(music)
Sensei
was such an influential part of my life, leaving my little farm town of Minooka,
Illinois,
where I grew up, and coming to college
to begin a life of pursuit of
performing as an artist was -uh, was daunting in many ways,
and to to sort of fall comfortably nestled under his wing
was a profoundly
affecting blanket of security.
Our relationship is not like just plain
school teacher and student; more of
father and sons and daughters. We can rehearse until
11 o'clock or 12 o'clock at Krannert, and of course all the
restaurants are closed,
so they all hungry, and they all come to my house and then we
fix the meal, and we eat all together. And when I returned
to campus and was shown this new Japan House and the beautiful grounds,
I was incredibly grateful that, that this was happening and
not only was the legacy continuing, but it was flourishing,
and had this beautiful new home, and just coincidentally somebody said, "I think, I'm
not sure if they've run out of
funding or if they've run into some snags, but there's supposed to be a couple of
wooden
accessories here," and I immediately perked up and said,
"That's my department! I would be so grateful for the opportunity
to give anything back to this institution that is
that has taken such good care of me." I recommend that how about
gazebo or "azumaya" in Japanese.
This is one of the key point in the Japanese
garden, where one can walk around
and sudden shower, or
very hot sunny days, one can hide in
the shade of the roof and then rest.
So I send him some of the traditional
sketches of azumaya existing in Japan. So from there,
he created his own edition,
and so become beautiful east and west
blended in Japanese garden.
Originally when I was studying theater here, and I, I saw
Shozo's designs for the stage, and his designs
for every aspect of the show, down to our makeup
and our costumes and the lighting,
I was really taken with how everything you make,
you can consider part of a picture. Anything you're placing anywhere,
you can imagine it's part of the greater canvas,
and so I tried to imagine this sort of like a painting,
because I knew we'd be looking at it from across the pond as part of a
landscape.
And so I tried to let his teaching influence every decision I made
down to the choice with hammer. Beyond that, I knew I wanted a bench in the
middle,
and, uh, when I first visited California,
with Shozo, that was when I first experienced the Redwood
forests. I chose a a redwood slab,
and I found a single curve of a redwood root -
it reminded me of one stroke of a sums-i brush.
I wanted to add some some
beautiful Eastern influenced curves to it, and uh,
there are some great architects in California from the turn the 20th
century,
the Green and Green brothers, and they took the Craftsman style of the period and added
the sort of Asian curves,
and I thought emulating that would make a nice homage
to combine the sort of eastern and western
ideas. Uh, because of this hectangle design
and this structure to be
and this openness, instead of just plain
flat cement floor,
I thought it needs some sort of design, and so
this straight edge and straight columns
are represented in straight-line divided
but the pond is all curved lines,
so the nature is in the curved lines,
and so I incorporated to
that design of the curvature. As he says,
there's no, there's no separating your work as an artist
and, and your life, and your spirit, and what is holy about it
and so for me, you know,
the theater is my church as much as much as any
house of worship, and so this is, this is a part of
where I worship. My, my family has always been very active in the Catholic
Church in my hometown, and
I put in a lot of time there, serving, and my parents still do,
and it's, it's something that my family does, like, whatever
house is serving the community,
spiritually, we show up and cut the grass if they'll let us, or
you know, we'll shovel the sidewalk, or
whatever needs doing. To have the chance to
create a gift, a token of
my esteem and gratitude for my teacher
is something that I'm incredibly grateful for, especially because it's something
that
will hopefully stand for many many years to come.