We simply could not have done any of this without the enthusiasm, advocacy and support of Pasadena Arts Council, Pacific Asia Museum and so many generous artists, producers, supporters and volunteers, as well as the permission of Craig Arnold’s family . Top of our list of thanks is Charles Mason and his staff at the Pacific Asia, Terry Lemoncheck and Aaron Slavin, More thanks go to our wonderful production and venue team, to individual donors such as Katie and Chris Poole, Ann Graham Ehringer, David Rambo, Laurie Dowling, Fernando and Talin Sanchez-Nagolian; and our audiences including so many dear friends.

Finally, very special thanks must be offered to Demeter herself for last night’s ideal weather conditions. Despite the Santa Anas, the air temperature fell rapidly after sunset.  And though one could feel heat radiating up at the 7:30 performance, by 9 o’clock the atmosphere was perfect.

A celestial bonus was a bright, full moon tracking overhead, casting its pale light on all of us and the green tiles of the villa.

Peering down from my perch half-way up the courtyard stairs, I treasured hearing a collective gasp from the audience as Alpha (Persephone) opened the heavy blue doors and beckoned them in Japanese. The sight of the garden lit up by Jason’s hot pink Tokyo graphic and the sound of Bruno’s ethereal techno score mixed with the rush of flowing water clearly captivated everyone.  I watched Alpha as she skittered across the pond with its gigantic koi swimming under plate-sized lily pads, then passed two massive scholar stones and finally brought the group to rest under glowing ginkos and crepe myrtles.  As our audiences grew, we encouraged them  to “dance” with the performers who circulate around them throughout the piece. Last night, seeing the crowd learn to shift and move as the actors did was especially satisfying.

I hope  to make more projects that can involve audiences in this way.  Surf Orpheus on the beach comes first to mind.

After everyone moved into the galleries, the courtyard fell silent; and I became very aware of how soon Rain After Ash would be over.  It had been two years in the making and in less than two hours it would be gone for good.  This “present-tenseness” was only made more poignant by the chirring of last summer’s crickets.

With so little time left, I took an insider’s privilege and visited Grace Nicholson’s living room, now the conference room of the museum.  The long wood table and its eight high-backed chairs were back-lit by mercury vapor street lights.  Next to the window was a wide couch covered in fuschia silk with a fierce bronze dragon hovering nearby.  I sat in the shadows and thought about Grace’s legacy; and how I had benefited from her vision.

I wondered about my own. And Craig’s. Had I done well by his vision of himself? I tried to quiet my thoughts but cars and concerns kept whizzing by. ”Let go,” I intoned.  ”Let go of expectations, attachments and most of all desire.”  For a brief moment I could almost see Eternity. But I sighed with the next thought.

Human beings can’t help their desiring. Craig taught me that. It’s what makes us human. It’s how we know we’re still alive.

And to stay alive, we have to keep moving and leave things behind.

But I can’t stop the rain and honestly, I love that.

I don’t know exactly when I started, but I like to write very early in the morning with my eyes closed and all the lights off in the house. It’s as if I can be in two worlds when I do; one glimpsed through my lashes, the worn out “N” and “S” keys on my laptop glowing like beacons; the other, a dream world dimly recalled but rich with meaning.

My fingers move over the keys like the stylus on an Ouija board. I type, “Do you believe in Fate? Unfortunately, I have to.”  It scares me to read it later that morning sipping coffee.

But both the characters Persephone and Demeter must admit this and I might as well, too.

I think the world can be divided into two camps: those who believe Fate has a heavy hand in shaping their lives and those who are still riding a long streak of dumb luck.

When I read Craig Arnold’s blog in the weeks after he’d gone missing I couldn’t help finding portents of his fateful climb up Kuchinoerabu-jima.

Craig writes about being deeply attracted to what he calls the sublime, a profound awareness of death in life. He’s constantly seeing the beauty and the decay at once.  I relate to this…having had a few too many encounters with trauma and sudden death as a youngish woman.   Was he depressed?  Maybe. Suicidal?  I don’t think so.

More interesting questions for me: Did Fate play a hand in his fall?  Did his preoccupations lead him close to the precipice?

This is what I wrestle with in the piece. And try to do it in a way that’s reflective of the way my mind works on these kinds of questions. Fragmentary and dream like. Like writing with your eyes closed. Or as someone who visited the rehearsal at PAM last week said.  Like scuba diving. Scuba diving through poetry!

Lying on the dusty floor at ATV- drunk…or at least trying to remember drunkenness…was I ever so drunk that I lay on the floor singing? Maybe…

I certainly remember the little ones, their grins and giggles as I made up songs to tickle them under their chins, their bare little toes. As I think back, so many of the things I’ve almost lost- or feared that I would lose- push to the front of my brain. It’s rather frightening…I worry that the mere thought will make the terror manifest, as if thinking might make it so. The line between premonition and irrational fear- when one loves so fiercely, is it possible to let go? What’s the difference between trying to hold onto a connection with a child on the other side of the globe –

or on the other side of life? I live in a reality I’ve created from my memory, real or not-  and it doesn’t  matter if anyone else acknowledges the same reality.  Is this madness? Perhaps…and I understand that way to madness…

Late one night Spring 2009 I came upon the headline “Missing Poet” on the New York Times website and clicked through to read the following:

“Craig Arnold who was working on a book of lyric essays ‘about volcanoes and the end of the world as we know it’, was climbing a volcano alone early this week and never returned to the inn where he was staying.”

Soon, I was following the search and rescue effort through a Facebook site called “Find Craig Arnold” set up by his loved ones and reading his blog, The Volcano Pilgrim. Arnold’s plight and especially his poem “Hymn to Persephone” took hold of me; and in the succeeding months I began to reflect on what it means to wander into cyber space where total strangers become virtual intimates with a simple click of the mouse.

Having spent the first half of my life in a darkened theatre directing, writing and producing new plays, I have a powerful need to understand the human inclination to connect at a remove, separated by the stage or screen; and to better understand why artists become so enthralled by dreams and visions, sometimes to their own detriment.

Writer and Director of Rain After Ash

Is the artist’s purpose to complete the “as if body loop” for the rest of society as neurobiologist Antonio Damasio suggests; fulfilling a biological and evolutionary imperative that helps develops empathy in all?  Or perhaps as ancient myths suggest, s/he’s a shaman who ventures to the Underworld, risking his own life in order to bring us his clarifying vision?  I don’t know. Rain After Ash came to me as a path, not an answer, and that’s the spirit in which I hope to share it with audiences this week.

Over the next few days some of the other members of the company have graciously offered to write about their own experiences, so please come back and read some more.