The anthropologist James C. Scott makes a fascinating distinction between monocropping, basically modern agriculture and polycropping, which is often practiced in jungle climates in which farming mimics the natural environment itself; in polycropping, enhances and works in synergy with the natural environment. I've read elsewhere that there's a strong argument that the supposedly virgin forests encountered by Europeans in the early 1500s in North and South America were actually food forests cultivated for hundreds and thousands of years in a way that was unrecognizable as agriculture to the European eye.
Weirdly enough, I realized that polycropping is a good analogy for how I like to make theater. In other words, I work within the constraints of the cast in my own play and the environment of the weird spaces we work in. I don't try to turn them into traditional proscenium plays, which would just look like a bad version of a big budget theater—which is why I'm often not even recognized as a director (only as a playwright), even though I've directed dozens of show.
Extrapolating here… I think, in general, Western culture has a fetish for control, transformation, and rewards, controllers and transformers over shapers and sculptors, adapters. I'm often asked why I don't have more stage managers, for instance, or employ more of them often. The answer is that a lot of times, professional stage managers come in and they start clearing up all the supposed disorder of the environment and can't distinguish between helpful disorder and actual mistakes or missing pieces–can't distinguish between a missing prop and a creative impulse.1
Usually given that most of us, almost all of us are socially conditioned to prefer monocropping (control), it's hard to find fellow polycroppers out there (synergizers). But of course, they are out there and it's always joyful to meet them and work with them.