Swimming in a sea of uncertainty

Oversaturated.

Oversaturated.


Well then. To be living and working in a town with more theatre than it can possibly handle or support properly is a strange task for the early career theatre artist.

On the one hand, I've hooked up with Bricolage, a company I adore in both theory and practice, and who have generously embraced me.

And on the other there is this dark and twisted beast comprised of companies I am familiar with and generally frustrated by.

Plus, there's Hostile Takeover. A project that makes up for in beautiful women and lofty intentions what it lacks in direction and focus. Along with two other graduates of Point Park's acting BA, I am brainstorming what we can do. What is the point of jumping into the pool if we're just going to sink anyway? We were so excited to start our own company sans the regular bullshit of bourgeois theatre. Perhaps it was merely a trite rebellion against the middle-of-the-road standards we had pushed down our throats in college: "Throwing Our Bodies Betwixt the Cogs of the Bureaucratic Theatre Machine". But it's hard. Where do we fit into everything else? What are we creating that stands out? Or matters?

Another kick in the teeth: without those bureaucratic systems precious little actually gets done.

I know exactly what kind of theatre I DON'T want to be doing. But how do I actually turn intentions into action?

Our discussions seem limited to the room where we meet. We make lists and agree to contact people. We plan, shuffle pages of monolugues and other people's scenes, and we never seem to grab onto any of this...

Should we as artists create based on our need to push *something* into the world, or create only when we have conceived and developed this proverbial child, and can send it out with legs to stand on?

Argh.