I've been thinking a lot about why I make art - theater, specifically. And, were I to create a "manifesto" or statement of why I make art and what that creative process should look like, what would I say? I decided to write a few thoughts down. Look out, world - I have a "Draft Manifesto In Progress"! Okay, so that sounds disappointingly unthreatening. But just wait. I'm ready to conquer the universe. Er...someday.
DRAFT MANIFESTO IN PROGRESS (Or, Pickles' Battle Cry):
When I was three years old, I told my mother I wanted to be a ballerina. That one seemingly far-reaching dream has since catapulted me into the life I now lead as an artist, and I couldn't be more grateful for my very early beginnings. Classical ballet taught me the necessity and significance of precision, as well as how to ask the mind and the body to work together as one unit. Growing into my craft, these skills and ideals have become increasingly important, and have sculpted both my work as a performer and my identity as an artist. The tiniest detail holds volumes of information - an entire existence, perhaps.
As my career progresses, I find myself drawn largely toward new, innovative, and collaborative work. As a performer, I bring life to words on a page. As a collaborator, I breathe through ideas and colors and emotions and silence. I ask questions and find answers in the people and energy that surround me. I seek to always tell the truth - to show the world the vulnerability of the human heart and the reality of the human spirit.
Holding tightly to the ideals I learned as a dancer, I seek to synchronize my body fully with my mind, to present work that embraces the viewer and gives a full experience of the life being created on the stage. Recently, I have become fascinated with the human voice and how to utilize it as part of the entire instrument - through song, inflection, pitch, and rhythm - to establish an even more complete existence into which audiences can crawl. Like music, words on a page also have a melody - a detailed score that when captured expresses a story not often heard or understood in the words alone.
Sound is one of the most intimate emotional stimulants. What would happen if each sound generated on stage was done so by the character for whom that sound resonated the most? With the advent of portable music devices, some as small as a postage stamp, we carry with us every day the means to stimulate and nurture our most profound, private emotions. With the touch of a button, we can energize ourselves with a dance beat, breathe through depression with some dirty country, or even stimulate our sense of community and politics with Ira Glass. So why can’t that happen on stage? What could be more human?
If theater is actually art, then it must be collaborative and fresh. To create work that not only stimulates our individual vision and sense of humanity, but also generates beauty, identifies truths, and electrifies emotional receptors, we must work as collaborators – partners. Art is not made in a vacuum. It gets its pulse from the world around it and everything that lives and breathes in that world. By the same token, theater is not a self-contained act. Nor does it thrive or become art simply because someone hundreds of years ago found it entertaining. An element of theater as art that is often overlooked is the spark or electrical current created when different artistic minds set to work on a shared vision. What is lacking in theater today is not specifically new plays, but a new way of looking at what a “play” is – at how to create an experience that not only tells a story, but enlivens the true, unvarnished emotions that make up that story. To bring every color, sound, and sensory response that comprise each second of a human life onto the blank canvas of the stage and create a performance that viewers don’t just watch, but rather, feel. In every cell of their bodies. The space at the end of a performance should literally be vibrating – or at least feel that way.
To do this, we need to eliminate the idea that every play has a pre-written script. That it looks “this way” or sounds “that way”. If you give an actor a kazoo, don’t do so with the prediction that they are going to pick it up and play “Yankee Doodle Dandy”. Perhaps what comes out is an aria from The Magic Flute…or the sound of a camel belching. The point is not to present a polished version of something we already know, but rather, a new composition, however rugged or raw, that kicks us in the gut with a steel-toed boot.
Theater is art. It must tingle all the senses. Send an electrical current into your toes. Just like a blank canvas, there are no set rules or boundaries except the ones the artists set for themselves. Nor is there one correct, limited medium. Theater is an open room where every surface is part of the canvas. Let’s bring in the artists, have them throw their art at the wall, and see what sticks. Then we’ll bring in some more. And together, those artists will look at what they have created and work together to find and nurture the beauty that has spilled out onto the canvas. They are partners. Because not one person makes theater into art. Theater is human. It breathes. It needs nourishment just as much as we as do to survive. The energy that true theater creates should be able to topple buildings not just fill a room with applause. It should be more of a human chain than a bound script. Theater is something we experience, not just something we go to see.
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