Babel-ing

Hello, friends and loved ones,

I’m sorry that I disappeared from this electronic meeting
room roughly the shape of a spider’s web. I was out having adventures. What
kind of adventures you might ask?

Wells,

This blog is being written in the University of Toronto
Library, a fine place to be if you have PhD work to do (or are with people who
do PhD – style work) It is also great place to work on errant research papers.
Outside of the library (which resembles a concrete turkey) the yard is a fine
spot for spontaneous partner acro. Torontonians of many-a-kind smile when
bowler-hatted couples lift each other with their well-placed feets.

Toronto is also a fine place to rise above your fears, so to
speak, and stilt around in self-same bowler hats, umbrellas and bowties Magritte-ing
children at a local busker fest, if you are so inclined. If inclines are your
inclination, Toronto has hills! Unnoticeable in a vehicle, those who ped about
the town lugging computers and stilts to a library might come to appreciate the
subtleties of places like Nebraska. My companion, guide and host might have
said, “Up ahead is the Hill of Doom”. At that moment, I might have looked at a
road sign we were passing by that said “No Exit”.

If Hell is other people, Toronto is a barbeque of Biblical
proportions. Not a barbeque, a bistro – a multicultural fusion of ethnicities
that brings life to the tower of Babel. Never before have I encountered such a
MIX of diversities as I have in this city. By appearance the only thing that
seems to unify this city is a propensity for men to wear shorts, women to wear
hats and dogs seem less common that bicyclists.

Compare this to my location last week, the lovely Twin
Cities, where it seemed every lady under the age of 35 had a tattoo artist for
a best friend. Let it be said that I have no problem with people who make use
of their flesh as canvas, but goodness gracious, the ladies of the land of 1000
lakes love their ink. It almost makes my
un-needled naked body a fringe member of society…

Ah, the Minnesota Fringe Festival. If I am around in August,
I make sure to head up to the cities to watch my college buddies show off at
the nation’s largest un-juried Fringe Festival. It’s a pleasure to see your
friends work, and with the fringe, you can see many of your buddies within a
couple day period. This year to add
benefit to bad-*%%ery, the NET conference and the BOSTON RED SOX were in town
all in the same week!

I missed out on the baseball, kind of. (I ended up in Des
Moines; saw an Iowa Cubs game and built some sets for an evening with friends.
Baseball and building with buddies? Win.)

BUT>>>

I got to fringe it up with my friends, and I attended the
NET summit!

What is NET? A Network of Ensemble Theatres.

What does NET stand for? A Network of Ensemble Theatres.

What does NET discuss? Ensemble Theatre, and Networking, and
a few other things.

NET is a place for Ensemble-style theatres to meet and
discuss life in this art. There is no unifying theme to the companies aside
from their identity of process. In some ways, this gathering was like the tower
of Babel, everyone committed to the same purpose, but using different language
to describe their craft. Because of this, everyone had to listen to the other’s
entire sentence rather than jumping on to key words. It seemed to me like this
allowed us to understand one another better. The thoughts we shared became the
medium of exchange, not our skill in using a shared lexicon.

This being said, creating a universal vocabulary was at the
heart of this gathering. This summit was a capstone for the previous year’s
three conferences on the topics of Race, Process and Genre. These previous
meetings made it clear that many of the companies in attendance were using the
same words, but meaning completely different things with them. How can one
speak about culture when what I call culture, you call ethnicity? Even more
hidden is the fact that we are probably unaware that we mean two different
things. Part of the genius of NET is that it put people in the same room and
through discussion, got them to realize that these fundamental words don’t
necessarily adhere to the same fundamental processes. I’m unsure if it’s NET’s
place to impose a universal vocabulary upon the artists of the nation (and that
doing so might be an exercise in futility) but it sure gives my brain a lot of
thought jerky to chew on.

I was surrounded for three days by some of the most
brilliant minds in the theatre. These people’s passion and vision was inspiring
to behold. More than once it felt like being at the convention where the
Declaration of Independence was penned. I am no Jefferson, nor Franklin. A
minor representative, perhaps from the hills of western Massachusetts, but
still proud and honored to be included in such a noble gathering.

Zita has walked in, read what I’ve written, asked what it
had to do with physical training and how work on previously mentioned errant
paper is coming along. As always, the lady has a point.

Waffles!