Trust and a Briefcase

Last night we moved into the space we'll be performing The Other Shore in.

I love this play. I have for a long time. I think it is one of the great works of the last century, even though no one I know has/had ever heard of it, nor of Gao Xingjian.(pronounced gow shing-jen.) In my research I wasn't able to find any other productions of any of his work in Chicago. There seems to have been only a handful of productions in the US.

Winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature, Gao Xingjian was born January 4, 1940 in Ganzhou (Jiangxi province) in eastern China. A multi-talented writer and visual artist, he received his basic education in the schools of the People's Republic and took a degree in French in 1962. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) he was persecuted by the ruling party and fearing for his safety, burnt a suitcase full of his manuscripts.

He was still sent to a re-education camp for six years of hard labor. (Until 1979 he could not publish his work or travel abroad.) His play Bus Stop (1983) was condemned during the campaign against "intellectual pollution." Three years later, The Other Shore was banned and since then none of his plays have been performed in mainland China. In 1987 he left China and settled down in Paris as a political refugee. He became a French citizen in 1997.

It was in Paris I first came across Xingjian's work. It made sense to have found it there, adopted home of the bulk of the absurdists. To my mind, no living writer's work is as direct of a descendent of Beckett, Genet, Adamov, or Ionesco than Xingjian. And like them, he emigrated to Paris. (Well, Genet was born in Paris but spent enough time as "a guest" of various governments that he probably could be considered an immigrant upon returning to Paris.)

A few months after I discovered his work, they announced he would receive the Nobel that year. It would be a few years before I could get my hands on an English translation of his work to give to others to read. As soon as I gave a copy of the play to Jenn and asked her to read it, telling her I wanted her to direct it, she tore through it. That's how I can tell if she likes a script or not. She'll finish it in a day, or take a month to slog through it. I think it took her about an hour to get through The Other Shore.

More than any other play we've produced, it is the trust of the company that got it there. It was humbling to have one of our associates tell me, "I don't get it. But I trust you." It's a difficult script that could easily devolve into arty-pretentiousness, stripping away all of its power and beauty. They trusted me on it, even though it didn't seem like the most likely choice for us, and we trusted Jenn to see it come to life.

It is a challenge to be sure. Xingjian is one of those writers that would be easy for a director to Interperet. You could say it is about time and have a huge set of clocks, etc. Many productions, especially of absurdist works, have a ham-fisted concept to try to fit the work into what the director wants it to be about. On the surface it can seem like one needs to impose a concept on his work, or that one should. To find a unifying visual metaphor. Therein lies the greatest trap as the true difficulty in directing or performing the greatest works for the stage is not figuring out what it is about by adding a concept, it is not about directorial intent or eye-popping visual design, but in simply striving to keep up. To me that is what the greatest playwrights have in common. A lot of directors at all levels fail to see that the way it doesn't come from the outside in.

Physicists smash atoms in a search to see the universe. By exploding the smallest of particles they can get a glimpse of what makes our world, in a way that artists used to search for God. If a physicist were able to put a life into a particle accelerator, and smash it like an atom--this play might be what comes out.

The Other Shore is a life distilled, taken apart into it's fragments so as to understand our world. Our charge is to give audience members the keys and permission to unlock the meanings for themselves. Not by hiding from them, but through opening up, the way scientists open atoms.

Moving into that space was pretty stressful for Jenn at first. She had been planning on doing it in the round. But logistical issues required a change to the planned seating configuration, mostly due lighting needs. It's not a traditional space and there's no grid to hang lights from in the air, so we have to be a bit more creative. Once we figured out a new configuration that would work both for the lighting and for her staging, it went pretty well. It'll be a rough couple of days, but I can already see glimpses of what it can be.

Last night I saw one moment in particular click for the first time. It may have been there for the cast, but it was the first time I had seen it. Every time I read his work, I can only think of what was lost in that briefcase on fire. Gao Xingjian's remaining work, including The Other Shore and others written in China after "re-education", earned him a nobel prize. I always wonder if his extant body of work is a glimpse into what could have been, or a distillation of what was, or simply a gift waiting to be unlocked.

I'm not much of a hands-off kind of guy, and Jenn and I used to work pretty hand in hand on our shows. Two kids have made that much more difficult, as one of us watches them as the other rehearsals. So, I've seen fewer rehearsals and run-throughs than any show Jenn and I have done in a long time.

This is always a stressful time. Everything Jenn and the cast have done in the rehearsal room comes to a screaching halt for tech. Knowing what needs to happen; working to tie all the strings together; trusting it will all work out well in the end, we open a week from tomorrow. There's a lot to be done and we've got our work cut out for us. I hope we don't fuck it up. All the typical producer concerns are there.

I've never taken a play I love this much and handed it off like a briefcase for someone else to shepard. I hoped Jenn could make it come alive. I got a glimpse last night. I can't wait to see what happens once we take off the breaks.