Spent 5 hours last night looking for jobs and graduate programs on the web. I have an unexpectedly solid feeling about this game company my friends are setting up. It is exactly the kind of right-place-at-the-right-time surprise that have marked so many of my favorite jobs. You don't see them coming, you just are alert enough to grab them when they appear.
It's eerie. I am deeper than ever with theatre. When Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavski took the Moscow Art Theatre company to tour Europe in the early 1900's, they did it with wagons and horses -- and periodic trains. The only reason we ever got to see them at all in America is because producer Morris Gest paid all their expenses. Without Gest, we would never have seen realistic acting. Or, had sitcoms or movies like we do today.
It illuminates again what a precious communal organism a theatre is. Who was responsible for it? Was it Stanislavski, who was revolutionising acting? Moskvin, who was luminous with the new techniques? The company, which all together simply WAS the work? Nemirovich-Danchenko, who was ceaselessly getting them money, negotiating, arranging, keeping the company alive? The stranger in America who paid for them to come over?
It's like that Russian fairytale about the stump in the meadow. "This is my stump," says the ant, "I live here." "This is my stump," says the bird, "I nest here." "This is my stump," says the bear, "I rub my back here." "This is my stump," says the man, "I own this field." Whose stump is it?
Gotta go. Time for rehearsal. Thornton Wilder is such a good playwright, the text can carry the play. You don't find that very often.
1 comment:
Interesting. Believable, yet it's something I had never thought about. Cool point.
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