Minkgirl Muses

HEART

For the 3 of you who have RSS feeds and will know to look for this post after a 6-month hiatus - thank you for reading!  Future posts will cover the gap, but in the meantime, a love letter to Anne Bogart that I wrote this morning.  Happy Summer Solstice!

Dear Anne,

I was sitting in my kitchen this morning reading the intro to and then, you act while my children climbed all over me.  This seemed an apt metaphor for my experience of making art these days, which is less like that of the balletic diver on the cover of your book and more like that of the Hungarian strong man dragging his family in pyramid formation on his back slowly across the ring.

Nonetheless, your book is inspiring - encouraging - a source of sustenance and solace.  

You have been on my radar a lot in the past few weeks.  We literally kept bumping into each other at the TCG conference - you were on the stairs of the shuttle bus as I tried to back down from a full bus - we got squeezed into the same corner in the lobby - rubbed elbows at the food table at the party.  I kept trying to work up the courage to speak to you, but never managed it.  And there were so many people there who wanted to talk you (as I'm sure there always are).  And you looked tired to me, maybe in need of some silence.

This past weekend, I attended the NET conference which was housed at the university where I now teach.  I attended a session where one of your company members described the current Ensemble/University partnership that SITI Company is seeking to broker with Columbia, and she shared that your endgame in this endeavor is to train a slew of "Warrior Artists" who can help reshape American culture.  Hearing her say that took my breath away, because that exact phrase has been ricocheting around my brain of late.

These recent encounters and the force of the truth on the page this morning made me feel I needed to write to you to express my intense gratitude for your presence and leadership in the theater field.

We've met before, a few times.  I was one of 30 hopeful directing MFA candidates at a weekend workshop in 1995.  Then I was a participant in two separate Viewpoints workshops you led at the University of Iowa between 1996-1999.  I've heard you speak.  I've read your books.  And most recently I've worked with one of your students and mentees AV, at the university where I teach full-time now.

Given how little time we've actually spent in a room together, it's staggering to me how much you've influenced my life.  Concepts like the violence of articulation and vertical energy & horizontal energy have become foundational principles in my own directing and teaching.  My memory of the quality of attention you gave to a small group of MFA directors one day in a cafe in Iowa City is often on my mind when I prepare myself to encounter a new group of people.  The satisfaction of reading your words which capture and amplify truths I recognize fuels me in my teaching practice.

This is my first year in higher education - an intentional transition from the non-profit theater world that I undertook in order to support my family.  I went to Princeton as an undergrad, and the aforementioned U of Iowa for my MFA.  And despite how much I love school, I have always been distrustful of academia.  There seems to be much hypocrisy in the academic environment, as well as a strong tendency to value intellectual knowledge and book learning over experiential knowledge and other more intuitive ways of engaging with truth.  

And this is why I value you so much.  Because you are both a deeply intellectual person and a bold practioner.  In you, theory and form appear to be (miraculously) evenly matched.  Your example offers me hope that I can construct a similarly balanced pedagogical approach in my new environment.

You are also a model of courage for me.  I am trying to do something I have never done before - educate and train artists within a liberal arts context while at the same time empowering them to toss out everything they know and remake theater in their own way.  I am trying to imagine/create/discover a more cogent and inspiring approach to artistic education than the ones I was exposed to in school.  There are a lot of days when this seems an impossible task given how little I know.  You are a model for me both in terms of how you translate your experience into ideas and conceptual frameworks, and also because of your ability to ask unanswerable questions and live with the unknown.

About a month ago, as the semester was grinding to a close, I found myself exhausted, demoralized and seriously considering quitting my job.  But today - largely because of my re-exposure to you - I feel encouraged, energized, and inspired to get back to work.  It's a beautiful word encourage - to put heart into.  I feel my heart beating in my body again today - as I stagger across the ring, holding up myself, my family, and my students - all of us working together to maintain a fragile balance.  All of us buzzing with the thrill of being alive in this moment.

Be well.

Labels: Creative Process, Creative Women, Directing, Teaching

What is DUST?

DUST is the working title of the mainstage show that I am directing at USF this spring, a show that will be created from scratch by the ensemble of performers and the production staff during a 7-week period. The motivation for DUST comes from my life-long interest in creation stories (see What will DUST be about? below) and also from a desire to explore a certain kind of creative process, one in which the performance emerges directly from imaginations of the people who are working together in the rehearsal room.

I am trained as a director - specifically a director of new plays. This means that I have spent a lot of time helping playwrights get what they imagine out of their heads and onto the page. Sometimes this activity is called dramaturgy - the act of shaping and honing a text so that it can effectively tell the story it wants to tell. I love working dramaturgically, because I love language, ideas and stories.

But I also love images, movement and music. I often work with choreographers and composers when I direct a play, because as an audience member I appreciate a richly textured theatrical environment, one that engages all my senses. I also like surprises. I like to be amused, delighted even, by unexpected and beautiful moments onstage.

Most of all, I love to watch people do what they do best. I like to see performers really do something amazing, rather than just pretend to do it. That's why I want to make a play in this way - because I want to see onstage the best theatrical material this group of people can imagine and manifest together.




What will DUST about?

I was a Religion major in college (with a double minor in Theater and Gender Studies.) I spent a lot of time examining stories in the Bible and trying to unpack, understand, and interpret them. My senior thesis was an original production that explored the creation myth in Genesis 3 (Adam, Eve & the Serpent.) I'm also eternally curious about people's ancestry, both personal and communal (as in collective memory.) I think a lot about the secret messages our DNA carries. I think about angels (I've also directed Jose Rivera's Marisol.) I like to tease my brain with What If? scenarios.

