When I went to Moscow, I felt I was relearning Swan Lake - which was written for the Bolshoi - and being immersed in a tradition and history I had never experienced. It took a while to adjust to living there and learning the language, but now I have lots of friends. I get the best of two completely different worlds.
Education is necessary to unlearn privilege, unlearn exclusion, unlearn discrimination, unlearn prejudice, unlearn war.
For me, every film is a learning process. After each, I take time to unlearn.
Learning how to walk again was a process for me. It was some of the darker days of my life, but I've had many moments of my life where I've had to just kind of put my head down and work, and this was no different.
You learn so much from making mistakes, not even necessarily mistakes that I've made, a lot of the time the films just don't work out because it's a really difficult process. And sometimes there's a certain person underlining process. But I've had an opportunity to work on all different types of films and I have had a lot of opportunities to stretch myself in different ways and now is the time where I get to try and figure out out the roles that I can really play well and play them well.
When negotiations are at an impasse, when States dig their heels in, it is time to 'undig' them in a spirit of compromise. We all need to unlearn the predator in us, unlearn discrimination, unlearn privilege.
I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from.
I had phases of listening to rap and trap, and then I had phases where I'd listen to post-hardcore, rap, grunge, metal... all that. I had different time periods of listening to different music. And now it all clashes together.
Talking with other artists is an incredible process. You engage with the work very differently...a nd different relationships between different works start to emerge. To tap into that energy-to tap into that moment-is great for me as an exercise.
I had to get used to the theater atmosphere because I haven't had a role on Broadway since Aida. It was a different process from day one because I was learning my parts by myself.
I think every directing team works differently in the same manner that every director works differently. Everybody has a different personality and a different way of working, and that somehow evolves in the process.
Marches work, rallies work, civil disobedience works, direct action works, voting works, writing letters works, speaking to churches and schools works, rioting works.
The promise of learning is a delusion.... Tomorrow would alter the sense of what had already been learned, that the learning process is extended in this way, so that from this standpoint none of us ever graduates from college, for time is an emulsion, and probably thinking not to grow up is the brightest kind of maturity for us, right now at any rate.
Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.
Performing in Detroit or performing in Chicago, you're on your own turf, but when you tour a show, the audiences change. You're in a completely different space; sensibilities change. I think I learned a lot from doing that - how written material works in different places, learning to have confidence, learning the idea of how to be adaptable.
I know that everyone has been hurt in some way and that everyone is capable of learning and relearning how to trust again. Starting with themselves.