What it is to perform

I came across something just now that I'd vaguely heard of years ago. A woman, Jill Bolte Taylor, was a neuroscientist, self-described intellectual, and a very logical and linear person. One morning she woke up and was changed.

This is her story:


That last slide of her presentation is a stained-glass brain. She makes them by hand. After her stroke, she was deluged with creative energy and an intense desire to express herself in non-traditional ways (for a scientist).

Her Bio at the TED pages says:
"From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the 'Singin' Scientist.'"

'Singin' is right! I've seen only a handful of one-man shows that come close to the emotional truth, showmanship, and beautiful communication of this speech. Her transformation seems to have given her that most divine and rare of performer's gifts: the ability to loose sight of oneself and offer up every ounce of personal energy to the audience.

Her message of "Right Brain Nirvana" is immensely instructive to anyone engaged in the live performance arts. If performers and observers can sit in a space and truly breath, think, feel, and exist together (forget where our molecules give way to the universe's molecules) there is a serendipitous moment in time when artistic endeavor can cross the realms of science and the spirit. It can help us understand what it is to be. What it means to exist, and how we can live together in peace.

I wonder if she's ever thought about writing a play...

When we're not hanging drywall...

Sort of gets you in the mood for a good Russian comedy, doesn't it?

Our Source

We have six barrels on order. It will be a great season.

We have the keys!

Our apologies for abandoning the blog the last few weeks.  The whole purpose of the blog was to keep folks up to date and hopefully excited about what we're doing.  And for months--long, long months--not much was happening except for the dreaming.  But now... NOW...this theatre thing is actually materializing.  The permits from the county began falling into place about two weeks ago.  We were about to take possession of the space on Spring Hill Road when yet another unforeseen problem--this time about fireproofing the space beneath us--suddenly reared up throwing all of us into some dark pit.  (I don't think we could have handled another long wait.)  Our architects, ButzWilbern, came to the rescue yet again, solved the problem with a simple solution, and cleared the way for the takeover.  We picked up the keys on Tuesday, June 10, and started demolition of the previous tenant's buildout right away.  We decided to handle the demolition ourselves to save some money.  Thankfully--and I don't think I've ever been so full of thanks--word spread and we've had a whole stream of hardworking friends and neighbors tackling a quite sizable demo job.  It's pretty much a big, empty room now but you don't have to dream too much to begin seeing the outlines of a theatre...an actual, living, breathing theatre.  Our 1st Stage.  It's hard to find the words...

But you have to see it for yourself.  Please stop by anytime and take something more than a virtual tour.  We're going to have a party very soon--we just have to figure out how a party meshes with the construction folks.  Keep an eye on the website for an announcement.  We have so much to celebrate.  This is going to be a good thing.  What a world!

Put a Little Science in Your Life

This Sunday's New York Times has a really special op-ed piece from Brian Greene, string theorist and author of many popular non-fiction bookson scientific topics.

Greene writes about Science's mis-characterization in the public sphere as a method/world-view that is useful (produces technology) but ultimately difficult to grasp, boring, or unable to inspire real wonder or 'spiritual' satisfaction. He writes about faults in the ways science is often taught: "Like a music curriculum that requires its students to practice scales while rarely if ever inspiring them by playing the great masterpieces."

Here's my favorite bit:

"It’s one thing to go outside on a crisp, clear night and marvel at a sky full of stars. It’s another to marvel not only at the spectacle but to recognize that those stars are the result of exceedingly ordered conditions 13.7 billion years ago at the moment of the Big Bang. It’s another still to understand how those stars act as nuclear furnaces that supply the universe with carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, the raw material of life as we know it.

And it’s yet another level of experience to realize that those stars account for less than 4 percent of what’s out there — the rest being of an unknown composition, so-called dark matter and energy, which researchers are now vigorously trying to divine."

Beautiful.

Anyway, I just really liked all this. But, it also relates to our endeavor at 1st Stage. One play I'd very much like to do in our first season is a charming, fascinating, and odd work by Charlotte Jones, called Humble Boy. Humble Boy's main character, Felix Humble, is a troubled string theorist. Jones, aside from writing a touching story on the human level, manages to expound on the intricacies of String Theory through a number of Felix's cryptic, fascinating, and vaguely metaphorical monologues.

It, like Brian Greene's writing, is useful for provoking curiosity and yielding greater understanding in scientific realms, but most importantly it's also just a fun, entertaining experience; it's exactly what science themed works can and should be.