I’m looking back and looking forward.
Next season is our 30th at Two Planks and a Passion Theatre. It’s hard to believe.
In the midst of all the chaos and uncertainty, we are carving out a pathway back to our outdoor stages for our 30th. Part of that process is the unexpectedly moving experience of looking back, and the exciting (and daunting) process of imagining the future.
We are working on some projects that will collect memories and experiences of 30 years of collaborations, triumphs and challenges, as well as some deeply personal perspectives on the company we have become, and the one we hope to be.
For me, this effort has come at exactly the right time. So much of my work since March has been in un-planning, de-constructing and hibernating rather than dreaming. I’ve been feeling that, in a profound way. The challenges are all still there, but I need to start dreaming again.
Today Robin Munro started collecting ideas and taking photographs for her contribution to this project, and upon seeing them, something inside me came awake. The ghosts of productions past seem to come to life in these photos, and I can almost hear the laughter of a rehearsal and the shuffle of an audience through a field.
These images speak to me, powerfully, about the beauty of impermanence- that some things are most treasured precisely because they are ephemeral. We can revisit the place, but not the performance. They are a metaphor for our brief lives in an eternal landscape.
These pictures are, admittedly, heartbreaking- but not because I am not hopeful. It has more to do with what the Pandemic has done to re-order my priorities and what I value most. I am thinking about how the people in these photos are a gift in my life. While the productions disappear into the air and the seasons come and go, the relationships with my colleagues stay with me.
Hope is a powerful force. Robin’s photographs brought me hope today in a way that is hard to express in words. Art will do that.
