"Your beloved and your friends were once strangers. Somehow at a particular time, they came from the distance toward your life. Their arrival seemed so accidental and contingent. Now your life is unimaginable without them. Similarly, your identity and vision are composed of a certain constellation of ideas and feelings that surfaced from the depths of the distance within you. To lose these now would be to lose yourself."
― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
I remember when we were somewhat strangers at the beginning of our (a man enters) rehearsal process. That time feels so distant now, I had to look at my calendar to confirm that it has only been 8 weeks since we forged out together to meet the play. Personal proof positive of the relativity of time. The time we spend in the rehearsal room and in performance is not bound by the calendar and clock; yes, there are schedules and deadlines. The Designer Run, Tech, Dress, and Opening are certainties, but the currents of time spent creating the production together feel swifter and deeper. You end up feeling you've known each other for far longer than what the calendar suggests is possible. I hope that connection leaps the distance between the actors and the audience. Michael Howard describes acting as revealing yourself to illuminate the material. I love the will, the recognition, and incandescent vulnerability that act of revelation requires.
In Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water, she writes about kairos and chronos, the two ancient Greek words for time. Chronos is chronological time, sequential time. I struggle with this time in the rehearsal room and am ever thankful for Stage Managers who can be fully present in the process and contend with the clock simultaneously (thank you, Nick, Josh, Jennie, Aly, Becca...) My hypothesis is that when you are fortunate to work on a play you love, with an ensemble of actors who take the script's questions to heart and truly play with it and each other, you are wading deep into kairos. L'Engle speaks of kairos as God time. The Wikipedia entry defines it as "the right or opportune moment – the supreme moment"; it goes on to note that in rhetoric, kairos is "a passing instant when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be achieved." I'm doubtful that force ever does the trick, but creating demands both muscularity of intention and effortless presence in the same instant. It is working under that strange yoke that creates moments of possibility - and then - you leap together.
It has been a glorious adventure working on (a man enters) with Playwrights Elaine Jarvik and Kate Jarvik Birch, the Company: Joyce Cohen, Terence Goodman, Amanda Mahoney, Deena Marie Manzanares, and Jesse Peery, Stage Manager Nick Fleming, Designers Josh Martin, Jim Craig, Keven Myhre and Brenda Van der Wiel, and Argentine Tango Gurus Julianne Basinger and Renne Rodriguez. I hope you will come experience our shared leap into (a man enters).
To once strangers and the constellations of ideas and emotions.
Due to sold out performances, (a man enters) has been extended until December 11, 2011. Tickets available online or by calling the Box Office: 801.363.7522.
