Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - March/April 2012 - (Page 6)

in my own words Expanding the Boundaries of Theater Diane Paulus artistic Director, american Repertory Theater Tony award-winning director Diane Paulus has always enjoyed the challenge of organizing a group of people to make something out of nothing. Sometimes that means convincing a cast and crew to merge Shakespeare and disco in a common space, as she does in her smash hit, The Donkey Show. Sometimes that means working with the world’s best athletes and acrobats to tell a story without words, as she does in Cirque du Soleil’s new production, Amaluna. But, always, it means waiting for the very people she cannot direct to come and make her shows real. The lonely pianist I grew up in New York City, and my parents exposed me to all of the arts. My older sister was a professional harpist, so there was always music in the house. I was taken to the ballet, and I danced as a kid with the New York City Ballet when George Balanchine was still alive. My father was an actor. He would make me read the newspaper out loud and correct my enunciation. He took me to shows ever since I was a kid. I seriously pursued playing the piano until, at about age 12, I was deciding if I should continue with music. It would have meant dedicating four to five hours a day practicing, solo. I had also started doing theater, and I just loved the experience of being in a group and that feeling of creating something with other people. When I had to choose between living the solitary life of a concert pianist and being in the room with a lot of people making something together, there was no question which way I wanted to go. government, and I enjoyed it. But I realized that theater was my passion. There was nothing I loved more than being in the theater. That is where I felt the most challenged—intellectually, emotionally, and physically. I could rehearse 12 hours a day or until 2:00 in the morning and never get bored or feel like it was a task. Looking back, I was interested in theater for a lot of the same reasons I was interested in politics. Theater is about building community. It’s about outreach— engaging other human beings and making them feel alive, present, and valued as individuals. I believe you can make theater on a street corner or in a field or on a stage. As a professional director, my passion is to find ways to redefine theater and return it to a more central place in our lives, to have it be not just an elite cultural activity but something that fuels our lives as citizens. Now more than ever The theater serves our human needs. We have a need for ritual—for going through something together as a group. We have a need for spectacle, or seeing something larger than ourselves. That’s why people like to stand on a mountaintop and look out over an ocean. They want to see themselves in the presence of something larger. There is a human need for magic, for empathy, for learning. Those are all things that theater can uniquely do. We’re living in an age in which electronic devices are glued to our hands. We spend most of our lives hunched over and pressing keys. Anywhere you go, people are relating to these electronic devices more than they are to each other. But that doesn’t mean we don’t still have these needs. We’re going to realize that we can look each other in the eye and celebrate being together in a space, and the theater will be a place where we go to do that. There will be a profound need for community—physical community, not a community through Facebook or iChat—a need to be in a space together, in real time. Community building I went to Harvard as an undergraduate thinking I wanted to go into politics. Growing up in New York in the 1970s, I looked around me and saw all of the distress of the city. I couldn’t understand it. I went to college with this dream of being the mayor of New York. I really felt that I could help New York and make the city a better place to live. In college, I spent some time working for the city Please don’t take your seats At the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, our mission is to expand the boundaries of theater. When most people think of theater, they think of going to an 6 imagine Mar/Apr 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - March/April 2012

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - March/April 2012
Big Picture
In My Own Words
Theater Bound
Art Song
Out of My Head
Playwright’s Journal
Play(wright) in Progress
For All Time
My Life in Felt and Foam
Preserving the Golden Past of the Silver Screen
An Actor and a Critic
Selected Opportunities & Resources
Broadcom MASTERS
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - March/April 2012