Just finished a 16-hour day on "Portrait," the show that opens this week. Over the course of a very long night, one that had me singing happy birthday to our stage manager at midnight, belting showtunes on demand at 1:00 am, and simulating extraordinary acts of, um, "athletic" prowess with my punch-drunk dramaturg for the benefit of the light designer at 1:30, I thought about questions and answers...or rather, questions and decisions.
I designed sound this afternoon, in the midst of our focus...turned to our stage manager and said "sometimes making a decision matters more than the decision you make." It's a mantra that gets me through my (frequent) moments of paralysis...both on and off the page.
When I got home, a friend (and a favorite collaborator) had written to Dietz about the primacy of QUESTIONS -- quoting Oscar Wilde: “It is always worthwhile asking a question. It is not always worthwhile answering one.” He talked about the "absolutes" imposed by answers...and the opportunities afforded by questions.
A reminder, then, on a long day, and in the face of my own instinct to seek answers, that there is value to Living In The Question.
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"I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." - Rilke
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