On March 5th, HowlRound published an article I wrote entitled Women Directors: Language Worth Repeating
Below is an excerpt:
Renew
I call for a revolution of language. I reject the notion that my options for how to be in a creative process are either nice and accommodating or manipulative and renowned. I believe that the language of accommodation and the language of dominance are both deeply rooted in fear. For the former, it’s a fear of being considered unlikeable and for the latter, it’s a fear of not having control or not owning the best idea. I believe that directing requires great vision, great attention, great awareness, and great humility. It requires egos to be left outside while bold action and outstanding listening enter the room. I am guided by a small piece of text that I return to season after season as a kind of ritual meditation. It’s from the foreword of Paul Woodruff’s The Necessity of Theatre. It reads,
There is an art to watching and being watched, and that is one of the few arts on which all human living depends. If we are unwatched, we diminish and we cannot be entirely as we wish to be. If we never stop to watch, we know only how it feels to be us, never how it feels to be another. Watched too much or in the wrong way, we become frightened. Watching too much, we lose the capacity for action in our own lives. Watching well, together, and being watched well, with limits on both sides, we grow, and grow together.
I return to these words because they are a reminder of how I wish to be in the creative process and a foundation for a new language of power to build from. The balance between watching and being watched calls for empathy and action. When I first read the passage, I was surprised by how revelatory this simple text was. The idea of theater as a place of seeing was not new—it’s the origin of the word itself and a starting place for most theater makers. It was the “If we are unwatched, we diminish and we cannot be entirely as we wish to be” portion that stopped me in my tracks. As a director, as a teacher, as a woman, this felt like an urgent reminder to be visible, to allow my work to be visible, and to allow my language to be heard. This text could easily be adjusted to be about speaking and listening as opposed to watching and being watched and be just as powerful and pertinent to a discussion on language.
Read the full article HERE.