An excerpt from The Hunger for Story : Lessons from One Theatre World 2007 to be published in TYA Today in the fall.

The mid-morning sun shone on an oversize bronze sculpture of Marcie, the character from the Peanuts comic strip, sitting on a park bench and reading a book.  While I had noticed the many Peanuts sculptures throughout St. Paul, their significance was not made clear to me until a 2 year old taught me an important lesson. 

He was walking on the sidewalk in front of me.  I had just noticed him when suddenly he changed direction.  Tottering along at a steady clip, he veered right, increased velocity and barreled toward the sculpture.  As he got closer, he slowed, lifted his hands to the top of the book—which was just as flatly bronze as the rest of the figure—and began to lift himself up to peer into the open pages.  It was clear that he wanted to know what story it was that was being told on these pages.  It was clear that he had in him the very thing that brought us all to St. Paul: the hunger for story.

While writing an article for TYA Today about the Tribe of Story at the One Theater World festival in St. Paul, MN, I discovered many aspects of St. Paul, MN that to me told the story of that city:

• A community of story in which “I’m gonna put the game on” naturally refers to the Stanley Cup finals.

• A community in which when you are handed your coffee at Dunn Brothers, you get multiple syllables in the last word of the phrase “Here you go.”

• A community in which there is a line of folks around the block at St. Paul’s cathedral, standing in the rain, to pay respects to the owner of the steakhouse at the end of 7^th Street and there are signs to honor him in nearly every shop window on that same street.

• A community in which when I pull out a program from the 1974-75 Minnesota Fighting Saints season (that I bought from the antique store across the street), the guy next to me recounts with great energy going to the rink as a kid with his dad to see childhood heroes like Gord Gallant smoking cigarettes and drinking beer on the bench during practices.

• A community in which cars make full stops at stop signs

• A community in which Peanuts characters, a statue of Herb Brooks and colorful dinosaur sculptures live in harmony not far from a sign on the side of the building that houses the Minnesota Museum of American Art that announces “ART HERE.”

Although I hesitate to say so for fear of being perceived as claiming any true "knowledge" on the subject, I do love music.  Or at least I love the music that I love.  And one of the great things of the music that I love the most is the theatricality of the music and the musicians that I love the most. 

The music that I love most these days is certainly some of the most theatrical that I know.  And what is so "theatrical" about it?  It seems to convey a place, a person, a setting, a dynamic event in a way that transcends the pedestrian by tapping into the universal.  And what are examples of this "theatricality"?

1.) The Long Winters.

These guys are from Seattle, a great home for theatricality (from my highly biased opinion) in itself, and its members have been involved in theater in various capacities, but it is moments like this that truly set the stage for something transcendently theatrical:

Now I don’t feel she feels the same way about me She wonders if I’ll ever be Who she dreamed I’d be But she never says I love you Til I say I love you Like we’re exchanging hostages From "Nora"

One of the disadvantages of moving into a new apartment is that one must reorganize every item to fit the new space, particularly when one is sharing that space with someone else.  One of the advantages of moving into a new apartment is that one has the opportunity to reorganize one’s items.

This week I completed unpacking my theater books for our collective theater library.  One tall shelf is designated as the theater library and, of course, not all the books fit.  This is not a bad thing, however, as some of the plays I have never even read and they would better housed on the shelves of a used bookstore like Strand or, better yet, the theater book exchange at Manhattan Theater Source.

In selecting which books are important enough to keep and in finding creative ways to fit them on the shelves, I created a “foundations” stack.  These are the books that, of all the books in the library, with the exception of the entire shelf below it filled with Shakespeare’s plays and studies, are the ones that had a particular impact on me.  These are the books that I hold with a special fondness.  These are the books that I would recommend that a young theater practitioner gather for her own theater library.

Greek Tragedy by HD Kitto

Comedy by Meredith & Bergson

Aristotle’s Poetics

Audition by Michael Shurtleff

The Theater and Its Double by Artaud

Backwards and Forwards by David Ball

The Empty Space by Peter Brook

A Director Prepares by Anne Bogart

On Directing by Harold Clurman

The Art of Course Acting by Green

Michael Chekov’s Lessons for the Professional Actor

Fundamentals of Play Directing by Dean and Carra

Play Directing by Francis Hodge

(Most theater folks will know most all of these books.  However, you may not know The Art of Course Acting.  If you don’t and don’t already have a copy in your own library, find a way to get one.  The book is out of print, when last I checked, but it is worth it.  It is one of the funniest books about acting I have ever read.  The author is a long-time British community theater actor who blunders his way through play after play and tells the sad and comic tale of his fiascos on stage and in the wings.  If you love Waiting for Guffman, you’ll love this book…)

I am doing some blocking preparation tonight for Into the Woods.  Although I don’t have a “usual cast” for blocking as some directors do—in fact, I don’t always pre-block this way, even with kids—I do have a pretty stellar cast for this prep.  It includes a missing-his-hands Han Solo downstage right as Cinderella, some crazy Indian cartoon character DL as Jack and center is smiley face Baker’s Wife and the queen-y pink Power Ranger as the Baker.  The Children and Narrator are down left—more Power Rangers and a NWO wrestler, respectively.