As many readers know, the life of the traveling artist makes it difficult to keep pets. It's not fair to a faithful dog to never be home. And even though cats may seem more independent of human attention, a lack of a regular home isn't fair to them either. So, I don't have pets.
In the past, this writer was a touring actor, living out of a suitcase, changing cities and states the way most people change their socks. In more recent years, the travel has been from state to state as a director and as a teacher. A pet would have been nice for me, but cruel to the animal. And so it has been until about a month ago, when I received an unlikely "pet" from an unlikely source.
My sister gave me some sourdough starter.
I don't know enough about microbiology to understand all of how the process works, but I now have a pet. I have to feed it each week. After I feed it, I have to "burp" it so that it releases gas. It grows. If I don't use it to make bread, it'll get too big for where it stays. And it seems terrible to waste something that could be food. So I've become concerned with different recipes. How do you make bread? What is the recipe that will lead to the best (if not perfect) loaf?
What is the recipe? How long should the dough ferment? How should the dough be shaped? How to keep the loaf creamy in texture with a crisp, chewy crust? In the midst of rehearsals for a production, I've also been making bread.
The rehearsals are for the first theatre production at a college with a completely new theatre program. Our task is to make literally a new theatre. What is the recipe for the best (if not perfect) theatre?
Every day brings a myriad of new questions to be faced. How should the space be used? What kind of shows should we do? How should the actors be trained? Where does one simply start to grow the beginnings of a program?
Sometimes it seems as if there are as many recipe books for theatre as there are for food. Everyone has an idea about how actors should be trained. That's well and good, but how to train actors on the fly while mounting a production? Won't the training/style depend on the material for the project? The answer to one question affects the answers to several other questions. And raises still further questions.
So, how to proceed? You commit yourself to certain principles and test those principles in the boiling cauldron of experience. You try something and ask yourself, "Does it work? Does it make the work better or more meaningful? Will this communicate to our audience?" And you add a dash of salt with this exercise or a smidge of pepper with that apt and well-timed comment. And you taste.
When I came here, friends asked, "What are you going to do for your first show?" Well, a new theatre program? I wasn't going to start with "Camelot" or "Long Day's Journey Into Night." I planned for having many women. Instead I had slightly more than double the number of men compared to women who auditioned for me. I planned for doing something simple. Instead the simple has shown its amazing complexity.
Our school was founded by Bernardine Sisters, an order of nuns who follow precepts established by St Francis of Assisi. (The auditorium that houses our first show here is named after Francis.) As such, one of the college's precepts is peace. How can one stand for peace in a society at war? How is it to be a person who has been made strange simple by living within their culture? Unsurprisingly, for our first show, I chose Brecht.
Our first production is a collection of short plays by Brecht in which people's lives aren't odd – but they've been made odd by the circumstances of their society and culture. In one story a teacher and his wife work themselves into such a frenzy that they believe their 10 year-old son is informing on them to the authorities. The second story is about a judge who works to decide a verdict for a case before he enters the courtroom. The final story is about a Jewish woman married to a Lutheran surgeon. She calls people on the telephone to tell them she's going – a bridge partner, a possible woman companion for her husband, her sister-in-law, her best friend. She then begins to plan her 'speech' to tell her husband why she's leaving. Naturally the moment he actually walks in the door, both of them speak in short, spare words. They're unable to say what they must say. A world in which parents can't trust their own young child, a world in which a judge decides a case before the trial, and world in which two married people can't live together and actually remain alive – this is a made world. This is a world made odd by circumstances. Looking at such a world seemed like a way to provide a kind of reflective glimpse of the real world.
And so I work to make theatre. And so I work to make bread. Each a prop of life in its own way. Each involving the same necessary qualities – patience, strength, patience, observational sensitivity, patience, literally a creative space, patience. . . . . Each a worthy, human work for a person to do.
©2003 Nathan Thomas
Nathan Thomas has earned his 
living as a touring actor, Artistic Director, director
stage manager, designer, composer, and pianist
He has a Ph.D. in Theatre and is a member of
the theatre faculty of Alvernia College
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