I love theatre. I forget how true this is, until I walk back into a rehearsal room. I love all its aspects: story, people, groupwork, excellence, striving, fabrics, music, movement, light, space, movement, time, myth. Even when it's someone else's production, I am highly nourished by it. Everything in that room interests me. It is medieval enough for me -- paper, fabric, touch, word, hand-made-ness. The laptops and fiber-optics are adjunct, the human body & spirit is the focus.
I am acting dramaturg for this production. Our play takes place in New Hampshire, 1901 - 1913, so we need to know what life was like back then. Using an idea I saw at Yale School of Drama, I made a visual wall of reference -- huge photos of people in 1910, blown-up xerox copies of 1900-1920 household & kitchen items, enlarged articles of what an ordinary person would need to know -- how to diagnose a disease; how to identify the plants to make the medicine yourself; how to cook for the sick; basic cooking & canning; choosing and training a horse; bee-keeping; sheep; chickens; cattle; domestic animals; mechanical; the toilet (cosmetics & barbering); miscellaneous (young ladies, avoid drunk young men).
I am relearning the impact of visual communal information. This same info, in handouts, would not be used nearly as often as when it is displayed on a wall. On a wall, it seeps into our group consciousness, and can be referenced during rehearsals. "How DID they grind coffee? Did they have percolators yet?" To the wall we go.
Some people just love being around cars. Or boats. Or in the woods. For me, it's a theatre.
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