Artistic Statement
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James Meneses
Artistic Statement
When I was a kid, I told stories alone in my room for hours at a time. The players were action figures, stuffed animals, Legos, and there weren't many rules, just mostly free-flowing chaos. Years later in architecture school the conflict grew between nurturing and stagnating the creative impulse within a set of standards and guidelines, a structure. One very late night working on a project at the studio, this thought came up - If there is a center between chaos and order, then where could it be? Where forms grow without forcing or wanting something? When it’s grounded, yet soars beyond into a new doorway of imagination? With architecture, this center felt elusive, or maybe this sense of a perfect balance was just an impossible idea.
Across the street from the studio was the college auditorium where the drama club rehearsed and performed. I joined my senior year, acted in two plays, and the following year attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. During an early exercise called "Slice of life," while my classmates were in their "own room" just simply being themselves, I was trying to be a character. There was no script but I had this idea that it would be easier to be something, someone, anyone but myself. Maybe I was still trying to escape being the shy kid, who felt uncomfortable in social settings and would much rather tell stories with Legos. After the first year of training I received a letter informing me I was not invited back for year 2. And they were right. How could I be a character, if I was too afraid to simply be myself first? I was skipping a step and had no foundation.
I would journey on to HB Studio and take acting classes with Austin Pendleton and Michael Beckett. During this time I became a member of a NYC theater group, called the Greenhouse Ensemble. In one project, we experimented with dance, movement and dramatic writing to ask, "how do you fill absence with meaning?" and it became my first opportunity to write for theater. Since then, I’ve studied playwriting with Kim Sharp, Julie McKee, and Lia Romeo, and meet with the Greenhouse Ensemble Writer's Group, where I began realizing that any idea, good or bad starts on the surface, and takes time, patience, and risk to shed layers, and create something specific, surprising, and moving. Writing is a way of sculpting a question I don't know the answer to and my inner child who once told stories with Legos, has bargained to keep the creative hunch somewhat imperfect and reckless till the very end.
Across the street from the studio was the college auditorium where the drama club rehearsed and performed. I joined my senior year, acted in two plays, and the following year attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. During an early exercise called "Slice of life," while my classmates were in their "own room" just simply being themselves, I was trying to be a character. There was no script but I had this idea that it would be easier to be something, someone, anyone but myself. Maybe I was still trying to escape being the shy kid, who felt uncomfortable in social settings and would much rather tell stories with Legos. After the first year of training I received a letter informing me I was not invited back for year 2. And they were right. How could I be a character, if I was too afraid to simply be myself first? I was skipping a step and had no foundation.
I would journey on to HB Studio and take acting classes with Austin Pendleton and Michael Beckett. During this time I became a member of a NYC theater group, called the Greenhouse Ensemble. In one project, we experimented with dance, movement and dramatic writing to ask, "how do you fill absence with meaning?" and it became my first opportunity to write for theater. Since then, I’ve studied playwriting with Kim Sharp, Julie McKee, and Lia Romeo, and meet with the Greenhouse Ensemble Writer's Group, where I began realizing that any idea, good or bad starts on the surface, and takes time, patience, and risk to shed layers, and create something specific, surprising, and moving. Writing is a way of sculpting a question I don't know the answer to and my inner child who once told stories with Legos, has bargained to keep the creative hunch somewhat imperfect and reckless till the very end.