Miss Marker director's note
My father, a lifelong teacher and advocate of cooperative learning, recently shared his motto with me which isn't, "two heads are better than one," but rather, "two heads (together) are better than two (apart)." I think this insight holds great value to both the theatre as a creative process and to the people the theatre tries to reach. For me, theatre, in the largest sense, is about learning to unlock ourselves from ourselves. It is about the fundamental recognition that we need one another in order to move in any direction. We're often fooled into thinking that we can accomplish great things alone, without the deeper understanding that both our failures and successes are part of a larger picture, one which relies on our interaction and experience, on falling in and out of step with our environment; on the constant tension between the stagnancy that comes with safety and the risk that comes with growth. Miss Marker, both as a process and a piece, has been an exploration of this tension. When I first began working with Catherine Montgomery on writing the play, we had no idea where our collaboration would lead us. We each brought a character to the table, and then re-invented that character together once we realized how much fuller each could be under one another's influence. Working with Natasha, Randy and Chardae on developing the piece has been incredibly rewarding. Like Audrey and Henry, each of us are in very different stages of our lives, yet our intersection has provided us each with a wider looking-glass. Many thanks for your support and enjoy the show.
