It’s hard to get rusty when you’re working, doing show after show, playing the game everyday.

Rust comes from disuse, from waiting, from sitting, untested, unstretched – just parked in the rain waiting for the sun to emerge. It’s the not doing, the fallow periods that can cripple a technique. It’s those months of no action that can make you think you don’t know how to do it anymore.

Doing it day after day might make you rigid and boring or robotic and disconnected but the danger there is less rustiness and more smoothness. They could grow too slick, too safe, like watching someone open a garage door with a button. Like closing the window in a car over and over with a little lever instead of watching someone turn it with his arm. Without a little bit of effort, without a little bit of danger, that slickness is dull. I’d rather watch someone rusty.

When I asked my college directing professor for his thoughts about teaching directing, he mentioned a tendency in all of his students to believe in happy endings. He notes that they all thought if you worked hard enough and were a good person that everything would work out in the end. When I was one of his students, I believed the same thing.

I thought my good will and enthusiasm and my talent would save me and I would float, like a balloon to the loftiest heights. I thought the good and the smart and the nice people would be elevated and I would be among them, a handful of beautiful colorful brilliant balloons bouncing around on the palace’s gold-trimmed ceiling.

But I’ve seen the stupid thrive. That one girl at our college who seemed to not have three brain cells to rub together was the first to find success. I’ve seen the mean, the cruel, the hard, rise to the top of the pile. I’ve seen the authors of some of the most insipid, confused, messy, nonsensical, artless works find themselves with awards and great reviews.

And I’ve seen the kindest, the most brilliant, the most innovative, the most spirited artists consigned to artistic ghettos.

I’d like to be that naïve student I once was, believing that the good and smart will have happy endings but experience does not bear this out.

Nowadays, you can just follow someone by clicking a button via your chosen social media but there were times when following someone, an artist, a band, a theatre, meant actually following them. It meant bringing ones body to the chosen follower and following what they did with one’s eyes or literally following them one foot after the other. Make a parade through the streets and follow us to the show. On a good day, one’s followers would fall right in step, on others not everyone feels like following.

How did a theatre in this time measure its success? There weren’t newspapers, no written reviews. You didn’t get public critics. I doubt someone stood on the box in the center of the square proclaiming opinions on theatrical productions. Samuel Pepys had his opinions, of course, but those were in his diary. It really must have all been word of mouth. Actual, literal word of mouth to actual ear. And your box office numbers were likely the only real barometer. Well, that and royal commendations and such.

Whereas my residence, both in reputation and profit, has been negligible both ways. It has been fruitful in the making of things, in collaborations, in creating things I love and others loved as well – but reputation and profit? Not so much. It is time to travel I suppose.

It would seem that the economics of theatrical production were such that a company would be sort of 2nd tier. The successful company remains in residence but when times get tough they hit the road. I haven’t really seen it work that way these days. If the Guthrie, for example, decides to tour, it is in addition to their home season. It doesn’t close up shop and take the show on the road. But then so much of theatre these days is building-centric. The season is created to raise money to keep the building operational. Even for the tiny producer like me, we have to rent a building to do a show. Touring is an advanced skill, not a 2nd choice. It may be a money maker but it is also a money taker. Most people do it to increase their reputations more than to improve their circumstances.
Me, I’m desperate to travel. But I can’t figure out how to afford it.

I would have asked this question first. I’m not sure I’d welcome just any old troupe of players to my castle. Some, sure, I’d be delighted to see but others, it would be like inviting a group of preening roosters to campout in my drawing room. Most shows I see are performed by preening roosters and having them roosting in my parlor would likely be just as unpleasant as watching their show. Some people don’t mind that sort of thing; They enjoy a little bird poop on the carpet and feathers scattered across their cushions. Me, I’d at least want to make sure the roosters were doing a play I liked.