This week we finished the long marathon that was teching an outdoor, site specific staging of Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle in two languages during two week period of rain falling at some point almost very night, necessitating additional starts and stops to a start and stopping process on a show with a huge amount of tech to begin with due to the dozens of characters (and subsequently dozens of costumes) and did I mention it was being staged environmentally? In a park? And that we have a bath tub?
It was a very, very challenging week, culminating in a small panic attack yesterday afternoon while I was at work. It was sparked by a moment of confusion over my own age, but was the result of a building sense of anxiety over "what am I doing with my life!? This is crazy!"
It may also have had to do with the fact that after having opened in one language, my native language of English I was preparing to open the show all over again in a language I don't speak and had been struggling to memorize and pronounce correctly while maintaing some veneer of acting artistry for the past two months.
My Spanish text prior to last night's opening had been rocky to say the least. By the time of our first attempted tech run in Spanish, when we got to my big scene, all of my text was on point and for the first time I was totally off book and acting the hell out of my scene. Then I went away for a day or two as we worked English and fixed the very complicated mechanics of tracking all the props, costumes and set pieces as they traveled from act to act. By the time we ran again in Spanish, I thought "my lines were good last time, I got this" but they were not as good as they thought and then when my bathtub had disappeared due to the impending rain I was frankly thrown off balance, further complicating my juggling act of speaking another language and acting at the same time and my pronunciations went to shit.
So I was self conscious going into last night's run in Spanish. Our first attempt at opening had been Wednesday, but then that was rained out, and we finally opened the show in English on Saturday with no major technical glitches but definitely a cautious energy bordering on anxiety for when something would inevitably go wrong. But it didn't, and when we got to last night's Spanish performance, to an eager and excited audience that ultimately grew to something like 30 people a fire was lit underneath us, and we took off!
The crowd began immediately reacting and laughing at the funny bits (which the English audience the previous night did substantially less of, if this was us or them I'm not sure more on that in a paragraph or two) and we fed off that vibe. By the time my big scene came, at the juncture of my big entrance I felt myself go into a kind of comedic "bullet time" you know where stuff goes really slow and crazy in the Matrix movies? I get that way when I can feel my sense of comedic timing lining up perfectly, all of my lines and gestures landing at the perfect moment for maximum comedic effect, what had been a juggling act transformed into a wonderful dance.
And THAT is what I'm doing with my life is the answer to the question that precipitated my panic attack. And in this context, I'm doing it for an audience that gets very few stories at the level of a Bertolt Brecht much less brought to their park for free and in the language they speak.
I've been meaning to write for a while about how beautiful this story is, and how I imagine it must speak to the Latin American experience of the 20th century. At it's heart, it's a story about two young people in love, one of whom has to go off to war but before he does asks the girl to marry him. She promises to wait, but in the anarchy of a coup d'eta, is left with the abandoned child of the deposed aristocracy, sure to be killed if the usurping forces were to discover it. She flees with it, and due to forces of circumstance adopts it as her own. She marries a man she doesn't love to give it shelter, and in this moment her true love returns and condemns her as the forces of the previous regime, now back in power, take her to trial for kidnapping. The village eccentric, made judge by bizarre circumstances, follows his heart to do what is right and gives her the child, her beloved forgives her, they are reunited and with the child they are able to continue with their lives and live happily ever after.
There's something incredibly beautiful about this, and to me it's a story about the redemption of the human race and western civilization. There's a very old version of this story, perhaps in the mode of Greek tragedy, where the man goes to war and leaves his beloved behind, comes home to her and discovers a child and then kills both of them, or where the Judge has an opportunity to bring justice and restore order to the land and is perhaps destroyed in the process.
But Brecht turns those expectations on their head, and his story love wins the day. I speculate on this stories resonance for Latin America, because political upheaval defined the landscape of many Latin countries during the 20th century. No doubt, numerous men went off to fight the war, leaving women behind who were left to live their lives in fear and hope of their return while suffering at the hands of cruel fate. Many of them no doubt had children whether by their choice or not, and were left with no choice but to carry on with their lives as best as they could, as did the men who returned to them.
And in this parable they are able to forgive each other, and love wins the day, and I find that very moving. And the reward we get for all the hard work we've done, is bringing that story to the world at a time when the world needs stories about love more than ever before.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Identifying Identity/Putting On My Podcast Hat
Getting back into the swing of blogging, here we go!
I think two factors have contributed to the drop off in how much I've been writing this past year, well three if you count Shakes and Co. But the first is, ironically I guess, Facebook. Someone I know posed the question over Facebook "do you consider Facebook status updates and tweets to be their own form of writing?" Which got me thinking why of course they are. Usually when I go to write a status update, which is at least once a day probably, I'm trying to think of how to phrase it in the pithiest, punchiest or most insightful way possible in as few words as it can be expressed. When I consider my own identity and the ways which I define myself, actor and musician come to mind, in that order but I've always struggled with allowing "writer" or at another time in my life "poet" into that equation. I think maybe it's because writers and poets are so frequently presented as caricatured figures, the idea of the pompous pseudo intellectual novelist or poet or whatever pops up a lot in popular culture to the extent that it's become a comedic archetype in our modern landscape of comedia dell arte types. And perhaps because of that representation I was always very hyper aware of being pompous or pretentious, and thought telling people "oh I'm a poet" or "oh I'm a writer" would somehow invoke that.
Additionally, I wonder if those same forces in culture make the act of creation in some sense problematic, I suppose combined with the proliferation of technology that made it very easy to print and share one's own work. Inevitably, this writer caricature tries to get the other characters in the world they inhabit to try and read their work and it's never any good and usually the butt of a joke.
Knowing what I do know, seeing this scene played out in film or television is pretty ironic because the people who make those things are writers themselves and no doubt would identify with that same caricature in the much the same way I am doing in this moment!
Where was I? This post was going to be about my podcast but it's become about identity. Also I feel a sense of vulnerability in telling people that I'm a creative person. This doesn't extend to my acting, which I've always felt very confident about for whatever reason or at least have learned to, but also it's much harder to "act" for someone in a coffee shop. It's much more feasible to say "I'm a writer, can I share some writing with you?" and then if they don't like it or it doesn't set them off or inspire some kind of praise in them, it feels like failing a little.
This feeds back into whatever need for approval loops I have that do whatever they do for me in making me create my art. And this all a big tangent to why I haven't been writing here so much!
Because Facebook makes for a very easy feedback and approval loop I find when it comes to creating things, specifically status updates. If I can write a really funny or affecting status update, people can "like" it or comment on it instantaneously and in the hours after I put something up I can see all the people who read it and liked it or whatever.
This requires much less effort and focus than writing a blog post and involves much more instant gratification!
Which is ironic because the other thing I've been pouring my energy into other than blogging has been my podcast, (The Mike Handelman Podcast, I keep trying to think of catchier names but then I've stuck with this one for this long) which takes hours of work or honestly however much work I feel like putting into it but if I'm motivated and able it can take hours and for all that probably the fewest people take the time to really give it a listen.
