#david prete

(USA 2000)

With The Florida Project (https://moviebloke.com/2017/10/03/the-florida-project/), Sean Baker sparked my curiosity in his work. Big time. Sure, I heard of him and caught an earlier film, Tangerine (https://moviebloke.com/2015/07/28/tangerine/), before that. Now, though, I’m practically obsessed with seeing what else he’s done, more than any other director in recent memory. For my…

An essay by director David Prete on the first day of I and You rehearsal at RedTwist in Chicago which opens Nov 29th, 2014.

I just loved David's summation of the work and themes of my play and thought it would be worth sharing (with his permission). He's one of those directors that I really treasure as he seems to understand my plays better than I do at times. I said that to him once and he said, "No, I just understand them differently." Grateful for great collaborators. - Lauren

  "Why should we ask an audience to watch two high school kids do homework for 90 minutes? That is arguably the plot summary of this play. (There is the whole meta- plot, but that’s not revealed until minute 88.) I’m sincerely asking why we should ask people to sit in this room with us, because I don’t think we can make anything worthwhile without asking that question. Two high school kids do homework. That is the plot of the play. But the story of the play—and what I really want to ask people to watch—is this: during the time it takes two teenagers to do their homework, they stand behind each other’s eyes and see a wisdom and love that forms who they will be for the rest of their lives and beyond. I think it’s a worthy story. Because standing behind the eyes of another person to gain life- altering wisdom is something everyone knows something about. A person could argue that they don’t know anything about that, but that would only mean they forgot it happened to them. Which would put us in the business of reminding them.

Before I continue I need to tell you about what I get from art, because the wisdom art brings us is also something this play is about.

First time I heard John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things I was standing in a Hell’s Kitchen bar. When the first few notes hit my ear I thought: What the fuck IS this? Obviously I knew it was that song from The Sound of Music, but Coltrane was demanding that I hear something new in it. It took me a while but I finally heard what Coltrane had put in the notes. He was saying: Melancholy and joy function best together. And this wisdom came at the perfect time, because I was a young actor still in the conservatory and I was struggling to get rid of my melancholy because I thought it was blocking my joy. In the middle of my struggle Coltrane stepped in and said: Not true. Joy doesn’t need to take the place of melancholy; they really need to stay together. I sensed that if I allowed the union of those two things, I would be a better actor and more complete person. This spiritual implications of that hit me fuckin hard. And finding art that could give me that kind of wisdom became one of my greatest desires. Obsessions. 

What we’ll finally ask people to come into this room to watch is two high school kids who pursue life-altering wisdom with each other and through each other. A wisdom that will show them how to see beyond the ordinary, to the best possible life, in spite of how long or short lived it may be.

The fun and beauty of our job, is discovering specifically why they pursue these things, how they pursue them, and what blocks their pursuit. The point is not how often we discover these things; the point is that every day we get to look for them. And we’ve already begun."