Artistic Statement

Artistic Statement

What happens when an actor on-stage lights a cigarette and the audience smells that cigarette smoke? What happens inside you when you sit in a theater watching a play and a real baby is brought on-stage and fed a bottle of formula? What can I create when I sit down to write something that can be done only on a stage and not on the internet or on film or on television or in an art gallery?
These questions haunt me as I write for the theater and I don’t have answers. I do know that each time I write I want to explore passionately the uniqueness of live theater. I want to present an event that lives on a stage in front of live people sharing space in that same moment with actors who, when they sneeze, you reflexively want to say, "Gesundheit."
I want to capture truths in new ways. I want people to feel, "Oh, I've experienced that thought, that sensation, that emotion." I want people to suddenly realize, "I never knew I always hurt with that pain and loved with that joy."
I have no credo except a passion to share the intensities of our existence by creating work for the theater so that people sitting together in the same space listening and watching my work might lean forward and say to themselves, "Yes".

Direct contact: fredjaygordon@gmail.com