Critical Correspondence

MRPJ#22/Ownership: Extras

I urge those with power over the tangible evidence of Martha’s genius to stop acting as if Martha was still alive, imitating her choices. It has proven to be an impossible path—destructive rather than creative. Let us lesser mortals take up the task relevant to our time: to codify, interpret, teach, and inspire new audiences with fresh revelations of her message of change and growth. Our company will flourish by remembering what she expected of us, not what she expected of herself.

— from “Dear Friends” by Janet Elber

So I began from self-consciously borrowed sources, engaging in the transformation that occurred as they filtered through me; I attempted to force an “inclusive” aesthetic on myself, in response to so many years of “fearless” editing…again watching the transformation that takes place from the setting of an unrealistic task; tried, in others words, to slip into another’s skin, knowing full well the impossibility of the attempt, using it rather as a means to expand my own definitions. And by so doing, I meant to force my own definitions of what’s possible to put on stage by searching out the awkward, the uncool, the ridiculous, the “untrue to oneself,” the simply untrue, etc.

— from “Stealing, Influence and Identity” by Susan Rethorst