director’s reflection

in Sarah Ruhl’s “afterword to Eurydice in the form of 10 questions”, she asks “How can we mourn in the theatre, and what is the proper place for ghosts?” I don’t imagine that ghosts are concerned with proper places or that we are capable of such a sectioning-off. if we believe that dead people become ghosts, then we must also believe that ghosts are all around us, every inch of everywhere—ghosts in the theatre, in the churches, bathrooms, nurseries, jails. we can’t corral them, nor can we corral our grieving hearts. mourning is not an isolated event or even an action— mourning is a veneer that all lovers left alive wear all the time, a filter through which all things are refracted. so we mourn in the theatre the same way we mourn at the grocery store, which is to say: by necessity. but I love this question because it pushes me to go a little further, to imagine the ways that we can create theatre that calls our grief by name and probes it with a dissector’s precision, tender with the wound. ghosts, you are welcome here. sad people, you are too. just as you are, with your bleeding heart hanging outside of your chest.

this production is a live community ritual that involves the audience, the (very vocal) geese, the beavers, the kayakers passing by, the sanitation workers across the river, the bugs, and the fishermen who set up next to us on the dock and wonder what the hell we are doing.

audiences have become accustomed to the technologies that make an elevator rain, accustomed to relying on a camera lens to direct their focus, and accustomed to sitting in the dark. what is unfamiliar to us is seeing the spaces we occupy in our daily lives radically awakened as sites of transformation. it’s unfamiliar to sit across from each other in the light and witness actively, even as the distant honking trucks and geese illustrate a world that is always calling our attention elsewhere. to just be here. we’ve been so spoiled by elaborate visuals and cutting-edge technology, but is there really anything more spectacular than the real thing? a play about a river, by a river. water cupped in palms, poured from metal cans, rippling as the oar skates across the water, dripping off the actors’ skin. stilts, ladders, a scooter, string. umbrellas and suitcases that become roofs and bathtubs analog sound, played across a banjo, a cello, two guitars, a washboard, two harmonicas, and good old fashioned bangin’ on a bucket.

we can still be dazzled by the things we understand, believe the puppet is alive even if we see the hand. we’ve chosen the live medium in a space where nothing can be hidden, embracing limitation as aesthetic, vitalizing the text, and inviting the audience to follow their curiosity by staging the play in every inch of usable space, including the river itself. welcome. look around.