I'm ready, I'm ready now!

Very quickly, the summer is wrapping up. I was telling myself, "You know, the summer's ending," before, but today as I sat in the Moose I realized it was the last day of Clubs and the last day of the last Youth conference, that we close out our workspaces tomorrow, and that almost everyone would be gone before worship ends on Sunday. The few of us who are staying on for a couple more days are going to be packing up and moving into Balsam, one of the other lodges, for our last few days. The parents and Emily will be here on Tuesday, and we'll leave Wednesday morning. I have asked that we go to Bojangles for Cheerwine and cinnamon biscuits. I did some Google Map searching and found out that there's a Bojangles in Brooklyn, but I'm not sure if I trust Bojangles that far north, much like I don't trust the Cracker Barrels in Connecticut.

In the last few days, I read the entirety of The Art Spirit, by Robert Henri. The Art Spirit was the assigned book for one of my classes first year, but as it is a collection of letters, lecture notes, and the occasional article, we never sat down and read it all the way through - usually the teacher would have us choose ten pages (any ten pages) and read it. The beauty of The Art Spirit is you WILL find something inspiring in any given ten pages. Open it up to any page, really, and you'll find something that will change your life. Our teacher referred to The Art Spirit as our new boyfriend. And while I've picked it up occasionally when I've needed inspiration, I've never sat down and read all of it before. So I spent the last three days snuggling with Boyfriend, and it's been delightful. A journey, even. I started out slightly panicked about art and next semester and all of that, which is what started my reading, I think, but by the end the anxiety was transformed into excitement. I've been writing a bit for a big future post, and I saw some of the same language used in The Art Spirit, which was startling and beautifully affirming.

When I closed the book, my first thought was, "I'm ready for Tongues."

There is a part of me that has been nagging myself about preproduction work. Preproduction work tends to include a lot of research into the subject matter, the playwright(s), the original production. A lot of finding impulse images, sounds, textures, films, anything. A lot of rigorous thought about the play in the space, what to look for in cast and in designers, etc. Preproduction is an extraordinarily busy time for a director, and to be honest, I've been putting it off. A part of me has said, "GO!" but another part has said, "Wait." I said I'd start it after I knew for sure it would be approved. And I poked at books by Sam Shepard and Joe Chaikin, but to no avail. I couldn't get into it. To be fair, I did an intense script analysis presentation on Tongues last semester, so I've got a lot of basic work already done, but for as much work as you've already done, there's more you are now able to do. I chastised myself for laziness, but it didn't help. I'd start to think about the play and the journey and all that other stuff we talk about and my head would twist into knots. I'd try to think about design concepts and would get ideas and immediately second guess them, do that whole, "is there support for this?" game with myself and eventually combust. I gave up and swore I'd get really into preproduction when I got back to VA.

Henri was a painter. (I once went to a museum in Charleston, SC, and saw one of his paintings when I turned the corner. I squealed, "BOYFRIEND!" loudly and got strange looks from passerby and my mother.) The Art Spirit has a lot to do with painting, though most of it also leads into larger ideas of art. I found a lot of clear parallels between directing and painting in The Art Spirit. Henri speaks of painting what you see - it is the seeing that is difficult. The sensations evoked in you when you see your model; this is what you paint. "Two people may declare to each other the wonder of a sunset or the loveliness of a woman, but, although they agree, each has made his own selection. Two painter before a sunset or a woman put down on canvas the order of their seeing, and thus they communicate to each other their separate ways." To show what happened to you, you paint the face how you see it. This does not mean painting painstakingly realistically, but selecting what will get across what you see.

This makes a lot of sense to me in thinking about directing. I encounter a play, it makes me feel things and see things and hear things, so I then work to get across those things to an audience. Usually there are physical sensations, especially with me, because I'm obsessed with sensation. Usually there is also some kind of message to get across. The idea of actually painting what I see, onstage, is very basic, and freeing, and I was absolutely ignoring it for a long time.