But that's assuming that the goal is page views or whatever, which it's not, it's to make things I'm proud of. At a certain point the snake starts swallowing it's own tail though, because you need to go from making things you like and would want to listen to into finding other people who like and want to listen to similar things and will do that enough that people will pay money to access those people such is the nature of entertainment and show business!
So I'm doing all this work with the mindset that someday I'll find a way or have an opportunity to bring this work to a larger audience and then on to some kind of sponsorship to at least make some pizza and beer money, which would be nice. And by continuing this work with dedication, every time I put out a new podcast, I'm making a slightly improved or more refined product.
Which has been the case! I've been at this for about a year now since my friend Jesse and I first got in a room with a microphone and we really have come a long way in our artistic partnership and in my skills as a producer and engineer, which is something to be excited about. I hope after you've finished this, maybe you'll check out the podcast. Even if it's not yet something you'd enjoy (it's hard for me to keep perspective on whether or not I even enjoy it, I listen to some so many times in editing them) someday soon it will evolve in a better version of the thing it already is, that you will want to listen to.
I think two factors have contributed to the drop off in how much I've been writing this past year, well three if you count Shakes and Co. But the first is, ironically I guess, Facebook. Someone I know posed the question over Facebook "do you consider Facebook status updates and tweets to be their own form of writing?" Which got me thinking why of course they are. Usually when I go to write a status update, which is at least once a day probably, I'm trying to think of how to phrase it in the pithiest, punchiest or most insightful way possible in as few words as it can be expressed. When I consider my own identity and the ways which I define myself, actor and musician come to mind, in that order but I've always struggled with allowing "writer" or at another time in my life "poet" into that equation. I think maybe it's because writers and poets are so frequently presented as caricatured figures, the idea of the pompous pseudo intellectual novelist or poet or whatever pops up a lot in popular culture to the extent that it's become a comedic archetype in our modern landscape of comedia dell arte types. And perhaps because of that representation I was always very hyper aware of being pompous or pretentious, and thought telling people "oh I'm a poet" or "oh I'm a writer" would somehow invoke that.
Additionally, I wonder if those same forces in culture make the act of creation in some sense problematic, I suppose combined with the proliferation of technology that made it very easy to print and share one's own work. Inevitably, this writer caricature tries to get the other characters in the world they inhabit to try and read their work and it's never any good and usually the butt of a joke.
Knowing what I do know, seeing this scene played out in film or television is pretty ironic because the people who make those things are writers themselves and no doubt would identify with that same caricature in the much the same way I am doing in this moment!
Where was I? This post was going to be about my podcast but it's become about identity. Also I feel a sense of vulnerability in telling people that I'm a creative person. This doesn't extend to my acting, which I've always felt very confident about for whatever reason or at least have learned to, but also it's much harder to "act" for someone in a coffee shop. It's much more feasible to say "I'm a writer, can I share some writing with you?" and then if they don't like it or it doesn't set them off or inspire some kind of praise in them, it feels like failing a little.
This feeds back into whatever need for approval loops I have that do whatever they do for me in making me create my art. And this all a big tangent to why I haven't been writing here so much!
Because Facebook makes for a very easy feedback and approval loop I find when it comes to creating things, specifically status updates. If I can write a really funny or affecting status update, people can "like" it or comment on it instantaneously and in the hours after I put something up I can see all the people who read it and liked it or whatever.
This requires much less effort and focus than writing a blog post and involves much more instant gratification!
Which is ironic because the other thing I've been pouring my energy into other than blogging has been my podcast, (The Mike Handelman Podcast, I keep trying to think of catchier names but then I've stuck with this one for this long) which takes hours of work or honestly however much work I feel like putting into it but if I'm motivated and able it can take hours and for all that probably the fewest people take the time to really give it a listen.
But that's assuming that the goal is page views or whatever, which it's not, it's to make things I'm proud of. At a certain point the snake starts swallowing it's own tail though, because you need to go from making things you like and would want to listen to into finding other people who like and want to listen to similar things and will do that enough that people will pay money to access those people such is the nature of entertainment and show business!
So I'm doing all this work with the mindset that someday I'll find a way or have an opportunity to bring this work to a larger audience and then on to some kind of sponsorship to at least make some pizza and beer money, which would be nice. And by continuing this work with dedication, every time I put out a new podcast, I'm making a slightly improved or more refined product.
Which has been the case! I've been at this for about a year now since my friend Jesse and I first got in a room with a microphone and we really have come a long way in our artistic partnership and in my skills as a producer and engineer, which is something to be excited about. I hope after you've finished this, maybe you'll check out the podcast. Even if it's not yet something you'd enjoy (it's hard for me to keep perspective on whether or not I even enjoy it, I listen to some so many times in editing them) someday soon it will evolve in a better version of the thing it already is, that you will want to listen to.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Moments of Anticipation
I've realized I need to become less precious with the communications I share via this blog. Since coming back from Shakespeare and Company this February (wow hard to believe it's been that long) I've started to write a whole bunch of blog posts and then either stopped and not finished them or meant to go back to them or what have you.
Part of this I think had to do with how Shakespeare and Company dealt with the subject of communication in their training, in that they teach you to talk about things as succinctly and specifically as possible. This lead to a struggle in my writing to continue doing that, and when I've felt like I don't completely or succinctly communicate something in a first pass, I get frustrated and want to write it over until I get annoyed with writing it or move on to something else and then I have no writing to share!
That's silly. I have observed my writing process is that I'm most likely to actually get a blog post at the end of a writing session if I commit fully to writing down the thoughts I have in a given moment, ideally doing a quick pass of an edit, and then sharing it and moving on. The blessing and the curse of the internet is how easy it is to access quantity in a sense that it's removed from the expenses of physical media, so you can quickly and cheaply create things and so there are lots of things being created. Vast numbers of things, so many that it becomes counter productive at a certain point to spend too much time worrying about the quality.
But that's another blog post.
I'm pretty far into rehearsals for Caucasian Chalk Circle, we've been getting into the really rough and difficult parts of the "birthing" as it were of this piece of art. Is that an appropriate analogy? There's a lot of collective pain and suffering as we work through the gritty details and logistics of mastering the text, smoothing over the staging, sweating out blocking and staging. For many of us in particular a big part of this has been mastering our Spanish lines, I know it has been for me! I studied Spanish a good deal in school, so I'm not coming in completely ignorant to how it works, but back then I never worked very hard at it, or was ever a preternatural talent for the language, I don't think. So that's been very challenging. But also pretty cool and kind of rewarding. I really like the Spanish text and it's fun getting to work with different sets of actors on the same scenes but in different languages. It's basically equivalent to rehearsing two shows at once. On the hand, that sucks, you're rehearsing two shows at once and it's a lot of work. But also, I'm getting to rehearse two shows at once, so I feel like I'm growing perhaps faster or at least exercising new and different muscles than I normally do as an actor and that's really rewarding.
