Creation is an Act of Love. 

I don’t mean good vibes and positivity. I mean love the way bell hooks describes it: the act of investing oneself towards another’s spiritual growth. Understanding spirit to be the convergence of mind, body, and heart, this means doing all one can to uplift the mental, physical, and emotional health of their collaborators. Love holds boundaries and practices accountability. Love listens more than it talks, and when it talks it speaks with kindness. Love isn’t afraid of hard work. Like theatre, it is more of a verb than a noun, as it is always in process. 

The Play Already Knows What It Is, and It’s Our Job to Figure It Out.  

Can you tell I’ve read the Artist’s Way? My experience as a playwright, actor, director, and designer has taught me that the play is less like a nothing that is constructed into something, and more like a something that we’re all looking for. It’s like a puzzle with hidden pieces that can only be found and assembled through experimental collaboration. No one is more important than anyone else; there is no Grand Creator. Rather, there is an assemblage of prophets. 

Understanding Lives Between Meanings. 

Theatre is the most expressive art form, in my opinion, because it’s metaphor in motion. The story of the lights is layered with the story of the text, the costumes, the gestures, et cetera. The people behind the characters are stories in themselves. These stories can be consciously told or otherwise. The friction of all these stories put together is the energy that an effective play immerses an audience within. 

Cheap Theatre is Everything. 

I can’t bring myself to be embarrassed about how seriously I took theatre that was rehearsed in YMCA senior centers and friend’s parent’s backyards. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was operating with one of Anne Bogart’s principles. To paraphrase, what is done with a little reflects what will be done with a lot. Being raised in an environment where low-to-no budget theatre was the only theatre, the importance of these types of projects never had to be taught to me. It has always been clear. 

Stupidity Is Sacred. 

The Dunning-Kruger Effect: a theory on the relationship between wisdom and confidence. The beginning stages of acquiring knowledge places one on what is scientifically referred to as the peak of “Mt. Stupid.” This is someone who does not know what they do not know. In order to proceed from the novice stage, one must plummet to an absolute depth of insecurity referred to as the “Pit of Despair.” It is from this pit that I now write to you. My time at Michigan taught me just enough about my passions to show me how much I still have to learn. The only way out is through. My intention is to schlep up the “Slope of Enlightenment” through hard work and valuable mentorship. The trick is, those with years of accrued wisdom still display less confidence than the novice. Learning this taught me not to be afraid of my own ignorance, and to look on those who admit what they do not know as some of the wisest among us. 

Specificity and Universality are Inextricably Linked 

In my first month at UMICH, the actor Wendell Pierce was generous enough with his time to talk with us students about mental health, August Wilson, Arthur Miller, and more. In his talk, he discussed the production of All My Sons he was working on, featuring a Black family as the Kellers. When asked about the process, he emphasized the importance of specificity and attention to detail in his character work. This is how the story would feel universal, or relatable, to the audience. My eighteen-year-old brain was enthralled by this paradox. It was counterintuitive to me- I thought of universal stories as plays with characters named “Business Man” and “Sad Girl”. I figured specificity would be alienating to people who did not express the same traits as the central characters. Pierce’s words opened my mind to the idea that details make stories more real, and thus more connective. By honing the Kellers’ idiosyncrasies, Pierce and his collaborators nudged their audiences towards considering their own family’s traits, connecting them further with the Kellers. It was not until long after I directed Lorraine Hansberry’s final play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, as my senior thesis (in which much attention to cultural specificity was paid), that I found out Pierce’s sentiment was based on an idea expressed by Hansberry: “…In order to create the universal you must pay very close attention to the specific.” Kismet, right? 

Everything Is Process

There’s a reason Camus used the metaphor of the Actor to explain an archetype of absurdity. Theatremakers invest themselves in what they know is temporary. We build the set, we play around on it for a while, then we take it down. The play that we put all of our hope, love, anxiety, and sweat into is gone without a trace. It only exists in memory. I’ve found that there is no moment of consummation in a process. Every moment passes with just as much importance as the last and the next. Opening night bows are not more important to me than the first time I try on my character’s shoes. There’s no click. Maybe I’ll change my mind about this someday. Until then, the lack of a special moment makes every moment special. 

WORKS CITED: 

Bogart, Anne. A Director Prepares : Seven Essays on Art and Theatre. London, Routledge, 2010.

Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Tarcher/Putnam, 2002.

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Éditions Gallimard, Oct. 1942.

‌hooks, bell. All about Love: New Visions. New York, Harper Perennial, 22 Dec. 1999.
Magazine, Corey S. Powell, OpenMind. “The Dunning-Kruger Effect Shows That People   Don’t Know What They Don’t Know.” Scientific American, www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dunning-kruger-effect-shows-that-people-dont-know-what-they-dont-know/.