it's all been crazy lately

i’ve been thinking about crazy lately – how crazy it is – what we’re doing.

it’s crazy.

building this huge machine to support and enhance one production of amadeus.

building an education component from the ground up.

taking all of this on in the worst economic circumstances in our recent history

when unemployment in the state of rhode island is among the highest in the nation..

when conventional wisdom and past models, graphs and statistics say you can’t consider offering a high-quality production for free and have it be a success.

but here’s the thing.

it’s all crazy right now.

it’s crazy that huge institutions we’ve trusted for years are going belly-up right and left.

it’s crazy that the world’s economy has just stopped.

it’s crazy that no one saw this coming – or worse, that the people “in charge” did nothing about it.

it’s crazy that we’ve become so isolated, so arrogant that somehow it’s ok in our world to bilk people out of $50 billion and then, your punishment is to remain under house arrest in a manhattan penthouse.

it’s crazy that in the richest nation in the word, children remain uneducated, that people go to bed hungry and that good, comprehensive health care remains out of reach for a large segment of our population.

it’s crazy.

because there’s solutions to all of it.

and, biggest and best of all – it’s absolutely crazy that there’s an african american family living in the white house.

it’s crazy.

and it’s all true.

and here’s the thing….as i think about the crazy stuff that supposedly “couldn’t happen”, i reflect on a few other crazy things.

--in the 70’s (another time of economic free fall) a small theatre company housed in a church basement decided to take a leap into a huge building in crumbling downtown providence

--in the 80’s and 90's, a mayor decided to invest heavily in the arts to reinvigorate a blighted downtown.

--in the 00’s, another theatre company moved to pawtucket…pawtucket for god’s sake…

it’s crazy.

and on a summer break from graduate school, some students decided to do shakespeare for free in waterplace park on a budget of $300.

it’s crazy.

and here's a big one --

i mean, if you really think about it, captain sullenburger wouldn’t have been able to make that spectacular, heroic hudson river landing a few weeks ago if those crazy wright brothers hadn’t stopped listening to the experts who said it was crazy.

so it’s crazy…

so what?

let’s do it anyway.

because usually it’s those really crazy things that later, when the dust of creation has settled, people look at the brand new shiny object and think

wow.

that was inspired.

we’ve got to stop placing all of our faith in the old models and listening only to those voices of doubt. the experts who live in a place of what can’t be done…the safe path…the proven. the conventional wisdom.

because this is a new model.

and there will be times of frustration, and setback and seeming lack of clarity.

but that’s because we’re building it around us…as we go…it’s never been done before quite like this – grass roots theatre – from the bottom up.

instead of seeing things as a roadblock, we’ve always got to understand it’s an opportunity to get sharper and better and smarter. to trust in ourselves and each other that we may not know the answer instantly, but together, pulling on the very highest and best we can imagine for all involved –

we’ll figure it out.

and think about it this way –

eight months from now, if we all do our parts – if we all work hard, ask smart questions of smart people and push to grow and learn together, we’ll be able to reflect on my god, look what we’ve done…what we’ve created.

or

we could all just hang out in fear and uncertainty for the next eight months to see what happens. and miss this window of opportunity

it’s up to us.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

and i've been thinking about why education is important and why i believe that theatre can be such an integral component to education.

and i realize that i may think of this topic differently from a lot of people.

see, i don't think that good education is a one-way street.

i think that if we're good at what we do we’re not so much teaching kids as learning with them -- compelling them to ask questions that force us to examine our strongly held beliefs, our areas of expertise, so that we can more accurately demonstrate them by explaining them -- and maybe even, who knows, changing them.

rubrics. standards. e.l.a.... it’s not a language i speak and honestly, i don’t really give a hoot about most of those words.

learning. education. mentorship.

those words matter to me.

i mean, we don’t take tests in life, so why are we teaching kids to pass tests?

we should be teaching kids, adults, everyone how to think….how to learn…how to question….how to figure it out.

because that’s what’s important –

figuring it out.

and that's where theatre can be so influential in kid's, in people's, lives -- not just in observing the performance, but in actually becoming part of the creative process....by helping the adults in the room figure it out, they enrich the experience for all involved.

success in life is not being able to fill in enough correct circles with a #2 pencil on some form concocted by some weenie-armed big brain in a cubicle in washington.

what’s important is learning how to think – how to look at a problem as an interesting challenge instead of an insurmountable obstacle –

learning how to trust yourself and those around you enough to believe that if we all turn our attention to the same challenge – the same problem – we’ll figure it out.

i’m not particularly interested in people who say "i don’t know how to do that…”

i’m interested and invested in people who say “i’ve never done that before but i’m working as hard as i can to figure it out.”

that’s exciting to me.

because that’s our job. as human beings. to figure it out.

instead of just sitting on our couch, surfing through jiggle-fear-wrestle mania-bachelorette number 4-i-wanna-be-famous-for-no-good-reason, survival-of-the-most-ruthless escapist drivel waiting for someone to tell us what to do or what to think, we need to roll up our sleeves, get out the shovels and start figuring it out.

because, let’s face it –

the other model hasn’t been working out so well lately.

just because we haven’t yet is not a good reason to say we can’t

one is a challenge. the other is a defeat.

it’s the struggle that’s fascinating.

and two more random (or not so) thoughts:

the only fish that go with the flow are dead fish.

you don’t build a big, strong ship to sit in the harbor.