So, DUST is a container for exploring all these ideas. What cultural and personal stories do we tell about where we come from? How do we remember/imagine our origins as a species? What is controversial about these stories and how does it impact the way we live and relate to each other?

I'm interested in putting a variety of answers to these questions onstage. I want to offer plenty of ideas, stories, and images for the audience to chew on, as well as room for them to mentally insert their own stories and perspectives. The form of this play will take is likely to be more variations on a theme than a single straightforward narrative.




Who will be part of the DUST creative team?

Director, Christine Young
Movement, Anjali Vashi (Viewpoints specialist & USF instructor)
Dramaturgy, Eugenie Chan (professional playwright & USF instructor)
Sets, Jamie Mulligan (professional designer & USF technical director)
Lights, Gabe Maxson (professional designer & USF production manager)
Costumes, TBA (likely someone who designs for dance)
Sound, TBA (likely someone who composes electronic music)
Assistant Director, Caitlin Shindldecker (PASJ major)
Stage Manager, Ashley Smiley (PASJ major)

Performers, 9 to 16 students of any gender/ethnicity/body type/artistic persuasion (ie. actor/dancer/musician)
I'm interested in creating a diverse and dynamic ensemble of multi-talented performers who are jazzed about the chance to collaborate and create something new.




How will DUST be made?

Because this is an ensemble-created show, performers will be asked to attend every rehearsal.
Some say God made the world in 7 days.
We're going to make a play in 7 weeks.

Our process will have 3 phases:
PlayTime (Weeks 1, 2 & 3) - Rehearsal begins Friday, 1/23 (weekend before classes start)
BuildTime (Weeks 4, 5 & 6)
Tech/Perform (Week 7) - Performances Thu 3/12-Mon 3/16

During our PlayTime, we will develop intimacy as an ensemble and do lots of creative brainstorming through the use of daily creative prompts. For example: after a physical warmup, I might ask everyone to spend 15 minutes writing a personal story that starts with "In the beginning...". We might then take that text and play with it physically, developing character gestures based on key phrases. Then, we might work as a group to create a floor pattern that represents one of the images in the text. Finally, we might splice all these things together into a scene. We will also have production elements to play with. The set, currently conceived as a 3-dimensional chalk board that we can draw on, will be installed during week 2. We'll have light and sound sources available as well during early rehearsals (for example, a video-projector, some flashlights, a sound-system, instruments). Part of our playtime will be spent exploring all the different ways we can use these things theatrically.

At the end of the first 3 weeks, the dramaturgical team (Christine, Anjali, Eugenie, Caitlin, Ashley) will spend a few days sifting through all the creative material we've generated in order to discover the best structure for our piece. I liken this to the quilting process - the performers will cut interesting shapes out of the theatrical fabric we have available to us - then the dramaturgical team will assemble those shapes into the most dynamic pattern they can discern.

Once we've determined the structure, during the BuildTime, we'll stitch the quilt together, fleshing out the missing bits, connecting the dots, making sure the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Part of this work will involve editing, figuring out what fits and what doesn't. We will solidify characters, create transitions, gather additional props, costumes and other production elements we need to tell our story.

Finally, we will Tech and then Perform our work during 5 shows. Our goal will be to create 60 minutes of performance material with a beginning, middle and end that satisfies us and an audience. The "2nd Act" of each performance will be a conversation between the audience and "experts" in the fields of Theology and Science who can talk about the stories they tell to explain/describe our origins.




How can I get involved in DUST?

Come to auditions (sign up for 1 of the 2 sessions by emailing me at cyoung8@usfca.edu). Or contact me via email or at 422.6733 if you have questions or want to be involved in another way.

Auditions for DUST are on Sun 12/7
Session 1: 10a-12p
Session 2: 1p-3p

Bring a piece of text you love (no monologues please).
A unique object
Your schedule/conflicts for January-March 2009
* Be prepared to speak, sing & move!

Labels: Creative Process, Directing

DRAMA

1) Picture This...

a Woman, a Boy, and a Baby get off a bus and go into a shop. The Woman doesn’t normally take the Boy into shops. She knows about his penchant for hiding in stockrooms, stripping cans and packets off shelves, and performing various other inventive acts of mischief. She knows that he does things in shops he does nowhere else - embarrassing things, things that make other parents roll their eyes and shake their heads, things that make store-keepers tremble. The Boy seems to believe that because the Woman has engaged in the careless and cruel act of taking the Boy shopping in the first place, all terms of the Mother-Son contract are temporarily invalid, those terms being chiefly that given appropriate levels of glaring, squeezing, and scolding, the Son will more or less conform to accepted standards of moderately annoying behavior (such as, but not limited to, whining, poking, fidgeting, and suggestions for sugar-based bribery.)

Not this Boy. This Boy waits until the 4 or 5 critical foodstuffs have been deposited on the counter (via an elaborate and laborious “Can you find Mama the eggs? What a helpful Boy!” game), and the Woman has just handed over her credit card to the Clerk, and then he suddenly dashes out of the shop and runs up the street at a dead-sprint. “Has he gone far?” the Woman asks the Clerk, who has a better vantage point through the plate glass window. “Oh yeah. He’s going for it,” the Clerk replies. The Woman snatches her card and her foodstuffs (sans sack) and runs higgledy-piggeldy after the Boy, eggs clutched between elbow and Baby Bjorn, milk jug dangling precariously from one finger, trying desperately to keep her eyes trained on the Boy (who is now a good 100 yards ahead of her) without dropping anything or knocking anyone over on the crowded side-walk.

