Duende Discussions
A fun and invigorating artist interview podcast where I talk to my brilliant friends about their personal and creative relationship with duende - the visceral vibration of the soul making impact with its most authentic, ancient self - made famous by Spanish playwright and poet Federico Garcia Lorca. My guests and I will explore how to define what the mysterious duende actually is, how to access it, what to do with our art once we've confronted it, wrestle with it - possibly in real time! - as well as decipher who/what has it today, and what role it plays in today's ever evolving and challenging artistic landscapes and vocabularies. Why duende today? Because like Lorca says, “The true struggle is with the duende.”
Duende Discussions
5 - Nathan Singh - Heart Spelunking, Joy-First Emotion Excavating, & Breaking the Waves of Duende's Dark Love
Happy Love Month my Valentine duders! I know this February has been *the most* intense/tense month - sending so much affection and peace your way ❤️🩹 - but I can’t contain how stoked I am to share this very special heart-full convo with you. Because while there’s so much divisiveness right now, I hope this love-themed episode with my super sweet and generous twin friend - a consummate creative thinker and communicator of theatre directing and educating, Nathan Singh - sparks your heart, discussing duende with him definitely sparked mine! I mean he started the episode off bringing me (and duende) a dozen red roses, what a Romantic 🥰🩷 We dig into Nathan’s fearless and compassionate emotion-excavating approach to directing vulnerable stories for the stage (including his own story of turning heartbreak into self-love), why sensitivity is his superpower, how the spiritual activations of the duende-conjuring dance is a mystically possessing experience for him, and how creating work joy-first helps him deal with duende’s sometimes overwhelming darkness.
As what happens when two wild cinephiles get together, we completely nerd out over romantic movies! We start off by fawning over Emily Watson’s remarkable, otherworldly film debut in Lars Von Trier’s 1996 romantic fable Breaking the Waves - his duende-of-love art example. And in response to some rad listener-submitted Love & Duende art, we wrestle with the tricky nature of duende’s darker effects on possessive love. We also play a quick game of Valentine’s Day Duende This-or-That - he prompts me with one of the most challenging This-or-That questions I’ve EVER been asked! Listen to the end to discover my very dramatic answer. And please weigh in if you disagree with me. 😊
I hope you enjoy this defiantly joyous and love-focused discussion. Nathan’s wholly original leaning-into-love life vision can be contagious, I hope you catch some of it and that it fills your Valentine’s Day week with so much warmth and connection 😘🌹💘
Sending so much love,
Megan
Have a great duend-ay! :)
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