Firsts

Greetings and welcome to my introductory blog post! First and foremost, thank you to Blue Coyote Theater Group for the opportunity and honor to be one of the playwrights chosen for the inaugural Coyote Commission Project. I’m in excellent company. Also, I’d like to add that this is my very first blog post ever, of any kind, so there’s that too.

Now, a quote.

“I want to be ripped apart by music. I want it to be something that feeds and replenishes, or that totally sucks the life out of you. I want to be dashed against the rocks.” - Jeff Buckley

I was talking to my Mom about Jeff Buckley a couple of weeks ago. She is in her late sixties. And while she enjoys music, she's never really been crazy over it. She wasn't one to rush out and buy a new album when she was young or go to a lot of concerts (at least this is what I remember her telling me, maybe I have it all wrong...). She does like to sing though, and does so to all music - but only in a very high soprano.

I sent her a couple of favorite Jeff Buckley songs, or rather, YouTube videos, because I really like to subject my Mother to things she probably won't like and then bug her endlessly about it. But she called the next day to say that she had been incredibly moved by watching the video of Hallelujah, but in a way that had unnerved her, which was surprising to both of us. She was excited and emotional in telling me about it, trying to "figure out" the beauty of the thing - what exactly it was about the video, the song, the singer himself that moved her so. We talked for a while and concluded that maybe she just got dashed against the rocks a little by Jeff Buckley.

The quote above has stuck with me ever since reading it several years ago. It's something I agree with, strongly. And while it's said about music, it resonates with me as something for theatre as well. In discussions about playwriting, storytelling and the theatrical experience, I eventually truck out this quote to sum up exactly how I feel.

So there it is.

Looking forward to all the blogging...

- Christine Whitley