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Artist’s Statement: Director

The Meaning of Art, ,

And…here it is.  The result of a lot of research, brain-storming and re-working.  Not bad.

When working on a production as a director, I find myself infinitely excited by the potential of the artists around me. Together, we will create visual and visceral aesthetic, but first comes a working aesthetic: a pulsing, floating, flexible, beautiful collaboration. This, in turn, breeds creativity, excitement, enthusiasm and trust, steadily becoming a process not just to create a play, but to reveal a new truth within each collaborator. If I do my job well, every artist will have a moment of truth, myself included. I will never know when and I am not always privy to each, nor should I be, but I know I am heading in the right direction when epiphanies start happening.

At the heart of every dramatic piece are the words. Theatre is telling a story. Were I to strip away the lights, the fancy costumes, and the scenes, and stand before you with the script in my hand, the words should hold you captive and play out a scene in your minds eye. The rest is just icing on the cake. Needed, wanted, loved, and revered icing, but without the foundation of poetry and prose, I find little to work with that has meaning for me.

Once I find the words, I move beyond simple story telling, looking for silence, stillness and negative space. Used with aplomb, these hidden gems create the energy-filled tension that pulses, unwinds, or explodes. Silence, stillness and negative space create the fourth dimension that we all crave in a story. Theatre is not real life. Bodies can move as we see them in our dreams, in other dimensions, and non-linearly. By using bodies the way we use them in our dreams, they become something more, and the story becomes something more.

Because I believe theatre can use the unreal to more deftly explore the real, I love to mix times and mediums into a new kind of world. Our thoughts are not projected on a screen; we do not freeze in time with our neighbors; Ancient Grecians did not wear biker jackets, but by placing the unreal into the real, I can highlight moments, exaggerate ideas, pluck out multifaceted truths, place them before an audience, and make them listen.

Oddly enough, my favorite moment in a production is not the play itself. At the end of the first performance, I love to squeeze into a corner in the lobby and watch the artists greet their families, friends, and fans. Their pride is my pride. In the end, they made the audience take note, listen, and think. They provided the bricks; I just lovingly slapped in the mortar to bind it all together.

Writing an Artist’s Statement

The Meaning of Art, ,

I find it daunting to write an artist’s statement.  It means tackling the unconquerable task of identifying WHY I do theatre.

This is what the world asks you as an actress:

Why do you do theatre?

Out of my lips always came a weak “um…..because I love it.” And the pale catch phrase rang in my ears, but rarely crossed my lips, “it’s in my blood.”

WHY do I do theatre?  Because I can’t not do theatre.  I’ve tried.  Believe me I’ve tried.  As a young actress, I found myself hurling back and forth between ecstatic joy and darkest misery.  And I’m not talking young adult blues.  This was so clearly linked to my life in the theatre that it pained me simply to attempt to identify the exact cause.  Because identifying WHY I hated what I loved meant that I would have to walk away from this thing coursing through my veins. I would have to drain the very life from my body, entering hell in the search for joy.

As it turns out, it wasn’t really all that dramatic, or traumatic:  I just don’t love acting all that much.  I love the sense of pretend, the freedom from my everyday fears, the ‘other-worldliness’–for lack of a better word.  But I love telling the whole story much more than just one character’s story.  And I only discovered this when I tried out directing.

Which brings me back to the WHY because, as it turns out, an artist’s statement is not about the WHY.  It’s about the HOW and the WHAT and the WAY.

I did a little poking about and although most how-to resources are written for the visual artist, they’re still quite helpful because the tips all include identifying material and color.  I have never considered my directing work as a whole based on tangible materials.  I’ve been tackling it in terms of people, stories, literature, and relationships.  In short, the intangible.  But when broken down into tangible materials, it becomes space, crowds, rough, smooth, silky, red, yellow, blue, white, distance, length, height, wood, metal…you get the idea.  Which, in turn translates into the story.

The HOW is enough to imply the WHY.  No one cares about WHY once you’ve passed adolescence.

And this is my current task: to put on my grown-up shoes and go beyond the unanswerable WHY to the very attainable HOW.

Beyond the Face

get out of the way of the play, Photography, Raising a Humanist, The Meaning of Art, , ,

Sometimes, I take a photograph that I absolutely fall in love with and no one understands what I see in it.  It must be the artist in me seeing something beyond just faces.  I love taking photos of people on the move best of all.  And what draws me is not just their faces and shapes, but the empty space around them.

Sometimes, I take a photograph that I quite like but is nothing extraordinary and people tell me it is stunning and they point out beautiful pieces.  They find meaning where I found none.

NPR interviewed Joss Whedon this week.  As an artist, I admire the risks he takes and the stories he creates which possess infinite detail and unexpected variations.  He told the story of how he came to befriend Steven Sondheim:  How he made a comment at an interview about a truth he saw in Sunday in the Park with George, and Mr. Sondheim sent him a note because he had never seen it himself.  I have never heard another artist express what I love the most about creating my own art:  Others find things you never knew were there. I don’t create a photograph, play or character and expect to know everything about it.  I create works of art in the hopes that others will find even more.  It was exciting to hear this view expressed by another.

And, it was a timely expression of thought because I took a photograph last week that I thought “oh, that’s pretty neat,” but the responses from friends and family have been unprecedented.  It may be extra-meaningful since they know the subject matter (my daughter) but apparently, it says more than I thought it did.  So I thought I would share it with you.

Flash Back: Avid Xpress DV

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Tonight, I had a fun little adventure into my past.

I sent my info into a studio casting a 30-something mom for a commercial.  At 30, and a mom, I believe I fit the bill pretty well.  He asked if I had clips on line.  Oops.  No.  Not at all.  So I had to go digging for this little industrial I shot for Avid Xpress DV.  It feels like ages ago, when really it was only 2001.

So, it’s online now, and, if you’re ever so curious, you can go watch it.  I have to warn you, though, I seriously look and sound closer to twelve than my actual age of 22.  Makes me wonder how I managed to age from looking 12 to looking 30 so suddenly.  Sigh.

Avid Xpress DV Industrial

a tribute to high school actors

High School Actors,

originally posted on my momblog.  but i thought it deserved a little attention over here too:

i love teaching high school actors.

together, they are a group of inherently cool people.  and in every group of students there is at least one, often two or three, of the following:

– the chic i wish was my friend

– the dorky boy who will grow up to change the world

– the political activist who has done more in 15 years than i have in 30

– the forgotten child who fell into acting by chance and it has changed her world

– the one i want to party with

– the gay boy who doesn’t know it yet, or does but doesn’t announce it

– the gay boy who boldly announces it

– the movie starlet

– the shy one with a big soul and a louder voice (when she or he finally uses it)

– the one who gives me hugs

– the one who writes me such a beautiful thank you card that it makes me cry

– the unexpected jock

– the one who gets the least attention because she works the hardest and goes so far and needs only the smallest of nudges from me.  and, in the end, she reveals herself to have talent far beyond what i expected.

– the one i cannot budge.  he is seemingly talentless.  until, one day, something miraculous happens.  i never know what it is.  but it happens.  and then he is a changed child.  perhaps he is even a changed man.  and i wonder if i made a difference in his world, or if he did it all on his own after all.

they all make my heart soar.

due to creations like facebook, i get to see many of their shiny faces pretty much every day.  i respect the boundaries of children and adults.  i rarely look at their ‘party’ photos.  it’s none of my business.  but i love seeing them fly.

and, sometimes, i’m blessed with things like seeing two of them seriously lip-sync to the most absurd video ever.

Go here to read the rest.