My Catskills Tour Diary

By Isaac Butler

I spent almost exactly twenty four hours up in the Catskills as a resident artist at The Orchard Project courtesy of the good folks at The Exchange. I spent time with their core company talking about art and the industry and trying to create a meaningful life and body of work, got to do a bit of work on my own writing, and got to catch up and spend some time with the ferociously talented Nick Jones, who roomed in the same building as me.

I struggled for a long time in the car ride up figuring out what I was going to say, how I was going to be, what performance I wanted to give with the Core. They range in age from about 20 to 25, most of them are recent college graduates. Many of them (but not all) were theatre majors, as I was, at least a couple of them have BFAs. And now they're going into this crazy real world, and trying to figure out how theatre fits in it.  

I decided ultimately, that I wasn't there to lead a workshop in anything. i was only there for a day. We had scheduled two times for them to meet with me and talk. So that's what we would do. We would talk. I would try to be there for them, to offer my perspective, to share what I've learned. And to be honest with them. So few people are honest with people just at the start of their careers. I could be an exception to that. Maybe by listening to them and asking them some questions, and offering my opinion when it was needed, I could give them something of value.

And it turns out, I did. It worked very well. We talked about the blog and how it started, and how I got started in theatre. We talked about my transition from director who writes to writer who directs. We talked about the necessity of failure. We talked about how different my life is from the life I envisioned when I was their age, and that that was okay. 

I saw much in the members of The Core Company that reminded me of myself when I was their age, but carrying a weight I did not carry at 22, four months before 9/11, when the dot com bubble burst didn't seem that bad, when theaters weren't closing left and right, when Bush seemed like a harmless sack of shit, when New York was a bit cheaper and everything just seemed wide open with possibility and I was suffused with entitlement. When I was young, the path of move to NYC/self-produce/go to Williamstown/get your MFA/success seemed a real possibility, as two recent Yale graduates immediately had Off Broadway careers.

 An optimism, an enthusiasm, a lightness about theatre as an art form filled the Core Company, but this was combined with a realization that the industry of theater was something else entirely. And then I read to them from your generous comments here on Parabasis of what you would say to them.  And then they asked me to read them my Spider-Man review, which I had never read out loud, and was, I'll admit it, fun to do.

At the end of their first day, in part inspired by some of Scott's writing, I asked them to write two paragraphs for me. One that explained in as much specificity as possible why they do (or want to do) theatre now, today. And the other asking them what they think good theatre is. We adjourned the official activities and then went to someone's cabin and played Mafia (or Werewolf, or maybe Mafia-Werewolf, I'm still unclear).

Watching them act out the roles of storyteller, sheriffs, mafia-werewolfs, townsfolk, I saw that a certain purity, a certain love of the art form that I remembered in myself, but that I have (to be frank) lost. I lost it in learning about the industry and how it works. I lost it in rehearsal rooms dealing with an alcoholic who couldn't remember his lines, or an aspiring film star who reinterpreted scenes behind my back, or losing thousands of dollars on a labor of love. I lost it arguing in the comments of this blog and seeing terrible plays and letting those terrible plays stick with me while forgetting the brilliant ones.

And I realized that part of my journey out of theatre and into writing, part of this sojourn in the wilderness, was to rediscover the pure joy of simply putting on a show together. That the weight I put on everything I did to be the show that made me, or pushed some kind of career forward, or would eventually create a sustainable life for me and my family, that that burden of trying to make A Life In The Theatre was what I needed to remove from the equation. This was not the first time I realized this.  But I needed to be reminded of it. 

The next day, the Core Company read their answers to each other and Nick Jones and David Chapman and myself. They were almost indescribably moving. Well written, articulate, specific, visionary, hopeful. I don't have their permission to write what they told me, and there is little more private and intimate and secret than why we do what we do, what we truly believe in when the chips are down, so that may stay unknown.  

But here's the thing: no one said dick about working in the theatre professionally. Not one of them. Their Whys and their Goods (as I started to call them in my notebook as I listened) were about community, and healing, and exploring complex heady ideas through flesh and blood people,and giving, and intimacy, and understanding, and learning, and creating a space for the human in an increasingly mediatized age.  

I listened, and thought about what I would say to them, what "wisdom" I could perhaps offer from my perch, ten years in to a life they are just embarking on.

I thanked them for giving me the gift of their answers. I told them that I am always moved by the instantaneous trust that theatre artists put in each other. I told them that I asked them to articulate these answers and to write them down for a few reasons.  First, it is very rare outside of a grant application that anyone is going to ask them why they are doing theatre.  They are going to assume a great number of things about why they are doing theatre and what they want to do, and off of that, they are going to give them a lot of advice.  Those people are trying to be helpful, but much of their advice is going to be useless or worse, actively harmful.  Simply because they know neither the why nor the what of your journey.

