Daniel Student’s Artistic Statement
The performing arts are the last bastion of human connectivity in an increasingly disconnected world. Artists are connected by making a choice to dedicating their lives to empathy and understanding. In the theater, there are no murderers, molesters, or swindlers. There is Macbeth, The Woodsman, and Topdog/Underdog. We, artists and audience, gather in a single space, and all who enter sign an unwritten contract that in the time they spend together they will examine the world they share. To prepare, we, artists, gather, in a rehearsal process or a design meeting, and discuss themes, objectives, and making compelling choices, so that the performance can provide excitement and wonder, providing an access point for the audience to feel engaged in the lives presented to them.
I was drawn to the theater as a director by the social consciousness and ideals of youth. In my high school I started the Cultural Awareness Club, edited the Special Issues Section of the School Paper (“Race at Park School!”, “Homosexuality at Park School!” screamed the headlines), and steadfastly refused to give in to the casual segregation I witnessed at the lunch room (the only white kid at the black table). Yet, it was not until my senior year, when given an opportunity to direct a play, and subsequently choosing a play called Night Baseball about group of white guys who use every racial slur known to man and commit racially inspired revenge murders of black youths, that I truly felt that I had made an impact.
For once that audience had signed that unwritten contract to enter our theater that fateful night, they could not divorce themselves from their own emotional reaction, or, for that matter, the emotional reaction of the person sitting next to them and so on and so on. They could no longer say aloud “well, I just don’t agree,” or “I’m not racist, I just choose to sit with my friends,” or any of the various phrases we teach ourselves to help us forget that we, like everybody else, are flawed. That night, in that room, we were all connected to each other. We all saw each other’s reactions, each other’s feelings, each other’s fears, and each other’s reality. It is a feeling I will never forget.
As I grew into a professional director and artist, my interest in the arts grew broader, and my need to feel that every production I was involved in create a cathartic moment for the audience lessened. I have, in fact, become a steadfast campaigner for all arts, all artists, and an artistic community. How different is a broad, big budget musical from a solo performance artist really? Don’t we all still sign the same contract, even if the cost of that contract is $5 or $120? I have come to understand that a shared emotional release comes in many shapes and sizes, some that make us go bounding down the streets in good spirits and sharing a joke with our friends, and others that make us quiet and still in the car ride home, starting out the window in internal reflection. I yearn for both, and simply can’t get enough of either.
In summation, I direct plays with the intention to be a leader to my fellow artists, and to provide a central vision that allows them to invest their work with creativity and passion, so that the product on stage has a united and shared vision designed to provoke a response from the audience. I am uninterested in being a dictator in my work; it is, in fact, not my work, but our work. I am focused on building a community of artists invested in a final result, each with a lifetime lived and a world of personal experience which enrich the process and production. In choosing a play to produce, or even the plays that I write, I renounce my least favorite word used in the development process,clarity. My favorite stage direction comes from the Dan Dietz play, Tilt Angel. It is: “The earth tilts on its axis.” What a challenge to the reader’s imagination! But, even better, what a challenge to the actors, the designers, the director, the tech director, and on and on! What does it mean for the earth to tilt on its axis? How would a character feel about it? How would you represent it on stage? How do you build it? And, with that, the artists’ imaginations are provoked, the world they belong to is examined, and the audience who attends feels vividly and kinetically connected to the magic of it all and to the people with whom they are sharing the experience. And to me, that’s what the theater is all about.