Why I Left Theatre
If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.
– John Cage
Substitute theatre for music in the passage above and that’s pretty much the problem I was facing back in the mid-90s. I wanted more experience. More life. And it had to be life beyond/outside theatre. I didn’t see how I could ever make meaningful theatre otherwise.
Because I was 24, over educated and under-experienced I didn’t realize that life happens no matter what we do or where we go until it’s done with us and we don’t get to know what happens after wards. I didn’t necessarily need to drop theatre, I needed to pay more attention to the rest of my life and integrate what I found there into theatre whenever and how ever I could.
Now, fifteen-plus years later, I feel a bit locked out of theatre. Rivers crossed. Bridges burned. Chance and opportunity neglected. Contacts lost.
I know. I know. I’m not dead yet. It’s just not an easy thing to fix, folks. And you know it. And if you know me, you know it’s not about joining a local community theatre group (may Shakespeare bless them from his perfectly worded Elizabethan heaven). It’s about generating material and getting it heard. Performed. Produced.
Pro forma blogging says I should end here with a question, instead I ask you for yours.
