A place is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. … It implies an indication of stability. A space exists when one takes into consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables. Thus space is composed of intersections of mobile elements. It is in a sense actuated by the ensemble of movements deployed within it.
Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984).p.117
Okay, so now we’re talking about something else entirely. Now we’re in the territory of obsession, of the kind of commitment that makes normal people uncomfortable at dinner parties.
She’s out there in her underwear. On a rock. In the Pacific. Scouting locations for a play that barely exists anymore. For Sophocles‘ Nausicäa, the lost one, the ghost play, the one that survives only in fragments and marginal notes and the wet dreams of classicists. We’re building a tragedy from shards. From the iota of what remains. And Angrette’s out there communing with Poseidon for it.
This is what I’m talking about. This is the difference between someone who “works in theater” and someone who serves it like some kind of fevered priest. Most people won’t even get their shoes wet for art. Angrette’s out there basically naked, exposed to the elements and the universe, because she understands that to reconstruct something that’s been lost for 2,500 years, to position Poseidon correctly in a play Sophocles wrote and the world forgot, you have to strip away everything that isn’t essential. You have to be as vulnerable as Odysseus was when the sea tried to erase him, as vulnerable as the text itself, which barely survived two and half centuries.
There’s something almost ritualistic about it, like she’s making an offering not just to this production, but to Sophocles himself. To the ghosts of Athens. To everything that’s been lost and might be found again.
The best collaborators don’t just show up. They offer themselves up. And I, putting together IOTA, resurrecting fragments, building worlds from whispers, I found someone who understands that great work demands a certain kind of madness.
That’s not just talent. That’s devotion. That’s grace.