Now I am twittering, writing on my facebook pages and this... it's a lot but it also forcing me to reflect publicly... and document this process, which is frankly profoundly life changing and I know it is so easy on these kinds of tools to just blather on about things rather over positively- and yet this rehearsal process is really unusual and lovely, with a cast that has willingly joined me to create this show in which we are praying together- despite our very different understandings of what that means... and when I say we are praying- it is not as clear as it may sound. We are... in silence sometimes, singing and crying at others. laughing at times, some dancing, some silent as others 'praise', some wondering what 'praise' means, sometimes just saying thank you, sometimes someone is grumpy and distant, sometimes even vaguely angry... and it all is under this thing we are calling 'prayer'... sacred with the curse taken off of it, prayer with the expectations removed... so hard to describe... and it leads to rehearsals that are deeper, more fun, more relaxed, more dangerous material appears as well... of course most of the time we are rehearsing/warming up etc... normal rehearsals... but it is this aspect of the 'warm up' that I am most intrigued by... will it/does it make a difference? If so.... how? And is that difference just for us? will it be visible/felt by the audience? If so- how- in our unity? in the form we create?

This all began from my trying to take the way that i work on my solos into my work as a creator/DIRECTOR. It felt and still feels dangerous. Blogging about it ALSO feels dangerous- because of the understandable prejudices against what people understand 'religion', 'faith' to mean... but as I 'come out' as a Baha'i and try to integrate the practices that I use in the studio that are truly from Baha'i practice into the studio with others, who share similiar... practices (and i like the word practice as i am not refering to just a sense of spirituality- but a practice... be it prayer/sacred singing/silence/meditation/thanks giving/conscious relationship to ancestors) regardless of what... container it may come in... I am finding that MANY folks in the theatre world have some practice that they would call... spiritual or prayer and that this is hardly unusual- BUT is kept very quiet.... seems private and is often not shared for fear of

what?