Monday, August 27, 2007
CALIFORNIA GIRL
Well, it's finally happened. I've gotten a job interview. A letter came in the post this week from a UK university drama department, and I'm on the shortlist (which is ironic, since I'm so tall) for a job I applied for back in June (apparently they're not in a hurry to hire.) As it turns out, this is the job (out of the seven that I applied for) that I felt most qualified for and drawn toward, and I think my application letter was actually pretty good. I've finally worked out a couple of kinks in my approach, such as how to couch my eclectic resume in the best light and how to sound enthusiastic about teaching without sounding insane.
Now I don't have any illusions that I'll actually get the job. Because let's face it: I'm 5 months pregnant, although the belly looks more like 7, and I can't start until April! But it will be a really good experience to go to the interview, which is an all-day affair and involves me making a 15-minute presentation about my research, teaching, or professional practice (yikes!) And it has bolstered my confidence somewhat to finally have a foot in a door somewhere, even if I don't expect the door to stay open very long. Because honestly, people in this country aren't terribly friendly. I don't know what I was expecting, not a red carpet exactly, but maybe a little enthusiasm about cross-cultural exchange and collaboration. Around most Brits, I feel like an overzealous extrovert, which I most definitely am not. But I don't think their lack of warmth is just because I'm an American. I think that's just how they are. An Australian friend of mine was over for dinner last week, and she said "Oh, God! You've got to know someone in London for like a year before they'll invite you over to their house for tea. And forget dinner. That's like asking someone to sleep with you!"
So, out of the frying pan and into the fire. Because while I truly love San Francisco and feel like I can count many people there as friends, I've never found the Bay Area theatre community to be especially welcoming or encouraging. Sure, if you stick around long enough, people except you. But there are a lot of fish in that small pond, and not enough bugs to go around. Yet compared to London, the San Francisco theatre scene is a non-stop orgy love-fest. Yes, there is lots of theatre in London, and lots of artists making it. But they all seem so secretive, like they're part of the Masons or something. There is this ubiquitous undercurrent of competition and suspicion about what other people are up to. Maybe it's like this in New York too. I don't really know. San Francisco is the only place I've ever practiced theatre (aside from college and grad school), and the word on the street is that Bay Area-ns are more collaborative than most other US theatre-makers. And yet to me, they never seemed collaborative enough.
As I "prepare" for this interview, imagining how I'll respond to my inquisitors' questions and what aspects of my experience and my agenda I want to put forward, I have come to realize that I am at heart a "California girl." It's ironic, since I was dying to leave the joint just a few months ago, but in considering what I have to offer a group of eager young British directing students, I think my best asset is my laid-back West-Coast attitude toward art: what it is, how it's meant to be made, and what it's for. No matter how much I want to be ambitious, there is and has always been some deep part of me that understands that all ambition is bullshit. That part will never allow the ego who loves to spin stories to get too far ahead; "If I get this job, then I'll get a good review, and maybe that bigger theatre will hire me, and then I'll be able to work with a better class of actor, and then maybe someone will notice how good I really am, and then..."
"No, no, no," whispers my inner Buddha. This is false thinking. There is nothing real in any of this. What is real is beauty. And people gathering together in a room to share themselves, despite their exhaustion from their day-jobs, and their anxiety about their finances, and their fear that they aren't really artists and never will be. What is real is the whiz and whir of the brain as it latches onto something that amuses or disturbs it; and image, an idea, a phrase, a snatch of song. What is real is the inexorable passage of time and the fact that the stage, like the patch of ground I am standing on, will be wiped clean again and again and again, and while the echo of the life that has marched there before may still resound, nothing tangible will be left behind.
I think it is easier to believe in the true nature of things when the sun is shining, which may be why Buddhism is bigger in sunny California than it is in rainy London. Nonetheless, if you want to live a life in the theatre, you have to pace yourself. There are ups, there are downs. Okay, mostly there are downs. But in between the long-awaited ups we live by the memory of those great moments of passion when everything was clicking onstage and we could feel our hearts beat in time with the audience. If you love the sun, you know that it always returns - even if you have to live through 40 straight days of rain (as I did during my first San Francisco winter) before you see it again. To my future inquisitors, I will say "I plan to teach British theatre students to believe in the sun. And of course, to believe in themselves."
Well, it's finally happened. I've gotten a job interview. A letter came in the post this week from a UK university drama department, and I'm on the shortlist (which is ironic, since I'm so tall) for a job I applied for back in June (apparently they're not in a hurry to hire.) As it turns out, this is the job (out of the seven that I applied for) that I felt most qualified for and drawn toward, and I think my application letter was actually pretty good. I've finally worked out a couple of kinks in my approach, such as how to couch my eclectic resume in the best light and how to sound enthusiastic about teaching without sounding insane.
