It’s New Year’s Eve and before I close the 2007 chapter on “Macbeth,” I need to tell you about one moment that had, up to now, slipped my mind. It happened the last day I was in New Jersey for rehearsals.

Ian had reacted to the Doctor’s, “Therein the patient must minister to himself,” in a way that was so dark, sweet, and crazed that it made the hairs on my neck rise. I asked Aaron whether I should let Ian know I thought he’d found a perfect reading.

“No,” he said. “We can’t micromanage that. What Ian is doing is like skiing down a mountain between those, you know, those poles. Ian has to ski that mountain for us every night, and that job is huge. Tremendous. We can help set the obstacles he skis around, but we can’t ever tell him which way to point his feet.”

I don’t know if that image had just come to mind, or whether it is a famous or traditional one. But – as you probably know -- Penn and I both love overextended extended similes more than almost anything in the world.

What Aaron said will, I think, stick with me forever.

Teller

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