WHAT _IS_ ALL THIS CRAP ABOUT THOREAU?!
i have two independent projects that I have developed in the past four years. they are both based equally on really compelling text and a theory i have about how you can morph sign language distally to make it resonate with dance values, while still utilizing the emerging shapes as narrative language. i kind of swoop in and out of the method of physical actions while executing the work – and it’s really all just a platform for me to examine my own particular facility in movement.
this all started when a mass of ideas, experiences, and people -and death- collided in my life. i was introduced to Thoreau’s first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, by way of an epigraph to James Wright’s book of poetry, Saint Judas:
“I stop my habitual thinking, as if the plough had suddenly run deeper in its furrow through the crust of the world. How can I go on, who have just stepped over such a bottomless skylight in the bog of my life. Suddenly old Time winked at me,—Ah, you know me, you rogue,—And news had come that IT was well. That ancient universe is in such capital health, I think undoubtedly it will never die. Heal yourselves, doctors; by God, I live.” (end of the “Monday” chapter; p. 109 in the Dover edition)
say WHAT?! that is some pretty ecstatic sanctified signifyin’ on up in there! i had never read ANY Thoreau and had chalked him up as the stodgy father of conservationism and patron saint of hippies and granolas everywhere prior to this—and, oh yeah, didn’t he inspired Gandhi or something?
well, i got into the book— and, long story short (if you really want to know all the gory details ask me and i’ll email it to you), i realized that Thoreau is the greatest observer in the history of American letters, and that his observations resonate with a clarity and peculiar energy of someone COMPLETELY interested in what they are engaged with. i sense this energy in all theatrical modes (but perhaps never more similar in character than in the way Anne Bogart sits on a stool in a rehearsal room). i was convinced that the book was a block of wood with a play inside of it. so i started whittling away.
it so happens that this coincided with a point in my life where i needed to start moving away from seeing myself bound inextricably to the organizations and people i was working with, as well as the teachers i was continuing to study with. ten years of therapy taught me that there is something of the entrepreneur naturally burning inside of me. so i’ve been throwing myself at developing this work as something that stands on its own and also represents all that i’ve hoped to become as an artist. the other project, MONODY, is a companion to the Thoreau adaptation (which is entitled, OF RIVERS, OF DAYS).
i workshopped MONODY last spring and it really represents a doorway into the way of working that i am seeking to establish. the Thoreau project is a little more prickly, and i needed to develop MONODY as a stepping stool to Thoreau. the Thoreau project is weighty from a logistical stand-point. it has a lot more explicit sign language (and addresses itself directly to the history of American Sign Language). also, it’s a massive amount of spoken text – and i have not been completely satisfied with the way that i’ve been working and living (vis a vis all my regional work), with regard to the long-term affect on how i use my body and voice. so this time here in Harveyville, and the ability to address all that, has been immeasurably beneficial in the grand scheme of where i’m trying to go.
the last time we worked on bobrauschenbergamerca Anne Bogart said i’ve learned to put my heart into my work more and more. i hope and i think that she is right. it had been just torturous not to be able to give my projects the kind of time and focus they require – not to be able to put my heart into it. this time in my life has also been maddeningly disorienting, because i have accomplished quite a bit as an actor, but i am envious of my friends and colleagues (in SITI, the South Wing, the Shalimar, T.E.A.M.) who are committed to one another and who are working together towards common goals. my friend, the Great Actress Kathleen Chalfant said to me “Don’t do it alone”, when i told about the stuff i’m developing. i took that to heart, but i own that i often fall short of the mark. i do not always communicate well with others…a pretty strange characteristic for an actor to have… but my determination to communicate well (especially with digital equipment) is yet another thing that i’ve been able to address here in Harveyville.
so, all in all, i’m seeing my identity as an independent artist begin to catch up with my experiences as a “theater artist at large”. there are some very vital matters to reconcile pertaining to my own psychological make-up, as well with the artist’s role in the society we live in now – which is muuuuuch different than when i got out of school, or even when i conceived this particular work four years ago. it’s an excellent time, if you thrive on moving toward the dangers – but then when is it not? to quote David Chase’s inexhaustible and estimable font of folk wisdom:
Tony Soprano: Sil, break it down for ‘em. What two businesses have traditionally been recession-proof since time immemorial?
Silvio Dante: Certain aspects of show business and Our Thing.
