DAY 002 – DESIGNING DANGEROUSLY

Tap into your history

I just spoke with my class today about Arthur Kopit’s Wings, one of my favorite plays on the page and one I’d like to design at some point. I realized I had a very definitive read on the end of the play that I hadn’t had before. There was a bedrock certainty that wasn’t there in the past. Turns out, as I repeat in class, the play didn’t change. I changed.

We are bodies in constant motion, and for those of us who get the opportunity to work on one script multiple times in our life it can serve as mile markers. That is, it can be a mirror if we’re awake and are willing to see what the story reflects back to us. I’ve had markedly different readings of Of Mice and Men, Next to Normal, and The Crucible since entering my 30’s. That’s not to say that my earlier interpretations were invalid or incorrect, merely that they were (which is different from my experience now). Both can be valid, truthful and beautiful. 

What should be celebrated and honored is the difference, because it means that we have moved, that we have sloughed off our skins and become a new creation again and again and again. We are the mystery and we are the detective, the pursuer and the pursued, constantly asking and answering the question: who am I, what am I?