These podcasts are sooo rich and captivating...so evocative. Thank you, Susan Lambert and Walker Vreeland for these and for all the resulting happy neural explosions: all my cells are dancing after I listen to one of your podcasts.
I really enjoyed the recent conversation with Anne Bogart. I loved the discussion about seeing two plays at once, but for me, too, every encounter with art is always three, because we also bring our own utterly subjective "everything" to the experience, so it's the literal words, painting, song, dance, photo, etc.; the relationship among everyone sharing it (actors/audience, etc.), and also the co-mingling of all the echoes and memories in everyone present...why we can be so affected by a work of art and then years later revisit a play or book or movie and wonder why we don't respond the same way..."that's not how I remember it," or it takes us even deeper or a different direction...
What a gift Anne and her colleagues have been to the world of theater. Balancing the feminine with the masculine offers such integrated wholeness...and also reveals how "deformed" a lot of art from the past really is...another whole discussion. So, although it wasn't a stated topic in this interview, for me, a great richness in the subtext was about healing. Anne--and, of course, you, Susan Lambert--are healers, whole-makers, integrators.
I love, too, that collaboration invites, tirelessly, everyone involved to become more fully who they are, and to contribute that to the creation-in-process. Which is the original theory/impetus behind the servant leadership theory of Robert Greeleaf: leaders are meant to serve the organic fulfillment of every participant's gifts. It sounds like what Anne understands the role of a director to be. Generating the space for the collaboration of gifts. Magic. Our own creative agency in collaboration with others' gifts and efforts...and, for me, the post-post modern ethos is that. All about relationship. And our personal responsibility to contribute our gifts.
So many places where I wanted to be part of this conversation and so many places where I was stunned and light just washed over me. Thank you, again. What a perfect way to begin a new week. These “In the Balance” podcasts are such gifts to us all.
