What I Would Like to See in the Theater

Contributed by Paul Bargetto

I recently watched a documentary about the Apollo space program and the astronauts that visited the moon. One of them described how he paused for a moment while standing on the surface of the moon and saw the earth suspended in the black and limitless void of space. He held up his hand and marveled that he could cover the entire earth with his thumb. I cannot stop thinking about that gesture and the awesome perspective it represents for our earth-bound fears and desires, our beliefs and faiths, our nationalities and identities. We all live together, by some extraordinary chance, on this tiny spot of blue, this miraculous and fertile garden in a limitlessly vast, sterile, and hostile void. And so, when I think about what play I would like to make, I find myself longing for the drama that can bring us closer to the other worldly perspective granted to those few men who were sent to the moon. While I would love to stage Waiting for Godot in the Sea of Tranquility, I hope more than anything for new plays that possess the creative power to match that view of our home seen from our nearest heavenly body over forty years ago. What new things can be seen and said from that vista of the imagination about the family, the tribe, the nation, the faith, the gender, the historical moment, or the language we find ourselves in on this spinning bit of cosmic dust, our beloved planet Earth? I am waiting for those dramatists to appear with great anticipation.

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Paul Bargetto is an international theater director and festival producer. He is the Artistic Director of the undergroundzero festival and cooperative and the artistic director of East River Commedia. He worked in New York City's downtown independent theater scene for the past fifteen years at such venues as PS 122, Collective:Unconscious, La MaMa, the Connelly Theater and the Abrons Arts Center. Internationally he has worked in Germany, Turkey, Poland and Romania. He currently resides in Warsaw, Poland.