And another reason is that their why and their good will change. They've changed for me, dramatically. When I moved to New York, it was to build myself to the place where I was making a living as a director. That's what I wanted to do, and I failed at it. And that's okay. Failure is good. You learn from failure. You change from failure, hopefully for the better. And having a written record of what they thought, what they believed in right now at this moment would serve them well in the future.

As with criticism, so with advice: part of what you will need to develop is how to weed out the good from the bad.  Not everything everyone in a position of authority tells you will be the right thing for you to do. 

Now as to your Whys and as to your Goods. Your job now is to create the environment that allows you to do your work, by which i mean the work that fulfills the reasons why you do theatre and the work that is an example of what you think is good. That is your job.

It's not for me-- particularly after only knowing you for a day-- to tell you what to do to create that environment, although if you have questions about the landscape of theatre, I'm happy to answer them. It might be that your environment is in New York, for example. There are lots of perfectly good reasons to move to New York to do theatre that having nothing to do with being a fame-hound. But it may be somewhere else as well. My advice to you here is simply that you think consciously and deliberately about how to go about creating that environment. 

I told them that when I moved to New York, I didn't think about it. Literally, I didn't think about it. All my friends were in New York, that's where you went if you wanted to do theatre, there was a path and I was on it.  I didn't go to Williamstown, but I did all the things you're supposed to do, I assisted, I self-produced, I got hired a few times, got good reviews, did the LCT Directors Lab etc.  And now, I don't work in theatre, except when I want to.

I told them that I say this because those old paths, those old assumptions, those old institutions are breaking down in real time.  You might get advice from your acting teacher at your BFA program, but that person walked a path that existed twenty years ago, that seemed like stone then and that is now cracking and fading into dust. Some people still walk those paths successfully, and if you want to go for it, if that's how you're going to create your environment, do it. I won't judge you.  But I'm simply saying that's not the only path to take.

And then we talked. They were smart questions. Difficult questions. Unanswerable questions, but we tried. We talked about how you can't figure anything out in your head theoretically. If you don't know if you want to act or direct or both, you should be trying to do both as often as possible to collect data.  If people are rejecting your scripts, you should produce them. If you are trying to do this on your own, you need to find a community and if they turn out to be assholes, you need to find another one. 

And then our session was over and it was time for lunch. An actor in one of the shows being developed at the Orchard Project asked me about my car because he's thinking of buying the same model. The Core Company members wanted to know about what I think of and how I respond to critics. I ate more potato chips than I probably should have.  

It was raining.  But in the mountains, about a hundred yards away from us, there was a fire. The smoke hovered in the air like a Djinn tentatively deciding whether or not to get back in the bottle. It was time for me to go.

When we graduate from college and into the world, there's an immediate pressure put on us to Figure Things Out and Have All The Answers. It's like a door closes somewhere and you're not allowed to explore and experiment and fail anymore.  I think this is a grave injustice we visit on the newly-not-young. We worry about the perpetual American adolescence.  I worry about it too. But there has to be a way to demand that people grow up while also allowing them possibility.

I didn't realize when I went up there what a blessing it is to be surrounded by uncynical people, people who believe in what they are doing, who are motivated by love and are unafraid to express it.

On the drive back down to New York, I listened to music from my college years on shuffle on my ipod, songs I haven't heard in a long time. I sang along while Ramona slept on the back seat. I'm not who I was then when I loved these songs.  I don't like who I was then, when I was much more selfish and cruel and ego-driven than the people I spent a day with up in the mountains. As the car idled into a traffic jam just north of the George Washington Bridge, I found myself grateful. Grateful to be given this gift, and to have figured out the life I've figured out thus far. Grateful that there are still young people who love theatre, and want to do it for that love. And grateful, oddly grateful, that I still remembered every word to every song that blared from the speakers of my car. 

Comments

[Josh]

"An alcoholic who couldn't remember his lines." Wow, that's a really harsh way to describe me, Isaac. At any rate, we'll always have MilkMilkLemonade, right? that was fun and special, yes?

This post is beautiful btw.

[isaac]

Josh,

I laughed out loud for a full minute after reading this comment. And thank you.

[Tony Adams]

dig it

[Scott Walters]

Nicely done. It's so important to just work and explore. Find a place to do it where failure isn't so costly, so it isn't scary. I think about Moliere, who came into Paris too early and went bankrupt, and who learned his craft by touring the countryside for a decade working working always working. I'm glad you had them write out their why's, and I hope they store those writings away somewhere to refer to regularly to remind themselves. The temptation to be "professional" can, like many temptations, take you away from your heart, your raison d'etre, and having something to remind you can help keep you on your path. Not The Path, but your path. It was good of you to share what you've discovered. Well done.

[Timberland Waterproof Boots]

He is a good friend that speaks well of us behind our backs.