You can call me Ishmael, but only if you are listening to what I’m saying….

From Curt Columbus--

I always tell this story about when I was performing as an actor  - I was Ishmael in Moby Dick. I had almost a 10 page monologue at the top of this show

"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world"

. . ..oh I can still do a good fifteen minutes of it – well maybe not fifteen . . but probably two.

I remember being on stage and the kids in this one matinee audience were talking. So, I am in the middle of my monologue and I was so angry at them for talking . . .until I realized that they were talking to me. And they were talking about the things that I was saying. So I started then delivering the monologue to them and we started to have a conversation. So it was at 24 years old that I had this revelation about what happens when you really listen to the person who’s talking to you. Sometimes it appears like rudeness, and in fact it’s just someone else’s mode of communication. .

A colleague of mine recently asked me why I was so jazzed about Boots on the Ground. And I thought "God I don’t really know" It is really hard to quantify what it is that makes the piece so exciting to me. But I sat in the room for the first reading - in the presence of these words - and it’s really exciting. So, I guess I do know. . .we are back to politeness. I find what Laura & Deb have created here to be so respectful of the people that they interviewed. As a piece of theater it is genuinely open hearted to the people involved.

From The Artistic Director

When my colleagues here asked me to write something for our weekly Trinity blog, I said, I’d be delighted to contribute.  But, now that I’m sitting down staring at the computer screen, I don’t quite know where to begin.  You see, I’m not sure how to begin to add my voice to this medium, because I’m used to direct contact with my audience.  That’s why I’m drawn to the theater as my medium, why I continue to make theater as opposed to being involved in any other art form.

Maybe that’s where I’ll begin. What makes the theater unique in our culture?  Why does it remain a vital, indeed necessary form of communion and inspiration?  I would argue that the very medium itself – the fact that we leave the comfort of our routine, that we remove ourselves from isolation, that we come into contact with people we do not know – is the reason that theater is still so important.  A night at home on the internet or watching a DVD on the couch cannot break our boundaries and place us outside of ourselves in the same way.  Theater places us on the edge BECAUSE it forces us to live outside of routine.