With a quick glance over his shoulder, the Boy veers sharply to the left and ducks into a Chinese Restaurant. “Perfect!” thinks the Woman. “He’s cornered and at least not going to run into traffic.” She decides that she’ll play it cool, saunter right by the restaurant (which also has a plate-glass window), and let him see that she’s continuing on her way, unruffled by his absence. But as she passes the window, she sees a Cook with his hand on the Boy’s shoulder, clearly quizzing him about his solo status, and the Boy smugly pointing out the window at her. The Cook brings the Boy out onto the street with a “Be careful! Stay close to your Mama!” and returns to the restaurant. The Boy waits until the door has closed and then turns around and takes off at a run again – this time in the opposite direction.

“I’m going home!” the Woman shouts at the Boy’s retreating back. “See ya later!” And making good on her bluff, she turns her back on the Boy and begins to walk in the direction of home. Curious, he follows, eventually catching up with her and giving her that “Are you mad yet?” side-ways smile he’s perfected so well in recent weeks. The Woman walks in silence for a moment, and then offers (with utter calm) “You won’t be watching any television when we get home.” The Boy blanches. What?! No wind-down pre-dinner television hour? “No way!” shouts the Boy. “I’m sorry,” explains the Woman with polite magnaminity, “but you know you are not allowed to run away from me in stores. That’s very dangerous for you and very scary for me. You could get lost and I wouldn’t know where you were.” “But what about my warning?” asks the Boy, referring to the standard practice of offering a “If you do that again, then I’m going to…” before meting out punishments. “Nope,” replies the Woman blithely, “No TV. You know you aren’t allowed to hide from me. No TV will help you remember that next time.”

And cue….Hysteria…on the 12 minute walk home, the Boy gushes an ocean of crocodile tears, complete with melodramatic sobbing. His performance is so over-the-top, the Woman is just dying to run into a friend on the road or meet someone come out of their house to see what all the fuss is about, so she can share the joke. It is all the Woman can do to make it back to her house without completely splitting a gut and laughing in the Boy’s face. He keeps up his dramatic tantrum all the way up to the door of their 3rd floor flat, through the process of removing coat and shoes, and into the living room, whereupon he spots an abandoned sheet of bubble-wrap and immediately drops his act like a cheap clown-nose in favor of popping bubbles. Television is not referred to again for the rest of the evening, and the Boy and the Woman spend a pleasant hour before dinner playing with toy cars on the carpet.

Score one for Mama!


2) On Wednesday morning at 9am...

I had just climbed back into my cozy bed to nurse Miss V (after making oatmeal, dressing Mr. G, dispensing vitamins, enforcing peeing and toothbrushing, packing the spare “just-in-case” clothes and the after-school snack into the back-pack, and putting on his shoes and coat), when Lord Limescale asked me “Where’s the scooter?”

Gman has one of the Mini-Micro scooters (the toddler version of the Razer) that are ubiquitous on the cheery streets of Chiswick. You really never meet a child over 2-1/2 in the outdoor world anymore who isn’t attached to one of these 3-wheeled wonders. They stream-line and fun-ify the process of getting from here to there for kids who are post-stroller but not quite up to walking long distances. The scooter was the “big present” of birthday #3, and it is one of Gman’s prize possessions.

So Lord Limescale’s question elicited an instant jolt of adrenaline, because I had absolutely no idea where the scooter was. My mind was a total blank. I remembered leaving school with it the day before, and then…and then…had I left it on the bus?! The sidewalk?! In a shop?! Where was the @%&! scooter? I wracked my brains for several minutes until I remembered that Gman had led me on a merry chase out of a shop and up the high street the day before, and I realized that I must have abandoned the scooter somewhere along the way in order to pursue him.

And cue…Cursing…I jumped out of bed and proceeded to speed through the morning routine so I could drag my butt (and Miss V’s) back up to the high street in search of the scooter. I found the damn thing (thank my lucky stars). But despite my successful recovery mission, I was left with an uneasy feeling for the rest of the day. Because this memory lapse is not my first. Lately I have been simply unable to retain data in the normal way. People phone at an inconvenient moment, and I say I’ll phone right back. I usually remember to do this 3 or 4 days later. I find myself entering rooms and wondering what I’ve come for, leaving, only to remember, and then returning, only to forget again. I’ve missed doctor’s appointments, stood up friends for coffee, failed to pay really overdue bills, and left key items such as “milk and bread” off the shopping list.

I know what my problem is. It’s simple. I’m feeding another human being, and my brain has shut down all non-essential decks (ala Star Trek) in order to conserve energy for the supremely important task of feeding Miss V’s chub (you should see her thighs, they’re really getting Sumo-like). But because I don’t have the kind of sleep deprivation I did the first time around, I keep forgetting that I can’t function like a normal person. During the first few months of Gman’s life, I felt like crap all the time, so I wasn’t surprised when I screwed up ordinary tasks. But I feel pretty okay this time around, so I keep being caught-off guard by my swiss-cheese brain. I think I should make my own warning label:



3) After nearly a year...

of stressing and strategizing, wishing and worrying, and then finally giving up, I’m back in the saddle again – I’m directing a play. It’s a one-act with one actor to be performed for one night only at the theatre at the end of my road, but nonetheless, it is a bonafide piece of art and I’m gonna make it. I had auditions this week (in my living room with a baby in my lap), and it was lovely to be in a room with actors again. Yes, I know that I bad-mouthed actors in one of my recent posts, but actually I kind of like them. They care so much. They try so hard. They really want to be good.