I talked in that last process about how creating theatre feels like giving birth. Obviously, I haven't ever and will never get the chance to experience that particular component of the human experience, which is honestly something I sort of regret. If I could do it, I would do it. Is that weird and over sharey? I remember talking to my mother as a younger person about her experiences birthing myself and my two brothers. She talked about doing it naturally, and that when I was conceived the philosophy was that the feeling of giving birth can be perceived as being pain but that it's not, it's something else and if you can learn to experience it as that something else pain killers become unnecessary.
So maybe this analogy is stretching it a little bit, but what the hell. For us as artists, what other people might perceive as the tedious, frustrating or painful work of putting something together maybe what sets us apart is that we're able to see the process of birthing work as that something else, something joyful.
This is especially true in theatre, where getting to that final result is such an ecstatic experience, sharing work with an audience, sharing moments with cast members, getting to relive and redo and retry each individual moment night after night and watch it grow and change. I find myself in a series of moments of anticipation as we're on the verge of those final contractions before we can share our creation with the world. I see all the beautiful things beginning to happen, I can see all the things I've already discovered and can already imagine the moments of discovery to come. It's an amazing feeling.
Remind me to make sure I get back into the habit of blogging about it, OK? Thanks.
Part of this I think had to do with how Shakespeare and Company dealt with the subject of communication in their training, in that they teach you to talk about things as succinctly and specifically as possible. This lead to a struggle in my writing to continue doing that, and when I've felt like I don't completely or succinctly communicate something in a first pass, I get frustrated and want to write it over until I get annoyed with writing it or move on to something else and then I have no writing to share!
That's silly. I have observed my writing process is that I'm most likely to actually get a blog post at the end of a writing session if I commit fully to writing down the thoughts I have in a given moment, ideally doing a quick pass of an edit, and then sharing it and moving on. The blessing and the curse of the internet is how easy it is to access quantity in a sense that it's removed from the expenses of physical media, so you can quickly and cheaply create things and so there are lots of things being created. Vast numbers of things, so many that it becomes counter productive at a certain point to spend too much time worrying about the quality.
But that's another blog post.
I'm pretty far into rehearsals for Caucasian Chalk Circle, we've been getting into the really rough and difficult parts of the "birthing" as it were of this piece of art. Is that an appropriate analogy? There's a lot of collective pain and suffering as we work through the gritty details and logistics of mastering the text, smoothing over the staging, sweating out blocking and staging. For many of us in particular a big part of this has been mastering our Spanish lines, I know it has been for me! I studied Spanish a good deal in school, so I'm not coming in completely ignorant to how it works, but back then I never worked very hard at it, or was ever a preternatural talent for the language, I don't think. So that's been very challenging. But also pretty cool and kind of rewarding. I really like the Spanish text and it's fun getting to work with different sets of actors on the same scenes but in different languages. It's basically equivalent to rehearsing two shows at once. On the hand, that sucks, you're rehearsing two shows at once and it's a lot of work. But also, I'm getting to rehearse two shows at once, so I feel like I'm growing perhaps faster or at least exercising new and different muscles than I normally do as an actor and that's really rewarding.
I talked in that last process about how creating theatre feels like giving birth. Obviously, I haven't ever and will never get the chance to experience that particular component of the human experience, which is honestly something I sort of regret. If I could do it, I would do it. Is that weird and over sharey? I remember talking to my mother as a younger person about her experiences birthing myself and my two brothers. She talked about doing it naturally, and that when I was conceived the philosophy was that the feeling of giving birth can be perceived as being pain but that it's not, it's something else and if you can learn to experience it as that something else pain killers become unnecessary.
So maybe this analogy is stretching it a little bit, but what the hell. For us as artists, what other people might perceive as the tedious, frustrating or painful work of putting something together maybe what sets us apart is that we're able to see the process of birthing work as that something else, something joyful.
This is especially true in theatre, where getting to that final result is such an ecstatic experience, sharing work with an audience, sharing moments with cast members, getting to relive and redo and retry each individual moment night after night and watch it grow and change. I find myself in a series of moments of anticipation as we're on the verge of those final contractions before we can share our creation with the world. I see all the beautiful things beginning to happen, I can see all the things I've already discovered and can already imagine the moments of discovery to come. It's an amazing feeling.
Remind me to make sure I get back into the habit of blogging about it, OK? Thanks.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Closing the door on one show (all the monsters are dead), opening another (the oppressors still live): She Kills Monsters to Caucasian Chalk Circle
Last weekend was the closing of She Kills Monsters, and the end of a months long artistic journey going back to our initial read through way back in February until mid May, now that all the monsters are dead and Tilly's bedroom has been packed up for good, once and for all.
And so I say goodbye to Chuck Biggs aka DM Biggs because he's big where it counts... one of the most outsized but fully realized parts I've yet brought to the stage, and I'd like to think perhaps the best work of my acting career and certainly the highest profile, which is very satisfying professionally and personally. Likewise I say goodbye to the story of Agnes the Average, the girl who never left home and the experience of coming together with my first cast mates now friends every night to bring this story to a new group of strangers.
You know, the thing that happens when you put up and close a show. Very possibly you're a theatre person, so you know what I'm talking about. I'm still sort of bathing in the after glow of that experience, going through the world having people tell me how much they loved She Kills Monsters. I can still remember all the lines, all the moments. I don't have to think back very hard to conjure them. If I had to go back and do the show again tonight, I probably could.
But that won't be true for much longer, because life goes on. And for me, I really haven't had time to be depressed about this one ending (although often as not I'm not one for sentimentality with these sorts of things) because I've already started work on my next show.
Last summer I blogged a lot about putting Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead/Han Muerto, Tom Stoppard's classic in both English and Spanish, and this year I'm rejoining several of my cast mates from last year and a whole bunch of new folks in bringing another modern classic to Mary O'Malley Park in Chelsea, Bertolt Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle. I'm playing the part of Yussup, a young man who dodges the draft by playing sick for a year until he's married on his "death bed" to the play's heroine, a young peasant girl who's adopted the abandoned child of a displaced upper class family. I'm also playing a horseman, a peasant, a soldier, a drummer and at some point the guitar. Oh and probably a bridge, or a door, and who knows what else.
The read through was this past Sunday, and last night was our first rehearsal. We spent most of the time going through cuts and then because a lot of English speakers are tackling sometimes substantial roles in Spanish (myself included I've got some pretty big chunks to untangle) much of the time was spent addressing that issue.
And then at the end of the night, we sort of stumbled through Act 1, and I thought to myself "whoa this play is crazy! And awesome! And oh man this is going to be amazing in the park" and then I thought "oh shit and we've got to figure it out in two languages simultaneously".
If you do the math on what that entails, it's a lot of work, which I realized last summer. Initially, there were certain productions of an Equity nature happening various places I was hopeful I'd be cast in, because that's really the next big goal post for me as a performer, to get on to Boston's equity stages and start getting those EMC points. But it became clear at a certain point that wasn't going to happen, and I was debating whether to do a show, in particular something like Caucasian Chalk Circle where I figured there would be room for me in the ensemble and I would know various people involved and the environment we were staging it in and also from all of that prior knowledge the time commitment involved.
