Glorificamus te

So. Tongues happened.

UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE YEAR!

Tongues went very, very well, and that doesn't begin to cover it. Tech week went incredibly smoothly and the reception the show got was phenomenal. I've rarely heard people so enthusiastic about a 3rd Year project. I've gotten extremely high praise from teachers, peers, people who see a lot of theater and know what they're doing.

I'll say that Tongues was a success in a few ways:

1) We put on stage what we wanted to see on stage. This is a much bigger deal than it sounds, because I've struggled violently with this forever, even believing for the longest time that it couldn't be done. It's funny that just when I gave up on the possibility of it happening, it happens. It is enormously difficult to get something that's in your head out of your head and into spaces and bodies.

2) Technically speaking, the tech week and performances were very smooth. We had no real tech week disasters. The fabric came in late, but my set designer cared and found a way to work so we could still focus lights on Sunday and know exactly what needed to be done with the fabric when it came in. A lot of the houselights didn't work for various reasons so we ended up with a singular houselight but the audience was still lit. (My lighting designer said, "Colleen, God wanted this show to only have one houselight." I accepted that explanation.)

3) The combination of the two of these means that now, when I'm getting feedback, I'm getting feedback on the actual vision of the show. Not, "Oh, we couldn't get that to work in the space," or "Oh, that didn't do what I thought it would do." We got the show into the space as we envisioned it and were not victims of tech or anything like that. Thus the feedback I'm getting now is a lot more useful because people saw the show we wanted them to see. Sad to say, that is often not the case and that's only happened because the entire team (including the freshmen crew members) was engaged, invested, open, available, and caring. 90% of my job was done when I assembled this team, because they're all brilliant and work tremendously hard.

4) Many of the choices we made seemed to hit and affect the audience in the kind of ways we wanted them to. The room after very show was alive and buzzing. I'm going through the process of getting feedback and finding out what I want to about people's experiences of the piece, but the feeling of that theatre afterward, and the enthusiasm of people who have come up to me to talk about it, has felt like what I wanted it to feel like and that is HUGE.

A lot of things lined up beautifully for this show. We took a lot of risks and many of them paid off. Some of them didn't, but I'm glad we took them because it's more interesting. (When I wasn't sure about something, I went for the choice that might be more confusing but was definitely more interesting.) Our Collaboration teachers talk about presentations as trying to take the "luck" factor away... so that we do enough preparation and ask enough questions that we know what will happen when we get into the space, so it's not, "The fabric happened to work, oh thank God!" Yes, yes, I agree - however, when we're doing this for the first time, there IS a greater "luck" factor because we don't have as much experience to know how things work in spaces. Especially early on in directing, you're just making things up. I am, anyway. I'm just making things up and when things work I keep doing them. It happens that this process a lot of things I made up worked, so now my job is to go back in and figure out what made things go right and how I can grab a hold of that and use it consciously. And look at the things that didn't work, which were largely things that I just don't understand, and figure out how to work on those issues for the next piece (or figure out who to surround myself with).

Speaking of the next piece, I've been hearing, "Tongues was incredible - what're you doing next semester?!" a lot. I panicked for a while at this. I had ideas, but they flew out the window when Tongues actually went up. I plunged myself into reading plays and I think I've found one that's a good fit, and I have some exciting impulses that I've pitched to people who seemed to become enthused by them. The great thing about the success of Tongues is that I have a lot more people who actively want to work with me, which will hopefully make life easier for me next semester. The scary thing is that the bar is set higher for my next piece. It's set REALLY HIGH. Because just like staging a dance number, I have to top myself.

As I found myself becoming intimidated by my own work, I went back to what this process was before the "critical acclaim". I sat for two hours on Sunday and watched one stick of incense burn all the way down, to calm myself, reflect and meditate, because my brain was whirring incessantly by the end of this run. And what I determined was that this was the most honest thing I've ever done. This piece was me, sitting down with my passions and my fears and saying, "Okay. Let's do this." I am scared by the things I love the most. The things that interest me are also the things that I find terrifying. I think many of us are afraid to follow what we love because in loving something, there is always the possibility that you could get too close and break it. It's why intimacy is so terrifying - every string is more fragile up close than at a distance. One note I've gotten often is, "She loves this, she has this, she cares about this - why isn't she using it?" The answer is fear. Plain and simple. Fear.