Like most other things, directing is like riding a bicycle. You think you'll forget how to do it, but you don't. Like a few things, not doing it for awhile actually makes you better at it. At least I think it does. We'll see what I think when rehearsals start and the drama in my life is taking place in a theatre rather than in the small bodies around me.

Be well.

Labels: Creative Process, Directing, Drama, Mamahood

SHABBY CHIC

Last week on the District Line, I saw my fantasy family - a family that oozed harmony and creativity - a family that seemed to be living more vibrantly and more joyfully than everyone else around them.

There were 4 adults and 6 children, representing (I think) 3 different families. But so relaxed and seamless were the parent-kid interactions, it felt like one big family. Also, they were dressed alike. Not in the "creepy cult" sense, but rather in the "birds of a feather flock together" sense. You know how you always see pairs or trios of friends walking down the street wearing the same kind of outfit? Either they shopped for them together, or they recognized each other as kindred spirits via their fashion choices.

This family I saw on the tube was the epitome of "shabby chic." Everyone was wearing vintage and/or handmade clothing. There was a ton of color, lots of layers of different kinds of patterns, crocheted hats, chenille coats with applique - you get the picture - the kind of clothes you might see on any stylish thrift-store maven in San Francisco. Also, they were all a little unkempt - in the "I've been too busy painting murals or writing my novel to get a proper haircut" sense. The 6-year old was wearing summer shoes with no socks. The 10-year old was dressed entirely in orange. The Dad was dispensing snacks from a small backpack which the kids shared with democratic fervor, and I got the sense that the parents expected the kids to mostly to take care of themselves and each other without too much parental intervention. The adults weren't about to get bent out of shape over a failure to wear socks or eat nothing but shrimp-flavored crisps all day. In fact, it seemed as though eating and dressing might be considered creative acts by this clan - opportunities for the kids to practice creative self-expression. These parents were clearly in it for the joy, not for the nag, and the children seemed incredibly happy, well-adjusted and open to the world.

That's it. That's what I want for me and my family. I want us always dressed in a riot of color. I want to have a wall in our house that we repaint 100 times a year, whenever the mood strikes us, with fabulous murals and pithy sayings. I want the word "Mama" to conjure up images of surprise, adventure, pleasure and fun, rather than duty and organization and rules. I want "No!", "Don't!", "Stop!", and "Be careful!" to be replaced by "Why not?", "Check it out!", "Let's do it!" and "What do you think?" I want to laugh more than I worry, and play more than I work.

But I think I might need a tutor. I was never the bold one in either my fashion choices or my ability to buck the system and my ideas about what I "should" be doing. I had a friend in junior high school who had a cool Flock of Seagulls haircut (long on one side, short on the other), and pure United Colors of Benetton style. She would layer a purple spotted short-sleeve top over an orange and green striped long-sleeve top paired with a rainbow knitted scarf and a jaunty little hat. She was cool. Meanwhile, I was wearing tailored lavender courdoroys with a matching wool sweater that my grandmother picked out. I was not cool. And 25 years later, I still haven't gained much purchase on the fashion front. It doesn't occur to me to "mix 'n match" and I'm generally too obsessed with being tidy to let myself (or my kids) have as much fun as we could.

So here's a prayer to the gods of color, composition, and chaos:

Please spring me from my middle-class suburban strait-jacket and embolden me to unleash the creative mama within. Give me the courage to let my children make messes - even when they aren't going to come out of the carpet. Keep sending me signs that the world needs us to express ourselves more than it needs tidy sock drawers and clean kitchen counters. And send me back to the land of thrift store magic and multi-cultural magnificence, where I might have a fighting chance of making these dreams reality.

Be well.

Labels: Creative Process, Mamahood

ELEMENTARY

It's been 3 weeks since I've blogged. I feel bad about it, because to honor the Jewish New Year in September, I made "fresh start" plans including the goal of writing twice a week. And then I immediately failed to live up to my own goals. How surprising! But of course, that's the way life is. Maybe this is the universe's first gift of the year to me - a reminder that human plans are mere scratchings in the sand. What matters is that you keep picking up the stick.

But, today is a 21 day, the beginning of the 2nd month of my 37th year, so it's a fine day to refresh, renew and try again. And anyway, I tell myself that I haven't been writing because I've been busy changing my life. Or rather, my understanding about the context in which my life takes place - which in my overly cerebral case is basically the same thing.

For the past 3 weeks, I've been working almost obsessively on a job application for a full-time tenure-track teaching position at the University of San Francisco. I taught for this department last fall, just before coming to England, and the experience confirmed my suspicions that a university environment might be the landscape in which I could finally make use of all my skills and interests, while living a fairly comfortable life-style at the same time. This was my first academic application for an American university (I've done about 5 for schools in the UK), and it was quite arduous getting all the materials together - letter of application, graduate transcripts, letters of recommendation and support, and the terrifying "Statement of Teaching Philosophy." This last piece was the most troublesome and painful to achieve - it felt just like writing essays for college or grad school admission - trying to figure out how to say that you're cool and interesting with succinct and stylish language while avoiding cliches and hyperbolic metaphors about the value of art.

