I began writing this blog in Rijeka, Croatia, a town on the Adriatic Sea, while re-staging a production of TRISTAN AND ISOLDE that premiered shortly before Covid shut down the world.
For the past several years my blogs on the SITI Company website have been fruitful and useful as I worked towards the completion of a new book of essays entitled What’s the Story. Thanks to the… more
I am writing today in West Fulton, New York in the heart of the Catskill Mountains. I am close to finishing a new book of essays entitled What’s the Story. The book is made up of eleven chapters,… more
Our capacity to tolerate error depends upon our capacity to tolerate emotion.(Irna Gadd) In 1974 I moved to New York City with the dream of making a life in the theater but first I had to find gainful… more
Successful theater requires a combination of technique, content and passion. Like a three legged milking stool, if one of the legs is missing, the entire enterprise collapses. No one cares about… more
I am late with this blog and I feel the pressure of time on my back. I work on the blog in the five minutes before leaving for rehearsal or on a plane in an uncomfortable seat. Afterwards of… more
The Buddhists propose that pain is caused by personal attachment to desire. Accordingly, I consciously and vigilantly police my own burning desires in order to live closer to and in harmony with the… more
The subject of the theater is, at its core, community. The nurturing substance of theater is not only the story that the play relates and the manner in which the story is expressed, but it is also the… more
At the Theater Communications Group Conference in Baltimore in 2009, “Generation Y” representative Nadira Hira bounded onto the stage and announced that she would not be using any PowerPoint in… more
Human beings are expectation machines. We are constructed physiologically and neurologically to anticipate what will happen next. This human trait, which almost certainly originated in ancient… more
Election season is upon us. I watch HBO’s Bill Maher bang his head on the “Real Time” table in despair at the lack of communication that is possible between parties. We wade into a… more
Not long after the cataclysmic events of 9/11, I launched a series of one-on-one conversations between myself and various artists and theater people I admired. Open to the general public, the talks… more
We read and we write. We read the world and at times we write upon it. In order to write effectively we must learn to read well. It is impossible to write without reading first. Great writers are… more
Artists and inventors rarely create something out of nothing, but rather they use the components that exist already their environment to forge new territory. Innovation results from re-combining… more
The playwright and performer Taylor Mac is constantly developing multiple new projects. He is at work now on a twenty-four hour concert about the history of popular music. He spoke to my students at… more
In early January, during the APAP (Arts Presenters) Conference in New York City, I enjoyed a few quality moments with my friend Mike Ross, Director of the Krannert Center in Champaign-Urbana. We sat… more
SITI Company has just completed a two-week “creative lab” period in which we laid down the initial strokes on the canvas for a new project entitled Café Variations. Committing those first… more