Jun 4, 2011  |  lillian

How long have you worked with FullStop?
The Collective! I’ve been working with FullStop since its primordial days: a group of students training together at the National Theater Institute. I’ve since written, acted, directed, designed marketing media and now musical directed collaborating with these rockin’ artists!

What has been your favorite part of the rehearsal process so far?
I’ve loved working with the cast to explore and arrange Pat’s tunes!

What are you doing when you are not acting/directing/designing?
I perform puppet shows for children as a part of Puppetonia at Symposia; I write music, which you can hear at alexandrabassett.biz; and work part-time for Teddy boutique.

Why did you get into theater?
I saw Lysistrata at Epidevros in Greece. I was blown away by its communion of crass and culture; its political commentary and witty repartee.

What is your vision of utopia?
I’ve been kneading this question using various recipes in my mind to find no pleasant equilibrium…and realize that inadvertently I have been connecting the concept of utopia with euphoria all along. And this is wrong. A human utopia (a perfect social, economic, political, and moral community), at this juncture in history, rather requires structure and continuous work to maintain its structure. And so it would require people of like mind to live and work harmoniously. So far, the proven way to get humans as unanimous as possible behind a cause is to ask them to step up when the going gets dire. So I ask, when do we deem our global habits dire? We will soon have to create utopia to unanimously give conscious care to the Earth we’re daily raping, to think of our children by maybe not having children, to change our practices to be much less lucrative and much more full of care, in hopes of a lasting continuum. This is not euphoric for the human psyche as I’ve known it. This is scary.

If you were king/queen of the world, how would you solve our global warming crisis?
I’d begin by amassing proposals from scientists around the world. Ecologists, biologists, chemists, bioengineers, physicists, astronauts…what’s it gonna take to do this now?
This reminds me of a White House memo I came upon:
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/09/is-there-space-program-which-which-we.html
I’d motivate them to get it done through collaboration or competition…whatever works faster, better, and forever.

Along those lines, what else would you do as king/queen of the world?
Kiss a lot o’ babies, shake a lot o’ hands, take a lot o’ maybes and make ‘em into plans…

Ever been to Brazil? How about Jacksonville?
Drove through Jacksonville once. Never been to Brazil. But oh man, I am game to Tango.