Congress In Session

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen:

I stand before you today with great excitement and hope. Hope for the future of No. 11 Productions. Allow me to digress, so I may get to my point most directly.

My favorite word is asymptotic. You may recall this term from mathematics classes. In layman’s terms, an asymptote is a curve that gets perpetually nearer to a number without ever reaching it.

In this diagram, note how the curve keeps getting closer to the dashed line. The x-axis represents time. So as time passes, the curves gets closer. Yet even if the curve had an infinite amount of time, it would never touch (or go higher than) that dashed line. That is what makes it an asymptote. It will never reach its goal exactly, but will get infinitely closer. Suppose the dashed line was at 2. Then as time passed, the curve would go from 0 to 1 to 1.5 to 1.9 to 1.99 to 1.999 to 1.9999999999 into infinity.

At No. 11 Productions, we are on an asymptotic quest. We want to do Perfect Theatre. We want to attain Truth and Beauty. Yet we know that these are abstract concepts. These ideals are our asymptotes. With every production we do, we will get closer and closer. We will learn more and we will grow.

That is why we chose to work as part of a company, so that the next play could pick up from where the previous one left off. For us, that “x-axis” is our productions. Rather than each play starting from zero and being an isolated line, all of our pieces will be going further and further on the “Great Parabola to Truth”.

It may not always be easy, but we will find strength because we are forever working towards, and getting infinitely closer to, a higher aspiration.

Written by Julie Congress