2014 – Healing Wars

There are so many stories in each project. And hopefully, breakthroughs in structure, systems, processes. In the case of Healing Wars I tried a lot of new things because I was newly without an organization. Among the experiments I forwarded in this work was the idea that narrative-based dance work could live within the regional theater world. I believed at the time, and still do despite hardships and setbacks, that dance has a lot to offer to the regional theater movement, and they us.

We premiered Healing Wars at Arena Stage and when we got to La Jolla Playhouse fifteen months later for the closing run, my ongoing curiosity about abstraction and concrete storytelling came to a head in a great conversation with Chris Ashley, LJP’s artistic director. Through a lot of questioning I was able to fix the piece’s ending, which I had thought was so clear, but to Chris was not… and in fixing it, made it even more haunting. I only wish that we could make this pathway between the worlds of theater and dance a more traveled highway by more artists.