the timboucher experience

“The theatre is an enclosed, isolated world with its own rules and laws, its own traditions and disciplines, and however accurately it may appear to mirror real life it is, in fact, obstinately and justly cut off from it.”

- Richard Huggett, Supernatural On Stage

Chess has its own momentum. The development of a game is governed according to firstly the rules of motion of each piece, and secondly by the position of the various pieces of the board. No information is hidden from either player. Except maybe your opponent’s intentions, but a skilled player learns to effectively read those according to the language spoken by pieces moving on the board.

Theatre, of course, operates almost entirely according to what is hidden and what is revealed. In a play I saw recently at my home theatre, called “The Rabbit Hole,” one of the main characters is only experienced by his absence: a young son who has died by a tragic accident before the action witnessed by the audience even occurs. The actors though, operate almost like chess pieces though - each moving according to their character’s particular emotional dynamic, their own rules of motion which govern their course through life. The same thing occurred to me this spring while working on Chekhov: one of the characters is always talking about billiards. Suddenly I realized the people in this drama were working the same way: one would come careening into the next, transferring the effects of their energetic motion to the next, sending them sailing off in another direction. People bumping into each other in loosely organized chaotic patterns, constantly unfolding themselves. Yielding what? Who knows? Entertainment, truth, meaning? Take your pick. It’s happening every moment across all boards and stages whether players are acting consciously or not.

I’ve spent several days the past couple weeks developing a local outdoor chess club on a streetcorner in my neighborhood. The idea was spawned this summer while working summer stock theatre in cape Cod. After shows, we were all trying to wind down, but were limited in our ability to go out and explore by our exhausting schedule. So I whipped out my chess board one night, kept playing and before I knew it people were playing almost every night, and we even put together a tournament - though we never quite found the time to find out who the reigning champ would be. Almost surely it wouldn’t have been me. I’m a social player, competitive to beginner-intermediate level challenges. But I still have moments where I get completely blindsided by someone who obviously has their whole situation laid out ahead of them and is probably tut-tuting me internally over my choice of moves and my lack of insight into the True Principles of the Game™.

But that’s how you learn, that’s how you develop as a player whether its chess, stagework, or any other domain of human knowledge, activity and tradition. You start out at the bottom, you work your way through the shit jobs and WTF situations until you start accumulating the range of experience to know what should happen, how it should happen, why it should happen and when. And by then you’re equipped with the ability to make it happen, and so you simply do. The barriers between intention and action become lower and lower until you’re operating - optimally - in a kind of continuum of unity. At least that’s what the goal looks like from where I’m sitting.

Today at Baltimore’s own Velocipede, a wonderful cooperative bike shop, I volunteered for four hours, learned how to true a wheel and disassemble, clean and reassemble a derailer. We never quite got our shit working how it needed to be, but I learned a great deal about what to look for when doing this kind of mechanical work from the patience and attentiveness of those I was working with. An excellent time, and I’m planning on going back tomorrow night for their hub workshop. I feel like at this point in the world, it behooves any free man or woman to take it upon themselves to learn a craft, learn a trade - learn many crafts and many trades - so that they can not only sustain themselves, but improve the life experiences of those around them, adding value to their community wherever possible. Towards that end, I’ve also made arrangements to meet up with the wonderful lady who runs Beth’s DIY Workshop on Harford Road (about a five mile bike ride from my house in Hampden/Medfield). Beth runs an open workshop where she teaches classes on everything from power tools, building boxes, plumbing, hanging doors, residential electric - and I’m hoping welding. If I can learn to weld, I can then go and work with another guy in town in his metal shop who make swords for stage combat and does fight choreography. But right now its about accruing value with people, learning skills and just genuinely sharing my passions and abilities with those around me. I’m assuming - and I have tentative evidence to back it up - that this will take me where I need to go…

• Beginner’s Checkmates in Chess: Fool’s Mate and Scholar’s Mate
• Play Chess Against Yourself
• Dramatic Situations Within Chess
• Corner of Hickory & 36th St, Hampden, Baltimore, MD, USA
• Engraving Hampden Chess Pieces with RTX Rotary Tool