'Til My Face Becomes a Mirror

I just got back from the TCG Conference in Baltimore.  As most people know by now, I am going through another big redirection in my career right now.  At first I wasn’t even sure if I should go to the conference at all.  Most of it is taken up with discussions of budgets, and audience development, and how we can get the young people’s butts into our seats.  Since I will no longer be asked to weigh in any of those things at ASP, I wasn’t sure what I would be doing there, and I was afraid I’d just wander around being really bummed out.  But Kelli, smart girl, convinced me that I would get to see people I really liked, and maybe get jazzed again about the possibilities of the theatre.  Boy was she right.

Most of the actual events at the conference were not really useful to me, but I saw some really dear people - Rick and Harriet and Bridget and my TCG buddy and new great friend Rachel May.  And the last day finished off with a wonderful conversation between Anne Bogart and Bill T. Jones, two of the biggest movers and shakers in the performing arts in the last 30 years.  Anne has the series “Conversations with Anne”, that she is now putting into a book, which you should all check out.  And this was one more of these.  There was a multitude of cools things in what they talked about - ever scientific, Anne was trying to pin down Bill T. Jones on the “rules” of postmodern dance; he was struggling with maintaining his outsider’s voice in the face of the rigid demands of Broadway; he even got her up out of her chair and gave her a quick introduction to basic contact improv.  Anne Bogart!  of all people!

But, for me, the most meaningful part of the conversation was when Bill T. Jones was talking about his childhood, and his introduction to the idea of performance. On Christmas morning, his mother would gather his very large family - 10 or 11 kids - under the tree, but would not let any of them open the presents.  Then she would start to pray, and she would pray for all of them; and for all their family and friends; and for the president; and the governor; and on and on until she became “happy” - full of the spirit and wild with the spirit.  And she would pray that the Lord would fill her until her face became a mirror and her soul...  And then she would fall down exhausted, and there would be a silence, and then she would say, “now, open your presents.”  

This was such a beautiful example of the juxtaposition of the sacred and mundane, and it filled me with spirit, too.  And I was so struck by this phrase, “until her face became a mirror” - it is the state we who would be artists aspire to, and I was so inspired by this story.  So I decided to take it as the name of my blog.