Thanks For Theatre

With thanksgiving come and gone I wanted to write, perhaps a bit self indulgently, about how thankful I am to be a theatre artist. On Thursday, I am on my way to Waterbury Connecticut with fellow company member and collaborator Julie Congress. This trip brings three blessings. First, I get to work with high school students. In case you did not know, I have a real passion for working with young theatre artists, there is a vibrancy and life to young artists that I find inspiring and motivational. Second, I get to direct the festival showcase production, which will be a challenging and professional experience. I’ve been given a room with an attached living area in case I want to have meetings. Third, and perhaps misplaced in my list of thanks, I get to collaborate with Julie! It is rare to find someone with whom you can co-direct and both end up feeling really proud of the finished product. Julie and I have the ability to create a unified vision and then see it to it’s completion. A recipe for success that I am of course grateful for.

That is only one thing. There are other things as well. That you should know about! For instance we have a reading on Dec. 1^st of a play called The Resurrectionist. We are reading the play with English accents, which is really fun. It is also an adventure story, which is doubly fun. Then of course we have our opening of Claire and the Ornithological Shadow. The more I have been thinking about it the more I think it is really going to be an excellent venture. I feel lucky that I am in a position where I can produce risky, new, experimental work. I am not sure on the commercial success of the productions. It does not really fit the formula for large monetary gain…it is an unknown play, it is playing in Brooklyn, No. 11 Productions is still a very new company, we have not gotten the kind of press that we wore hoping for (yet). That being said, it is still an admirable example of theatre as powerful art. The play is simple and beautiful, which is ideally perhaps how we should live our lives…simply and beautifully. I am not sure about that one but it makes sense to me today.

Alright, thank you so much for reading and caring and caring to read. I hope you have not read this entry to carefully, I ramble. I wish everyone the best of weekends and I will write again soon. To the simple and beautiful life!

Written by Ryan Emmons