And to be brutally honest, I am not a strong enough person to overcome that for myself. I could, yes, but I don't want to. I'd rather be comfortable, and that's something I've denied for a long time. But yes. I would rather be comfortable in middle-class obscurity than constantly going out on limbs I'm afraid will break underneath me, which is what directing often feels like. I actually don't like leading people, which is funny because people have been telling me my whole life that I'm good at it. (PEOPLE SCARE ME.) And if I was doing it for myself alone... well, I just wouldn't.

The secret that keeps me ticking is that I'm not doing this for myself. I'm doing this because God has called me to do this. I don't know why. I'm like Moses with his stutter. Send Aaron, he's more articulate. I don't get it, but I believe it. And the secret of these days of hearing mindblowingly glorious responses to this piece is that, while, yes, I'm as emotionally needy as the next person, yes, I freak out that so-and-so said it was one of the best third years they've ever seen... but the deeper joy is that all of those praises I get to reflect up. What I do is all for the glory of God.

I got into a conversation earlier this semester about thanking God in the director's note of the program... and the more I thought about it, the more I personally disagreed with that concept. Because to me, thanking God sounds like, "Thank you, God, for helping me carry out my plan." I'm not a Prayer of Jabez Christian. I'm even extreme enough to not be an, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," Christian. I will pray for strength to do God's will, yes, because many of the things He asks of me made me tremble and I cannot get through them without that prayer, but why should God strengthen me, if not for the glory of Him? I would rather disappear. The verse that resonates with me is, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Christ living in me means that God can use everything He has given me, the things that make me specifically me, that makes my production different than any other production. Use them for His purposes. If I try to use them for my own I run dry and implode and start hating everything. (I speak from experience.)

What I did in the Director's Note in the program to that end was have the phrase, "Omnis honor et gloria. Per omnia saecula saeculorum." It's quoting the Eucharistic Doxology, in Latin. Full text of that Doxology is, "Through Him, and with Him, and in Him, is unto Thee, God the Father almighty, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honour and glory, world without end. Amen." All honor and glory is yours. And what a deep joy it is to reflect glory to God.

Tongues was my two coins, my loaves and fish, all I had. One of my teachers told oneof his classes, "She needs to recharge herself because she poured everything she had into that piece." Give everything, and give it fully, and give it honestly. I think that's the key, for me at least. I do not know the path that is set before me, but it is God who multiplies the offerings we give. Not to dismiss the work that myself or anyone working on the team did, because it's only when you give of yourself so fully that God does His work. To phrase it in a more secular way: when groups of people come and work hard together, something is created that none of them could have dreamt up on their own.

I've got my work cut out for me for next semester. Right now I'm picking the brains of smart people about my work in ways that will (hopefully) help me move forward, and starting to seduce people for the next piece. I have come out of this process infinitely more confident in my ability to lead a group of artists, and it's very nice to have such a successful production behind me because it's easier to get people excited about the next one. I'll fight again to be in voice and speech, though I think it should be easier now that people have seen how I used it in Tongues. (That is one thing I'm very proud of. I think Tongues was a giant win for the Voice and Speech department. It's like I was saying for a year, "Guys, please, just put me in voice and speech, I PROMISE it's really important to what I want to do," and they trusted me or took a risk on me or thought, "I guess if she's so passionate/annoying about it...." and got me in the class against all odds... and with Tongues I could say, "See?! THIS IS WHAT I MEAN." The Voice and Speech teachers were all quite excited because I partially used this show to scream, "THESE CLASSES ARE RELEVANT!") I'll give myself time to recharge. I'll compose music because I think there's a vocal ensemble in the next piece. (Right?) And I'll be very aware that anticipation is high for my next piece and I'll have a lot of expectations to live up to... but ultimately, I think I need to approach the piece the same way. Giving my two coins, all I have, up as offering.


My cast gave me this necklace before closing night. It means more than I can say. A cross full of colors. Exactly me. I marvel at the shift that has happened in even just the past year. Since really this summer. I'm associated with color, not black. Today I was aptly described as being "sunny", which is a descriptor that would NEVER have been used for me in years past. I think the secret is the freedom in service.

Unbounded gratitude pours from me to everyone involved in Tongues. To the inspiring designers who fought me for things that made the show infinitely better, and their assistants who reminded me of the best kind of attitude to have during tech. To the hardest working actors I have ever encountered who gave every waking moment to this piece. To the on-top-of-everything stage manager who pushed me when I started getting uncomfortable and squirrelly. To the most supportive crew I have ever worked with. To every teacher and classmate who has offered advice, questions, or feedback to anyone on the team. To PHTS who made it happen, which is one of the greatest gifts. The smartest thing I did was surround myself with all of you.