If it wasn't for Lord Limescale, I might have given up on the whole project. 5 days before the mailing deadline, I finally sat down with some sketchy notes with the goal of hammering out a killer STP. Nearly 9 hours later I had about 5 paragraphs written in a voice that was not my own, which felt wooden, forced, and most importantly boring. When LL came home from a long day in the Chicago salt-mines, I begged him to read what I had written, and he confirmed that I was going about the project in the wrong way - trying to write in an imagined "academic" tone for a mysterious audience whose expectations I had no way of knowing. He dug through some older drafts, pulled out a few nuggets and proceeded to make me an outline laced with simple, direct instructions like "write about this here, and don't use too many big words." His final words of wisdom were: "Persuasive writing is like cooking. Keep your wits about you, and follow the goddamn recipe! Small adjustments are fine, but don’t throw a handful of oregano into the masala." Sage advice for so many situations.

His generous assistance gave me hope and the will to try again to say what I mean and feel instead of what I think others might want to hear. It's amazing how desire ties us up in knots. I really want this job, and that want drew out all my insecurities, and made me doubt who I am and what I know. But by embracing my fear and working through it, I was able to approach the project with some curiosity and a little bit of humor. The best I can do is the best I can do. Whether or not I get this job is actually out of my hands (although I wouldn't mind it if you took this opportunity to make a sign for luck and a mental wish that the hiring committee accidentally spills coffee on all the other applications and decides to choose me because they're too embarrassed to ask the other candidates to resubmit their materials!) But perhaps more important even than whether or not I get the job, is the fact that I learned something significant about myself and my motivations for making art by engaging in the application process.

The title of the USF theatre department is the "Performing Arts & Social Justice Department." Kinda grand. While I love their mission of developing socially conscious artists, I've always felt like a bit of a poser suggesting that I am one of those. I am at best, an accidental activist - the kind of person who goes to political marches because the friends she's made brunch plans with are going and it sounds cool. I always feel good about it when I get there. I get engaged by the issues. I usually think "hey, I should participate in more direct political actions, because I really enjoy the collective spirit and believe in their effectiveness in changing the way people think and behave." But at heart, I am an introvert. I tend to take the easy way out and send money or a letter addressing issues I care about rather than getting out and mingling with others. And at heart I am a privileged middle-class white girl. The troubles and tribulations I have had to deal with in my life are paltry compared to what the average African woman my age has lived through (provided she lives this long.) So it takes more to knock me out of my comfortable little life than it might a person who is living closer to the edge to begin with.

But one thing that has always moved me is people. The phrase "the personal is political" has always rung true to me - even though I think it has been widely discredited in our apathetic age. I remember two years ago this fall a young schizophrenic woman, who was essentially living in a homeless shelter and who had been unable to access appropriate medical support, stripped her 3 children naked and threw them one by one off the pedestrian pier on the Embarcadero into the Bay. This incident haunted me for months. I imagined the children bobbing in the water, the 7 year-old reaching out for the 10 month old and maybe trying to hold her aloft for a moment before they both succumbed to the cold and the waves. I imagined the rescue workers desperately trolling the waters around the pier, both hoping and fearing to find what they were looking for. And most of all, I imagined the woman, "waking up" to what she had done at some future time and the terrible inescapable anguish that would engulf her for the rest of her conscious moments. This event lodged in my imagination and forced its way into my consciousness at the most inconvenient moments. I found myself having nightmares for weeks, crying in budget meetings, having to pull off to the side of the road when an unexpected wave of grief hit me. I know a big part of my reaction had to do with the fact that I shared something with this woman - we are both mothers - but of course I have every advantage and every support, while she had every obstacle. And I felt tremendously angry and disappointed with myself and everyone in my community that we had failed this woman, failed to recognize her deep need before it was too late, failed to be the village that one actually does need in order to raise healthy successful children.

Where I meet the phrase "social justice" is in the simple non-intellectual plane of empathy - the place of "co-feeling." Facts and statistics have always sailed right through my head, but imagining another human being facing their darkest moment creates inescapable images that lodge in me like hot lead. The question is how to transform that co-feeling into some kind of action that will contribute to changing the circumstances that created such a tragedy in the first place. And after wrestling 6 rounds with my STP, I think I can truly say that I believe this is what theatre can do in modern America - manifest characters and their stories in a way that penetrates our information-saturated brains and marketing-perverted hearts so that we care about another person's dilemma enough that we actually get off our asses and do something to help them.

I already knew this in some inner chamber of my heart, but having to write about it for others made it crystal clear to me, and also helped me understand the ambivalence with which I have approached mainstream theatre-making in the past few years in a new context. I don't know what the future holds - if I will get this job or another like it, when I will make a play again, how the recent realization that I don't ever want to direct Shaw or Marivaux or O'Neill will affect my career - but I do know that being in touch in a deeper way with why art matters to me is a good outcome for 3 weeks of work.

I'll leave you with the opening of my STP. May your next 3 weeks be as full of revelation as my last 3 have been.

Be well.

