For his thesis production, a third-year Columbia director chose to stage T. S. Eliot’s 1935 verse drama Murder in the Cathedral in St. John’s Cathedral on the upper west side of Manhattan. For the… more

I find that one of the best, but most difficult, ways for me to learn is to drop my own defensiveness, at least temporarily, and to try to understand the way in which his experience seems and feels to… more

At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.  (Maya Angelou) Until a recent conversation with my colleague and friend Leon… more

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