Singer-songwriter Ben Folds recently wrote a memoir entitled A Dream About Lightning Bugs.  As a child during the summer months, he captured lightning bugs, also known as fireflies, to put into glass… more

There are always flowers for those who want to see them. (Henri Matisse) As a theater director, my job is to watch over, to pay attention, to bring empathy and quick thinking to each rehearsal; to be… more

While studying at Bard College in the early 1970’s I joined Via Theater, a group of likeminded theater majors founded by fellow student Ossian Cameron. The company began as an active investigation… more

An old friend and colleague from my time in the Suzuki Company Of Toga, Toshihisa Nishikibe said to me once that the true goal of any good artistic practice is freedom. How do we free our voices? Free… more

"The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar”, to make forms difficult, to increase… more

“This play resonated with me.” What does that mean?  Why does a particular play, painting or piece of music resonate with me, and others do not? The Oxford dictionary defines resonance as,… more

Hi, I changed my profile picture since I’d changed the appearance in public with my natural grey hair.  ©Al Foote III  #alfoote3photograpy

The fragments fly apart and shift, trembling on the threshold of a kind of fullness: the minor wonder of remembering; the greater wonders of forgetfulness. (John Koethe) Perhaps I became a theater… more

We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our own passion, and our passion is our task. (Henry James) In a recent public interview, novelist Margaret Atwood was… more

During the 1948 summer session at Black Mountain College, John Cage presented a series of performances of music by Erik Satie. In order to contextualize what was then considered radically avant-garde… more

someone sees a play. they ask, what's it about? i'm, like, you just saw it. it's "about" the experience you just had. ... blank face. ... but what's it about? they ask again. ... hmm. maybe it's time… more

I recently had a conversation with someone that was the kind of conversation I don’t have often enough. This person was a relative stranger. I don’t want to go into specific detail about the… more

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. (Henry Miller) During the late 1990s SITI Company regularly led two and three-week summer workshops in Los Angeles during which… more

Perhaps we could say that the power of theatre is that it gives us the opportunity of a sustained gaze where we can move slowly from looking to seeing. In such moments of ocular transmutation, we… more

The thing about the past is that it’s not the past. (old Irish saying) Perhaps the theater is a form of eulogy and our job is to raid the graveyard regularly. The ways in which we remember dead… more

Pain is weakness leaving your body. For many years I’ve thought the source of this adage was the monks of the Shaolin Temple where Kung-Fu was born and became the root of much of what we call… more