Mission Statement*, Part IV -- Getting Somewhere!

*Key Caveat:  I BELIEVE these things...and I'm very much still working to make them all TRUE OF MY WORK AND THE WAY I WORK.  My work and I are (obviously) definitely works-in-progress.

I believe theater should be cheap or free.  If we really think the stories we’re telling are worth hearing, we shouldn’t guard the temple gates like Pharisees – we should fall over ourselves to the play to as many people as possible on THEIR terms, not ours.  If that means we need to re-think our production values, let’s do it.  If that means we lose a few temples, fine.  If that means we can’t make a living, then we need to come up with other ways to feed ourselves.

I believe theater should welcome the uninitiated.  I don’t write for the brilliant literary managers who’ve read the entire canon (and every new play in the last ten years) twice, because they’re the opposite of the audience I’m trying to reach – the neophyte, the teenager who’s never seen a stage fight up close, the 20-something who assumes theater can’t offer the same adrenaline rush of a rock concert, the passer-by who wanders upon a site-specific production and suddenly sees his evening commute transformed.

I believe in destroying fourth walls.

I believe telling (and hearing) stories is our birthright, and that the act itself is an act of faith.  It says: we are connected to each other, and we are connected to all the storytellers who have come before us.  I believe in theater that connects us to moments beyond our particular moment.  I believe storytelling, like raising children, is a crazy act of faith (both selfish and selfless) in the face of our own mortality.

I believe that we don’t actually live in the present most of the time, or in reality (even when we pretend we do).  Our bodies might be in the present, but our hearts are in the past and future, our heads in our own realities.  Our lives may move linearly, but we don’t experience them linearly.  One of the beauties of storytelling and theater is that it allows you to move away from realism in order to move toward the truth…which is what we need from storytellers.  I acknowledge that one way to phrase this is "magical realism," although I think that term has maybe been used to the point that it becomes lazy shorthand.

I believe in telling the stories that scare me, in telling the stories I fear I have no right to tell, in telling the stories that might make the people I love hate me or avoid me.  I believe the stories we most need to tell, and the stories we most need to hear, are the ones that are dangerous, that force us to confront our own terrors, to gather together and examine them.

I believe in humor, especially in the face of terror.

I believe theater is more than just story-telling.  Aristotle had it right when he included spectacle and music as two of the six crucial elements of drama: theater gives us a place to create transformative moments, moments of beauty, moments of magic.  Transformation, beauty and magic take us outside ourselves.  We need story, but we also need that feeling of wonder and awe, the closest thing we get to seeing the face of god.  Medieval architects knew it when they built enormous cathedrals, artists know this when they create paintings so beautiful they stop us in our tracks.  Ideally, these moments are in the service of story…but sometimes it’s okay if the story is in service of these moments. 

I believe theater-making is a life-long vocation, and that there is always more to learn, further to go, better work to do.  

I believe in hard work, and the long haul.

I believe in change -- in my work, in myself, in the people around me, and in the world.  I don't know whether I believe my work can change the world, but it would be interesting to try.

I believe in experimentation, failure, and reflection.

I believe in making a mess.

I believe there is no such thing as “emerged.”