Here's something I've never tried here. This is a constructed dialogue between two thinkers who never actually had this exchange. Oliver Sacks was a physician, neurologist, and writer known for books such as Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, where neurological case histories become vivid accounts of perception, identity, memory, and consciousness. His essay “Speak, Memory” is the source for the idea that memory is not a direct recording of experience. Sacks is not simply...

One way to think about tropes in general is as a game that has forgotten it is a game. A game has rules. It has roles. It has things you are allowed to do and things that are seen as breaking the frame. Everyone in it seems to know how to play, but working outside of the frame can make those following the rules feel betrayed, even angry. Family dinner can be a game. Academic life, religious ceremony, dating, theatre, hospitality, politeness, masculinity, femininity, loyalty, grief, courtship,...

It Begins in the Event I love Active Analysis because it begins with the simplest theatrical truth: something happens. Not something is diagnosed or discussed. I've often seen work lose its heat and resonance that way, only to be chased and rediscovered through more rehearsal. When you start with the first silent étude, you're already into something. The people inside the scene can no longer proceed as they did before. That sounds obvious, but in actor training it is so easy to drift away...