Today’s post is brought to you by my iPhone, courtesy of an Internet outage at my hotel. So my thumbs and I will keep this short.
I’m thinking about the idea of faith today, after the word has come up in several sessions in the last few days.
On day one, I joked at orientation that so many of us made our Pasadena pilgrimages on blind faith, not knowing anyone else who was going, not knowing what we would be doing or who this year’s guest artists would be.
Sheldon Epps said that first afternoon, “Everything we do in theatre is based on faith… As the leader is falls to you to sustain the faith even when your own faith falters.”
We’ve been talking about trusting our instincts and our collaborators. You can never truly know if the project is a good idea or if you can pull it off. But we all believe the show must go on, and so it does.
On Day 3, we met Jessica Kubzansky and Michael Michetti, the co-artistic directors of the Theatre @ Boston Court. They took on that role blindly, never having sought after an artistic directorship in their freelance careers. The trust they’ve cultivated between them and their faith in the company they’ve built is remarkable.
As someone who grew up almost completely without religion, I am quite curious about the idea of faith. I won’t get too deep into religion – not least because I’m working on a tiny screen and it’s nearly time to begin day 4.
Perhaps I’ve never felt I needed religion in the traditional church-going sense because theater is built on faith. Theater makers seek a transcendent experience with a congregation.
Most important of all, “theater is church for me, because it is the place where souls are moved.” – playwright Marcus Gardley