Gavin Reub,
Assistant Director, Dirty Story

We have been given a fresh opportunity.  This is the summer where we get to be a part of something new; a fresh breath into a stale system, a new fire in the belly of the repertory beast:  a new model, a new perspective, a new Intiman.

The first rehearsal for Dirty Story was full of heavy energy.  The script had only been in our heads a short period of time, due to a last minute rights issue, and had only lived in our mouths for one brief read-through.  The opportunity was there, however, not just to fire Intiman’s season off with a dirty bang, but to find authenticity in our tale.  History, after all, is the victors yarn, and our energy was geared toward strength.

Our battle, wasn’t fought entirely through the script’s prime metaphor, but rather aimed toward the root of the problem.  Story.  There is no greater story-teller in Seattle than our director, Valerie Curtis-Newton,  and once the story is told, and the relationship is full and fleshed, then the stage lives, and the monster breathes.

I typify most people who walk through the streets.  It’s a matter of instinctual social work.  Do I walk away?  Should I flash a smile?  In my everyday maneuvers I build borders via generalizations and stereotypes.  I create individualized stories, in order to find some kind of solid ground to walk on through the busy streets.  These stories are just a gloss, an easy way to condense an overly complicated world.  No, in fact they are a gloss on a gloss, a picture built on lies and speculation that is subconsciously force-fed so that I can go to bed with some kind of solid notion in my head.

These stories are lies.  In the rehearsal room we attempt to deconstruct them.  To not only ask why, but to search for something authentic.  For truth.

With some stories we will never know the truth, and often we can never distinguish fiction from non-fiction.  The role of victim and villain are doled out after-the-fact, and the actors are left to ask what they did to get the part.

Story is frequently told in terms of villain, hero, side-kick, saint – at least the clean story.  The dirty story digs into the depths, and pulls up a mass of contradictions that complicates the equation.  The search for authenticity:  the originality of the soul.  We build a brand new interpretation from the foundation of story, and rough it into our own shape.  This is where we find the originality in a story, – through our own fight, our own voice, and our own process; by the end, we will be blessed with scars in the shape of wisdom and courage.