Spirital Atelier

Today, according to NASA’s SkyWatch, Fredericksburg citizens will be able to see the International Space Station in the sky for three minutes as it passes in its orbit. At first, this was only garnered passing interest from me – it’s not as though I couldn’t look the ISS up online whenever I wanted. But something about it kept drawing my focus, so I did some research into it.

A massive endeavor, the ISS was started at the end of the Cold War, when American astronautical engineers were at their most industrious. They found that since there was no competition anymore, their energies were waning. Instead of letting themselves atrophy, they called nations around the world and proposed a collaborative project to surpass all other individual works. Planning and drafting took until 1998, when work formally began. It’s on track to be completed in 2010, and will stay in orbit until 2016. It currently weighs approximately 500,000lbs., and spans 191ft. by 240ft. by 90ft. – as you saw above, bigger than a Boeing 747. Click here to see scale drawings (Note they are in 1/100 scale).

It also travels at 17,240 miles per hour; at that speed and with the distance it is from Earth, this massive structure appears in the sky like this (click to see more):
So why does this mean anything?

As I sat there staring at this blur in the sky at some Idaho house, there was a great disconnect. That is the International Space Station. A crowning achievement in international cooperation and coordination, a paragon in collaborative design and engineering, the current zenith of man’s endeavors to sustain life outside this planet’s atmosphere. But unless you knew that this was the ISS, you would mistake it for a naturally occuring item. It would blip out of your interest as quickly as it came in. And something about that reverberated in me.

A playwright writes a play to communicate an artistic message that came to him or her. A producer reads a play, and finds it suitable to perform for a paying audience. A company contacts directors, designers, stage managers, and any and all stagehands, wardrobe crew, etc. to inform them of this project. A director analyzes the play for its artistic quality and its techncial demands and provisions, eventually conceiving a message to convey. A designer analyzes the play for its technical demands and provisions, eventually conceiving an aesthetic to convey. An actor auditions, either with a prepared monolog or reading the play without time to prepare, and then analyzes the script for its artistic quality and technical demands and provisions, eventually conceiving a series of genuine emotions to convey. A stage manager compiles all this information and his or her own analyses so they are aware of any and all questions or concerns and can answer them knowledgably. At the same time, the company must find ways to present the play to the public in such a way as excites interest and encourages attendance. Labor laws define great portions of the work, and for most of the people listed above, they must start the process anew soon thereafter (if they are not doing more than one production at the time). To describe the process of what we do in theatre to, say, my parents (admitted outsiders to the field), there is little difference in the degree of difficulty between it and building a space station. So much can go wrong in the course of a production, making it a miracle that things go as well as they do. But even when they do go well, what does it mean?

Honestly speaking, an overwhelming majority of people will never see a single thing I do. I will not be remembered by most people, statistically speaking. Most people will also not pay attention as the ISS passes overhead. But for the people that do know, for the people that are looking, it’s a captivating glimpse.

I can say the same with theatre.

It’s an amazing thing we do. We create life onstage, we manifest truths and stories and the worlds we wish we had. No matter what, we have that. And it’s never easy. Creating life is a trying, painful, process. But when it’s done, it’s an amazing sight. And nothing can change that.

So when I’m staring at the six o’clock sky, I’ll have a part of me expand right into that sky, right in time for rehearsal.