Collider Theatre – Mission Statement
We live in an absurdly overconnected world. Internet devices and cell phones give us the
ability to connect with anybody and everybody, 24/7, anywhere in the
world. Major catastrophes are fed into
the global news feed, transformed into downloadable entertainment for our
phones and wireless devices. Human
migration across the globe has reached proportions that our ancestors could not
have dreamed of. But this aggressive
intermingling and interconnection seems to have evolved far beyond our basic
human abilities to understand each other.
As New Yorkers, many of us migrate here from all corners of
the country and the globe. For the most
part we respect each other’s rights and boundaries, but we don’t begin to
understand our neighbors, or what they’ve gone through. That lack of understanding results with
tragic frequency in violence – Americans attacking Sikhs immediately after
9/11, clueless that the victims weren’t remotely Muslim. The traffic accident in Crown Heights that
resulted in weeks of civic unrest, with racial and religious tensions that
linger to this day. The number of
Americans who seem completely unable to digest the fact that a biracial man,
with an African Muslim father, was elected President of the United States.
As theatre artists, we’re interested in creating a theatre
company that explores these collisions and how they influence us as human
beings. The intention is not as much to
explore bridges that connect us, but rather to investigate points of
collision: An American gringo forced by
his partner’s death to honor African religious ceremonies that he doesn’t
comprehend. Immigrant kids fighting with
their parents who speak a language they barely understand. Hipsters and Orthodox Jews forced into an
uneasy coexistence in Williamsburg.
European tourists searching in vain for the old sex-drenched Times
Square.
Theatre in contemporary America can sometimes feel like a
pointless exercise, for theatre artists and audiences alike. Sitting on public transit, gazing at a sea of
commuters welded to their iPhones, you start to wonder if the need for human
interaction is being phased out of our DNA.
Despite all this, I believe that if you have a good story and can make
your audience feel something, you’ve won a small battle towards preserving
human contact in modern society.
Robert Murphy
Jean Randich
Co-Artistic Directors, Collider Theatre
