Excerpt from my Letter to Christy, 26 February 2006

...

I've only been in Idaho again for this past week and already it feels as though I've been away for months. I've living my life right now in hiccups, snap-elections and immersive experiences, constantly losing sight of the last rich tapestry of sensory-overload just as soon as that next one clobbers me and wraps me up inside, like Cleopatra, ready to be bustled off and dropped at the feet of some other Roman.

...I saw Boise Contemporary Theatre's "The Physics of Regret" last night. It was an ensemble-created work crafted over the course of 2 years, and while I saw much that was worthwhile and provocative, I did not see enough to draw the work together as a whole, not on the same scale as the ambition of the piece, which obviously impelled it across two years, the landing of various grants and a striking design process.

But it was enough to remind me that this was exactly the kind of theatre I want--the strong, meticulously crafted design, the intimate ensemble, the sense of grown-up pro's workign with everything they've got. No choking back to make the lesser scene partner look better. No dumbing-down for the lowest-common-audience denominator. Complex ideas. Complicated characters. And risking enough to clearly fail means that the stakes if you succeed are that much sweeter. Goddammit, THAT'S WHAT I WANT.

So now I'm leafing through yet more plays, looking for more monologues, stoking this precious kindling of frank ambition, cupped in my hands like a match in the wind. My roster of Books here In Idaho now includes a much larger, richer proportion of plays than is even otherwise my wont. I'm hungry for more.

I have to be careful with this frank ambition, though. Too often and too quickly I can easily smother it all by comprehending too much from the top of the trail, and sinking in resignation at the face of so many obstacles--funding, casting, organizaqtion, finding playing spaces, scheduling, marketing--all stuff I've hardly begun to conceive of. Patience, and a careful pace of constructing myself such as to be able to undertake all of these things in due course, are my only conceivable responses right now... I must bide my time, audition, and keep learning...