Guest Blogger: Dan McCleary

It is the rare occasion I can get to a film, with twin three-year-olds, but my friend Chris McKinley was in town last week and he was speaking at a showing of a documentary that he is an editor and associate producer on titled "Finding Vivian Maier." The showing was at the Brooks Museum, and I made the occasion happen.

There is no ceremony in the packing up and loading up and transfer of these items that have come to define the office surroundings of Tennessee Shakespeare Company.

I cannot begin to imagine the fear that must overwhelm people in battle. And then to attempt to imagine a person taking action while overwhelmed with that fear, the action always with someone's mortality at stake, is more than I can bear.

Susan Dibble is a remarkable dancer, choreographer, and teacher. She has been for decades, and I had the fortune to work with and around her for some years in Massachusetts.

As I approach an anniversary of sorts in the creation of Tennessee Shakespeare Company eight years ago from Massachusetts, I found myself this month getting asked by a number of new audience members during our recent production of The Taming of the Shrew (which I will write about later) how the company was forged.

Being a part of a live theatre process is dangerous stuff. Dangerous, personally, in somewhat obvious ways (as previously discussed here) for actors and those choosing the profession as their remunerative occupation.

The profession of acting is for warriors. Men and women who choose to make their living going job to job in multiple acting forums and media, with occasional side jobs of distant sorts to ensure the electricity remains on, have some tough stories. And they are strengthened by them, and educated by them…and they are working.

I was once speaking over the phone with a man I had never met in person, yet he had given every indication to me that he bordering on lunacy. He rambled and ranted, but as he approached the end of his one-way conversation he offered to me that, in the end between two people in a relationship, what truly mattered was that they were able to laugh at the same things.

Tennessee Shakespeare Company asked our actor playing Petruchio, Paul Kiernan?, five questions now that he's been through the first week of rehearsal with us for The Taming of the Shrew.

The courage of clowns and lovers in our business never ceases to hearten me.

Carrie Linquist of Memphis was the first reader last week to let me know Sullivan's Shakespeare-text request of me. Caliban speaks it in The Tempest as the drunken Stephano and Trinculo attempt to sing: 'That's not the tune!'

I have never been in the habit of speaking Shakespeare's text on purpose in my everyday life. Of course, we all use his creations daily, but often only in the natural course of conversation.a

Tennessee Shakespeare Company is budgeted to earn approximately 42% of its season's income this year. The balance is conservatively projected to come from contributing sources such as corporations, grants, foundations, and individuals. This percentage is in line with the non-profit national average, and in fact for our classical corner of the industry, TSC's earned income ratio is slightly higher.

Music has always played the role of Muse for me as a stage director. Occasionally, when I am stuck creatively or wanting to be around the actors in the rehearsal room or need to assistance in focusing, I will play the same piece of music over and over. I have meditated on Dvorak when considering the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West in Vita & Virginia, on Bach's cello concertos when considering Julius Caesar, on Bartok when constructing A Midsummer Night's Dream, Zoe Keating for The Tempest, Rachmaninoff for Hamlet, and many others.

Today is my dad's birthday. As a father myself now, I think of him daily and nightly as I have my hands full with twin three-year-old boys and running a theatre company. I mostly consider how often he went without being thanked by me when I was a child. He did an awful lot I am thankful for now.

On February 7, The Commercial Appeal reported that two Tennessee state senators had filed a bill that would shield individuals, businesses, and other entities from lawsuits or other sanctions for refusing services and goods to same-sex couples "if doing so would violate (their) sincerely held religious beliefs."

Pete Seeger died last Monday at age 94. He was and remains a champion of social change.

In the aftermath of the massacre of children in Connecticut in December 2012, I found myself mesmerized watching Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association Wayne LaPierre on "Meet the Press." I remember the horror I felt, as he struggled to articulate his defense, as he interrupted with his solution to violence in our schools: "More guns." He said arming adults in U.S. schools was the answer to decreasing future violence in U.S. schools. Here, I thought, was the perfect, tragic embodiment of our country's need to teach our children Romeo and Juliet differently. Five children end up dead in that story and they were likely whisked there due to their parents' foundationless rage.

Celebrated and criticized writer-activist Amiri Baraka died at age 79 on January 9. When I first read his poetry his name was LeRoi Jones (his birth name). I came to him through reading early literary heroes, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, birthers of a literary and cultural movement that welcomed Mr. Baraka into their wide fold. He in turn published some of their work, later penning controversial plays and helping lead the Black Nationalist movement.

For those of us who spend much our days raising funds to produce live theatre, we are intimate with the competition for those funds from individuals, governments, foundations, and corporations.