Michael Joseph Woody
Composer/Theatrical Designer/Innovator
"In so many words"
The existence of this archive was inspired by my having had a charmed life long community of designers, fabricators and performing artists in every possible medium of creative expression that I've been fortunate enough to meet on my own decidedly unique path, my friends and extended families, acquaintances and active and prospective collaborators with the audience in there somewhere. Credit where it's due, I'm nothing without others. I've also tried to honor them by including their work at a public record of the worlds theatrical production history here.
These pages will take you to various versions of my history in The Craft, presented with different emphasis for different interests, and a few examples of the occasional innovations I've discovered in the course of working in all the different mediums I have over time.
The purpose of it all is to provide a context for a meandering four decades+ body of work and I concede now the failure to adequately represent the many overlapping communities that meet through the arts and embrace the influences we have on each other as an enrichment.
As much as possible I add or update links to media that illustrate or credit the work of my collaborators. My Life as a List is the most comprehensive collection of links to media and documentation I have to date; August 2021.
These pages will take you to various versions of my history in The Craft, presented with different emphasis for different interests, and a few examples of the occasional innovations I've discovered in the course of working in all the different mediums I have over time.
The purpose of it all is to provide a context for a meandering four decades+ body of work and I concede now the failure to adequately represent the many overlapping communities that meet through the arts and embrace the influences we have on each other as an enrichment.
As much as possible I add or update links to media that illustrate or credit the work of my collaborators. My Life as a List is the most comprehensive collection of links to media and documentation I have to date; August 2021.
A site like this is clearly my seeking recognition for personal accomplishments in my beloved craft but the value of it, to me and I hope to others, is that it aspires to illuminate the existence of the kind of world I was able to locate and live within, with such a pocket of self perpetuating energy where such a community could gather and be free to practice their craft for an appreciative public, as freely and wildly as so many of us did for as long as we could to an influential effect.
It's a fact that it's now almost wholly extinct in San Francisco since the spawning of the 1st Dot Con onset of the Internet and the shallow opportunists it attracted that displaced the very community that made living there something they could covet, half/think to buy a way into.
My opinion is those people did what they typically do which is to worship $ as power and prestige then attempt to fill the void in their soul from being that with material extravagance and cultural appropriation and no sense of conscience or care to consider the consequences to others. When there was healthy theater we used to stage plays about struggles like that so everyone could understand the madness that comes with trying to control other people with power and $ when one is themselves out of control of themselves.
Dedicated to the free spirited and courageous people of the interdependent communities that made it all possible because we answered the call to meet in San Francisco and get to work, just before the start of the ongoing culture wars and the vilification of other citizens for their differences, just after an abandoning of public art and humanities that could be addressing it... because it used to... so we could all talk about it from a fixed point... the great works of art themselves.
Much of this work stands in defiance of that, theater is generally a celebration of our common humanity, that after a collaboration of creative teams work to achieve goals larger than the parts that may delight and inform an appreciative audience willing to subsidize it but it involves a stage and any stage may depict any world it will, as it may and the better ones shine a light to illuminate the shadows of the human mind for the greater good, I reckon. I measure that roughly in terms of contributing to the peaceful coexistence of the many of us there are spread as widely as we are, still living among other people but struggling with the dehumanizing of others in the process.
You're welcome!
Sincerely,
-Michael Joseph Woody
It's a fact that it's now almost wholly extinct in San Francisco since the spawning of the 1st Dot Con onset of the Internet and the shallow opportunists it attracted that displaced the very community that made living there something they could covet, half/think to buy a way into.
My opinion is those people did what they typically do which is to worship $ as power and prestige then attempt to fill the void in their soul from being that with material extravagance and cultural appropriation and no sense of conscience or care to consider the consequences to others. When there was healthy theater we used to stage plays about struggles like that so everyone could understand the madness that comes with trying to control other people with power and $ when one is themselves out of control of themselves.
Dedicated to the free spirited and courageous people of the interdependent communities that made it all possible because we answered the call to meet in San Francisco and get to work, just before the start of the ongoing culture wars and the vilification of other citizens for their differences, just after an abandoning of public art and humanities that could be addressing it... because it used to... so we could all talk about it from a fixed point... the great works of art themselves.
Much of this work stands in defiance of that, theater is generally a celebration of our common humanity, that after a collaboration of creative teams work to achieve goals larger than the parts that may delight and inform an appreciative audience willing to subsidize it but it involves a stage and any stage may depict any world it will, as it may and the better ones shine a light to illuminate the shadows of the human mind for the greater good, I reckon. I measure that roughly in terms of contributing to the peaceful coexistence of the many of us there are spread as widely as we are, still living among other people but struggling with the dehumanizing of others in the process.
You're welcome!
Sincerely,
-Michael Joseph Woody