(Apologies to those who may find this preoccupation with my theatre work self-absorbed. The era begged some kind of closure here, and reflection is my best and only closure. Feel free to skip this entry for the more interesting ones above and below. —Ed.)

I never want to make theatre again.

Hm, yes, so, I directed this play, and that's what consumed most of my time over the last six weeks, so at risk of dwelling on it, I'd like to get some closure by way of reflection on the process. The result was, for me as the director, a mild disappointment—not a disaster by any means, but something of a disappointment. I accomplished about 2/3 of what I set out to do with this production. To that, some friends said, "Oh, that's good!"—a depressing thought. That 2/3 of happiness is a respectable feat here makes me never want to make theatre again.

Unlike writing, making theatre is necessarily collaborative. The process of negotiating with other people to get what you want (finding a way to "slip into the water" as Joe Lavy said) occupies a good deal of your time, and the tactical aspect of herding a group of people in one direction is a huge part of the director's craft. So although it might be easy to blame other people for the quality of the production, I recognize that I am at the center of process and if I didn't get the best out of each actor and designer, I made a mistake.

We tried to do a 110-minute two-act play in 105 minutes with no intermission. That worked the audience too hard; weariness dimished the impact.

Some staging was sloppy; to give an example: the piece ends with one of the characters "coming," and I never had the guts to tell him what was obvious to anyone watching—that he had to really reach a climax. For heavy breathing to trail off does not an orgasm make. At least not in my experience.

The main flaw as that I didn't fully "lift" the key elements of the piece. The wallop of the play comes not from the tragic accident of the story (as many people assume) but from the ideas that are presented, ideas about the proscribed nature of given social reality vs. the more important, individual, passionate world that each person has to construct. This is an idea, and ideas are slightly foreign to actors. No, that's not right. Actors love ideas but don't want to think about them. The director needs to think about them, and pull the actors' strings to produce an understanding "out there" in the house. This is the distinction, in the Sanskrit theory of theatre, between "bhava" and "rasa" (rasa means "flavor" in Sanskrit). Bhava is what the performer does—rasa is the what the spectator tastes.

The level of trust I inspired in the actors was too low to let them relax and let me construct the story that I thought was important. As a result, the important ideas that the script offers were occluded, leaving the audience to watch feats of acting instead of a carefully constructed story. Building more trust is my prime directive next time round.

What Seattle audiences want to see is people to flail their hair and release energy. They want, essentially, relief from their unsatisfying and burdensome work lives, and they want to live vicariously through people who are flailing their hair and rasping their voices. I can appreciate that, too—although it seems to me that a rock show proper would serve that need better than theatre does.

What I want to do is something different. Theatre is a matter of presenting interesting situations, chosen to provoke you, the audience member, as a social human being. It need not be intellectual, but it's not vicarious and it doesn't provide thrills. However (and this is my epiphany) that view doesn't exclude an experience that can, you know, kick your ass. One needs one's ass to be kicked from time to time. To have your ass kicked is to be lost to the vagaries of a turbulent airplane, in thrall to a giant wave, or punched out in the basement of Lou's (as in Fight Club). To have your ass kicked is one of the central experiences of life, like ice cream, the contemplation of great heights, and spooning in bed. To be not in control, to be dominated by an experience, for an experience to be so strong that it breaks open your skin—that refreshes the senses and the sense of life. And it can be done in theatre.

Bart Sher's production of Homebody/Kabul (Tony Kushner) makes this clear. There are moments in that show that feel like bricks falling on you, or waking up fitful and vomiting in the middle of the night (that's praise!). And this production doesn't turn on vicarious thrills—it presents situations, alternately enticing and appalling, but always engaging, and it stimulates you as a human being.

I have a new set of goals when I go back to making theatre.