First Blog Post - A Bar Mitzvah in Hyperspace, to quote Lewis Black

So this is my first blog post. I figured I would start out with a sort of personal mission statement about theatre, and what it is that I want to do within the art form.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, probably because I just graduated from college (WOO OBERLIN!) and have now entered the "real world" and have to figure out what it is that I as an artist bring to the table. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the mission statement I posted on my Weebly (jsobel.weebly.com) is still very much the most accurate description of what it is that I look to create and accomplish, and what theatre is about for me/why I have devoted myself to it (DISCLAIMER: Yes, the description on my Weebly, especially the end, is cheesy and cliché. Acknowledged. Moving on.)

So my first post is simply a copy-and-paste of my Weebly page on Theatre. For your viewing pleasure:

"I am a firm believer that great theatre is created through great collaboration. Only when all minds and hearts involved are working together positively toward a shared creation can theatre tap into the power it has to move people, and in so doing change the world. Theatre is a force that brings people together, and when that chord of mutual harmony, hard work, and inspiration is struck, there are no limits to the power that can result. This is theatre I believe in: a theatre where all of its creators can make art that they feel good about, from the first day all the way to closing.

For me, theatre is about people, both the people involved and the people portrayed. It is about the things we do to each other. Things large and things small, things wonderful and things horrific, things beautiful and things disgusting and vile. It is about the things we do, the things we have done, and the things we can and will do to each other, and to the world, well into the future.

Theatre forces us to look at ourselves and what we are capable of even when we are afraid to look, even if what we see is not what we care to admit. And it is through brutal honesty and incisive, imaginative artistry that truths about ourselves, exciting, grand, and repulsive truths, are revealed and explored. And it is through this theatre, through a theatre that grabs its audience and says 'look what we can do', a theatre that emotionally affects, infects, and involves its audience, that the world can be changed. Because if this theatre can affect one person's being, then that one world has been changed. And if it can affect a hundred people's beings... well you get the idea.

This is my goal. A theatre by people, a theatre for people, a theatre about people.

A Theatre Of People."