Now I don't have any illusions that I'll actually get the job. Because let's face it: I'm 5 months pregnant, although the belly looks more like 7, and I can't start until April! But it will be a really good experience to go to the interview, which is an all-day affair and involves me making a 15-minute presentation about my research, teaching, or professional practice (yikes!) And it has bolstered my confidence somewhat to finally have a foot in a door somewhere, even if I don't expect the door to stay open very long. Because honestly, people in this country aren't terribly friendly. I don't know what I was expecting, not a red carpet exactly, but maybe a little enthusiasm about cross-cultural exchange and collaboration. Around most Brits, I feel like an overzealous extrovert, which I most definitely am not. But I don't think their lack of warmth is just because I'm an American. I think that's just how they are. An Australian friend of mine was over for dinner last week, and she said "Oh, God! You've got to know someone in London for like a year before they'll invite you over to their house for tea. And forget dinner. That's like asking someone to sleep with you!"
So, out of the frying pan and into the fire. Because while I truly love San Francisco and feel like I can count many people there as friends, I've never found the Bay Area theatre community to be especially welcoming or encouraging. Sure, if you stick around long enough, people except you. But there are a lot of fish in that small pond, and not enough bugs to go around. Yet compared to London, the San Francisco theatre scene is a non-stop orgy love-fest. Yes, there is lots of theatre in London, and lots of artists making it. But they all seem so secretive, like they're part of the Masons or something. There is this ubiquitous undercurrent of competition and suspicion about what other people are up to. Maybe it's like this in New York too. I don't really know. San Francisco is the only place I've ever practiced theatre (aside from college and grad school), and the word on the street is that Bay Area-ns are more collaborative than most other US theatre-makers. And yet to me, they never seemed collaborative enough.
As I "prepare" for this interview, imagining how I'll respond to my inquisitors' questions and what aspects of my experience and my agenda I want to put forward, I have come to realize that I am at heart a "California girl." It's ironic, since I was dying to leave the joint just a few months ago, but in considering what I have to offer a group of eager young British directing students, I think my best asset is my laid-back West-Coast attitude toward art: what it is, how it's meant to be made, and what it's for. No matter how much I want to be ambitious, there is and has always been some deep part of me that understands that all ambition is bullshit. That part will never allow the ego who loves to spin stories to get too far ahead; "If I get this job, then I'll get a good review, and maybe that bigger theatre will hire me, and then I'll be able to work with a better class of actor, and then maybe someone will notice how good I really am, and then..."
"No, no, no," whispers my inner Buddha. This is false thinking. There is nothing real in any of this. What is real is beauty. And people gathering together in a room to share themselves, despite their exhaustion from their day-jobs, and their anxiety about their finances, and their fear that they aren't really artists and never will be. What is real is the whiz and whir of the brain as it latches onto something that amuses or disturbs it; and image, an idea, a phrase, a snatch of song. What is real is the inexorable passage of time and the fact that the stage, like the patch of ground I am standing on, will be wiped clean again and again and again, and while the echo of the life that has marched there before may still resound, nothing tangible will be left behind.
I think it is easier to believe in the true nature of things when the sun is shining, which may be why Buddhism is bigger in sunny California than it is in rainy London. Nonetheless, if you want to live a life in the theatre, you have to pace yourself. There are ups, there are downs. Okay, mostly there are downs. But in between the long-awaited ups we live by the memory of those great moments of passion when everything was clicking onstage and we could feel our hearts beat in time with the audience. If you love the sun, you know that it always returns - even if you have to live through 40 straight days of rain (as I did during my first San Francisco winter) before you see it again. To my future inquisitors, I will say "I plan to teach British theatre students to believe in the sun. And of course, to believe in themselves."
Labels: Career Anxiety, Creative Process
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
HOLIDAYTo the two or three of you who are actually reading this blog, apologies for my month-long silence. I've been on holiday. Well, first I was entertaining relatives here in London, then I had the stomach flu, then I went on holiday (to America for my sister's wedding.)
The Brits take their holidays seriously. By law or custom, UK citizens are entitled to 5 weeks of holiday per year - that's 150% more holiday than the average American takes. No wonder everyone here is a little less gripey. British holidays tend to coincide with the scandalously short school terms, of which there are three per year. The fall term begins in September, is interrupted by a week off in October, and concludes with a stunning month off for Christmas. The spring term commences in January, is bisected by another week off in February, and finishes in March with a 3-week Easter holiday (yes, despite the incredible diversity of this country, Christianity still holds sway, at least as far as the calendar is concerned.) Finally, the summer term gets underway in mid-April, includes (you guessed it) a week off in late May, and terminates in mid-July. Everyone in the UK (and apparently the rest of Europe) skips work altogether for the month of August.
Now I ask you - is this not a great civilization? Okay, they suck at technology, manufacturing, customer service, and tapas, but with enough holiday time, you care less about everything else.
Labels: Community Muses
