I deleted "social" media accounts over four years ago and won't be returning anytime soon. More on that in a future letter. Unless you'd meet for a cup of tea instead, this email is the only way to stay updated on my practice. Either way, the choice is yours.
Act One, Imagination Meets Physics
“Kae wakes in a bedroom, but not her bedroom. She is in a bed, but not her bed. The room is like a marshmallow, everything the same color and distortable if you add pressure. And neat, no destruction. The edges of this space are soft and glowing as if James Turrell designed it.”
That’s the opening stage direction of Act II of Outsider, a play about pain that I completed during the Dramatist Guild’s 2022 End of Play (the next one is coming up in April, and I’ve signed up; let me know if you have too and we can be writing buddies.)
I’ve been thinking a lot about that play while trying a new treatment for my chronic back pain and considering the “producibility” of my plays. The thing about theatre is that anything can happen. The stage direction might say, “The figure sinks into the ground,” but you don’t have to have a Broadway budget to make the audience believe it. You only need your imagination and the ability to take fellow artists and the audience into their imagination.
I’m not interested in kitchen sink dramas unless they occur in a giant kitchen sink with human-sized dirty dishes, and we sit in amongst the bubbles. I am a surrealist because I think the best way to mirror our world is to depict one without logic and rationality—that’s what the world feels like to me.
I recently visited Mass Moca with some friends. At dusk, I experienced James Turrell’s largest freestanding skyspace, C.A.V.U. We looked up at the oculus in the roof, and the sky’s colors changed as the light inside the cylindrical building altered.
“I can make the sky any color you choose.” — James Turrell
At that moment, the relativity of color and perception was made clear. Surreality accentuated the reality of the world we live in. Hell, Yes! for art. But it took thirty years to complete, and I can’t even fathom the cost. As an experience free with our museum admission, how does that work financially?
I didn’t have that thought immediately after leaving the structure; I was elated by the brilliance of one of my inspirations*. I pondered the physics before the finances. But I did start to roam around the actuality of making art like this within a few hours - when I realized the sky wasn’t hot pink. Oh, but what if it was?
James Turrell: C.A.V.U. is made possible by the support of an anonymous donor.
Ok…there’s my answer.
As someone a little overwhelmed by questioning the efficacies of non-profit compared to for-profit art-making, I think I’ll take a moment to ruminate on the nature and properties of matter and energy rather than the balance sheet. Money is a boundary. Artists need boundaries, but I want to lean into imagination.
“I can make the floor, and the pain, dissolve around your feet.” - Catherine Stewart
Act Two, Tell Me What You Felt
Illustrator Sara Argue created Margo’s sketchbook for the recent You, Me, and the Woodsmoke production. She also produced beautiful postcards from her artwork so audience members could send a love note to a friend.
Recently, over a cup of tea, she encouraged me to ask for testimonials on the play's experience. She told me what it meant to her and what it provoked. Sara thinks others might want to do the same. She also said that these response gifts might come in handy one day. I was hesitant at first, but Sara is often right about art and matters of the heart.
If you attended You, Me, and the Woodsmoke or have read the published script, or if you wanted to go but couldn’t because of the flood, I still want to hear your feedback.
Anyway, after the first of our expeditions, someone asked Matt Recine if he ever wanted to perform a one-man show. And he said, “Only if Catherine writes it.” I laughed and said, “I don’t write male-centered plays.”
Actor, Matt Recine, in the rehearsal room!
My husband pressed me again later, and I said, “I just don’t write for men.” He proposed, “Well, what if you just wrote for a…person?” I can’t disregard an intriguing gauntlet.
Matt and I have set a date to get in a room: March 19th, the first day of Spring. We’re going to play with research on a virus that attacks sheep and devastates livelihoods. I have read a daybook from the early 1900s that charts the downfall of a family farm. The story of familial expectations in the face of being a “man” is our playground.
“Community cultural development work inevitably responds to current social conditions: the word is grounded in social critique and social imagination.”
I’m challenging myself (and Matt) to CRITIQUE and IMAGINE with individuals who describe themselves as male. Not being a man myself, I am going to do some interviewing.
So, let's discuss being a guy. Topics might include the privileges and pressures you have felt or if you love a good woolly jumper. The possibilities are endless.
This is just a little lamb of an idea, so I make no promises that it will go anywhere, but I am at least getting back in the room, and this time, it’s one for the guys!
I'm off to listen to more Rufus Wainwright,
Catherine
P.S. Also, it’s been 100 years since Andre Breton wrote his Manifesto on Surrealism. If you’d like to do your homework for the following letter, there's a great NYT article on that, and here’s the source material, too. And, of course, I’m interested in the women of Surrealism—it’s not Dali and Duchamp, you know. More to com
P.P.S. Yes, there are two Google forms in this email. I think I might love them as much as I love spreadsheets. The fact that they populate a spreadsheet makes them all the more exciting.
P.P.P.S Don’t you just love words? Inspiration is defined as a person or thing that inspires. But also, the drawing in of breath; inhalation. I think inspiration should make you catch your breath.