Making a life in the theater often feels to me like putting together a massive, illogical puzzle. The pieces shift in front of your eyes as you lay them down, and the whole enterprise might be easily enough upended by a slobbering toddler, or just as likely to be left half-finished and moldering in a house upstate.

Talking to Padraic Lillis, founder and artistic director of The Farm Theater, I feel a surge of familiarity. Maybe it’s something from my family’s Midwestern farming past, but when he talks about his work I recognize an honorable reticence, cautious hope, and, maybe most particularly, the steady commitment to action that makes things grow.

The costumes—created for a huge cast on a tiny budget—were dark, sensual, heavy. They felt encumbered (in a great way) by their own style and danger, and evoked a sense of period that was both specific and novel, with modern touchstones layered on top of a Jacobean substructure.

Theater runs on the fuel of its own gypsy blood. As theater artists, we all have it in us, even when we settle down: the thrill of travel, the prospect of getting to tell our stories, with our people, in a new place and time.

Theater runs on the fuel of its own gypsy blood. As theater artists, we all have it in us, even when we settle down: the thrill of travel, the prospect of getting to tell our stories, with our people, in a new place and time.