Matt Baum is charged with the important, and often challenging, task of playing our main character in Inside I, Ben. Baum uses puppets to portray Ben from birth to his teenage years. Below, he describes the challenges of this type of technology and physical spectacle heavy work on stage, as well as how Inside I created a deeper understanding of the autistic experience.

Q. Inside I uses multimedia techniques to help the audience understand autism. What was your perception of autism before working on this production? And how has this production changed that perception?

A. I didn’t know much about autism before working on this production. To prepare for the show, I read some great books on the topic and spent some time getting to know some of the people who inspired Ben’s character. Researchers have uncovered a lot about autism, but there’s still a lot we don’t understand. The one thing we do know is that every person with autism is different.

Q. Describe your character and their role in the play?

A. Ben has autism. The show follows Ben as he grows from 18 months to 17 years old. Through the live-feed camera, Ben shares his life and world with the audience.

Q. Inside I is told through video, puppetry, and other visual techniques, what is the biggest challenge as an actor in telling a story this way on stage?

A. As an actor, I rely on my voice and body to express my character’s thoughts and feelings. It’s a challenge for me to communicate through puppets, the live-feed, and the other technical elements of the show. I don’t always feel as comfortable using these modes of expression as I do my own voice and body. Ben, on the other hand, struggles to communicate through words and body language, but finds freedom behind the camera.

Q. What do you hope audiences will walk away talking about after seeing Inside I?

A. I hope audiences will see similarities between Ben and themselves. I hope getting a window into Ben’s experience will inspire greater compassion and  appreciation for people with autism and the people who love and care for them.

In honor of World Theatre Day we wanted to share this year’s Message of World Theatre Day with you from Russian director, Anatoli Vassiliev. His message spoke to us as a staff, what we believe theatre is and can be, and to our mission as an organization. Let it inspire you to sit in a row of seats and watch living art in front of you. We promise, that art you see, will also ignite something within.

World Theater Day Message 2016

Do we need theatre?

That is the question thousands of professionals disappointed in theatre and millions of people who are tired of it are asking themselves.

What do we need it for?

In those years when the scene is so insignificant in comparison with the city squares and state lands, where the authentic tragedies of real life are being played.

What is it to us?

Gold-plated galleries and balconies in the theatre halls, velvet armchairs, dirty stage wings, well-polished actors’ voices, – or vice versa, something that might look apparently different: black boxes, stained with mud and blood, with a bunch of rabid naked bodies inside.

What is it able to tell us?

Everything!

Theatre can tell us everything.

How the gods dwell in heaven, and how prisoners languish in forgotten caves underground, and how passion can elevate us, and how love can ruin, and how no-one needs a good person in this world, and how deception reigns, and how people live in apartments, while children wither in refugee camps, and how they all have to return back to the desert, and how day after day we are forced to part with our beloveds, – theatre can tell everything.

The theatre has always been and it will remain forever.

And now, in those last fifty or seventy years, it is particularly necessary. Because if you take a look at all the public arts, you can immediately see that only theatre is giving us – a word from mouth to mouth, a glance from eye to eye, a gesture from hand to hand, and from body to body. It does not need any intermediary to work among human beings – it constitutes the most transparent side of light, it does not belong to either south, or north, or east, or west – oh no, it is the essence of light itself, shining from all four corners of the world, immediately recognizable by any person, whether hostile or friendly towards it.

And we need theatre that always remains different, we need theatre of many different kinds.

Still, I think that among all possible forms and shapes of theatre its archaic forms will now prove to be mostly in demand. Theatre of ritual forms should not be artificially opposed to that of “civilized” nations. Secular culture is now being more and more emasculated, so-called “cultural information” gradually replaces and pushes out simple entities, as well as our hope of eventually meeting them one day.

But I can see it clearly now: theatre is opening its doors widely. Free admission for all and everybody.

To hell with gadgets and computers – just go to the theatre, occupy whole rows in the stalls and in the galleries, listen to the word and look at living images! – it is theatre in front of you, do not neglect it and do not miss a chance to participate in it – perhaps the most precious chance we share in our vain and hurried lives.

We need every kind of theatre.

There is only one theatre which is surely not needed by anyone – I mean a theatre of political games, a theatre of a political “mousetraps”, a theatre of politicians, a futile theatre of politics. What we certainly do not need is a theatre of daily terror – whether individual or collective, what we do not need is the theatre of corpses and blood on the streets and squares, in the capitals or in the provinces, a phony theatre of clashes between religions or ethnic groups…

Translation by Natalia Isaeva