"When I was younger, I made theatre because I found it exciting and challenging to imagine fantastic worlds and then try to manifest them using the imperfect materials of bodies, wood, light, and paint. But now when I make theatre, I am motivated by a desire to give witness to what I see happening in the world and to conceive of alternative ways of being. I believe that theatre can function as a significant tool for social change, but not in the splashy sense that it will cause people to quite their day-jobs and riot in the streets for justice. Rather, I think theatre’s chief value in modern America is that it can create empathy and understanding between people by telling compelling and complex stories in imaginative and emotionally engaging ways. And I believe empathy has revolutionary consequences.

I can read in the paper about a woman who has lost her young children to the state because she left them in a locked apartment while she went to work. I can be shocked or saddened by this story and still go about my day and do nothing to help her or her children. But if I spend a few hours with this woman, in the body of an actor, if I hear her stories and watch her struggle with the economic and social challenges she faces, if I meet her children and see where she lives, if I try on her shoes for a time, I will not be able to forget her so quickly. I may walk out of the theatre with a visceral understanding of how fine a line there is between us. And the truth of that may inspire me to do something I have never done before, like write my congressman about the lack of affordable childcare, or volunteer at a shelter, or simply offer help to my neighbor when she needs someone to unexpectedly look after her kids."

Labels: Career Anxiety, Creative Process, Rebirth

INSPIRATION

I'm a journaler - I have an almost obsessive impulse to record and document my life and what I see and hear happening around me. The funny thing is, I don't actually think of myself as a journaler - probably because I never succeeded in doing my morning pages for more than a week (a tool/trick from The Artist's Way for getting the muse to be your daily companion). I tend to write a lot at certain times and then not at all for months. The urge to write usually strikes when something is affecting me emotionally or when I'm having a lot of recurring thoughts about a particular subject that won't leave me alone. I also write because my memory has always been poor. If I can read something descriptive about a past event, it instantly unlocks the secret cellar of my memories so that I can picture the past clearly, recall what happened, how I felt about ,and why it was important.

So, from time to time I reread bits of old journals to see how I have or haven't changed in the intervening time and to stir my mental soup so that interesting and tasty bits I've forgotten or abandoned will float to the top again. I find this particularly useful for my creative life - I can't tell you how many times I've had the same good idea and then forgotten all about it before I could manifest it. I guess in a sense, journaling is about having a conversation with yourself - the act of writing gives your present self a voice, and the act of reading allows all your past selves to join in the dialogue too.

Here's an excerpt from June of this year - it describes a moment when I was in the throes of both first-trimester pregnancy blues and the dawning unpleasant awareness that London might not be the creative cornucopia I had hoped for. It was also the moment when our honeymoon affection for our new home was starting to tarnish a bit, and I was feeling lonely and really missing the intimacy and connection I had with my San Francisco community. It actually started as a journal entry and then morphed into an email I sent to an acquaintance who I hoped would take the bait and become my creative pen pal. That didn't happen, but other things did, and over the course of the summer, I gradually moved out of my doldrums and into a much more content state - trusting that there are more creative conversations ahead in my future, and that inspiration will enter my life again one day like a lightning bolt, probably when I least expect it:

CREATIVE PROCESS

It's been on my mind to write to you for awhile. But I've been a little bit lost in mommy land - not entirely of my own choosing. As it turns out (warning: this is top secret!), I'm pregnant again. Only about 9 or 10 weeks. And while I am intellectually on board with this endeavor, emotionally I'm still coming to terms with it. Having another kid was actually part of the whole London plan, but I was hoping to wait awhile (like until I got a job) to pull the trigger. Ah, nature. So full of surprises.

So I'm feeling a little glum between the discomforts of the first trimester and the fact that I haven't made any artistic friends yet. Well, I've made a few, but they are mostly too busy (like I was in San Francisco) to really invite someone new into their lives. So I've been craving creative contact. And that made me think of you - which is a bit ridiculous since you're as busy as anyone I know. But I had this idea that maybe we could chat about the creative process a bit. And I've been reading Virginia Woolf's letters (she wrote a lot of letters) to a whole slew of female intellectual collaborators, which has made me want a pen pal of my own.

So, speaking of artistic foremothers (and forefathers), my first question is - who has inspired you either directly or indirectly to be an artist, and why? For me, it was a chance encounter with South African playwright/director Athol Fugard that served as a "conversion" to theatre. I heard him speak at an afternoon tea at Princeton when I was an undergraduate. I was 18, it was my first year, and I had no idea who he was. It was an intimate gathering - maybe only 20 people or so - and he read from his journals, which contained a combination of reflections about the play he was currently writing/directing, a new idea for a play that had just come to him and various observations about the world at large. He was so poetic, so present and so mystical that I instantly thought, "That's it. I want to do what he's doing. I want to know what he knows." I auditioned for a play the same day, got cast, quit the crew team (which is what brought me to Princeton on a scholarship in the first place) and devoted myself to theater. At the time I didn't really even think about it, I just knew I wanted to have the kind of deep communion with the world around me that I had seen this amazing man demonstrate. And now, nearly 20 years later, I think I am in need of another kind of conversion experience. Because the life I thought I was going to live and the life I am living are not the same things. I have made less art than I expected to and focused much more time on building relationships and learning how to support myself and live as a woman in the world.

