..memory not being what it used to be – I looked up the details on the period of creating Rex. On the front pg of v1 of the script is: begun 15.8.02 finished 26.7.03 _________ My time in London had pushed me ahead of general conversations to be found onstage elsewhere. Returned to the US, the realization was that my theatre voice was not at all in synch with what then was American theatre culture. I was rumbled and dug deeper in my belief of how arts disciplines must intersect, synergistically utilize distinct forms of storytelling, woven as fuse to permissions across arts disciplines, and give breadth to new landscapes of narrative. In point of fact, I began writing in the summer of 2001. A first draft of my thinking was finished by August, 2001. By 2002 boundaries were being stretched by technology, in a way that would transform how audiences consumed information, and instantaneously multi-task digesting waves of diverse details.. It was also almost a year on from 9/11. America was continuing to react - to dynamics of globalization.. migration.. climate change.. ..-it was in this crucible where I found the subject of Rex, ancient fodder of ‘end of empire’.. But constructing it in the chance to be refracted through innumerable cultural lenses happened in a trip to Australia, from a specific moment in a very small gallery in Melbourne, where I found myself absorbed by the details of an incredible piece of Indigenous art.. Although before that instant, I may have had a sense of the importance knowing was in Indigenous culture, the aspect of considering this as an immemorial river, of ways of belonging and journey .. that had not been my appreciation.. -connecting to such a view of continuum ..gave me the center to Rex – as a ‘map’, of sorts, that might refract any culture’s narratives of struggle.. through indigenous art forms of storytelling.. and memory. But what now comes to life through the acumen of JK Production’s vision and community of talent.. is navigation beyond even my most longstanding hope.
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