Welcome to my BlogJanuary 16th 2007 |
4 comments |
My
name is Rick St. Peter and I am in my third season as the artistic
director of Actors Guild of Lexington. I am hoping to use this blog to
carry on conversations about theatre in general and Actors Guild in
particular and to occasionally just ramble, like today. We are
currently in rehearsals for the great South African playwright Athol
Fugard's Exits and Entrances.
Fugard's play is a love letter to the theatre and perhaps most
importantly it is a valentine to the mentor who inspired him and had a
hand in guiding him down the road as one of history's great
playwrights.
It
is highly symbolic to me, although not unintentional, that our
production is being directed by Benny Sato Ambush, a personal mentor of
mine who set me on the path I am currently traveling. I first met
Benny in the mid-90's when I was a grad student at Virginia
Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA and he was a visiting guest
lecturer. I essentially attached myself to him, followed him all over
campus and tried to pick up as much insight as I could into the world
of directing, theatre as a career, the current state of our national
theatre scene...anything I could get from him. We reconnected in 2001
when he hired me to serve as his associate artistic director at
TheatreVirginia and we have remained close since, in November 2006 he
became godfather to my son Aidan, in effect we are a family now...and
that for me is what the theatre is all about. We create a community
within our community, gathering together in dark room, representing a
cross-section of humanity, and in that dark room we share and celebrate
stories of love, death, betrayal, politics, pain, family, in short, we
celebrate life...and we do it in a way that cannot be replicated by any
other art form.
Technology
is our society today is increasingly being used to isolate us. We can
go out and buy our 300" plasma widescreen tv complete with 17 remote
controls, gigantic surround-sound speakers and full service bar and
massage chair and we can sit in our house and watch Tom Cruise or Will
Smith try to save humanity as we know it and yet something fundamental
is missing...YOU ARE! Unless you are George Lucas, the movies we see
today will be the same in 20 years but in the theatre, the performance
we see tonight will be different from the performance we see tomorrow
just as it was different from the performance we saw last night. When
YOU are in the house, when you join the community in the dark room,
when you willingly become a family with the strangers in the dark
around you, you become part of the event. It is something innate in
our DNA as social creatures, human beings crave contact and thousands
of years ago, our first "art form" was someone (Og the Caveman,
perhaps) pretending to be someone he was not, and other people watched
him. What we do in the theatre has always been viewed somewhat
suspiciously, perhaps a little subversive and maybe even
dangerous...why have we done it for thousands of years? Why, with all
of our technology today do we still do it? Why will we be doing it a
century, a millenium from now? The short answer is because we have
to...and I think that is the point of Mr. Fugard's beautiful play,
actors, directors, designers and technicians in the theatre, the ones
who are truly called to the work, can no more not do theatre than they
can choose not to breathe the air around them...and you, the audience,
collectively give us permission to do the work we do. By willingly
joining in our collective effort, you actively partake in the art being
created in front of you...Love, death, betrayal, kings and queens,
princes and villains...not a bad night's entertainment, if you think
about it...
Well
that is all for now, I am delighted to welcome my friend, my mentor, my
colleague, my family Benny Sato Ambush to Lexington as he brings to
life this beautiful and tender production...Exits and Entrances previews
Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, opens Feb. 2 and runs through Feb. 25. You are
cordially invited to partake in the community we create, you are
cordially invited to assist in the creation of our work...without you,
there is no us and our combined absence would make our community a
little less alive...I'll see you at the theatre!
Peace and Love
Richard (Rick) St. Peter
Artistic Director
Actors Guild of Lexington
Comments
Rick St. Peter said...
Do they know about pay-what-you-can? They are announced far enough in advance, they always happen at the same time of each run and we added a second one to give people choice. They can pay $0.01 or $1,000.00 (we recommend $5) and see the same show everyone else is...
posted at 5:32 PM on Feb 15th 2007
Kim Dixon said...
Ticket prices
When chatting with my friends, they always say that AGL ticket prices are way out of their budget. That's the only reason they don't see shows at AGL. It's too bad, but I understand where they're coming from.
posted at 5:09 PM on Feb 15th 2007
Pogue said...
So, Rick, should I still step away from the computer or....ARE WE READY TO ROCK 'N' ROLL (A Tom Stoppard reference!)? Let the games begin!
posted at 11:55 PM on Feb 13th 2007
Marcie said...
Yeehaw!
posted at 12:16 PM on Feb 13th 2007
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