Am I Dying While I’m Devouring Life?

Am I Dying While I'm Devouring Life? Ruth Maleczech I am sitting in a Parisian cafe thinking about Mabou Mines-an artistic collaborative I've worked in for 11 years-and Re.Cher.Chez, a two-year-old studio for avant-garde performing arts-with sun and Paris fall, thinking about the death and dying of American art. Both Mabou Mines and Re.Cher.Chez have, on the contrary, nurtured and furthered the art of the theatre in such extraordinary ways and, in the case of Mabou Mines, on a worldwide scale. I suppose it becomes a question of stamina. Am I dying while I'm devouring life, transmuting it into art, throwing it up on a stage in a live performance-in an art form unlike any other-obeying none of the rules of art finances, art politics. It makes no lasting product, it dies the moment it is born, though for that instant it exists in all the terrifying clarity of life-not still born, but born to die. I think I don't care whether we're dying while we're creating life. I think it's not important to look backwards or ahead, not important to create for anything outside of the need to create-and then to create anything-a play, a book, a moment. Two tasks-to become responsible-to Re.Cher.Chez, a group of artists who must rely on the tradition of oral teaching to know, to whom I am committed to bind their future to my history and to remain passionate-to Mabou Mines, whose creativity gives me the room for my future, for my personal unknown. Dying? Yes, all the time-dying remembering, projecting, inventing, screaming about money, hating the critics who keep you poor-and knowing for sure in the end of all that, if it's not happening here, it's happening somewhere else-if it's not happening in me, it's happening in someone else. Ruth Maleczech directed the Mabou Mines production of Wrong Guys. 45 ...