I want to get back to those original impulses, that sense of wonder and mystery and the feeling that the veil was being parted and I was getting a peak-through into the true nature of things. I don't know where or when or how I'm going to find this new inspiration, especially with 2 children hanging off my hem. But I came to England to reinvent myself - intuitively chucking everything I had built personally and professionally so that I might be reborn. And here I am. Here I sit. Waiting for my mentor to step out of the fog and invite me back into the artistic fold. Although it has occurred to me that I might need to be a bit more active about finding him or her. Perhaps I cannot hope to just wander into a room this time and be served up with inspiration. Perhaps I need to go out and hunt for it.

Hmm. Tell me a story that makes you tick.

Be well.

Labels: Creative Process

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."

Labels: Career Anxiety, Creative Process

Labels: Career Anxiety, Creative Process

ARTISTIC RANT #1

I had a meeting today with an eccentric English director - someone who has a name in this country and who has worked with a number of famous people. He's also been asked to be a guest lecturer a lot, especially in America, which is where I first encountered him while I was in grad school.

He is a nice man, the kind of person who probably fancies himself a mentor for young artists, and he was kind enough to take time out of his busy life to meet with me. But at the end of our 2-hour meeting in a museum cafe, I wanted to shoot myself in the head.

I haven't indulged in too many moments of abject despair about my (currently non-existent) theatre career since crossing the pond 6 months ago, but today I made up for all that restraint. In the tube on the way home, my mind was a jumble of ineloquent curses and whiny tantrums:

Fuck fuck fuck it all. I'm never going to fucking get anything going here or anywhere else. Theatre is beat. This is bullshit. My career is going nowhere. I should pack it up and become a fucking preschool teacher. Fuck fuck fuck.

What did this man say that so stimulated the wrathful demons inside me, you ask? I have no idea. Really. Except that he did chide me a bit for being "unfocused", for being interested in too many things, and also for being too effusive, too enthusiastic. "Talk a little slower my dear. Don't try to tell everything at once." And maybe that's all it took - being chided took the piss out of me. It made me feel like I'm an eager-beaver graduate all over again, a newbie, fresh off the bus and dazzled by the lights of the big city marquee. It made me feel like I'm never going to get off the bench and back into the game.

And I can't believe that after all the time I've put in in the trenches - slaving for peanuts in non-profits and schlepping my ass here and there between 1,001 jobs, that I am still not qualified enough, not juiced up or hooked up enough to get the attention of anyone in theatre in this godforsaken country. It's like being in junior high all over again and having to find my clique. Where are my people? Where are the people who, like me, value collaboration above self-aggrandizement? Where are the people who would rather focus their energies on actually engaging with another person than trying to impress them with 120 straight minutes of name-dropping? Where are the people who aren't feeling so protective of their hand-built sandbox that they're not willing to invite the new kid over to play a bit and maybe share the toys a little.

It's humiliating all this selling of self. I sucked at it in the small and relatively low-key pond of San Francisco, and I suck even harder at it in the giant ocean that is London. I think in the back of my mind, I had some kind of ridiculous fantasy playing that in coming over here I could hopscotch over all the facets of the business of making theatre that have always plagued me - networking, proving your value as an artist by affiliating yourself with impressive people and institutions, using others (either literally or figuratively) to get a leg up. I was hoping that I would bump into some people like me who are just looking for space and time to play and people to play with, and that we would dance off together in a blissed-out creative haze.

But that isn't happening. And while I'm certainly capable of scraping some folks together and putting on a show myself, what I want more than anything is to be IN CONVERSATION with some other artists. I wish I could take out a personal ad:

36-year old over-educated director/dramaturg/teacher/dance-lover seeks artists of any discipline to connect and make art with. I love talking, listening, and brainstorming about the world and where we fit into it. You love long converations over coffee, taking creative risks, and know where we can rehearse for free. Let's get together and see where it leads. Let's dream something up and make it happen. Let's become intimate with each other's questions and then invite some others to chew on them with us.

One of the things that I got so fed up with working in non-profit theatre was how slowly things move - you have to fundraise at least 1-1/2 years out for any given project. Your organizational vision grows by leaps and bounds, while your infrastructure grows by dribs and drabs. It takes years for a play to go from the page to the stage, and often they never make the leap at all. Somehow I thought things might move faster here, but so far it feels the opposite. I've been here 6 months, and it feels like another 6 could pass and I would be in the same place - a person who wants to work but who can find no work, a person who wants to play but who can find no playmates.

I have to think the universe is trying to teach me something here. Maybe today's feeling that I'm trying to drive with the parking brake on is a warning that I'm not ready to "go back to work" yet afterall. Probably there is more discernment to be done, to figure out which of my interests and enthusiasms deserves my full attention. Most likely the eccentric English director hit the nail on the head when he metaphorically reduced me to a puppy fresh out of the box. Maybe my legs aren't strong enough yet for standing in this brave new world. Maybe I've distracted myself with work all these years to avoid the fact that I'm still afraid to do what it is that I most want to do. Whatever that is.

I read a book once called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - the kind of book you could read over and over and still not fully grasp. The bit I remember is something that I think comes from the Noh tradition - no matter how much mastery you think you have achieved, you must still approach every task and every problem from the perspective of a beginner. That way you will continually refresh yourself by testing your skill in the present moment, rather than repeating yourself or relying on tricks or shortcuts.

That's hard for me. To feel like a beginner. To accept that there is only the long road. Very hard.

But that's how it is today.

