This is more on the subject of freedom, and follows on from thoughts of sharing…
When I was figuring out how to enable actors to work with new material, how to give them the freedom, trying to understand their process, and vice versa, figuring out how to give writers the freedom, help actors understand their process, I knew that I was the person in the room who had to be responsible for creating the open space, because I was responsible for initially bringing the material to the space.
I knew that I had to maintain some responsibility, because the actors were going to offer me freedom of choice if I gave them freedom of expression. And ‘responsibility’ is a really good way to look at it, because I need to step back from my work and invite other people into it if I want to be able to respond to it. Response-able.
The audience must be response-able.
Freedom.
But the freedom to make an emotional connection can only be applied – or used – when there is a need for an emotional connection.
When an emotion in me sees its mirror image in a story, I engage with that story because it can serve a cathartic need in me. That’s why everyone in the audience watching the same show will connect to it in a slightly different way, and that’s why not everyone is drawn to every story.
That’s also why the same pop song should, if successful, work at a birth, wedding or funeral. (This, from Steven Sater at an MMD seminar, who was told it by someone in the pop industry.) That’s the thing about pop songs: the music must mirror the sine wave that emotion travels, and the lyric must leave enough open space that it can mirror any emotion following that path.
And that’s the thing about traditional musical theatre lyrics: the lyrics illustrate a specific point on the sine wave, in detail more specific than in pop. And folk songs tell a whole story…
We all differ, but our aim is the same: to be a mirror. And the mirror can only do its thing if someone has a need to look in it.
So the language I’m looking for, to illustrate the social value of the arts, must articulate the potential value of a mirror. It must be clear that even if you’ve managed perfectly well so far without it, if you looked in it, you might gain something.
This leads into the notion of being unlimited.
