In August of 2015, I drove out to the playa for the first time for the Golden Spike ceremony. I found myself standing alone facing the Razorback as a dust storm rolled in. Standing with my arms outstretched, feeling the grains of sand softly blast, my body leaning into the wind, feeling epic and minuscule at the same time, I heard myself say, “To Be or Not to Be, that is the Question.” “Blow winds
and crack your cheeks!,” was my next thought. This project is born of that moment. This installation draws upon the experiences I and the other actor/teachers have had introducing people from all ages, races, backgrounds to the transformational alchemy of Shakespeare’s language. We do not believe there is a right way just the way that brings the words, speaker and audience to life. It is a world in which the player gets to encounter who they are and who they might be. Everything they need is within themselves and as they breathe their life into the text it comes alive as if for the first time. This language is for everyone as it holds the sacred and the profane, the ridiculous and sublime. It asks big questions about the human experience in all its complexity and invites the speaker to commit body, voice, heart, and soul to the moment. And it is enormously fun. To get up on a stage and say to a group of friends and strangers under a wide desert sky, “We are such stuff as dreams are made of and our little life is rounded with a sleep ” transforms you and all those listening.
