I was looking for a copy of the script for Mary Zimmerman’s The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. I am looking for a script for a project next year. I was bummed to find out that she isn’t releasing the script for publication, and by extension performance.

Just a few years ago, Zimmerman would probably have said that she didn’t really write scripts so much as sculpt productions with a particular group of actors.

“I think when we first started out as kids just out of Northwestern, it was unthinkable on an emotional level for us to consider replacing cast members,” Zimmerman said.

But after “Metamorphoses” went all the way from Lookingglass to Broadway in 2001, Zimmerman began to see that actors could replace other actors and other directors could bring their own take to her adaptations.

Zimmerman says there will always be one exception: “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci.” “I won’t publish that piece,” she said. “It still feels like all of its meaning came from that particular staging.”

I can totally respect that position, I was privileged to see it on stage at the Seattle Repertory theater in 1997. It was a beautiful production. I have found a picture from it and included it at the top of this post.

There was another bit from the same interview really struck me:

“Great love springs from great knowledge.”

That is brief quote from an interview of Mary Zimmerman by Bill Moyers.

It stems from Ms. Zimmerman talking about how a love for something grows out of learning about it. That the striving to learn more about a subject increases the love of the subject. I really find this true. For parenting, my work in theater, in so many ways. That the more I know about something, the more I appreciate it, love it and want to learn even more about it. It just resonates.