“If two roads open up before you, always take the most difficult one.  Because you know you can travel the easy one.” (Raymond Belle – Parkour Traceur)

As a teenager I was deeply enamored with French impressionist paintings. The canvases, even in reproduction, lit up my heart and fired my imagination and I wanted to live my life as if in an impressionist painting.  The first time I visited Paris, at the age of fifteen, my high school summer program organized a visit to the Louvre, and for me even better, the adjacent Musée du Jeu de Paume.  

As the SCOT company clears away the debris of what was probably their most ambitious festival ever, they nurse injuries, sweep through guest rooms to clear out flip flops, broken umbrellas, half empty bags of coffee, “gifted” packages of nuts and cookies, and little surprises left by those of us who had to return to our own country. Simultaneously the SCOT company launches plans for new rehearsals and tours as they settle in for a long winter.

Most of us are regularly plagued by doubt, overwhelmed by the impossible odds against us, discouraged by lack of support and dragged down by physical and emotional hardships.  And yet, despite this, why is it that some people can regularly rise above such difficulties and make more headway in their creative work than others?  Is there a way to calibrate and encourage a balance of energies and forces in one’s daily life to optimize the ability to renew and flourish?  What is the ratio or balance required to maintain creative flow in sufficient doses in daily life?

Toga 2015 #2

This is by now out of date, but I thought I’d just post it for those interested.  It doesn’t accomplish what I’d hoped, and doesn’t  have a central idea, but maybe works as a kind of reflection from the heat of the moment.  I’ll try to write something as the festival finishes and the master class continues ….

Toga August 2015

Chicago theater director Damon Kiely is about to publish a book entitled “How to Read a Play” with Routledge Press and he asked me to write the forward.   Inspired by the title of his book and the thoughtfulness of Damon’s manuscript, I wrote the following:

I love reading and yet I am usually anxious at the prospect of reading a play. I tend to put off opening a script for as long as I can because it requires such different tools from me than reading a novel, a poem, an essay or a biography. Plays are not intended to be read in solitude and plays ask for an inordinate investment of my patience and imagination.  Essentially a novel, a poem, an essay or a biography embodies the words contained within its covers and is brought to life by the reader’s imagination, but a play, also within its covers, ultimately exists to point at something else and it requires a team of diverse talents to animate it successfully. 

I am currently directing Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth at Glimmerglass Festival (come visit this summer in beautiful Cooperstown, New York and catch the entire season of operas between July 11th and August 22nd). This past April with SITI Company, I co-directed the theater is a blank page with visual artist Ann Hamilton. These two productions provide a study in contrast around issues of a director’s control.

An acting student at Columbia University once mentioned that her father, a surgeon, had a saying: “Study one, do one, teach one.” I instantly recognized that this formula, familiar to surgeons, “study one, do one, teach one,” is precisely the right equation for me as well. The ratio that allows me to be the best possible theater artist is: 1/3 research, 1/3 directing and 1/3 teaching. If I do not dedicate enough time to research or if I teach too much or too little, my work as a director, as an artist, is compromised. The correct balance among the three activities is key. 

One who could make of himself a vacuum into which others might freely enter would become master of all situations. (Okakura Kakuzo) 

I probably share with many a terror and trepidation around the process of creating new work.  I am often frightened and apprehensive of an upcoming rehearsal or difficult encounter.  My stomach churns in a chaotic mess. But there is a saving grace that keeps me moving forwards: the image of my shoes.  Literally. I look down and see my shoes walking, one step after another, towards the rehearsal or towards the encounter. The fuel that makes this dreadful walk possible is faith.  I try to cultivate the faith that something positive will occur once I arrive.  

My dearest friend, Tom asked me “How did it go?”. And I tried my best to answer.  

I’m still digesting about the experience of “the theater is a blank page”. It was deep, meaningful and somehow ephemeral.

Here are some random thoughts.