LETTER ONE

TONY NARDI’S PROJECT - “TWO LETTERS”
July 28, 2006
Howard Wiseman (Writer/Director)

I simply had to write this letter of support for Tony Nardi’s “Two Letters,” knowing that if I over-praise the project, he will say that I am being dishonest, and if I under-praise it, he will grill me on what I did and didn’t like about it in great detail - specific, even painful detail. Because for Tony, as an artist, everything is in the specificity. Tony is one of the most challenging theatre artist/performers that I know. As a writer, he has helped me raise the bar in my own work. He is so challenging, so specific, so perceptive, and so unnerving that I find myself questioning what I too rarely question, reconsidering what I already reconsidered, and revising what I thought could never be revised.

Tony Nardi is a one-of-a-kind artist. “Two Letters,” the piece he has written, which I have been privy to from its earliest stages (often against my own will), is provocative, evocative, demanding, entertaining, daunting, and enthralling. His “Two Letters” grabs you by the lapels of your mind and drags you through your own prejudices and insecurities, and leads you to your own secret dreams of personal, artistic, and even national conquests. More than that, it’s just plain great theatre, coming from one single voice becoming a multitude of voices and perspectives before our very own eyes, and within our own minds and hearts. How can that be? Because that voice is driven by a lifeforce that will stop at nothing to express itself. He’s so honest as an artist that if he ever were to see this letter he’d actually use it against me as proof that I am part of the problem, an idle praiser and user of platitudes, someone who talks a good glib game, but who doesn’t stand for anything (okay I’m being too hard on myself).

In short, even though this project is competing with one of my own in this round, it was impossible for me not to write this letter of support for Tony Nardi’s “Two Letters.”

It simply wrote itself.