Baker Artist Portfolios

PETER
The waitress was telling me about her husband.
 
JOE
Don’t pretend to like her stories. She’ll rattle 'em off like a machine gun. The story about her husband’s death is a favorite. It’s one of those things people around here tend to take sides on. You either believe her or you don’t. Now, she may very well be telling the truth, but my thought has always been, temporary insanity my ass. She knew enuf when she pushed him.

Hi. I'm MJ Perrin and thanks for clicking on "more"; it's so gratifying.  Now here's your reward: you get the real make-believe story on me. To start, I'm a lifetime student of life. I also teach Life 101 and independent seminars on life. If I remember correctly (sorry, I'm getting old), this is my fifth lifetime; I regret to report, they don't get any easier.

I live my life by one simple rule: don't die doing something stupid. That pretty much keeps me from being an idiot, just in case. You may be thinking, "She's a bit pre-occupied with life & death", but I'm not. I'm pre-occupied with living before dying. There's a big difference. Sorry to disappoint if you were expecting something else, but that's... well, you know--life.

Seriously though, what follows has been the most profound lesson I have ever experienced, shaping my growth as both a writer and a person.

My theatrical experiences began with performances in cafes. One time I was portraying a bag lady doing “in your face” theatre. A for-real homeless woman came up to me and said, from one bag lady to another, that I shouldn’t confront the nice people who had the money to buy overpriced coffee—my words, not hers. It was at this point I realized theatre cannot be merely “performances”; it must be informed and respectful. I hated that I had no idea of this woman’s life and here I was acting like I did. When I pen plays, I always keep that in mind.

As a playwright, what appeals most to me, are the points where lives intersect, generating vast choices at the site of colliding interests, each in competition for value and worth. I am fascinated with how good and bad can exist in one person, at one moment in time, expressed in one decisive action. As the world becomes smaller, more accessible and more confrontational, I want my writing to explore how the saving grace of one soul, is damnation for another. Currently, my writing is focused on the inherent symbiotic relationship between the solitary individual and society as a collective of individuals.

Exploring the issues of living, is a continuous process for me. I am always emerging with a new understanding of what it means to be one, living among many, with different perspectives about what our common ground should be. As an observer, a historian and member of this world, I will forever seek to record how we engage the many aspects of life, trying not only to stay alive, but to flourish. I believe the awareness and willingness to acknowledge these struggles are necessary if we truly ever want to co-exist with one another. To accomplish this, people must be given the opportunity to see, not only oneself, but each other. I believe theatre provides an excellent venue to explore the possibilities.
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From an aesthetic point of view, I prefer to tear away the expected, the norm, the standard mode of operations. Brechtian at heart, I see the fourth wall as a buffer, allowing the audience to remain comfortable as voyeurs of someone else’s experiences. I like to remove the barriers that keep an audience from becoming interwoven with the re-enactment of life on stage. I opt for means to integrate audience members in a more visceral exchange of encounters, rather than pretend they don’t exist as participants to the events unfolding. The mere fact that viewers are there, watching, compels their inclusion as contributors to the occasion. As writer/director Bertolt Brecht would illustrate, "an audience plays the same role as a witness to an accident on the street; they are there, and that makes them a part of the occurrence".

My bio is best represented by my approach to theatre; these words provide the most important aspects of my art and myself as an artist. Everything else connected to my writing, awards & productions and whatever else is used to measure success, are nice, but they tell you nothing about who I am. That's what I believe a bio should do: offer to the reader what an artist's art is about? After all, isn't there a place for accolades on one's resume?