Sunset: Why?
Platt: I wanted the outdoors, the appeal of a frontier town.
Jones: I made a lifestyle choice. I wanted to be near the mountains, the ocean, everything I'd been driving to all my life.
Sunset: And then you met each other and, Bang!, you started the theater.
Jones: Almost. We talked, a lot. I'd seen Starlight Express and Miss Saigon. I worried that the pyrotechnics of modern theater were replacing words and actors. We were asking less and less of our audiences to listen and respond. Don't get me wrong. I think the technological advances in theater are great. I just wanted to do it in a simple way. There's a place for both.
Platt: Early on we were both simultaneously exploring the same idea in different parts of the country. There's more than one way to tell a story. It does not have to be big and splashy.
Sunset: So you've been at this 15 years now, and it is obviously working. Ever get bored?
Platt: Never! There's a communal experience to live theater. Everything in our culture is oversize, overblown. The simplicity of sharing stories in a sensitive way becomes a group experience that unifies people.
Jones: The sense of excitement is endless. Although everyone in the audience has a different picture of what they are hearing and watching, somehow they are all united in a common place of imagination.
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