“Everything appears OK but with an underlying sense that it is all wrong.”
The stories I’ve been hearing of the world right now don’t have a beginning middle and end. So why am I even thinking about telling stories like that? A few years ago I was feeling good about making art, having a job, voting for government, buying a car, eating food. Now? All of it makes me feel out of sorts. It’s not just these precise issues. It’s bigger. And I think everyone everywhere is feeling it. There’s no going back. We have to fall in love with each other all over again, but it won’t be built on what came before. You know how certain songs can make you feel like you are about to shatter inside? I feel like that edge is right where we’re at.
“Underneath everything in your life there is that thing, that empty- forever empty. You know what I’m talking about?”
Using a creative language that was dreamt up 100 years ago (or 50 or 20 years ago) in order to convince actors that they really are someone else, or provide some form for them to fill or even to feel as though they have some internal energy or presence. All of this feels so disconnected to what we are going through now. Theater artists who work with a limited set of tools and vocabulary can only make literal representations of life and therefore be left out of the deeper conversations about art and culture and the truths revealed in unlocking our hearts. Musicians can talk in such fresh and abstract terms about their music and yet still make an album that is relevant and that people want to hear. I want my theater to walk that line.
“Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.”
The way of searching is most important so I’m just going to throw away the expectation of finding answers and finally ask questions which are burning inside me. How do I bridge my ideas and experiences? How do I open my heart? What I need to know now is different than what I needed to know 2 years ago. I’m 33 years old and just now feeling the skill and strength to craft my own work. Build a platform of support. Develop a network of like minded makers.
The recent Enter Face project that I worked on as part of the Avant Art Festival was both the last straw and the final piece. It proved something that I have already suspected, technology is huge in how we make art. The digital revolution is having an undeniable impact on the evolution of analog. Seeing Akhe Russian Engineering Theater perform showed me, performance and art don’t need to be pretentious. It can be smart, imaginative, playful, poetic, and covered in wires. Hmm, now I don’t know if I’m making theater anymore. Not exactly, anyway.
“Whether you like it or not,
alone will be something
you’ll be quite a lot.
And when you’re alone there’s a very good chance
you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.”
Being fired and broken hearted is scary and it’s also exhilarating. Picking yourself up puts you in direct relation to that bottom. I see the craziness of all my past fantasies, imaginings, and delusions. I feel the sharpness of how cruel I had once been in matters of the heart. I hear the echoes of my footsteps as I traveled down false and twisted paths. I can only make something big and meaningful if I’m not pretending to be someone else. Poland has taught me that all songs are sad songs. And it has woken me up like a splash of cold water in bed. There are roots here that clutch such dark and spicy depths.
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
I do, I will.
Quotes:
Andrew VanWyngarden (from MGMT) in an interview with Electronic Beats Magazine, N° 35 (3, 2013).
Louis C.K. in an interview with Conan O’Brien, 2013.
Miles Davis, maybe.
Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go. 1990.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walden. 1854.
