maybe I’ll wake up in a city far away..
right now I’m here in Boston.
I’ve been wanting to write for a while now and I haven’t been able to force it.
I don’t know that I really have anything to say still.. I will give space to the silence and see if truth finds its way out.
I’m here for work and I say that with a hesitation. What I do is not work - it is not a job - I feel like when I work on a show - I’m stepping in to a role that has always existed and I am not just serving the work itself but i’m serving the history and the future of this thing we do. Theatre is at service to life.. to the dying and fading. For the lovers at the loveless. For children and the aging. For you when you’ve forgotten how beautiful you are and how ugly you can be. For the blood inside us that has forgotten what it longs for, where it came from.. for fighters, fuckers, the frightened and the fearless.
I’m working on a production of Cabaret while I am here at the American Repertory Theatre : http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/cabaret
Cabaret in itself is a pretty phenomenal piece of work. I’m so honoured to be working on a piece that has such history and weight. This is not a shiney shiney musical at all. and what we are unearthing in this telling is pulling out all of that stuff that I think is at the heart of it and exposing it more. it is messy and argumentative with itself and in that argument truth cracks open. I worked on the final scene today and found myself in tears. I remind myself that simplicity is key. the power of the human body and voice in space when it is connected and working is, alone, more than we can handle sometimes. As a director/movement director - sometimes I just need to get out of its way.. and let it be.
Cabaret begins previewing in a week.. so we’re into tech this week which is terrifying and amazing.. and then it opens. After that I’m going to begin teaching at the A.R.T/Harvard/Moscow Arts Theatre institute and I’m going to direct a show with some of the students there. ..but what is the show?
I’m obsessed with Lorca at the moment. The man more than his work.. but i’m thinking his work says so much about him - that I will do a show of his and put him in it.. and Dali in it.
“This winter I invite you to leap with me into the void. I’ve already been there for days, and have never had such security, and I now know something about Statuary and about real clarity, far from any aesthetic.” Dali to Lorca
I dunno. Still trying to work it out. I want it to be important and I want it to be the kind of work I love. From what I see there is a fairly HUGE lack of good experimental theatre in this town. Gonna get down and dirty.
I am very interested in queer mythology at the moment - not like Achilles and Patrocles (well that too) but the creation of new mythology and not even queer by definition but post sexuality mythology.. of love stories, of tragedies, of fantasies. I think this is how we change the world. create stories and experiences that do not have gender, race, age, sexuality.. this is my theory currently.
In addition to this I am working on everything still going on in Australia.. The Danger Ensemble planning and strategising. New Youth company I am launching - developing new work with them.. Planning for Adelaide Fringe next year already. Looking at what happens at the end of next year.. I think I want to be back in America.
I want to talk about love.. but there is none. I am burning for it. I see it. I find myself thinking about past lives a lot. both literal ones and allegorical ones.
when I grow up I want to be me. I want splashes of lorca, muller, whitman, neruda, shakespeare, kane.. but i want to be me.. and I want you to be you with splashes of dali, marlowe, thoreau, westwood, mcqueen and warhol and together we will change the world.. or at least or own and we’ll kiss in the wind, under the stars on freshly wet streets and you will have your life and I will have mine and where we meet will be simple and bursting full of light and in blankets of darkness we will lose our beginning and endings.. with a sound track of cellos and out of tune choirs. I will marry you in blood. outside of the law. and we will die. the flesh or the feeling. but i will never forget you and you will never forget me. (you will mark me in your flesh) and they will never forget us - we will burn our love into the history of the world even if it’s just in our mind (but it won’t be.. secretly I know it).
end of rant.
end of love.
end of night.
