004. go to your studio and make stuff (to BenS)

Dear Ben,

Talking with Ania was my first calibration in a long time. I had expected to feel a longing, an envy, that she is immersed in a rich & vibrant theatre company and I am not. Instead, I felt a profound equality. I am incredibly involved with my own theatre company -- with founding it, creating its second performance, shaping its form.

"You know how, when you're making a play, you are only fully alive in the rehearsal room?" I said. "How any time away from the rehearsal room is just waiting until you can return to it?" "Yes," she said, heartfelt, alight. "That is how I am with this bootcamp," I said. "It is the most real thing I'm doing, the edge of my work."

We had gone to Snoqualmie Falls that afternoon. Sunny, swarming with tourists. We climbed out to the foremost rocks, looking straight across the water to where twin falls crashed. "That is you and me," I said, gazing at the two. "What are we becoming?" Where the water falls, there is great spray, a deep pool, a broad and shallowing river coursed with rocks, the winds away.

She sang lightly an ancient Greek song, a ululation, as we stood in the spray. I stood beside her, shoulders touching, so I was within the song's small circle. I sang an underharmony, a bass with wail-attack that then droned. I cannot follow this kind of singing, only find its ground. I took pictures of her in front of the waterfall. The best was one without the falls, of her leaning against a rock higher than herself, looking like a piece of the rock.

That night we ate steaming mushroom spaghetti over fat ravioli, with sharp white cheddar cheese, toasted bread, cold carrot slaw with pepper, hot peas & corn, chilled water, tea.

She is the first guest I have had for a meal -- for whom I have provided the meal, where we sat at the dining table, and ate.

"Are you always like this?" she asked, as we drove to the airport a few days later. I nodded. "Whenever I am making a performance," I said. More accurately, whenever I am making a company that is making a performance.

Microsoft is itself an orthogonality. Making games for Microsoft is like the monastery making bread to sell in the town; not its primary work, but necessary.

"Find some work to do for the town which is not theatre," said Julia Varley, at the Odin. "Find another way to connect."

Meeting Anis is the first time I have met someone from an Odin, who although away from their Odin, like me carries their Odin within; and is, in fact, their Odin. We were a little piece of god meeting a little piece of god, as particles of god.

You wrote, "Just do it. Find the space any way you can. Just train." Mine is the same -- "Just do it. Find the space & the people who want to transform into a company, any way you can. Just train & make a company who is making a performance."

The next level is to "Just do it" for the highest level -- for clear upfront contracts, for solid support, for the beautiful space in nature, which this work requires. Which I require, to generate this work.

I am readinga writings on nature by Thomas Merton, the Franciscan monk. The sections are: The seasons... the elements... the sentinels... sanctuary. The sections each have several chapters, except Sanctuary which has only one: the forest. "The forest is my bride," he writes. At one point he is walking through a 2-mile forest which someone has just given the monastery. Deep in its heart, he says that just being here is enough to bring any human to enlightenment. To center, to peace.

I live on 5 acres of land. My house, garage, woodshed, & yard are all crept near the road, on the front part of the first acre. Behind, the other 4 acres slant down to a stream, then stretch up a long wilderness hill. My land ends at the top of the hill, where I have only been once, the day I bought it. My neighbors have left theirs wild as well. In the woods between us live a bear, several deer, raccoons. I love being part of a silent complicity, sanctuary for a bear.

Last week I discovered a well-worn trail across my land. It leads up from the stream, wends beside the house, then out through the tall-grass & blackberrries to the pond. I follwed it, bemused, to where it vanished into the reeds by the water.

"That's not a pond," observed Aric two years ago. "That's a big hole in the ground that will eventually widen out until its flat, and everything will fall into it." He is right. The bench has fallen in, and the bank, and it's heading for the trees. "Fix the pond" is on my to-do list.

When Staniewski was ready to found his theatre he rode all over Poland, rural and populated, on a motorbike, looking for the place most conducive for a theatre. He eventually chose Gardzienice, in the most rural of eastern Poland. The next city to the east, I believe, is Kiev. "His motorbike broke in Gardzienice," said Ania.

That is the phase I am entering. The search for where to found this company. I am already founding it, by doing the work.

The biggest thing different about this bootcamp is how saturated with reality it is. In a usual bootcamp, people create paintings; performances; things you can create in a week-long offsite. In this one we create things in the real world.

Do we need a consciously metaphoric form, like theatre or bootcamp, as a lens for reality? Or would any form do? Again, I return to the monastery as my model.

I am a monk of theatre. As are you. Of theatres which do not yet exist, because we have not yet created them; or, are creating them each time we go in the studio. But monks in a lineage, nonetheless.

You say your work in the studio is to prepare the space for the one who will come. You are the one who will come. Being in the studio, you are already beginning to arrive.

Go to your studio and make stuff, says Fred Babb.

rachel