Saturday, January 21, 2012

Gone Missing

I posted a blog yesterday about the problems with an economic model of "growth equaling success".  The entry was online for a few hours, after which, I accidentally erased it.  (Beware that "revert to draft" button.  Oh, the touchscreen troubles.)  I know that at least two people read the blog before it disappeared into the ether, so in my mind, it existed.  With digitally recorded work--writing, music, photography, or what-have-you--there is this question on my mind of the work's existence and permanence.  The work I do in the theatre is impermanent.  It exists in a specific temporal space and then is gone.  Therefore, I often think of my directing work as being not only about what happens upon the stage, but what happens in the room.  The collective experience that the audience members and the company has in the theatre on any particular night is what I (we) have created.  I always consider the journey the audience travels along through the performance.  The impermanence is part of the magic of theatre, and always a bit heartbreaking, too.  A recording often seems to be a pale impression of what happened.  You had to be there.

Did you see or hear the tree?  Then it is real.

No comments:

Post a Comment