In some ways what's exciting and terrifying is that it feels like Ground Zero, with different realities now. Suddenly the economic imperative is much harsher. We used to be able to make theater with nothing. I don't know where the money came from. And expectations, too.
People have a collective body of references.
There's always that buildup of expectations, but then there's always something to come and smash them. There's a continual churning. It's different for a director just starting out than for someone in the middle, in terms of access to material and venues. As people who were doing things on a shoestring begin to be hired by institutions to do more polished work, each of us has to reexamine what we're doing and find out how to keep our own innocence and wonder, even though now we may have a budget and maybe a contract and maybe aren't buying the props ourselves. No, I am not thinking differently, but the producers are.