Tuesday, July 31, 2012

With Fear and Trembling and Some Amont of Excitement

That whole "feel the fear and do it anyway" thing? I'm good at the first part.

But I seem to be doing something that I've avoided for . . . well, how old am I? That long. I think it was inevitable that it would come to this, but it always looked too much like Nineveh and who wants to go there?

But here I am, covered in big fish vomit, going forward. And, knowing me, there will be grumbling under some sort of vine or bush before it's all over.

My name is Jonah. Ishmael stars in another sea tale.

What am I talking about? Breath & Bone/Orts Performance is what I'm talking about. I seem to be forming a performance company. Not because the world needs another one, but because I can't seem to avoid it.

Because I keep having these ideas that I can't fit into other existing entities. That's the main thing. I have these theological thoughts about most everything, but since I'm a writer and performer, I think especially about the theology of art-making.

Or, to put it another way, I find art-making to be a fertile site for doing theology.

So, Breath & Bone/Orts Performance (which I realized just this evening that the initials are BBOP, which absolutely has to be pronounced "bebop") will be about the task of making interdisciplinary performances. I will also openly discuss relationships between theological concepts or biblical stories and performance theory and practice.

I'm also about as excited as I've ever been.

Last night, I had auditions for this fall project---not to worry, plenty of time to be blogging about that endlessly---and I pretty well threw out to the auditioners all my esoteric weirdness. Lo and behold, everyone left saying they had a good time. Luckily, I did, too.

Much much more to be said, but I'll stop here tonight. I'm on my way to Nineveh, that awful place I've always avoided. I think it's going to be okay.

Or it will be okay after I go shower off this big fish vomit . . .