Chimera: Blog

It’s funny—or maybe, not all that funny—that we seem to be so delinquent updating this blog. It’s not very funny, because we’ve been doing so much and have so much to report. On the other hand, it does make me smile because the more we work on this show, the more evident it becomes that one of the themes of the play is our uneasy encounter with technology. And this technology right here, this blog, is a medium I am trying to embrace as part of my art practice—trying to conceive of it as a creative act, an engagement of our phantom audience (are you out there?) – rather than “marketing,” which I am dubious about the powers of my ramblings to sell tickets or rustle up interest anyway…

And there, right there, in that previous sentence, is an example of my innate skepticism. I seem to always be the one asking “why?” Why do we need that? Why do we need video? Why does Suli need to be on microphone? I always surprise myself when that’s my reaction—I think of myself as an open and curious person, restless even; someone who will say yes before no, someone who will try the new closed door instead of the old open one. So why the skepticism? Why the questioning?

And we keep returning to the same answer: it’s got to be necessary. Don’t want video for video’s sake, or cool sound tricks just because they’re, well, cool. Suli and I don’t always agree on this, especially (I think) the definition of what is “necessary.” And this, I think, is part of the foundation of the heat of our collaboration – we are both driven and stubborn and precise, and also respectful of the given circumstance of, if one of us strongly believes that something (be it a character choice or a design element) belongs in the world of the play, we’ll find a way to make it work. And the hard sweet labor of “making it work” is where this is a true collaboration: we are building, bit by bit, a piece that contains material that we both believe in, inch by inch and moment by moment, and it is turning out to be deeply layered and textured in unexpected and, I hope, beautiful, ways.

More soon.

—DS