Isaac at Parabasis has been blogging about his thoughts as he reads Peter Brook's The Open Door. It's a brief but powerful volume that certainly left it's mark on my psyche when I first read it. My favorite part is the parable of the the golden fish, but he's not gotten that far, so I won't spoil it for those who are reading along. (If you're not reading along, or haven't read the book at all, do yourself a favor.)

I've been reading along, and one tiny thing has stuck with me from all the way back on page 4. It goes like this.

An empty space makes it possible for a new phenomenon to come to life, for anything that touches on content, meaning, expression, language and music can exist only if the experience is fresh and new. However, no fresh and new experience is possible if there isn't a pure, virgin space ready to receive it.

It's so difficult to find virgin territory, whether in discussions like those of the theatrenet or in our art. It's incredibly challenging, if not philosophically impossible to worm your mind around to a place without presumptions and prejudices. That simple, obvious fact makes a lot of what we want to accomplish very, very difficult.

For example, in our online discussions, a whole lot of time and energy has put into exposing those presumptions and prejudices. Wouldn't it have been nice if we all had the advantage of a virgin space that somehow existed outside of those issues in which to stage our theoretical collaborations? Impossible, of course, but maybe it's worth considering what that utopia would be like.

In making the art, of course, nothing can occur without previously created contexts. It might be an interesting thought experiment, though, to imagine what theatre might look like if we were creating something brand new to fulfill its purpose.