..in the period after meeting Philip Rose, Breathing Ash received several opportunities for workshop, and though each was well attended, and the play provoked all kinds of engaged conversation and interest, it had a visual component which, ultimately, was too challenging to produce.
I was left to consider how else I might engage a producer, or theatre company, to get involved with bringing the triptych to some kind of berth.
Theater, of this new millennium, is having a bit of a hard time settling itself in to being “new” –which is something of an old issue.
What we need as impetus are new houses that facilitate the thinking and technology of the next millennium, which should offer impetus for production companies to nurture artists who can speak the tongue of this new ‘black box’.
There are many moments of funny and fun working with kids, especially when you don’t expect it..
there are no rules about leaping into the new, because no one has ever been there before..
That was my high school yearbook quote, and remains something of a deep belief.
Guidelines are not the same as rules, though –and often, serendipity is a way of affirming direction.
Though separated by several years, two instances of particular chance are linked to the opportunities, and hopes, I have for the triptych.
The middle ‘panel’, called Breathing Ash, cuts close to the bone, touching issues of race, culture and politics.
When I started writing, Polly’s advice was wise: don’t force a type of writing. Don’t force the words into a play; just write, and however it comes, follow the story.
My first efforts came out as prose –short pieces of fiction, outlining a setting and carving a dynamic between protagonists.
The avenues into writing always seemed to develop out of visual settings: two people on a park bench; a person standing alone at a bus stop; a man, sitting on the edge of a swimming pool, watching the tattoo of a dolphin bobbing through the water..