I was on the fence, on the one hand I could take it easy this summer, work my summer jobs making money, do music, work on my podcast, maybe pursue stand up again. But once we were in the run of She Kills Monsters and I had that feeling of being in a room of collaborators with a room of strangers on the other side of the dressing room, the sense of connection to each other and anticipation for what we had to do, I realized "nope I've just gotta keep doing shows, this is where I'm happiest, this is where I belong" and that's what I'm doing.
To quote the cliche line, Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! Look forward to more blog posts on this exciting process. Knowing Apollinaire's work, trust me you're going to want to take the trek over the bridge (it's not as far as you think, seriously it's just a ten or twenty minute bus ride from Haymarket) to check this one out.
And so I say goodbye to Chuck Biggs aka DM Biggs because he's big where it counts... one of the most outsized but fully realized parts I've yet brought to the stage, and I'd like to think perhaps the best work of my acting career and certainly the highest profile, which is very satisfying professionally and personally. Likewise I say goodbye to the story of Agnes the Average, the girl who never left home and the experience of coming together with my first cast mates now friends every night to bring this story to a new group of strangers.
You know, the thing that happens when you put up and close a show. Very possibly you're a theatre person, so you know what I'm talking about. I'm still sort of bathing in the after glow of that experience, going through the world having people tell me how much they loved She Kills Monsters. I can still remember all the lines, all the moments. I don't have to think back very hard to conjure them. If I had to go back and do the show again tonight, I probably could.
But that won't be true for much longer, because life goes on. And for me, I really haven't had time to be depressed about this one ending (although often as not I'm not one for sentimentality with these sorts of things) because I've already started work on my next show.
Last summer I blogged a lot about putting Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead/Han Muerto, Tom Stoppard's classic in both English and Spanish, and this year I'm rejoining several of my cast mates from last year and a whole bunch of new folks in bringing another modern classic to Mary O'Malley Park in Chelsea, Bertolt Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle. I'm playing the part of Yussup, a young man who dodges the draft by playing sick for a year until he's married on his "death bed" to the play's heroine, a young peasant girl who's adopted the abandoned child of a displaced upper class family. I'm also playing a horseman, a peasant, a soldier, a drummer and at some point the guitar. Oh and probably a bridge, or a door, and who knows what else.
The read through was this past Sunday, and last night was our first rehearsal. We spent most of the time going through cuts and then because a lot of English speakers are tackling sometimes substantial roles in Spanish (myself included I've got some pretty big chunks to untangle) much of the time was spent addressing that issue.
And then at the end of the night, we sort of stumbled through Act 1, and I thought to myself "whoa this play is crazy! And awesome! And oh man this is going to be amazing in the park" and then I thought "oh shit and we've got to figure it out in two languages simultaneously".
If you do the math on what that entails, it's a lot of work, which I realized last summer. Initially, there were certain productions of an Equity nature happening various places I was hopeful I'd be cast in, because that's really the next big goal post for me as a performer, to get on to Boston's equity stages and start getting those EMC points. But it became clear at a certain point that wasn't going to happen, and I was debating whether to do a show, in particular something like Caucasian Chalk Circle where I figured there would be room for me in the ensemble and I would know various people involved and the environment we were staging it in and also from all of that prior knowledge the time commitment involved.
I was on the fence, on the one hand I could take it easy this summer, work my summer jobs making money, do music, work on my podcast, maybe pursue stand up again. But once we were in the run of She Kills Monsters and I had that feeling of being in a room of collaborators with a room of strangers on the other side of the dressing room, the sense of connection to each other and anticipation for what we had to do, I realized "nope I've just gotta keep doing shows, this is where I'm happiest, this is where I belong" and that's what I'm doing.
To quote the cliche line, Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! Look forward to more blog posts on this exciting process. Knowing Apollinaire's work, trust me you're going to want to take the trek over the bridge (it's not as far as you think, seriously it's just a ten or twenty minute bus ride from Haymarket) to check this one out.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Hello, how have you been? Here's what I've been up to.
Hello blog. How long has it been? It feels like ages. Writing has been proving itself to be challenging! (What, writing? Challenging? Never) For a while, when I felt a surge of creative energy, I'd be putting it into my podcast. Other times, when I felt the need to write, I'd be paralyzed by the impossibility of authentically communicating everything I was experiencing, which was most definitely a by product of my Shakespeare and Company experience (which if you're thinking about doing you should still totally do, don't get me wrong).
In the months, oh wow it really has been months, since I've gotten back I've spent a lot of that time in rehearsals for She Kills Monsters, the ass kicking New England premiere of Qui Nguyen (a New York based writer and artistic director of Vampire Cowboys, a post modern theatre company based I think in Brooklyn) bad ass new play. I'm using that language to describe it because it's highly appropriate to the tone of the play. Which you'll find out if you see it when we open on April 13th!
Oh wow, a huge part of that journey has transpired, and I haven't been writing anything about it. Well let's fix that! So, in the show, I play Chuck Biggs but my homies call me DM Biggs, cause you know, I'm big where it counts (this is a quote from the show) as in my BRAIN! Not because I'm fat.
OK done quoting. A big part of the action of the show transpires in the world of a Dungeons and Dragons adventure concocted by the protagonists now deceased younger sister, which she's playing in order to better understand her now dead sibling who she never really got to know in real life. And in order to play Dungeons and Dragons, you need a dungeon master, or DM, who basically is the guy who rolls the dice for the characters and bad guys not being played by the players, and generally sets up and runs the world of the game through descriptions and charts and so on and so forth. So that's what I do! It's pretty fun. Chuck is a riff on the archetypal "nerd" we all conceive when we think of someone who'd be into that stuff, which I was as a younger person and still am in a very passing extent (I'm totally down to throw down on some board games any time anyone wants to) to the point that in our cast and crew of about fifteen I probably have the most knowledge about what it's like to actually play Dungeons and Dragons and how it works, or at least I'm most willing to talk about it and explain things. Which has been complicated somewhat, by the fact that the play wright really isn't interested in the actual mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons and more so in telling a compelling story. Which I'm totally on board with! But we've also tried to reconcile things and sometimes it's complicated.
But that's another post on the dramaturgy of the play, the sort which I've been known to write and maybe will at some point if you ask nicely. This is about my experience acting. So yeah, in case you didn't know me as a sixteen year old and chances are you didn't, I was very awkward, very intellectual, very cerebral, capable of vicious sarcasm for no good reason (some things never completely leave you), and into some pretty geeky things. I also had a pretty hard time functioning, just in general, being all of these things tended to leave me rather lonely and isolated. Oh and did I mention how insecure I was? That too.
Initially, it was tempting to bring those elements of myself into the character of Chuck. Except, Chuck isn't that kind of nerd. I think a lot of ways he's written to be almost the inverse of the nerd that many of nerdier types were, and the awesome self image of our selves we wish we could have inhabited, funny, self confident, joyous, has an easy time talking to girls (he primarily interacts with Agnes who in the world of the play and hey in real life too is an attractive twenty something) etc. He's also oddly mature for his age, at certain moments, and surprisingly self aware at others.
