Stanley Kubrick is said to have been an avid chess player, often playing games with actors and stage hands. I think I can see why as the demands of both fields complement one another nicely. Two good quotes from Kubrick on the subject:
“Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you’re in trouble.”
“Chess helps you develop patience and discipline in choosing between alternatives at a time when an impulsive decision seems very attractive.”
Working both backstage and onstage lately makes those two quotes all the more poignant. Things go wrong, you have to keep your head. It’s always something different, always something unexpected. Theatre, especially working backstage running a show, contains a great many ritualized elements that help give you a predictable structure within which to work. But beyond that basic structure, you have to think on your feet, react and shepherd or steward actors, objects and actions towards appropriate ends. Meanwhile, things completely outside your control happens: theatres flood, random things break, somebody gets hurt - who knows what. You have to be able, like Kubrick says, to look at your own reactions and choose the best option, rather than what impulsively seems like the right thing to do.
It’s gotten me all thinking a lot about my errant (unfinished) sci-fi novella from a few years back, REPERMANENT. It’s the story, essentially, of a reality repairman who works for the artificially intelligent augmented reality corporation which has superseded all world governments and media outlets. His job is to sort of parachute into people’s private realities and make sure that their connection to “consensciousness” is within legal limits. I’ve let this project sit on the back burner for quite some time now, and am beginning to see new ways to flesh it out into something that will make it more substantial and possibly complete… Been inspired by working as a stage tech, applying that basic aesthetic to the augmented reality field. Imagining the main character, Fisher Caldwell (named after neighboring counties in Texas, incidentally), as essentially a stagehand working for a production company creating games for peoples brains, him having special access privileges, tools and techniques to jump in, fix, change, etc perceptual reality.
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8 Comments
Really?
O estás aprentando tus manos en torno suyo también?
4 días, 40 años, 4 milenios, es igual.
1
La serpiente siempre es hábil, no importa que tan alto crea que vuele.
if by abstract u mean “beyond my sight” it is not a bad thing, he’s always avobe us, avobe our understanding.
Losotros nos juzgamos, es por eso que dejamos que la marioposa bata sus alas. No hay fallo, todo lo que parece un error es mentira
Ties in nicely with your recent delving into the I Ching, I would think, in that your choosing between the potential changes available at any given moment, and the subtle options between those variables.
What I like about Chess is that it’s a show with everything AND Yul Brynner.
how do u like fake carpentry now?
Well, that certainly wasn’t here before.
My little bit of highschool spanish along with babelfish tells me that I like this.
And as for that which is “avobe” us, it pulls us higher, while that in which we are rooted is there to nourish us. Given enough sunlight and good soil, even the toughest plants will flower, and, perhaps, bear fruit. Just stop confusing one for the other…