Dreaming can be a Fact in our Life

I’ve been watching a lot of documentaries lately. I blame my unlimited membership to Netflix and the instant play option for these late night sojourns into the fascinating lives of others. [Netflix directs me to "Understated Biographical Documentaries" every time I sign in.] I’ve particularly been fanatical about Werner Herzog as I’m in the midst of taking notes for a project centered on his intense hateful love affair with actor Klaus Kinski.


Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski on set.

What I find most fascinating about the figures documented in these films, whether it’s Phillipe Petit in Man on Wire or Klaus Kinski in My Best Fiend, is the desire to achieve the impossible – to dream wholeheartedly, to believe in its possibility and to actually live that dream, whether or not it’s being recognized, supported or funded.

Philip Glass says in Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts, “People say, ‘I feel like I’m dreaming.’ And the reason they feel like they’re dreaming is because they are. Dreaming can be a fact in our life.”

Dreaming can be a FACT in our life.

Yes, I certainly agree with this. I will be the first to admit that 90% of my day is spent dreaming and acting out upon those dreams.

The notion of dreaming the impossible has always drawn me in. I say time and time again in rehearsals, a notion I garnered from someone else I am sure (I won’t claim credit), that our job as artists is to stage what seemed impossible. When I write stage directions I purposely write movements that cannot possibly be achieved on the stage – at least with the budgets Buran and companies similar to us are dealing with.

I’m intrigued and fascinated to see where this impossible movement will lead. I want the canvas to be as big and as sloppy as possible, with the hope that there might be some poetics in there. If not, there is the honest confrontation when meeting the impossibility of your ideas.

For instance, from Bournijka the Boxer (which will be premiering here in NYC in less than three weeks!):

BOURNIJKA comes out jabbing and punching.
ADAM goes in for a big old kiss – tongue prepped and all.
Bournijka punches Adam square in the face before the kiss can land.
Adam flies across the stage and OFF.

I see this as Adam literally being punched into the air and flying off the stage. This is the only moment this happens in the script. At no other moment does Adam FLY off stage. A literary manager, I am almost certain, would look at this and immediately, “No. I don’t think so.” Am I being stubborn for keeping this in the text? Is my constant day-dreaming deluding me?

I don’t think that’s even worth considering.

I feel very lucky to be the fool. The one with his head in the clouds and feet planted and scuffling about and around the stage.

The title track to Paul Simon’s album Rhythm of The Saints has the following chorus:

Reach in the darkness
A reach in the dark
To overcome an obstacle or an enemy
To glide away from the razor or a knife
To overcome an obstacle or an enemy
To dominate the impossible in your life

Dominating the impossible can only be accomplished by an act – and for me, at least, that act has always found itself achievable on the stage. As asinine as it may seem, I have no interest in staging something I have seen before, I want to tear apart and reconfigure the canvas each time.

How do your dreams manifest? Your aspirations? Your visions of a potential future that involve more participants than your own consciousness?

I want to know.

Onward and upward!

-Adam

Your Authentic Obsession

I was watching Charlie Rose last week as I was trying to put myself to sleep and he had half an hour dedicated to discussing the life and work of J.D. Salinger. Charlie Rose asked his guest Adam Gopnick of the New Yorker, who wrote last week’s piece “Remembering J.D. Salinger," what he learned from Salinger as a writer. Gopnick answered:

“I learned that the only thing that matters for a writer is not how clever you are – the only courage that matters is the courage to write the thing you want to read. Not to be afraid of the thing that seems to matter the most to you…the experience of becoming an artist [a writer] is learning to not throw out your authentic obsession, it’s learning to recognize your authentic obsession. Which most the time people don’t want you to write about because it’s embarrassing in some way – that your authentic obsession is your real material.”

This struck me as being extremely profound.

Your authentic obsession IS your material.

As I’ve been working in the past week on material for 2010 Summer Buran I’ve kept this notion close to me.

We so often try to ignore the material that keeps welling up time and time again- whether as actors, composers, musicians, designers - but by ignoring that we suffer the consequences of not doing the work that lives in us most fully, honestly, and whole-heartedly, in a way that makes it individualistic.

It got me thinking about my obsessions, like my obsession to figuratively meet Chekhov in my writing.

Or my obsession with familial situations. Or with the Marx Brothers. Or with Shirley Temple. Or Leonard Cohen. Or sloppy staging. Or people on stage with their mouths full. Or stark colors or no color at all. Or musical moments that have no place on stage. These are things I find myself wanting to bring into the picture time and time again.

Finding your true authentic obsession. I’m surely still figuring that out for myself.

I want to know, what is your true authentic obsession?
Do you find this notion freeing? Or ridiculous?
What does this mean? Your authentic obsession?
Is obsession the right word for it?
How can we share what is singularly our obsession. Is that selfish? Or is it selfish not to embrace it?

Talk amongst yourselves!

-Adam