Arguably, he actually has his shit the most together of anyone in the play AND he gets a lot of the funniest dialogue AND he gets to wear a super cool cape. Basically, this part has been awesome to play. And it's been awesome to work with Company One, which has been one of my professional goals of late, because they do really cool stuff really consistently (and for a non union company in Boston, pay pretty well). They also bring in really cool directors, like Shira (hi Shira!) and Rob who's our fight director (hey wassup Rob) both of whom have done cool stuff other places and are bringing all kinds of awesomeness to the show, which I can't wait for you to see.
The show has been really challenging to put together, it feels like every other scene is a gigantic set piece of fighting or dancing or puppetry or some combination of those but I think the end result with lights and sound and everything else will be spectacular.
She Kills Monsters! Opens April 13th. Go here for tickets and stuff: http://www.bostontheatrescene.com/season/iShe-Kills-Monstersi/
Next time on I Think Therefore Iambic: I'll try and talk about the work I've been doing on my physical instrument since I got back from Shakespeare and Company, and maybe about my guitar playing, which I've been meaning to do as well.
In the months, oh wow it really has been months, since I've gotten back I've spent a lot of that time in rehearsals for She Kills Monsters, the ass kicking New England premiere of Qui Nguyen (a New York based writer and artistic director of Vampire Cowboys, a post modern theatre company based I think in Brooklyn) bad ass new play. I'm using that language to describe it because it's highly appropriate to the tone of the play. Which you'll find out if you see it when we open on April 13th!
Oh wow, a huge part of that journey has transpired, and I haven't been writing anything about it. Well let's fix that! So, in the show, I play Chuck Biggs but my homies call me DM Biggs, cause you know, I'm big where it counts (this is a quote from the show) as in my BRAIN! Not because I'm fat.
OK done quoting. A big part of the action of the show transpires in the world of a Dungeons and Dragons adventure concocted by the protagonists now deceased younger sister, which she's playing in order to better understand her now dead sibling who she never really got to know in real life. And in order to play Dungeons and Dragons, you need a dungeon master, or DM, who basically is the guy who rolls the dice for the characters and bad guys not being played by the players, and generally sets up and runs the world of the game through descriptions and charts and so on and so forth. So that's what I do! It's pretty fun. Chuck is a riff on the archetypal "nerd" we all conceive when we think of someone who'd be into that stuff, which I was as a younger person and still am in a very passing extent (I'm totally down to throw down on some board games any time anyone wants to) to the point that in our cast and crew of about fifteen I probably have the most knowledge about what it's like to actually play Dungeons and Dragons and how it works, or at least I'm most willing to talk about it and explain things. Which has been complicated somewhat, by the fact that the play wright really isn't interested in the actual mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons and more so in telling a compelling story. Which I'm totally on board with! But we've also tried to reconcile things and sometimes it's complicated.
But that's another post on the dramaturgy of the play, the sort which I've been known to write and maybe will at some point if you ask nicely. This is about my experience acting. So yeah, in case you didn't know me as a sixteen year old and chances are you didn't, I was very awkward, very intellectual, very cerebral, capable of vicious sarcasm for no good reason (some things never completely leave you), and into some pretty geeky things. I also had a pretty hard time functioning, just in general, being all of these things tended to leave me rather lonely and isolated. Oh and did I mention how insecure I was? That too.
Initially, it was tempting to bring those elements of myself into the character of Chuck. Except, Chuck isn't that kind of nerd. I think a lot of ways he's written to be almost the inverse of the nerd that many of nerdier types were, and the awesome self image of our selves we wish we could have inhabited, funny, self confident, joyous, has an easy time talking to girls (he primarily interacts with Agnes who in the world of the play and hey in real life too is an attractive twenty something) etc. He's also oddly mature for his age, at certain moments, and surprisingly self aware at others.
Arguably, he actually has his shit the most together of anyone in the play AND he gets a lot of the funniest dialogue AND he gets to wear a super cool cape. Basically, this part has been awesome to play. And it's been awesome to work with Company One, which has been one of my professional goals of late, because they do really cool stuff really consistently (and for a non union company in Boston, pay pretty well). They also bring in really cool directors, like Shira (hi Shira!) and Rob who's our fight director (hey wassup Rob) both of whom have done cool stuff other places and are bringing all kinds of awesomeness to the show, which I can't wait for you to see.
The show has been really challenging to put together, it feels like every other scene is a gigantic set piece of fighting or dancing or puppetry or some combination of those but I think the end result with lights and sound and everything else will be spectacular.
She Kills Monsters! Opens April 13th. Go here for tickets and stuff: http://www.bostontheatrescene.com/season/iShe-Kills-Monstersi/
Next time on I Think Therefore Iambic: I'll try and talk about the work I've been doing on my physical instrument since I got back from Shakespeare and Company, and maybe about my guitar playing, which I've been meaning to do as well.
Friday, February 1, 2013
On Having The Problem
Since coming back from Shakespeare and Company, I've been writing a lot of letters to my fellow participants. Which, actually, has been incredibly helpful! Helpful in the way that I thought blogging would be helpful, but when I go to write in this space I'm inevitably dogged by intense feelings of judgement that what I'm writing is not worthy of the public sphere, or inadequately expresses what I'm feeling in the moment or does so in a way that makes me sound arrogant or pretentious.
That's one of the problems I'm having, and you know what I'm doing with them? Having them! If you'd been in Michael Toomey's Play aka Clown class you would know what I'm talking about. Essentially, the mantra as it relates to clown work is that if something is causing an issue for your clown, allow it to be there. If a fly is buzzing in your ears, don't swat the fly, that would be solving the problem. Instead, have the problem of the fly, and comedy/humanity/the things we want to see on stage will ensue.
One problem I find myself having is wanting to acknowledge and celebrate my instrument, by which I mean my acting by which I further mean that I'm a very talented actor, without becoming hubristic or arrogant. This is something that came up for me in the intensive, that I diminish myself unnecessarily to the point that it turns back on itself and becomes it's own kind of arrogance, does that sense? I guess in that to spare the feelings of others or perhaps avoid their judgement (probably it's the judgement) I diminish my own capabilities, and in the process let myself off the hook when I do a bad job. I thought about writing a note to one of my teachers, a particular instructor who shall go unnamed but who I observed did not seem to suffer from this particular problem. Then again, what do I know, it's totally possible that he does (I don't claim to know his problems), and maybe he came to a similar epiphany that I came to in that moment. Rather than finding a solution to the issue... have the problem! If I allow myself to celebrate my instrument, by way of perhaps declaring in this space, "I am a talented fucking actor" while being aware of the issue of becoming arrogant or hubristic as long as I'm aware of it that self awareness will prevent it from spiraling out of control.
Do you see? It all comes back to self awareness. Rather than ignoring my problems, or trying unnecessarily hard to find solutions to them (there may in fact be no solution) but by being aware of them then that is the half the battle in preventing them from controlling me. And by being aware of them, I hope they'll inhabit a manageable space in my life.
