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SITI Company has just completed a two-week “creative lab” period in which we laid down the initial strokes on the canvas for a new project entitled Café Variations.  Committing those first strokes is absolutely terrifying. At least that is my experience.  In the weeks and days leading up to our collective launch, I was nervous and jittery.  As much as I prepared, nevertheless I felt the real lack of firm ground.  Armed with the theme of the alchemy that occurs when one human being makes the heroic effort to reach out to ..

SITI Company is approaching its twentieth year.  Yes, twenty years!  One of the biggest challenges that we face is our capacity to reinvent ourselves rather than capitulate to the human tendency to repeat old worn down, unexamined patterns.  If SITI is to thrive in the coming years, we must re-assess the stories that we tell others and ourselves about ourselves, and we must invent new narratives when necessary. 

We are looking seriously at how decisions are made, how projects are initiated, funded, diversified and carried out and how we might possibly move forward ..

Walking through Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan last week, I noticed that everyone, in all directions of this packed tiny public space, seemed to be in the midst of serious conversations about the economy. I immediately recognized the analogue nature of the place, the face-to-face interaction, and the breathing-common-air so inherent to the art of theater.  In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, architecture critic Michael Kimmelman considered the effect of place on the viral nature of the Occupy Wall Street movement. “We tend to underestimate the power of physical places,” he wrote.  He quoted one of the ..

Every director is acquainted with the feeling of dismay when rehearsals turn into previews and an audience becomes part of the mix. Suddenly there is simply nowhere to leave your jacket or bag. Everyone else has a home base - the stage manager and the actors have the benefit of their dressing rooms and stations. The director wanders around aimlessly trying to figure out where to leave her belongings. This sense of displacement is spiritual as well as it is practical. I began to complain at various theaters to whoever would listen about the problem of displacement that all directors experience ..

Writing here in the hills of Malibu on the coast of southern California, while working on a new adaptation of Trojan Women on the outdoor stage at the Getty Villa, offers the opportunity to reflect not only upon the origins of theater in the western world but also the roots of the idea of a social experiment called democracy. The form of democracy that we inherited from the Greeks is vastly different from its starting point. But tracing democracy’s trajectory is valuable.

Democracy and theater are inextricably linked.  In fifth century BC Greece it was a requirement of ..

I am writing on the last day of July in Los Angeles.  The cool, dry climate here is a relief after the onslaught of heat and humidity on the east coast this summer.  We are here beginning a new adventure.  We are building a temple entitled Trojan Women .  How presumptuous to consider a play a temple and yet I believe that we are constructing a temple because the work of theater, although ephemeral, is an act of hope, audacity and faith in a world not formally asking for it.  I believe that the theater is a sanctuary for exactly these ..

The fourth and final undergraduate institution I attended was Bard College.  I transferred in the middle of the school year, January of 1972.  At registration I announced that I wanted to study directing and was told that I would have to take a course in acting instead and I was assigned to a class taught by an older gentleman in a natty suit named Neil McKenzie.  The class seemed quite close-knit and I was clearly the outsider joining into their process.  As I entered the studio on the first day, everyone was already in place and I stood awkwardly in front ..

I am upstate, preparing to begin rehearsals for Bizet’s Carmen at Glimmerglass and I am thrilled to be part of Francesca Zambello’s initial season as Artistic and General Director at that venerable opera house.  For anyone who has not been to Glimmerglass, it is worth a trip.  In addition to Carmen you can see Francesca’s production of Annie Get Your Gun with Deborah Voigt singing the eponymous role as well as Cherubini’s Medea (what an amazing confab of three strong women – Carmen, Annie and Medea) as well as a double bill of A ..

Veteran acting teacher Steve Wangh developed an exercise that he suggests can teach an actor most of what they need to know about acting. Five or more actors enter the stage together, each with the task of getting the audience to look at them and them alone.  Although it seems that this might lead to a free-for-all demonstration of blatant narcissism, in fact actors quickly learn that being loud and obvious does not necessarily attract and hold the attention of the audience.  To become un-dismissible demands a concentration of energy and intention into intensely focused action. The audience becomes ..

At a SITI Company Christmas party, I was sitting on the floor next to Jason Hackett, a great friend of the Company who had recently joined the SITI Board, bringing his expertise in marketing and branding to help our trajectory. Both of us were hunched over plates of holiday food when Jason said, “Tell me why my friends should come to see a SITI Company production.” I took a deep breath and began to speak about how our plays engage audiences with issues of contemporary interest and how they are like theatrical essays on relevant subjects. Jason interrupted me.  “No,” he ..