Chris Domig dreams big dreams. I’ve never worked with a better actor. And, more importantly, he is among the best people, truly – truly – a great person.
Chris is the artistic director and founder of Sea Dog Theater in NYC – one of his dreams, come true. He works harder than anyone I’ve ever known to make his dreams a reality.
In the next week he has a mountain to climb: for this new off-broadway production, Tuesdays With Morrie, he must raise $100,000 before this time next week. Seriously.
I have little money but a rich network. You can help Chris in two ways: 1) Pass this on, or 2) Follow this link and give-what-you-can to a worthy artist making very worthy art. Or, if you wish, do both.
Thank you for passing this through your network. Thank you for helping Chris climb this mountain.
[a note: Thirteen years ago I made a rule never to promote anything through my blog – except my own mad-mad-artistry. This post – for the first time – busts my rule and I’m delighted to do it – a statement of how much I value Chris and his work.]
Posted on January 11, 2017 by davidrobinsoncreative
A view from 30,000 feet (a meditation on metaphor):
Joe used to say that the universe tends toward wholeness. “Tends” is a precarious word of movement, like a tree that leans. Still, to me, Joe’s sentiment – his metaphor – is hopeful. He might have said that the universe tends toward confusion.
Chris and Janelle are starting a new theatre company, The Seadog Theatre Company. They are dedicating their work to exploring stories of alienation and reconciliation. Both alienation and reconciliation are words of movement. The first, alienation, is a movement away from wholeness (toward confusion?). The second, reconciliation, is a movement toward wholeness. Push away. Reach across.
Chris and I agree that all stories, from the deepest mythology to the most whimsical lampoon, are explorations of alienation and reconciliation. It is the human journey, it is humanity’s journey. It is the human experience. Journey is a word of movement, from here to there.
The Big Bang is science’s great narrative of alienation and reconciliation. Out of nothingness (formlessness) in a violent explosion of energy, all forms took shape. Stars, meteors, planets, atoms and oceans and daisies and Dog-Dog. Energy expressed in form. And then, so the narrative goes, form returns to energy. Like the tides going out the energy of the explosion will eventually turn, exhausted, and fall back toward the center in the Big Merge.
The eye blinks open, a universe comes into being. The eye blinks closed, a universe disappears. The tide comes in. The tide rolls out. It’s a cycle of movement. Metaphor.
“Your words are alienation and reconciliation,” I wrote to Chris, “mine are separation and unity. Same thing, yes?”
I’ve never been comfortable with religions because they often claim their metaphors as fact – and that freezes movement. For instance, Adam and Eve were Big-Banged out of the Garden of Eden for eating an apple from the tree of knowledge. One bite of the apple blew their minds open to differences. Separation. It is the experience of birth into this whacky world of duality and confusion. And just like all the stars and planets and oceans and daisies of the field hurtling through space and time, it is a story meant to help us seek wholeness as we stride though this field of opposites.
The universe may tend but we can intend. We can create. We can choose. We can point our ships toward alienation, we can cleave our world into us-and-them, run in fear and separation. Or, we can make conscious our stories (as Chris and Janelle intend in their theatre), we can walk the middle path (a potent metaphor), and recognize that the separation is at best temporary and arbitrary. Like the stars and planets and oceans and daisies, we will also exhaust the force of our explosion into form and fall back into the Big Merge.
The Direction of Intention 