Take note! The above paragraph was written in the third person, BUT NO I AM SPEAKING FROM I! And hopefully, from awareness and from my problems inhabiting a manageable space in my life, solutions to the problems to which solutions exist will present themselves. Isn't that a nice thought? Well it sounds good to me, god damn it, hopefully it helps you too.
It really is funny how much letter writing has helped in this past week. Can you believe that I had the above epiphany not even by writing a letter, but with the thought of writing a letter which by the end of the thought, I had no need to write? It's true! In a sense, each of the letters I've written have become little private blog posts, which I had the idea of making public, by which I mean my own letters, none of the private responses of anyone else, no need to worry. But I think I've done pretty good with this piece of writing, and I'll allow that to be on hold until I feel the need to put something else into the universe.
Until then!
That's one of the problems I'm having, and you know what I'm doing with them? Having them! If you'd been in Michael Toomey's Play aka Clown class you would know what I'm talking about. Essentially, the mantra as it relates to clown work is that if something is causing an issue for your clown, allow it to be there. If a fly is buzzing in your ears, don't swat the fly, that would be solving the problem. Instead, have the problem of the fly, and comedy/humanity/the things we want to see on stage will ensue.
One problem I find myself having is wanting to acknowledge and celebrate my instrument, by which I mean my acting by which I further mean that I'm a very talented actor, without becoming hubristic or arrogant. This is something that came up for me in the intensive, that I diminish myself unnecessarily to the point that it turns back on itself and becomes it's own kind of arrogance, does that sense? I guess in that to spare the feelings of others or perhaps avoid their judgement (probably it's the judgement) I diminish my own capabilities, and in the process let myself off the hook when I do a bad job. I thought about writing a note to one of my teachers, a particular instructor who shall go unnamed but who I observed did not seem to suffer from this particular problem. Then again, what do I know, it's totally possible that he does (I don't claim to know his problems), and maybe he came to a similar epiphany that I came to in that moment. Rather than finding a solution to the issue... have the problem! If I allow myself to celebrate my instrument, by way of perhaps declaring in this space, "I am a talented fucking actor" while being aware of the issue of becoming arrogant or hubristic as long as I'm aware of it that self awareness will prevent it from spiraling out of control.
Do you see? It all comes back to self awareness. Rather than ignoring my problems, or trying unnecessarily hard to find solutions to them (there may in fact be no solution) but by being aware of them then that is the half the battle in preventing them from controlling me. And by being aware of them, I hope they'll inhabit a manageable space in my life.
Take note! The above paragraph was written in the third person, BUT NO I AM SPEAKING FROM I! And hopefully, from awareness and from my problems inhabiting a manageable space in my life, solutions to the problems to which solutions exist will present themselves. Isn't that a nice thought? Well it sounds good to me, god damn it, hopefully it helps you too.
It really is funny how much letter writing has helped in this past week. Can you believe that I had the above epiphany not even by writing a letter, but with the thought of writing a letter which by the end of the thought, I had no need to write? It's true! In a sense, each of the letters I've written have become little private blog posts, which I had the idea of making public, by which I mean my own letters, none of the private responses of anyone else, no need to worry. But I think I've done pretty good with this piece of writing, and I'll allow that to be on hold until I feel the need to put something else into the universe.
Until then!
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Thinking About a Sonnet
143 to be precise.
Lo! as a careful housewife runs to catch
One of her feather'd creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe and makes an swift dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay,
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
To follow that which flies before her face,
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent;
So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;
But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind:
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy 'Will,'
If thou turn back, and my loud crying still.
It's the sonnet I took with me to work on during the intensive. I picked it because it was a week past the deadline of when I was supposed to have all my stuff in to the training assistant, and I'd been procrastinating on sitting down and finding a sonnet. My teacher had sent out an extensive list of sonnets which weren't too far out in their iambic structure so I picked one at random and read backwards from there. I think it may have been 145, but I don't remember.
I came to 143 and was immediately struck by it. Why? I had to answer this question at the workshop. Well, it's adorable, for one! Babies and housewives and chickens, what's not to love? And then it turns sexy and just a little (or a lot) dark.
Working on it with Dennis Krausnick opened my eyes to so much about Shakespeare and my work as an actor. Reading it to myself, I can't help performing it in my mind. And when I do in this moment, I'm struck by the "but" of the speech, it's antithesis, which becomes a musical theme in the lines. Behind, but, back. A big shout out to asses. I love the sway of these lines, to me they invoke the hips and butox of a beautiful woman.
"You have to get interested in big buts." Your friend, Dennis Krausnick (inside joke, Dennis and I are friends on Facebook though!)
And then at the end, "my loud crying still". I'm struck by the two potential meanings of still. Do you turn back and I'm still crying, or has my crying stilled, have I stopped? It could be either, and it's both!
Thinking about sonnets...
This has been an exercise in simplicity.
Lo! as a careful housewife runs to catch
One of her feather'd creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe and makes an swift dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay,
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
To follow that which flies before her face,
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent;
So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;
But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind:
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy 'Will,'
If thou turn back, and my loud crying still.
It's the sonnet I took with me to work on during the intensive. I picked it because it was a week past the deadline of when I was supposed to have all my stuff in to the training assistant, and I'd been procrastinating on sitting down and finding a sonnet. My teacher had sent out an extensive list of sonnets which weren't too far out in their iambic structure so I picked one at random and read backwards from there. I think it may have been 145, but I don't remember.
I came to 143 and was immediately struck by it. Why? I had to answer this question at the workshop. Well, it's adorable, for one! Babies and housewives and chickens, what's not to love? And then it turns sexy and just a little (or a lot) dark.
Working on it with Dennis Krausnick opened my eyes to so much about Shakespeare and my work as an actor. Reading it to myself, I can't help performing it in my mind. And when I do in this moment, I'm struck by the "but" of the speech, it's antithesis, which becomes a musical theme in the lines. Behind, but, back. A big shout out to asses. I love the sway of these lines, to me they invoke the hips and butox of a beautiful woman.
"You have to get interested in big buts." Your friend, Dennis Krausnick (inside joke, Dennis and I are friends on Facebook though!)
And then at the end, "my loud crying still". I'm struck by the two potential meanings of still. Do you turn back and I'm still crying, or has my crying stilled, have I stopped? It could be either, and it's both!
Thinking about sonnets...
This has been an exercise in simplicity.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Walking back into the real world: Post Shakes and Co Diary Part 2
I find myself overwhelmed with thoughts and feelings every time I go to write in this blog since leaving Shakespeare and Company five days ago. It feels like months have gone by and not days, like I've been transported to a different dimension with nothing to show for it but an endless sea of memories.