In thinking about design, I've been very conflicted. This play doesn't call for a lot in the stage directions. (Except for sound. YAY SOUND.) I do not want to bog it down, so I've been thinking that strong, simple choices are going to be key. I'm decent in my head on set, enough that I think I will soon be able articulate the goals of the set and what I need it to do to a set designer. Not so much with costumes and lights. ("How complex should these be? If I'm not trying to suggest a specific time or place, how do I deal with icons? Can there be such a thing as truly timeless? If there is, do I really want to use it or is that neutral? Is there a place to choose neutrality or is that a lack of choice? Should I be trying to suggest a specific time or place? Should that change with the voices? Color! How do I deal with it?! How can I get these to focus on sound? Is there some other message in the play but not coming out yet that I should put in costumes or lights? WHY did the original production use a Mexican blanket?")

At one point while reading, I thought, "I want color in the lights in Tongues." Why? Because I'm synaesthetic. Because sound and color are always connected, in my brain, and I like it. Because I've wanted to theatrically start working to connect people's senses and if I have color related to sound, that starts it. Because some people connect to color more than they connect to sound, and I could be able to draw these people into sound by using color. Because if I'm doing a play about sound, it makes a lot of sense to use design elements to crack open the beauties I see within sound.

I'm still a bit lost on costumes, but I'll get there.

Beyond this, I sensed that there was something more important than the preproduction research, that there was something else I needed to do to untie my knotted brain.

One of Henri's major points is that the artist must live. The artist is inspired by the sensations of a full life. This is not a popular view. There is the idea that the artist can only truly live through his art. This idea, along with the picture of the "starving artist", used to dominate my beliefs and point of view. It was a view I romanticized. I tend to romanticize unhealthy views. (The main reason I don't smoke or drink is because I romanticize them in an unhealthy way, so I know if I started it would be very easy for me to become addicted.) And there is an extent, I still believe, that the artist is separate from life. From the world. I think Kandinsky hits on it in Concerning the Spiritual in Art with the idea of artist-as-guide. (Concerning the Spiritual in Art is also incredible and I think Concerning the Spiritual in Art, The Art Spirit, and I could be in a successful polyamorous relationship. PHTS-types, I think everyone should read this and if you want to borrow it, let me know.)

But what I'm starting to think, what I've experienced, is that we make art because we are drunk on life. In my experience, it is when I experience and then am so full, of gratitude or sadness or joy or hope, that I simply must share it. I experience too much for just me. And I care too much about the world not to share.

I recently typed up a short summary of Tongues to post on facebook for my fellow PHTS project students. Coming back to it, writing the summary, I realized the summary was so much about what I'd learned and experienced this summer. It was all there from the beginning. In the play, in me, but it was the parts of the play I could SENSE were there but were still muddled and confusing. Things I would have tried to understand through analysis and preproduction work, but I don't think I would have been able to comprehend.

What happened? I went away, and I fell in love with life. I've never been in love with life before. And not to put down preproduction, but that was just as important as preproduction work.

Live rigorously. Work rigorously. Both are important to each other.

There were also bits in The Art Spirit about not stressing about critics, juries, salons (again, painting). I was so thankful, reading that, that I don't have to worry about that just yet. That's the greatest thing about going to theater school - it's SCHOOL. You don't really have to worry about the box office and reviews. One could argue that you have to worry about what the teachers think, or something, but that's stupid. It's YOUR education. (Henri also says that "The only education of any value is self-education, and I wholeheartedly agree.") I'm thankful, again, that I'm not in the kind of place where you "have to work in your teacher's style", but rather develop relationships so that your teachers know your aims and goals and can give you feedback to help you along, that you then choose what to do with.

In fact, I found the most accurate description of PHTS in The Art Spirit. Page 223, for those of you who have it:

"A school where individuality of thought and individuality of expression is encouraged. A school and instruction which offers itself to the student to be used by him in the building of himself up into a force that will be of a stimulating value to the world. That he may use the school, its facilities, its instruction, that he may know that the school and the instructors are back of him, interested, watching, encouraging, as ready to learn from him as to teach him, anxious for his evidence, recognizing in him a man--another or a new force, giving him the use of its knowledge and experience, only demanding from him that he work both mind and body to the limit of his endurance to find in himself whatever there is of value, to find his truest thoughts and find a means, the simplest, straightest, the most fit means to make a record of them."

See? Even got the intensity of second year into that ("work both mind and body to the limit of his endurance"). That's PHTS. That's how I've been using PHTS, at least, and it works well.

It is bedtime. Pancakes at the Moose at 8am, then work space closeout. Apparently we're going to have to get the AV cleaned. I'm afraid the windows leak too much for the car wash. We'll see...