The Road Ahead

"I've been thinking about leaving my fingerprints on your being" ~ Passing Strange

There are lots of things I’ve been thinking about when it comes to this business (being theatre) and my role in it. What attracts me? What do I have to say? How do I want to say it? Where, oh god WHERE do I want to be?

Let’s start with Nobility. A few nights ago the president of Green Peace came to talk at Meredith and I went to go hear what he had to say. It was kind of like being at Westport in an artist hour, except it was in an auditorium with over 600 people (it occurs to me that Jones Auditorium at Meredith College houses more people than the Westport Country Playhouse. Not many, but it does). One of the many things he said that caught my attention (all though he was a terrible public speaker, he had some interesting things to say) was that he did this job (activism, if you will) because it was fun and because it was important. This got me thinking. A week before I left the playhouse I flew back to Raleigh for a weekend for a wedding. On my way back I ran into my friend Patrick Baker at the airport. Patrick has known me forever, he is one of the people that grew up with me at Raleigh Little Theatre during our high school years. We still see each other every now and then, even though he lives in L.A. now. So, huge coincidence, we were both flying out of Raleigh on the same day around the same time. So we had breakfast and caught up. He asked what I had been doing and I told him about the education internship at the playhouse. “Is this an internship that could turn into a job?” he asked. I replied that there were some people at the playhouse who wanted me to stay but I didn’t think I was going to. “Why not?” he asked. “Well for one thing,” I replied “Connecticut is one of the richest states in the nation, and the type of kids there, they don’t need me. If I’m going to do this, Patrick, I want to teach kids that actually need me.” He replied that that was very noble. “What is?” I asked. “That if you are going to be a teacher you want to teach the poorest in society” I didn’t really know how to reply to this at the time. It seemed like such a cliché, cheesy thing to say “but that’s what I enjoy” . Like all people who are selfless (which I am not) and who serve excuse it (like such a thing needs an excuse) by saying that they are actually being selfish, that it is for personal gain because helping those in need makes them happy. There’s a great scene in There’s Something About Mary in which one of the guys employs this logic falsely to win over Mary. But it’s not an excuse, it’s not me being selfish so much as this is what I’m drawn to. Pure and simple, this is what interests me. People with no problems (not to say that anyone with money has no problems) are boring. Helping people who don’t really need it is boring. I like a challenge. Helping people in need interests me, it’s fun – if you will – it’s exciting, it’s challenging. It’s not boring. Just like the guy from Green Peace said. It’s fun. Is it Noble? Maybe. Well, yeah, sure it is. But that’s not why I do it. Is there anything wrong with doing something because it is noble? No. But that’s not why I do it. I do it because it lights my fire. It stokes me. Are these the wrong reasons to do it? I don’t know.

Moving on to public servants and public service. These things are fun for me because I have been called on to serve. It’s never going to pay me much, but I want to change the world and the tools I have been given to do it is by serving the community around me. It’s what interests me and it’s what I am good at. I believe that art is a public service and all artists, no matter what their medium, are public servants. If I had my way all artists would be subsidized by the government, and we wouldn’t have to worry about paychecks or health insurance. There’s a down side to that of course in that government could then decide to regulate art, and that could get all sorts of bad, not to mention that I don’t think government should be telling anyone what is art and what isn’t. But we are performing a public service. Jodie (the managing director of Westport Country Playhouse) had a talk with us about an experience of hers where this woman who performed public services like educating children in villages in India who had no inside plumbing and where girls were not allowed to be educated, pointed out to her that what she did was a service. She entertained people. It’s a powerful thing we do, as entertainers. The power to make someone laugh is an awesome, truly awesome thing. But beyond entertainment, the Greeks used theatre as a governmental check, a way to show everyone (those in government and the every day citizens) the consequences of their actions. An almost unbiased, pre-journalistic check. I think with journalism in the state it is in theatre more than ever has the power to be unbiased. To simply tell a story and state truths and let the audience judge for themselves. We have the power to both entertain and enlighten. Enlighten. Think of the possibilities. Not just enlighten because we are in some way more enlightened than everyone else but because we like everyone else are stuck in the mire. We simply have the ability to raise the mire to everyone’s view, so we can all see it from every side.

This is a public service. An important one. It must not die. I believe that while teaching theatre in small communities is very powerful and important, I don't think it's big enough for me. I have something I want to say, and I'm going to need a lot of people to listen to it if I want to change the world. I believe the problems facing us are as follows:
- Theatre is a dieing artform. How do we keep it alive without compromising it beyond recongnition? How are we going to revolutionize theatre? How are we going to make people come back to us?
- How do we . . . damn I had, like, three more big questions and I just lost them. Oh well, here's hoping they come back to me later.