DAY 032 – DESIGNING DANGEROUSLY

Tap into Your History

When I was working at Pioneer Theatre, I had my office right off the greenroom, where all the actors would congregate on rehearsal breaks, performances, etc. I overheard a lot of conversations in my three years there. I remember remarking to someone probably in a very Holden Caulfield kind of way about how phony all of it was, the bullshit of it all. The response was gentle but to the effect of: can you imagine living in six-week increments in different parts of the country with strangers all the time? Can you imagine having to form close relationships very quickly, then having those immediately severed to move on to the next thing?

That rebuke has stuck with me, and I’ve come to observe the work of all of us in creative fields with this sort of cyclical pattern. Each of us comes to a project with the pieces in front of us, not one of us holding something complete, but only a fragment, part of the equation, a whisper of an answer. Throughout the process, we start assembling, making sense, mending a distinct piece of pottery that will only exist for this one moment. One of the fragments finishing that vessel is unique to us, and somehow we get it to fit with the other pieces: the story, collaborators, layers of meaning. A unique creation. And then we finally ask an audience to fill the vessel we have formed, to convey themselves and their histories and their attention into it, to allow us to hold it for the space of two hours.

Our work is a series of little deaths and rebirths, of shattering and rebuilding, time and time again. For if we don’t start broken, where do we have to go? With what material do we have to build?