What you don't see...

From Low Pay? Don't Pay! lighting designer, Rich Bryant:

Have you ever taken the time to wonder how something comes into existence? How someone came up with an idea or an improvement of something already in existence? Do you find yourself watching HGTV, TLC, the History Channel or America's Test Kitchen on PBS? Then maybe you're just like me and have a bit of curiosity that pushes you to learn more.

Theatre is a process like anything else and one that has a certain amount of well worn methods to achieve it. Most folks, like yourselves, get to enjoy the end result and walk away from your experience with not only something to talk about, but hopefully also a reason to keep coming back. If you only knew.

In the many years of theater experience I have had I have learned that each show is unique in what it has to say and how it goes about saying it. The playwright has made distinct choices and selected a point of view that he or she wants an audience to hear and see. It is then up to the director, the actors and the designers, who all bring different experiences, thoughts and reasons, to try and address the questions within the play. We don't always agree nor should we. Theater to me is always one part collaboration and one part confrontation (not in a physical sense though sometimes it happens). It is a way for us to relate, to address, to challenge one another. To test our metal against the text. To forge new ideas and grow as people and performers. What I am hoping is that for all the hours, days and weeks I spend sweating, laboring, losing sleep and often times forgetting to eat, you come to the show and take away something you didn't have before. That what you take away continues to raise your curiosity and wonder. That what you didn't see makes you question what you just did.

I'll leave you with this thought and hopefully it makes you laugh and wonder what in the world these theatre artists are doing.

SELF PORTRAIT

anyone who says the square peg
does not fit in the circular hole
has never seen a crazy bitch with a hammer

-From Tricia Warden‘s Attack God Inside