Recently in Dramatic Imagination Category

Below, you can see a clip from a film by Ric Burns (American Experience: New York: The Center of the World), a clip that I’ve been looking hi and low online for -- and I finally found it.

Watch the clip and think about acting, or any art you do. Ask: Why do we do it, really? What draws us? What is “it” -- what’s its value? Answer: It is everything -- it is priceless.

Shakespeare was right -- life is a stage, and a stage is life, our life, our larger life, and we rise to meet its possibilities. The heightened words and text take us there:

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch is dying from pancreatic cancer, and he gave his last lecture at Carnegie Mellow university on September 18, 2007.

The topic of his lecture was not about his work, not about computational algorithms or immersive virtual reality systems -- its topic was instead:

Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.

The lecture, just for his students, colleagues and visitors, swelled to over 400 attendees in the large McConomy Auditorium. It was recorded and released on youtube where it became a world wide phenomena.

The Apostle Paul counsels us in the 13th Corinthians, verse 11: When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.

Yet there are some childish things that should not be put away, or at least not thought of as childish things, and that is -- our Hopes and our Dreams. They are what we begin with, and they will be with us in the end -- if we keep, hold, and cherish them always.

Give yourself a quiet uninterrupted hour and 15 minutes to listen to his lecture. He's a very successful happy guy, and he gives some great advice, but what stands out, in the end, is what we think are the most important things are not really those things -- it's something else: it's not what we get (though that is very important stuff!) -- it's what we give, and we give though the realization of our hopes and dreams:

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is on a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

~ Martha Graham (American Dancer and Choreographer, 1894-1991)

I don't know if I'd agree that there's never any satisfaction -- that's too grim, but it's definitely true that growth is at least partially motivated by being unsatisfied with some aspect of your work, but not letting that dissatisfaction ruin your day or motivation. Martha Graham definitely had a great relationship between who she was at any given moment and an idea/desire of who she would like to be, and maybe it's comes down to dropping any idea/desire of what you should be and work instead on just becoming more open.

A question was asked on Helium, Should theatre be socially motivated, so I thought I'd try to work out my position on this . . .

So, in theatre (and in life?) why do people sing? I can't give a theatrical historical reason for The Musical, but I think I can give a poetic one . . .

. . . Human beings sing when suddenly, they just can't talk anymore, and they're in flight.

There's a good reason why Musical Theatre rules on Broadway.

The Greatest Complement . . .and How To Act . . .

I was walking with L.B. before rehearsal, RIII I think. I said something like I really responded to the poetry of Shakespeare, but I didn't know why -- and she said, quite unexpectedly, well, you have a very poetic imagination. And walking east on W. 86th to Central Park, on that the sunny cool fall '00 afternoon, it was the best thing anyone has ever said to me.

What is a particular play -- not what is it about (which requires a more objective perspective), but what is it?

It's not what you say it is, what a reviewer/critic says it is, not even what the playwright says it is. It is a force of nature unto itself. It is like life -- it is where it hits you, how it hits you, and what it does to you. That's what a play is. That is my relationship to it.

(It's like life -- you don't ask what's it about and then go live it. Living it is what it's about).

I don’t write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but that’s not why I write. I work as an artist.

         - August Wilson, The Art Of Theatre, Paris Review, 1999

I read Fences in Urbana-Champaign Il, in late August, in that blazingly hot summer of '99. It was part of the readings for a MFA theatre history class at The Mason Gross School For The Arts at Rutgers University, a class that I somehow managed to talk my way into. I was bolting from a research position at Rutgers, and I had bolted from NJ in that hot dry fiery late August summer. I didn't know exactly where I was going at that moment, but I knew exactly what I wanted to do . . .

Fences was, and remains, one of the most moving plays I have ever read, and it is a landmark in 20th Century theatre.

Near the turn of the century, the destitute of Europe sprang on the city with tenacious claws and an honest and solid dream. The city devoured them. They swelled its belly until it bust into a thousand furnaces and sewing machines, a thousand butcher shops and bakers' ovens, a thousand churches and hospitals and funeral parlors and moneylenders. The city grew. It nourished itself and offered each man a partnership limited only by his talent, his guile, and his willingness and capacity for hard work. For the immigrants of Europe, a dream dared and won true.

The descendants of African slaves were offered no such welcome or participation. They came from places called the Carolinas and the Virginias, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, The came strong, eager, searching. The city rejected them and they fled and settled along the riverbanks and under bridges in shallow, ramshackle houses made of sticks and tarpaper. The collected rags and wood. They sold the the use of their muscles and their bodies. The cleaned houses and washed clothes, they shined shoes, and in quiet desperation and vengeful pride, they stole, and lived in pursuit of their own dream. That they could breathe free, finally, and stand to meet life with the force of dignity and whatever eloquence the heart could call upon.

By 1957, the hard-won victories of the European immigrants had solidified the industrial might of America.War had been confronted and won with new energies that used loyalty and patriotism as its fuel. Life was rich, full, and flourishing. The Milwaukee Braves won the World Series, and the hot winds of change that would make the sixties a turbulent, racing, dangerous, and provocative decade had not yet begun to blow full . . .

        - August Wilson, preface to Fences, 1985.

Power in the loft is flaky -- 'brown-outs' in some parts of the loft, lights and power over-driven in other parts, like my room . . . my computer may have burned out . . . so I'm reading Shaw: "Dramatic Opinions & Essays." Some of the best writing on theatre, what it means/is/should be, that I’ve ever read . . . brilliant & inspiring, like Shaw, I want to

     lay a siege to the theatre.

The stage floor, the proscenium arch, the ceiling, the relationship of the stage to the audience – this is a place of ancient, eternal magic, and it has always, eternally, fascinated me. Theatre is a 'space' within a space, and it is within this 'space,' this dramatic space, I want to live forever.

I have taken the title of this journal from Josef Svoboda’s monumental poetic memoir "The Secret Of Theatrical Space." This journal is, or will be, a record of my journey through this 'space' . . . but a journey to where?

                 To where I need to go.

                                       ~e-mail me

THEATRICAL BIO:

NYC: joans voicess (Medicine Show Theatre), Out Of The Closet (13th Street Rep), & To Be A Black Man In America (UJAAMA Theatre); Angel Heart (Stage Adapation,  Nuyorican Poets Cafe); BROOKLYN: The Adding Machine (Impact Theatre); FILM/TV: "Sad Love Story," "Searching for Bobby D," "Dysfunction," & "The Librarian"; UPCOMMING: Last Jew in Europe (Jewish Theatre Of New York, The Triad, NYC, fall 2007 through May 2008). Regularly performs with The Instant Shakespeare Company; Ongoing study with Deborah Carlson (a gifted actress with a amazing talent for teaching -- thank you Deborah!). vIsIt~ www.myspace.com/thefouragesofpoetry