I'm going to post John Hirsch's theater musings now, rather than waiting (Notes on him appear on the previous page).... And for the few of you who might find that what he wrote sounds just too, too… The raunchiest, funniest production I ever saw of A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON MY WAY TO THE FORUM, was directed by John.
By John Hirsch - Excerpted from A TRIBUTE TO J. H.:
Theatre is for the ongoing illumination of man: his problems, his dreams, his visions, the society which lifts him, his relationship to God. The is what theatre is about. It is also a celebration, communally, of all the values which society holds. To be truly human has to be learned, and has to be learned over and over again. And one of the places where we learn about being human is in the theatre.
As for the classics, if you’re going to do theatre, you should spend a lot of time doing the best. I just revel in the opportunity to come into the company of these great works. They kept me sane and helped me make sense of my life. If I hadn’t been working on the plays of Shakespeare, Chekov, Brecht and the other masters, I believe I would have gone crazy, because I could not deal with my experiences of the war and the Holocaust directly. All these experiences are at the centre of the plays, whether it’s the destruction of and disappearance of a society as in Chekhov, or tragedy of a personal kind in Shakespeare. Doing these plays became an ongoing meditation on what happened to me, an ongoing spiritual experience. I have always been an archeologist of my soul. The plays help in this exploration, which is the process of healing myself.
If your emotions, mind and sprit, as well as your senses, are not fed in the theatre, if you are not nurtured by some great vision clearly important to your existence, what the hell is theatre for? I’ve been lucky. I’m very fortunate to have directed plays that I loved, to have worked with artist of extraordinary ability. These are the great pleasures of being in the theatre – to spend most of your time in the company of passionate, brilliant, talented and committed people. It spoils your for life.