Write NowHephaestus’ hammer strikes twiceProducing Artistic Director Phil Smith on refining a vision
The unforgettable beauty and heartbreaking agony of producing new work in the theatre, lies in the inseparable reality that too soon after opening, the play will be just a memory.
Months, sometimes years, are dedicated to its inception, gestation, and realization. Scores of artists, crew, administrators, fund raisers, dedicate substantial portions of their finite lives to bring this once seed of an idea to life, only to see it disappear like sand through their fingers in a matter of weeks. Lookingglass and its patrons have endured this experience over 50 times these last 20 years. It is our dear hope that anyone who walked through our many doors to see one of our productions was changed/moved/challenged –ALTERED in some way, like Alice was when she walked through the looking glass. That is after all our mission.
Very rarely, we get the opportunity to breathe life back into one of those creations, to capture the sand that slipped away and mold it back into the form it once possessed, to see again that vital “happening” which, with the passage of time, has deepened in its meaning and value. The remount of Hephaestus is such an event, and I hope that you will all take the opportunity to see again with new eyes, or see now for the first time this lighting bolt of a play that took over our theatre a brief two and a half years ago.
Hephaestus began for us as part of our Glassworks program (the Lookingglass initiative to support new work). Artistic Associate Tony Hernandez was searching for a myth to anchor a circus event. Artistic Director David Catlin tossed out the idea of Hephaestus’ Forge as being ripe with potential theatricality. Tony and David, with our Artistic Director of New Work Heidi Stillman set the idea in motion with initial input from fellow artists John Musial and Kerry Catlin. The idea of a circus dominated telling of this story became a passion with Tony, and along with Heidi (and with some seed help from Lookingglass), they presented a one evening workshop production at the Village Theatre outside of Detroit, Michigan.
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