Guthrie Theater

Forced Filters

9 Parts of Desire has put a pair of glasses on me through which I can't help but see things with a different focus or sensitivity than other folks on the street. Mind you, not better or truer, just different.

I just paid my energy bill by phone.  Phone service in Iraq is inconsistent to put it mildly.  And electricity is sometimes available only 30% or less in an average day for most Iraqi citizens.  Please don't misunderstand this blog as some sort of soap box.  It's just that I'm aware of the aforementioned filter especially keenly right now.

Obviously, we can't live through life without any armor whatsoever against the seemingly constant barrage of information - of both negligible and extreme significance.  We wouldn't be able to function.  I, myself, am a person who changes the channel when I see the ads for organizations asking for donations to help underprivileged children.  Should I be ashamed? I'm not sure.

If I think and feel through the words of the script I'm currently working on, I can laugh and cry deeply and at the same time.  Some ask me if this is a political script. And at my core I have to answer "no."  Politics in my mind is a system necessarily created to help us all try to live together on this same dang ball.  And so any story about individuals living and facing conflict --  whether with other individuals or with groups or with the whole human community - is inherently political.  But, I believe that this is what the greatest victories of thought and art and culture address:  what is our place? What are we to do? 

9 Parts of Desire is by no means an ad for starving children.  I hope that I can share with audiences the edifying and revivifying spirit these words and people have brought to me.  Hope. And though no answers may be provided, the joy may be discovered in realizing we are not the only ones asking messy questions.

Kate