“It was my father who first taught me to see the stage for more than the contents presented within the proscenium. At six years old, he took me to see Yul Brynner in Anna and the King of Siam on Broadway in its first revival (1977). My father, an occasional opera singer with a wide social circle, told me to follow him as the audience roared to its feet and the curtain came down.

We slipped out of our seats and were ushered up a set of hidden stairs, into a thickly draped world of heavy, dark, sound-dampening curtains, glowing tape, and an army of silent people, dressed completely in black, invisible but for their furious working pace. Bows were beginning. A que of panted, costumed people was lining up, looking taught, alert, focused, out onto the stage. They were more brightly painted and exotic in the half-dark of the wings than they ever had been from the flattened image of an audience seat.  I was tucked in next to the assistant stage manager's booth by the front of the stage, and before my eyes, the scenery was flown, massive stacks of weights glided down into place as the final set piece disappeared. 

From that moment forward, I began to see the theatre from every angle, nook and cranny it held. I also met Yul Brynnr that night, but the twilight glow of the backstage was so much more fascinating than even he could ever be in his bright cerulean blue trousers and his pointed eyebrow makeup penciled up onto his shining forehead.

For the rest of my life, I fell asleep in catwalks and accidentally got locked in orchestra pits. I set the ghost light and put it away. I lived in the scene shop for days in a run-up to shows I designed, built, painted, lit, and stage-managed. I saw shows hundreds of times, from up, down, sideways, inside and out. 

The rhythm of a happening like theater reverberates through the body of the theater in a way that is newly created with every performance. It lives in the what-might-be. Theater has always been a part of my life, and so it is a huge part of my work. Theatre shaped me: my love of labor, of long hours, of being the hidden one, the one who turns the crank, I never stopped being amazed by what the live experience can convey. And theatre exists everywhere: the pigeon crossing the busy train station entrance is drama, and the opera of his navigation is epic when isolated to the theatrical experience. 

I think the scale of my work is also connected to the theater: theater promises transformation, of space, of sense, of sense of position, and its ability to have an impact has a lot to do with its scale. What is interesting is that one person performing to another is so intimate and often unexpected that the scale of the encounter feels enormous. Theatre is scale. Theater intensifies, isolates, presents, transmutes, translates, frees, opens possibility, and is seated at the heart of humanity's expressive endeavors: our first teachings were stories, spoken aloud.”

- Kate Howe.