Don't you see how I need you?

I mentioned before that I wrote a paper proposing a theater piece about the Song of Songs and Job. It's about what it is to be plunged chest-first into all-consuming, divine love, with the claim that Song of Songs and Job are the two extremes of the same experience. Well, unsurprisingly, the idea has taken more and more of a hold in me and I have decided that it will happen... after college.

The reality of "after college" presses closer and closer. The necessity of survival is a very real one. I am once again grateful that I'm going to school in New York. I'm getting my first off-Broadway sound design credit in May, and while in the grand scheme of things that's not huge (sounds much more important outside of New York than inside of it), it's nice to have that before graduating. Living here I'm able to network in college far more than if I'd gone anywhere else, and while the future is of course terrifying, I've been watching graduates deal with it for years and have ideas of where to go.

One thing that has come up a lot this semester is the values or horrors of producing your own work. It's very popular to graduate, start a theater company, scrounge for resources, and make art. There are people who have gone the other route of freelancing, assisting directors, seeking out staged readings and new playwrights. Generally there's a combination of both. My loose ideal plan right now is to do a little bit of everything. I think I'm more interested in producing my own work as a director, however I don't feel the need to do 17 shows immediately after graduating. I think my focus upon graduating will be far more on design and voice work, which are the areas I feel like I am more likely to be/more interested in being hired. So the idea is, work, support myself, hopefully with some of that being in theater itself... and work on developing this piece. I want to, for once, at least, give myself the luxury of a long process of development. Not that it would be really intense rehearsal for all that time, but rather developing, experimenting, having a workshop, then time for that to land, more experimentation. There's something about there being a passage of time that I think will be useful. Something to experience once, at least. Really incubating a piece of work. That's not how things work at PHTS (it's not how things work a lot of places), but I'd like to try it out.

As I was dreaming about this, I started to make a list of people who I would love to be involved... as collaborators, designers, actors, musicians, people to invite to workshops, people to get coffee with and chat, and I found that I was listing not only people in theater... but people who are not at all involved with theater who I know through church.

And I thought, "Oh, DUH!"

It's a Biblically-based piece, yes, so of course I'll want to talk to people who know far more theology than I do for dramaturgical purposes. But my "Duh!" moment was about, "You know, a lot of these people I'm thinking of would be absolutely thrilled to be at all involved on a theatrical piece like this." If not in actual production, but coffee dates and emails and outside eye and that kind of support that is vital. There is a different way of thinking in the church than in theater, there are different resources and ideas. Cross-pollination makes SENSE, and who ever comes up to a pastor and says, "Hi, I'm working on developing a new theater piece--I'd love to get lunch and chat and hear your thoughts."? I would imagine that would spark a kind of energy that those of us who do this all the time lose.

It begs the question, "Who are we not engaging?"

In the theater world, we can get so incestuous that we forget that there are people outside of our little bubble who can really help us out.

And, similarly, in the church, we sometimes do not reach out to those who don't share our beliefs because they ask the hard questions. (And when we do, we often do it not in the spirit of learning from them, but in the spirit of converting them to stifle all of those questions.)

As someone who floats between different religious, spiritual, and secular realms, I know incredibly intelligent people of WILDLY different religious beliefs... and I DESPERATELY want to get them in a room together, talking, because it is so clear to me that we all NEED each other. It would be a messy, battling conversation and I think everyone would come out better for it.

So, the idea of starting to engage people from the church in the creation of this theater piece feels so RIGHT to me. Because staying holed up in our own little worlds is not only silly, it's a tremendous loss.

I'm going to do a lot of beginning work on the piece this summer. I mean, after all, I'll be surrounded by theologians who understand the specifics of the debate between Job and his friends far more than I do, and probably have never been approached about a theater piece before.