Thoughts - On Space and Community and Race

Thoughts - On Space and Community and Race

I was thinking about a conversation I had like two weeks ago.

With an old friend, I hadn't talked to in a month or two.

We were talking about the internet and space, and how people form communities and communicate.

It came from a conversation about d&d, having to learn the skills to communicate and express oneself online and to form communities with other people having those skills.

And how there are no hard rules around things like that, they are all learned social interactions.

And she said something about that, about how she doesn't like those spaces because she doesn't want to interact in them, and doesn't need to. So she doesn't have that skill set. She doesn't like communicating that way. She doesn't need to if it isn't part of work.

And I talked about how with a two-year pandemic if I didn't have them, these spaces, this way of communicating, I wouldn't have any friends or anyone to talk to.

And I think I just realized tonight how angry that made me.

Quotes - Martha Graham

Quotes - Martha Graham

“No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
― Martha Graham

Theatre - On Othello, Walterdale, and White Privilege

Theatre - On Othello, Walterdale and White Privilege

I'm angry.

And then I'm alternately sad.

I like the Walterdale. That theatre is fun, and we've mounted many shows on that stage. I've seen a lot of my friends cut their teeth on productions in that space, as actors, as directors. It provides a great training ground with different stakes that are necessary to provide more fuel for a successful theatre community.

Then I was made aware of their mid-season show, Othello.

It's heartbreaking.

Celebrate - World Theatre Day 2015

Celebrate - World Theatre Day 2015

World Theater Day Message 2015

The true masters of the theater are most easily found far from the stage. And they generally have no interest in theater as a machine for replicating conventions and reproducing clichés. They search out the pulsing source, the living currents that tend to bypass performance halls and the throngs of people bent on copying some world or another. We copy instead of create worlds that are focused or even reliant on debate with an audience, on emotions that swell below the surface. And actually there is nothing that can reveal hidden passions better than the theater.

Quotes - Martha Graham - Doubt

Quotes - Martha Graham - Doubt

"There is no place for arrogance in the arts, but neither is there room for doubt or a perpetual need for affirmation. If you come to me with doubts about a particular move in a piece, or if you come to me and ask if what you've written has truth and power in it, these are doubts I can handle and respect. But if you come to me and moan about whether or not you really have a place in the dance or the theatre or in film, I'll be the first person to pack your bags and walk you to the door. You are either admitting that you lack the talent and the will, or you are just looking for some easy attention. I don't have time for that. The world doesn't have time for that. Believe in your worth and work with a will so that others will see it. That's how it is done; that's how it was always done." --Martha Graham