Your play, Force: Convergence, is part of a trilogy of plays. What is the Force trilogy about and how does Convergence fit into it?
I wish I could effectively summarize what Force is about, but I suppose my inability to do so is why it’s six hours long. Just about every explanation is insufficient, but I’ll give it a go. At its core, the play is about how we reckon with control and how we behave when things are out of control. But the context is tremendously intimate with the main plot line driven by a passionate marriage going through the unflattering depths of dissolution and disillusion. Consequently, Force is about large, philosophical matters juxtaposed with dirty dishes, moldy shower curtains and teddy bears with missing eyes.
What inspired you to tackle an entire trilogy?
Wendy (my collaborator and co-Founder of Aisling Arts) and I had grown tired of the six – eight week rhythm that single productions exist in. It was both financially and emotionally draining to work in such spurts, especially as our aesthetic and working style as a company — our voice, if you will — was growing so exacting. We felt nothing but frustration whenever we closed a show. I think there’s a beauty to a short-lived, ephemeral project, but only doing short-lived ephemeral projects is horribly unsatisfying. It’s like only have appetizers at a five star restaurant. Just as we were really getting under the skin of a play, we had to let it go.
Concurrently, we were becoming artistically obsessed with fate, accountability and causality. Everything we were choosing to work on was in some way related to the question of moral responsibility and the problem of trying to live out individual callings when everyone else is trying to do the same.
We were becoming acquainted with dancers and people in different art forms who either worked very far out in time, or who ran and revised shows over the course of several years. It only made sense to pick something big and devote our time and energy to it. Fortunately, we had other projects already in the works so we could live off of them while working slowly on Force.
The Force Trilogy was produced by your theatre company, Aisling Arts. Tell us more about the company, and what kind of stuff you all do.
We do original plays and radical interpretations of classical plays. At least, we used to! With Wendy having her little girl in about a week, it seems like we may re-evaluate our priorities to make sure we only work on things worth our time, stuff we can’t avoid working on. I fully expect our work to change as our lives do going forward.
What we’re quite good at is working in a feminine modality — our best work assumes that circles have a different energy than lines. Which sounds totally insane, but broken down means that we’ve found that while people expect Aristotelian story-telling, they are also capable of taking in information and riding a story out in a non-linear, non-climax oriented fashion. We invest a lot of time on ancillary story points, transitions, and all the stuff you can’t take the time to notice if you’re intent on getting to the big climb and subsequent drop of the rollercoaster ride.
People have also said we’re a very cinematic theatre voice. I think this has a lot to do with our use of music, timing, and multi-level story-telling. You can always expect an awful lot going on at once in our plays and usually a very physicalized kinesthetic aesthetic. Also, we have a knack for casting really exceptionally nice people who happen to be incredibly gorgeous. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s a huge running joke of ours.
What led you to start your own theatre company?
Wendy and I are both actors and we felt that actors were never being used to their fullest in director-centric work. We frequently felt like we were pawns in their master-vision instead of full-fledged collaborators. Looking back at theater history, prior to the 19th century when the age of omnipotent directors and Freudian theory revolutionized the way theater companies operated, actors operated as bands of family-oriented rep ensembles. Looking back, I think we really were craving a community of people who could get together and make well-told, detailed stories. Aisling Arts is definitely a family, and we’re very proud of that.
I understand you've spent half your adult life doing Shakespeare. Is that by accident or by design?
In the early days of Aisling Arts when we still ran the now defunct Free Shakespeare Project, we did it because we knew it was what we could do. For simple acting lessons that have a lot to do with keeping up one’s technical chops and for story-telling lessons that have a lot to do with making sure the events of a play are clear, there’s no better (or broader) menu for an English speaking actor than Shakespeare. Also, there are no royalties to pay and you can do Shakespeare out of the trunk of a car. So, using Shakespeare as a learning tool (and ultimately something to rage against as evident in our production of Macbeth or to refashion elegantly as we did with Love’s Labour’s Lost) was a natural choice. That I’ve been working on Shakespeare professionally since I was a teen-ager, well . . . now you’re making me feel old!
You mostly write and direct now, but still occasionally act as well. Which discipline do you like the most?
Writing terrifies me. Acting terrifies me. But I was an awesome camp counselor, so guiding a group of people and getting them psyched about whatever’s on our plate is second nature. Directing is something I can always get into after a nice, sweaty warm-up. It’s a process that never leaves me cold or self-conscious. I process information rhythmically and spatially, and have a brain that needs to move and organize things to make sense of the world. So it’s a deeply satisfying, energizing way to spend my time.
I am definitely at my most confident and resourceful when I’m working as a director. But is it my favorite just because it’s the easiest? Probably not. Acting and writing both demand an absence of self, and that’s why I find both so frightening and daunting. I have a lot of trouble sublimating my own voice, but there’s nothing like the thrill of taking a complete dive into an imaginary world with other invested artists (acting) or paring away at my own voice sufficiently enough to take the time to listen to exactly what people are saying in an imaginary world (writing). It all comes down to playing make believe and turning down all the white noise adult life has to offer in order to get to the place where it’s all about the playfulness and joy of making something new with other people.
I guess I have to politely decline to choose which I like the most!
What can audiences expect to see next from you and Aisling Arts?
Silence! We’re going on a break for the next several months (Wendy’s having a baby and I’m getting married). We’re going to take some time off to really invest in these precious life changes and will pop our heads back up after we have some more life experience under our belts.
Interview with Bryn Manion was conducted by Michael Criscuolo February 2007.