(Context -- I recently directed Oscar Wilde's Salome: Rude Mechanicals 1990s Edition. It was my directorial debut and, though no production is without hiccups, ultimately went really well! I remain super proud of it -- though it's been less than a week since we closed, so that's unsurprising.)

Okay, hear me out: The Importance of Being Earnest, but as staged by aliens who weren't entirely up on Earth/Victorian customs. Maybe the cucumber sandwiches are whole-ass cucumbers on hoagie rolls, and maybe Algernon nom-noms them in sprays of (craft foam) bread crumbs and cucumber chunks. Maybe Jack's home in the countryside is scary for no goddamned reason, and maybe Cecily is a haunted doll and Miss Prism a nun charged with containing her. (Maybe Horror Earnest should be a separate thing.) Maybe there's some *other* reason the name Ernest is important, like maybe it's obviously necessary to power-on and take control of the death ray that's been onstage the entire time but never mentioned. I'm just saying -- there are possibilities here.

So what got me tangentially thinking about that was a thing I was told back when I was developing my concept for Salome: "It's okay to just do the play." And -- sure. I've enjoyed productions where the director's intention was to stage a play in as close to its original presentation as possible given our limitations. Period dress, affected accents, furniture of the day and/or conscious attempts to avoid anachronisms in staging. I've been part of these productions (though admittedly not many). It's okay to do them.

But also -- no? Not for me, at least. Like, unless I were confident that somehow my swing at "just doing the play" was guaranteed to be better than all other prior attempts at "just doing the play," why would I not just point one towards a previous production? If I'd just wanted you to see a relatively straightforward take on Salome, I'd just direct you to the Al Pacino version. (I'll still do that, btw, because I think it's great! And it may make for an interesting point of comparison if you saw our RM-90s Salome, which is how I've just decided I'm going to refer to it from here on out. Salome's Last Dance is also worthwhile -- I'd briefly discussed that in my original director's notes before I needed to trim them for space -- though its silliness almost rivals what we did with the play.) And the more I think about *that* -- the reality that these "just do the play" directors still feel inclined to do the play *don't* simply point others to prior productions of the play that do the thing they describe -- the more I think that "just do the play" can't really even be their approach? They *have* to think that they're adding something -- some novel twist or interpretation, even if they think it's so core to the true text that they and only they are in fact performing the ultimate take on "just doing the play" -- right? Or maybe they think that sharing a film version or a performance recording is inferior -- live theatre needs to be seen *live* -- so they view themselves as members of a theatrical order of sorts, striving to perform just the play as close to its original state as possible so that audiences of all eras can experience some semblance of *that* thing that was beautiful in its proper time and context and cannot properly reside anywhere else. I think I can understand that. It's noble? It's impossible.

But the possible has soooooo many possibilities. Among them -- and somehow this is to my mind the thing that feels like it should be impossible; in a world so seeded with creative output how can we hope to generate something *new*?? -- putting on a show unlikely to be seen anywhere else. Granted, a lot of these efforts are bad. (I'm not saying Cucumber-Monster Algy is genius, though I promise you that you will definitely not be bored if I go that route.) But a lot of safe, "just the play" efforts are also bad. And I feel like if *I'm* going to do a bad (creative) thing, let it at least be a novel bad thing. Let it be a thing that "only" I would do. (I place "only" in quotes here because I'm not *quite* so convinced of my uniqueness; I imagine others have totally taken public domain texts and done similarly outlandish things with them. But I suspect I -- *we* -- are the first to do this thing to this text, and I think this particular text was well-suited to our aims.)

And heck, if we have those ideas -- and we work and develop the concepts; I do think we should exercise some artistic discipline in our approaches -- I'd almost say it's our responsibility to share them when given the opportunity? Plenty of people are capable of just doing Salome; I can link you to half a dozen serviceable examples on YouTube. We too could've just done Salome. But I'm damned proud that we did RM-90s Salome, and I maintain that it's a way more engaging watch (and potentially even a better vehicle for the story, to the extent that the story can exist outside of its cultural and historical setting) than any of those just-the-play approaches.

This is about where I'd pivot to discussing a pro-AI stance (see if you can guess how that followed from the above :P), and I've got bunches more to say about novelty, but also it's late and I don't want this to sound too judgy? I mean -- really -- I can see why some folks would want to "just do the play," and I have absolutely seen just-the-play instances (albeit not of Salome at the community theatre level, though admittedly recordings do often lose something of the magic of live performance) that were great. That's just not the kind of project that interests me, y'know? Let's go where no turtle has gone before. Let's go where we won't need eyes. Let's go to infinity... and beyond.

I really am humbled and grateful that at least some folks humored me with RM-90s Salome and our unconventional approach. To my mind it seems like those things should be more common, but I'm a weirdo who really kinda does want to see Bizarro World Earnest now. <3