Last Night I Couldn't Sleep

So again it's been over a month since I last posted on this blog. Quick update:

1. Had my show BROKEN premiere at the Strawberry One-Act Festival. The production went quite well, the actors involved did a great job in bringing to life the words and characters that have lived only on pages for over two years. It's an interesting show, and I'm definitely considering continuing work on the piece.



2. Have been in rehearsals for the past month for the show opening at the Emerging Artists Theatre's EATFest 2011. I have a really great cast and have been very fortunate to work with some great equity and non-equity actors on a production with a company I can really get behind - it's great to have technical support, for one thing. The show is really coming along, the script is really nice, written by Jeffrey Neuman, Assisted Living opens with a really fantastic monologue - I'm very excited for people to see this production.

This week we have three rehearsals and then Tech - which is a little daunting, but I've done this before. Just because this is in NYC shouldn't make anything different. It's about being prepared and ready for the process, and I feel that we are.

3. I don't want to say too much about this yet, but I'm working with a new group of people (including some fellow former NYTW interns) on the creation of a launch piece for a new theatre company entitled IN ASYLUM (check out www.theaterinasylum.com - right now there's not much there, but the site will be updated soon to include all sorts of information regarding this piece that will be taking place in early april). The group has produced one production already and is full of really intelligent, driven theatre artists with whom I'm thrilled to be working - it's great to start working with people your own age who share a similar passion for theatre that explores beyond the boundaries of the typical theatrical setting, which endeavors to confront and re-imagine the relationship between actor and audience and the way in which we experience art and live performance. I'll definitely be talking more about this group soon - I plan on pretty thoroughly documenting this experience here. I'm working as a Stage Manger/Assistant Director for the central piece to the even and will be directing a short piece as well. Should be really a lot of fun.


And so that's what's going on right now - also some preliminary thoughts about a possible Shakespeare production (probably Othello) outdoors in a found space - will also talk more about this if it ever seems like it will come to fruition.

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Last night I couldn't sleep. I turned off the lights and let my head rest on my pillow at around 1:45 am. Come 6:30am, with the light outside beginning to stream through my windows, I was still awake. I don't really know why, I was tired, even exhausted the whole time and yet I couldn't manage to get away from my constant awareness that I was absolutely and firmly stuck in the land of the not-sleeping.

About a million thoughts flitted through my mind over this time. One of the things that I kept thinking about was this notion of stillness - it was put in my head, humorously, by The Karate Kid (the remake) which I'd watched twice in the past 36 hours. I'd also been reading The Art of Stillness, a book about Tadashi Suzuki and his approach towards revolutionary theatre. Basically, I kept thinking about this notion of internal stillness, of internal openness and/or emptiness that allows you to let go and simply NOT think, just be. It's a central tenant of many martial arts, and it's something every artist should be striving towards as well. The ability to create within yourself a kind of open, receptive emptiness, where nothing inside is forced, where everything is calm, steady, but also active and sure. An openness to all external stimuli - to take in what is occurring without  judgment but also without letting that external world exert any sort of control over you. The actor needs to be open and empty, needs to be a reflective lens that takes in what happens around them and turns it into a calmness that attracts us - that draws us in.

And it reminds me that some of the work I did while in school, work that was very inherently physical in nature, that demanded a lot of my actors, I was doing that work in search of something similar - in search of a way to strip away all of our tricks and force what is essential and inherent in ourselves to be all that we have to rely on. Not pulling from a bag of tricks or putting something upon the characters we create, but instead allowing ourselves to be our characters naturally. Usually I used exhaustion as the method, physical exercise that truly tired us out and exhausted us. And at that point of being exhausted, having us perform, play the role - because when we are short of breath and catching up with ourselves there's no time to create, no time to put something upon ourselves, we have no choice but to be honest and true.

I'm just rambling about this and writing about this because it's been very easy for me, in New York, to turn away from the work I used to cling to - to try and be a 'professional', which for some reason seems to mean someone who doesn't experiment but instead already 'knows' how to do what they do.

And I realize, working with IN ASLYUM, one thing:

I don't know what I'm doing.

I don't 'know' how to create a piece or direct a show. Because there's no one way that will always work - there's always a new circumstance, and there should always be a new way of searching that is dependent upon the piece and the demands the text or circumstances require.

I don't know exactly what I'm doing - and that's a good thing. I should never think I know how to do this job, because once I do I stop growing and I stop learning. I don't want to stop learning.

And so the only thing to do is embrace what I don't know. And get back to the place where I'm still searching.