Gah, and then it's metaphors like that being the only description for the experience that frustrate me even furher! "An endless sea of memories"?! While I was doing the intensive, the single greatest boundary to my "work" or I guess the most significant facet is my intense self judgement. A big part of the Shakespeare and Company training process for me (and in general, there I'll say it) is becoming aware of my judgements of myself and by extension others. In order to facilitate that, they make really, really specific use of language. In writing this blog I also try to make specific use of language. As a poet as well. And very often I find myself judging the "success" of that specificity in my writing. Was I able to clearly convey the thought of how overwhelmed I am by the Shakes and Co intensive experience? I'm fighting against the instinct when I find myself going for an image like "an endless sea of memories" (it's not a very creative image) to just stop right where I am, and go back to Facebook.
But I owe it to myself to persevere and do my best to write my truth to whatever I'm feeling as best as I can. In writing that sentence, I struggle with the earnestness of that statement, and it's obvious quality. But it's earnest and obvious because it's truthful, and inevitably if something feels overly earnest and obvious it must be because it's TRUE.
This self judgement I've been trying so hard to observe and understand no doubt stems from all kinds of sources. One I spent a lot of time working on while at Shakespeare and Company was my child hood. I've struggled a lot with my body image in my life, and with not liking the way I look. But I remember a time when I was very young when I was with my friends in a park in Berekeley California and I took my shirt off in public completely free of fears of judgement. After moving to Massachusetts, and first being bullied over my weight, I started judging my body as being ugly, or a source of shame.
Oh christ but who gives a shit? So I was intermittently alienated and made fun of as a kid, it's affected the person I am today, why do I need to write multiple paragraphs about it? Quoth the voices of judgement in my head.
Long story short, with the support of a lot of people, friends and teachers and teachers who are now friends, I made a lot of progress on a lot of stuff. In particular, I was really able to carry forward all the movement work I've been doing in intermittent starts and stops, and discovered a whole new path of development in Linklater voice training, which I hope to continue as well as the movement work (I've found a Linklater teacher and a dance class, I just need to follow up on them).
Gosh there's so so much I want to blog about, I feel it pouring out of my pores. Coming back into the real world has been an adjustment. Something about spending a month surrounded by incredible people with whom I share a common love of the craft of acting and in so many other ways connected with as deeply as I've ever felt connected to anyone in my life has made it very difficult to incorporate the experience into my daily routine again without emphasizing the reality that I may and not (and in the cases of some) will not ever see those people who I came to love and care for so deeply ever again in my life. True statement! But how true it is will be up to me to decide. And how much of the work I did in that workshop, not just the work on my own instrument but on my life as a piece of art (something one of my acting teachers talked about which is now beginning to resonate with me as I write this) is up to me to decide.
Part of that needs to take the form of this blog, and through writing bringing all or as many of the parts of my artistic life as possible into one medium. One of the things I've been taking a great deal of comfort with in staving off the melancholy... no that's a bad choice of words, in expressing everything I've been feeling has been through my guitar. Indeed being reunited with my electric guitar and having the time again to practice has been one of the great joys of returning back to regular life. Something my teachers talked about was the ability of iambic pentameter to contain any possible emotion an actor could channel into Shakespeare text (apologies if that doesn't make sense, I'm moving on, this has been my briefly allowed moment of self judgement) and I believe the same could be said of the Blues, the musical form. Mind you for me, the blues encapsulates all of the creole music founded in the union of African and European influences which have taken place in the context of American music, and it's the feeling I have when I play that music on my guitar. Especially my electric guitar. I think if I could be anything in the world other than an actor, it would be an electric blues guitar player (and maybe singer but I'd settle for being Jeff Beck and not Eric Clapton). When I connect to my guitar, any emotion I could ever feel becomes accessible and expressible through my music. It's an incredible feeling, and something that's been incredibly pivotal in maintaining my mental health during this difficult time, as it has been during other difficult times and will no doubt continue to be in the future.
The same is true of writing. And the feeling I get knowing you read this. The hope that some part of you understands what I'm talking about, and hopefully if you're one of my fellow participants encountering it that it helps you in some way too. Until we meet again!
Gah, and then it's metaphors like that being the only description for the experience that frustrate me even furher! "An endless sea of memories"?! While I was doing the intensive, the single greatest boundary to my "work" or I guess the most significant facet is my intense self judgement. A big part of the Shakespeare and Company training process for me (and in general, there I'll say it) is becoming aware of my judgements of myself and by extension others. In order to facilitate that, they make really, really specific use of language. In writing this blog I also try to make specific use of language. As a poet as well. And very often I find myself judging the "success" of that specificity in my writing. Was I able to clearly convey the thought of how overwhelmed I am by the Shakes and Co intensive experience? I'm fighting against the instinct when I find myself going for an image like "an endless sea of memories" (it's not a very creative image) to just stop right where I am, and go back to Facebook.
But I owe it to myself to persevere and do my best to write my truth to whatever I'm feeling as best as I can. In writing that sentence, I struggle with the earnestness of that statement, and it's obvious quality. But it's earnest and obvious because it's truthful, and inevitably if something feels overly earnest and obvious it must be because it's TRUE.
This self judgement I've been trying so hard to observe and understand no doubt stems from all kinds of sources. One I spent a lot of time working on while at Shakespeare and Company was my child hood. I've struggled a lot with my body image in my life, and with not liking the way I look. But I remember a time when I was very young when I was with my friends in a park in Berekeley California and I took my shirt off in public completely free of fears of judgement. After moving to Massachusetts, and first being bullied over my weight, I started judging my body as being ugly, or a source of shame.
Oh christ but who gives a shit? So I was intermittently alienated and made fun of as a kid, it's affected the person I am today, why do I need to write multiple paragraphs about it? Quoth the voices of judgement in my head.
Long story short, with the support of a lot of people, friends and teachers and teachers who are now friends, I made a lot of progress on a lot of stuff. In particular, I was really able to carry forward all the movement work I've been doing in intermittent starts and stops, and discovered a whole new path of development in Linklater voice training, which I hope to continue as well as the movement work (I've found a Linklater teacher and a dance class, I just need to follow up on them).
Gosh there's so so much I want to blog about, I feel it pouring out of my pores. Coming back into the real world has been an adjustment. Something about spending a month surrounded by incredible people with whom I share a common love of the craft of acting and in so many other ways connected with as deeply as I've ever felt connected to anyone in my life has made it very difficult to incorporate the experience into my daily routine again without emphasizing the reality that I may and not (and in the cases of some) will not ever see those people who I came to love and care for so deeply ever again in my life. True statement! But how true it is will be up to me to decide. And how much of the work I did in that workshop, not just the work on my own instrument but on my life as a piece of art (something one of my acting teachers talked about which is now beginning to resonate with me as I write this) is up to me to decide.
