I am fascinated with the unpredictability and randomness of life.

I am aware that where we begin is only by a ridiculous combination of chance and coincidence.  What we do with these blueprints (our genes, our life), is then mixed up by another ridiculous combination of chance and coincidence.

We can work hard and never succeed.  We can screw up over and over again and become huge successes.  The world isn’t always fair.

I’m also fascinated by consciousness – like many I’ve experienced waking up from a dream over and over again to find that I’m still not awake.  Our perceptions of an event are never absolutely complete (they simply can’t be – we will never be able to see inside the minds of other people involved in the experience).

If tomorrow’s events will inevitably be decided by today’s actions, everything we do today is important while nothing we do today matters.

I enjoy Dickens’ Christmas Carol because it plays with the “what was,” “what is” and what “could still be.”

I enjoy books like Grendel and Wicked because they play with the “other” person’s (usually the disenfranchised person’s) point of view.

I adore the Harry Potter series because the books, characters and story evolve from a supposed good vs. evil plotline to show that it’s never quite as simple as that.  They also show that motivations that originally appear to be hate-driven may, in reality, be out of love.

I’m developing The Theater Door to be similar: to play with “what was” in history, “what is” and “appears to be” in the students’ daily lives and “how everything we do” affects what comes tomorrow.

A graduate of Miami’s New World School of the Arts’s performing arts high school Musical Theater program and Southern Methodist University’s BFA Acting and BA English programs, I’ve spent my professional years gaining a variety of performance experiences as an international circus performer, conservatory theater and dance teacher, a touring actor and choreographer, a hospital clown and a magician’s assistant.

After working as a middle school drama teacher and Thespian sponsor, I developed The Theater Door to share some previously unpublished stories with a wider audience, hoping to foster artistic creativity in this next generation and encourage their worldly curiosities.

Check out my “other” website: www.erikadiane.com.