Today was tough. There are big disagreements about what needs to happen now. We have 3 rehearsals left before tech. The differences are submerged. Andrew, Amy and I float suggestions as if they are small things that need to be tweaked. But these mild suggestions are masking deep disagreements about the aesthetics and tone of the piece. And ultimately an idea of how the thing is going to work, what the audience walks away with. How would I frame the disagreement? I think that Amy’s concerns have to do with theatricality and formality. She might say that we need to weave the sections together more tightly so that parts are clearly referring to each other, are clearly linked to each other. She wants repetition and reinforcement of main themes and ideas on a structural level and a theatrical persona that is clear for everyone inside and outside the piece. Amy is a formalist. What does Andrew want? He wants the dance to work on a deep level of relevance and still be playful. Not heavy or clever or neatly tied up for its own sake. He wants it to live up to his dearest hopes for a work of art – that we the performers and the audience play together being as awake as we can be. He wants the vehicle for that play to have no false notes because everyone can smell a false note and won’t trust or risk if the deep sense isn’t there. And me? I don’t know. Amy and Andrew might say that I err on the side of inscrutability. Idiosyncratic preferences. But I just know when something is working. I have filters that are hard to explain. But I know when the poetry of something is coming across-- when things are impossible to define and yet full of music and meaning. It’s hard to make arguments about exactly what will and what won’t work from my point of view. How do you collaborate with someone whose point of view is, I know it when I see it? I sympathize with them having to work with me! Really. Funny thing is—and this is why we’ve worked together for 15 years -- we would all agree with the importance of all the points of view I just laid out. It’s a disagreement over emphasis. And what a particular emphasis ends up meaning.
We’ve all tried putting the material together in different versions so far. All have been interesting and problematic. I’ve been charged with this last phase of pulling it together. I have the authority to take decisive action. Of course it is understood that I will be conscientious about understanding everyone’s concerns. In other words, I’m in the hot seat. But I think I know what we need now. I don’t know what it looks like, but I know what we need.
We’re just missing a layer, maybe a moment, of tenderness and vulnerability. The piece is amazing and complicated and very big in an odd, funny way. The space is enormous, beautiful and grand. The Explanatorium is full of ideas and haunting stories, and the audience circles around, 200 people at a time, all dressed in blue which makes it even bigger and more full. And what the piece needs is something small and very human to ground it. And that soulfulness is there, we’ve worked on it. We’ve worked from that place – the place of knowing that we can feel so small and fragile in this world that we can’t always explain: a world that we yearn to explain, and yearn also not to know too well, to instead feel mystery and magic. I think we just have to put that small, vulnerable thing back in this magnificent space full of big ideas. And there we will tether this big balloon to our shaky, terrene world.
David