Details

Our third day on the stage in a building that's going to be the death of me. How can I both love and hate it with such a passion? The space is awful and glitchy and can burst into flames at any moment. The space is open and wonderful because it allows me to discard all the rules of serious (read "deadly") theatre, one by one. I combine (shamelessly) elements of realism with touches of Strindberg, Durrenmatt and Craig. I ask the actors to be guided by the rhythm of the melody that accompanies their dialogue. The movement of the entire piece is dictated by the tension between moments of extraordinary sadness and mad bouts of comedy. I emphasize the cartoony character of I.N.S.E.C.T's personnel and the difficult humanity of the emotives.

In the play, humanity is more of a curse than a blessing. Having emotions, feeling things intensely, falling in and out of love are punishable offenses. At the end people are offered a choice: to be human (read, "a mess") or to go through life feeling nothing, protected from emotions and their misery. What would you choose? What would I choose if I had a choice?

It is difficult for me to focus entirely on details at this point (why repertory theatres ignore details almost always is a mystery to me). I have to deal with the faulty wiring, the noisy speakers, the loud neon sign that illuminates the exits, and the 250 props that somehow find their way downstage center .

One thing was confirmed today, though: I am surrounded by extraordinary people. I wrote a panicky message to Karl, KRVS's extraordinary sound engineer, and he came at the end of the day to fix all of our sound problems. I also wrote to Jamie, asking her to drop by one of these days (before the tech rehearsal on Saturday) and see how many lights are still working and what gels we need for the show. She came in today before we began rehearsal and assured me that all the lights we had for The Happiness Machine are still there.

I don't know what I did in another life to deserve these people. I don't know what I did to deserve the casts that I work with, or Susan and her paintings, or Drew and his profound understanding of structures and environments (particularly the artificial environments on the stage), or Chun who's doing sound for the first time but understands completely my need for perfectionism.

Details make the play: a particular movement that occurs on a particular musical beat; a certain inflection of the voice that anchors an entire scene; a spectacular shade of red that suggests a particular emotion, and so on. The position of the actors' hands in a moment of respiro. A delicate caress. An exaggerated walk. A sigh. A look. Everything choreographed to the second, repeated and perfected until it looks efortless, like a happy accident.

I was worried about Dan tonight. He looked rough, existential, dark. Is the character of the emotive getting to him? Mike is coming down with a cold, Ellie is overworked, Conni walked in yesterday announcing the worst day of her life. Laura...I'm not sure about Laura. This is her first play and -- I am told -- I am an acquired taste so I don't know how she feels yet. I try things out, make one demand one moment, and the opposite demand a moment later. I experiment, discard, try again. Everything is trial and error until the errors fade in the background and some new form of life -- not quite real, not entirely artificial either -- is born on the stage.

This is my refuge and my laboratory. These people are my friends and my army and we have declared war against all things ordinary. I want a theatre of extraordinary gestures and legendary love affairs. I want to create characters whose lives I envy. I want to tear down the barriers between tragedy and comedy. I want a drama that makes the public giddy and a farce that brings them to their knees.

I'm beginning to sound like Dr. Who, when he has one of those terrific end-of-the-episode monologues that create intergalactic incidents. I want to be the cause of an intergalactic incident. Then I can rest for a while.