Part of that needs to take the form of this blog, and through writing bringing all or as many of the parts of my artistic life as possible into one medium. One of the things I've been taking a great deal of comfort with in staving off the melancholy... no that's a bad choice of words, in expressing everything I've been feeling has been through my guitar. Indeed being reunited with my electric guitar and having the time again to practice has been one of the great joys of returning back to regular life. Something my teachers talked about was the ability of iambic pentameter to contain any possible emotion an actor could channel into Shakespeare text (apologies if that doesn't make sense, I'm moving on, this has been my briefly allowed moment of self judgement) and I believe the same could be said of the Blues, the musical form. Mind you for me, the blues encapsulates all of the creole music founded in the union of African and European influences which have taken place in the context of American music, and it's the feeling I have when I play that music on my guitar. Especially my electric guitar. I think if I could be anything in the world other than an actor, it would be an electric blues guitar player (and maybe singer but I'd settle for being Jeff Beck and not Eric Clapton). When I connect to my guitar, any emotion I could ever feel becomes accessible and expressible through my music. It's an incredible feeling, and something that's been incredibly pivotal in maintaining my mental health during this difficult time, as it has been during other difficult times and will no doubt continue to be in the future.
The same is true of writing. And the feeling I get knowing you read this. The hope that some part of you understands what I'm talking about, and hopefully if you're one of my fellow participants encountering it that it helps you in some way too. Until we meet again!
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Returning to the real world
Yesterday afternoon being driven back to Boston by my Mom after the 2013 month long intensive at Shakespeare and Company felt sort of like being released from a mental institution. Wait, hold on, that's not a very flattering image of the month long intensive. It felt like coming back from college for crazy people. Nope, that doesn't work either. I felt a little crazy, a little overstimulated both by exposure to the outside world after not having ventured outside of a mile radius from the Shakes and Co property and the knowledge of just how much outside world was waiting for me. When we got back to Cambridge, we went to our usual lunch spot after the extended drive, and I was immediately struck by the sensation of defensiveness and closed off-ness emanating from the other patrons in the restaurant.
A lot of the work I did at Shakespeare and Company had to do with allowing myself to be as fully present and open physically, mentally and emotionally as I can possibly be which I rediscovered can be very, very open. Practicing the Alexander Technique prior to going, I became conscious of this struggle in my own body, walking down the street leaving my apartment I would start out "aligned" and at my full height but after coming into contact with however many passer bys I would immediately find myself collapsed inward. I think this is partially true of Boston specifically, people are really closed to off each other here, particularly strangers on the street. A lot of what the instructors talked about prior to our departure from the program was that people in our lives might not react well to how open we'd be emotionally, but I think my real struggle will be remaining open mentally and physically not necessarily with my friends and family (whom it helps are all on board with my being an artist) but to the outside world who doesn't necessarily want to see me allowing my full physical presence and energy in their personal space.
So there's all that. I don't think it helped coming back to my apartment yesterday how incredibly sleep deprived I've been. I think maybe one night I was there I got something close to 8 hours of sleep, maybe 7.5, but I would average between 5 and 7 hours of sleep, with our intermittent days off being the worst of all when my internal alarm clock would wake me up at 7 AM like I had to be at an 8:15 class but I didn't and then I would be unable to get back to sleep on my rather uncomfortable bed in my weirdly shaped room which was directly next to the entryway to the dorm, so even if I could sleep I'd be woken up quite shortly. Yesterday lying in bed with my girlfriend, in my half asleep state I would sort of dream/hallucinate that I was still in physical awareness with a room full of people, dozing off between instructions on what part of my body to focus on as I allowed my breath to drop in.
I'm doing better this morning. I thought about going to see some theatre yesterday, but decided it was for the best if I stay in and chill out for the night. Today we have some fun stuff planned, there's a chocolate tasting event in Harvard Square, and tonight I'm finally seeing my friends in the Huntington's production of Our Town which they conveniently extended until I'd be back to see it.
I'm trying really hard not to just go on Facebook and look for people's pictures of themselves and each other at the intensive, or hanging out in New York, and just be present with this moment. Things which are helping, fresh, home made coffee. Playing my electric guitar. Playing an electric blues again, which like Shakespeare is flexible enough to contain any possible emotion in the human experience (that's another blog post). And my beautiful girlfriend, who last night made me a celebratory molten chocolate cake for my arrival.
I'd hoped to do more blogging while I was at the intensive, I was writing, but it was in my private journal. Maybe I'll share some of that with you, at some point. Or I'll try to process everything I saw and learned and experience from a place of digestion and reflection. Needless to say, more blog posts to come.
Also welcome to all my Shakes and Co friends who might be reading this! If you want to get a sense of my personal history, well here it is from the past year and a half or however long I've been doing this blog. And if you want to know where I'm at, here I am. Hello, goodbye, hello.
A lot of the work I did at Shakespeare and Company had to do with allowing myself to be as fully present and open physically, mentally and emotionally as I can possibly be which I rediscovered can be very, very open. Practicing the Alexander Technique prior to going, I became conscious of this struggle in my own body, walking down the street leaving my apartment I would start out "aligned" and at my full height but after coming into contact with however many passer bys I would immediately find myself collapsed inward. I think this is partially true of Boston specifically, people are really closed to off each other here, particularly strangers on the street. A lot of what the instructors talked about prior to our departure from the program was that people in our lives might not react well to how open we'd be emotionally, but I think my real struggle will be remaining open mentally and physically not necessarily with my friends and family (whom it helps are all on board with my being an artist) but to the outside world who doesn't necessarily want to see me allowing my full physical presence and energy in their personal space.
So there's all that. I don't think it helped coming back to my apartment yesterday how incredibly sleep deprived I've been. I think maybe one night I was there I got something close to 8 hours of sleep, maybe 7.5, but I would average between 5 and 7 hours of sleep, with our intermittent days off being the worst of all when my internal alarm clock would wake me up at 7 AM like I had to be at an 8:15 class but I didn't and then I would be unable to get back to sleep on my rather uncomfortable bed in my weirdly shaped room which was directly next to the entryway to the dorm, so even if I could sleep I'd be woken up quite shortly. Yesterday lying in bed with my girlfriend, in my half asleep state I would sort of dream/hallucinate that I was still in physical awareness with a room full of people, dozing off between instructions on what part of my body to focus on as I allowed my breath to drop in.
I'm doing better this morning. I thought about going to see some theatre yesterday, but decided it was for the best if I stay in and chill out for the night. Today we have some fun stuff planned, there's a chocolate tasting event in Harvard Square, and tonight I'm finally seeing my friends in the Huntington's production of Our Town which they conveniently extended until I'd be back to see it.
I'm trying really hard not to just go on Facebook and look for people's pictures of themselves and each other at the intensive, or hanging out in New York, and just be present with this moment. Things which are helping, fresh, home made coffee. Playing my electric guitar. Playing an electric blues again, which like Shakespeare is flexible enough to contain any possible emotion in the human experience (that's another blog post). And my beautiful girlfriend, who last night made me a celebratory molten chocolate cake for my arrival.
I'd hoped to do more blogging while I was at the intensive, I was writing, but it was in my private journal. Maybe I'll share some of that with you, at some point. Or I'll try to process everything I saw and learned and experience from a place of digestion and reflection. Needless to say, more blog posts to come.
Also welcome to all my Shakes and Co friends who might be reading this! If you want to get a sense of my personal history, well here it is from the past year and a half or however long I've been doing this blog. And if you want to know where I'm at, here I am. Hello, goodbye, hello.
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