We live in interesting times. I use the word “interesting” in the same way that it hits me as a comment from an acquaintance who has seen a show of mine that they clearly don’t get. And we live in interesting times that seem to be moving faster and faster with each passing news cycle.
I was in previews during the Kavanaugh hearings and felt the audiences shift each day, according to how they consumed the story in front of them. The stories we create, pour ourselves into, and put on stage do not get told in a vacuum, obviously. In this particular case, changes seemed nightly. Audiences arrived upset one night, open-hearted and hopeful the next, furious at some matinee as stuff was going down. Ultimately, by the time we got to “we don’t care what was true because we won”—I paraphrase—they seemed quietly resigned. The play was always the play, and it held what the audience was giving it nicely, allowing for deep catharsis through laughs and even tears. But the story did feel like it shifted, expanding and contracting with the news each day. What we made somehow leaned into the times, essentializing and personalizing what perhaps was needed in the moment.
As I write this letter, knowing that our national midterm elections will have transpired before this goes to print but not knowing how they will land, I cannot predict what artists and audiences will be contending with, so let me stick a pin in the politics for a beat. What I am certain of is that our Members will continue to create big and beautiful stories, fiercely personal and demanding tales. Our Members will lead, build consensus, communicate about politics, movement, form, psychology, and community with rigor and humor and grace.
What we do seems particularly necessary in these interesting times. I am reminded of Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift and “the accumulated wealth of the spirit.” It seems apropos of directors and choreographers, as ours are art forms of conversation and communication with collaborators and audience. Hyde writes, “A circulation of gifts nourishes those parts of our spirit that are not entirely personal, parts that derive from nature, the group, the race, or the gods. Furthermore, although these wider spirits are a part of us, they are not ‘ours’; they are endowments bestowed upon us. To feed them by giving away the increase they have brought us is to accept that our participation in them brings with it an obligation to preserve their vitality…Only when the increase of gifts moves with the gift may the accumulated wealth of our spirit continue to grow among us, so that each of us may enter, and be revived by, a vitality beyond his or her solitary powers.”
We exist as part of a field in which the giving of gifts is essential: the giving of talent, of understanding, of empathy, of time on the part of artists and audiences. We live in interesting times, but how we spend that time, and how we share it, is fundamental to our lives, the lives of those with whom we work and those to whom we present our work. It is our job to make certain that work is not merely interesting and subject to the buffeting forces outside of rehearsal room and theatre walls, but nourishing to all who choose to place themselves within them and essential when we step out of them. Be kind to yourselves and others out there.
In Solidarity,
Pam MacKinnon
Executive Board President