In conceiving the devised theater piece, I drew inspiration for a structure from my favorite NPR broadcast, “Radiolab.” Led by hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, each episode takes on questions about a certain topic, such as “blood” or “memory,” but the program does a remarkable job of resisting resolution of questions. Instead, the producers tell a sequence of stories around the one topic, pulling us in all different directions. The result is an emotional narrative made out real stories, and one that ends with losing certainty but gaining curiosity and a certain reverence for the topic at hand. I love it, and it’s exactly what I wanted to do with Missing in my own piece, “between 7 and eight.” My hope was that we could find the beginnings of stories and characters and images within the texts from the performance action and Saudade texts, and then bring them together on stage.

I reached out to friends and colleagues for help, and brought on board four other actors, an assistant director, and a stage manager. Together, we made 30 minutes of theater—three stories, drawn from the performance actions and ourselves, exploring questions of needing and missing and holding on and letting go.

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