those people who are compelled to understand the context of what they're doing with their work, and who wish to gain a more clear ownership of it.

The group is faced with the challenging task of navigating itself in the uncharted territory, and often tumultuous flux, of the resulting dynamic caused by the interfacing of the individual Wills and Intentions of its members. This is both an intense Personal and Political Process that occurs coincidentally with the creative process. What happens within it is ultimately reflected in what the group creates together, and therefore should be consciously attended to, in order to develop as accurate an expression of the group's intention as possible.

The foundational consensus to work together must be achieved first-actual consensus, as opposed to democratic majority, coercion, or abstention. If this is solidly achieved, then the real creative politic of anarchy may begin, as the members of the group introduce their individual intentions. From this point forward, the process requires continual personal and group orientation, as it is not conveniently linear in nature. Foundational questions, such as Where am I now?, Where are we now?, What are we doing?, How are we doing it?, Who is doing what?, and When shall we do it?, need to be continuously asked, and are the connective tissue of the process. A willingness to consistently reassess is essential, as is the courage to adjust what needs adjusting, as it is called for.

Time is also a challenge in the process of Creative Collaboration. Deadlines Are Deadly. The time that it takes to create can no more be predicted than can the product of the collaboration. Time constraints of this sort are deadly because they pressure the individuals in the group to take procedural shortcuts that can compromise the integrity of the relationship between the creative intention and the structural processes necessary for its articulate expression. This is another reason why Creative Collaboration is so rare. Financial subsidy of such an open-ended process could easily become cost-prohibitive, so it must primarily be subsidized by the desire and commitment of the people involved.

Ultimately, if the desire to embark in the process is strong enough, then commitment, curiosity, patience, persistence, and keen observation are necessary. When these traits are coupled with an understanding of some of the primary circumstances that may be met within the process, and strategies that may be used to meet those circumstances, Creative Collaboration can be one of the most fulfilling experiences a person may ever have.