Be well.

directing
art
job search

Labels: Career Anxiety, Creative Process

I AM AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF

One of the luxuries I allowed myself when we moved to London was the exorbitantly expensive shipping of four boxes of books. Choosing which books to bring, which to store, and which to give away was my very first moving task, one that I completed with the fortuitous assistance of my friend A. A is a writer herself – a brilliantly imaginative and poetic playwright in fact, so I felt secure in accepting her recommendation on each volume’s fate – “Script Analysis? Boring. Haven’t cracked it since grad school. Chuck it. The Playwright’s Voice? Well that’s important. Put that one in the ‘Take to London’ box.” And so we proceeded shelf by shelf with a miraculous rapidity and confidence that I experienced in no other part of the gruesome packing process.

When the books finally arrived 6 weeks after we did, I was ecstatic. I unpacked them and strew them about the living room (where they still sit as I haven’t managed to procure a bookshelf yet), and I’ve already dipped into the pile quite a few times – Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island has provided a humorous sense of perspective about our adopted culture. Ellen Gilchrist’s book of short stories Light Can Be Both Particle & Wave has been a faithful old friend on my nightstand – one whose characters and phrases I enjoy slipping on like a favorite bathrobe. Peter Brook’s Empty Space is as full of revelation as it was nearly 20 years ago, when I first read it in college.

And last week – due to an impulse that I have forgotten – I picked up Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. I also discovered this book in college – probably in a Women’s Studies class. And reading it makes me as angry now as it did then. Ms. Woolf acknowledges simply that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” and then goes on to prove in her slim volume just how impossible achieving these resources has been for her sisters throughout the ages. One could apply her maxim to nearly anything creative that a woman might aspire to: a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to paint, to play the violin, to design buildings, to make theatre.

I guess I picked up the book because the longing for a room of my own has snuck up on me again – a dull unavoidable throb. Even now, in this time of not working, this “sabbatical” time, where I have no responsibilities to the outside world, and am expected by no one to produce anything on any kind of deadline – even now, I barely have enough time to think half the thoughts I want to think, much less make anything creative. When all is said and done, I have about 10 hours a week to myself, 10 hours to spend as I choose. Of course the temptation is huge to get a jump on the laundry, to just pick up the house for a few minutes before I sit down to write (because I think better with less clutter), to take care of those errands that are so hard to get done with Gman in tow, etc. etc. But even when I avoid all domestic temptations and use my time to its best advantage, it still isn’t enough – I’m still racing out the door 10 minutes late to pick up Gman because I wanted to read one more chapter, write one more page, look up one more interesting thing on the internet. And I never get back to any of it. I always think I will, that I’ll come home and sneak back to the computer while Gman is playing, that I’ll make a quick dinner and use the extra time to read just a bit more, write one more email – but it never happens. My thoughts are always left unfinished. My intentions left unfulfilled. It turns out that being a housewife is nearly as time consuming as being a working mother. And of course since I’m not actually producing anything with this time, it’s hard to argue for more time. And how much would it take anyway, before I would feel intellectually and spiritually sated – 20 hours a week, 40 hours, 60 hours? How much solitude, how many moments to look out the 3^rd floor window at the sky and the tree branches flickering, how many hours of reading and writing in my journal would be enough to make me feel fulfilled? I could noodle away a life with introspection and creative musings and internet research. And still never actually make anything.

And that is why I am so angry with Virginia Woolf – why she terrifies me so. Not only does she reproach me with her sheer miraculous creative output – but she also describes in her witty side-ways prose the deep and historical circumscription of women’s lives – how and why it is that we will always achieve less.

“If only Mrs. Seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money, like their fathers and their grandfathers before them, to found fellowships and lectureships and prizes and scholarships appropriated to the use of their own sex…we might have looked forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honourable lifetime spent in the shelter of one of the liberally endowed professions. We might have been exploring or writing; mooning about the venerable places of the earth; sitting contemplative on the steps of the Parthenon, or going at ten to an office and coming home comfortably at half-past four to write a little poetry. Only, if Mrs. Seton and her like had gone into business at the age of fifteen, there would have been – that was the snag in the argument – no Mary…for, to endow a college would necessitate the suppression of families altogether. Making a fortune and bearing thirteen children – no human being could stand it.”

Okay, now I don’t have thirteen children, and I do recognize that individual women are accomplishing a great deal – I hold as friends a whole slew of women who are doctors, lawyers, teachers, entrepreneurs, scholars and managers of companies. But. Still. As a group, we still do not achieve what men do – mainly because of the baby question, and the simple inescapable fact that someone has to raise the darn things.

“First there are nine months before the baby is born. Then the baby is born. Then there are three or four months spent in feeding the baby. After the baby is fed there are certainly five years spent in playing with the baby. You cannot, it seems, let children run about the streets. People who have seen them running wild in Russia say that the sight is not a pleasant one. People say too, that human nature takes its shape in the years between one and five. If Mrs. Seton, I said, had been making money, what sort of memories would you have of games and quarrels? What would you have known of Scotland, and its fine air and cakes and all the rest of it? But it is useless to ask these questions, because you would never have come into existence at all.”

Yes, it is useless to ask these questions, to keep protesting – as I have for much of my life – how unfair it is to be a woman. It is a topic that I have endlessly bored Lord Limescale with. It is my favored form of whinging (fabulous British word for whining), and I can’t seem to stop doing it. I know my life is very very good, much better in nearly every way than woman of even one generation ago. But. Still. I cannot stop longing for the space and time (and money) to test my imagination fully, to see what might be possible if I could just sit still long enough and THINK.

Be well.

Labels: Career Anxiety, Creative Process, Creative Women