Wisdom from someone who knows more than I do.

I grabbed this quote to use for my paper, but ended up passing it off to a friend instead. Still, I liked it an awful lot, so I'm posting it here.

"One can say that a true artist is always ready to make any number of sacrifices in order to reach a moment of creativity. The mediocre artist prefers not to take risks, which is why he in conventional. Everything that is conventional, everything that is mediocre, is linked to this fear. The conventional actor puts a seal on his work, and sealing is a defensive act. To protect oneself, one 'builds' and one 'seals'. To open oneself, one must knock down the walls."

-Peter Brook, There Are No Secrets: Thoughts on Acting and Theatre

Mankind is No Island

My friend Mauro shared with me this video today. It's a short film (another favorite cinematic genre), an award winner, and was made for a total budget of $57, using camera phones as the only means of shooting. Pretty much a brilliant and affective piece of art, and if I don't someday have that song on my iPod, I may be a lesser woman for it.

Mauro thought of me after seeing it, having remembered my fascination with the homeless. The word "fascination" doesn't sit right with me, but I struggle with an appropriate adjective to really capture how I feel about this section of society. Being "fascinated by the homeless" leaves one with the mental image of a person walking down the street, coming across a someone begging, pointing at them and yelling, "OOOOooooohhhh! A homeless person! Look! Look! How fascinating!"

That's not it.

When I lived in New York, I saw my fair share of homeless people. Anyone who's visited that city can tell you, it's pretty much part of the experience of the place. There they were, every day: on the train platform headed to work, in the subway car I sat in, in the station that I changed at, at the corner before I got to my building. I once had to step over a man passed out on the ground to get where I was going, and to this day I still wonder if maybe he was dead. All of these bodies, littering the streets: in New York, you sometimes stop thinking you are surrounded by people, and start only seeing bodies. (And when you start seeing the bodies as sheep, then maybe you need to quit your job as an MTA employee.)

I used to journal every day on the subway, mostly during my near-hour commute each way, to and from work. Several of my entries mention, touch-on, or solely occupy themselves with the homeless person I happened the encounter during that ride. Sometimes I sketched them, taking pains to note how their spines were shaped in a seat, or how their facial features were laid out. Sometimes what struck me were their voices. I watched one man over a period of about three months totally alter. He had a voice like a sideshow barker, and his clothing went from a wrinkled-but-tailored suit, to sweats. He would ask for food or money, and would end several of these calls for assistance with, "even a penny!" One day near Christmas in 2006, I remember seeing him on the train I was riding, when someone offered him a candy bar. He yelled (barked) at the person for giving him a "piece of crap," complaining how he needed a piece of fruit or something healthy. It was our fault he didn't have a proper diet. He still took the candy bar.

What struck me most of the time, and what I have most frequently recorded, is dialogue. Things you'd never imagine could come out of a human's mouth--certainly not out of your mouth--you hear from the homeless and desperate. Once a woman (high or coming down, or something) came onto the train I was riding and was near tears begging for help, for money, and she just kept repeating, "It's all my fault. I know it's all my fault." It felt like she was pleading with us while she confessed this, but we couldn't save her, not in the way she really needed to be saved anyway.

I am deathly afraid of becoming homeless someday. It's one of my top anxieties about life, alongside being completely alone and pissing away my potential. And both of those fears somehow correspond to the fear of homelessness in my mind: piss away your potential and fail at life, and you'll become homeless; a large part of being homeless is being completely isolated and alone, sometimes even from yourself. And I think the number one reason people turn away when they see someone on the street, or turn up their iPod, or pretends to be asleep, or is thankful that their sunglasses are dark enough that their eyes don't show through them when someone comes by with a paper cup on the subway, is because the homeless serve as a reminder to us that yes: this does happen; and yes: it could happen to you.

There are less homeless people to be found in London. I won't make the claim that there are less homeless, but there are less to be found--you don't see them nearly as frequently as you do in New York. London comes off, by and large, as a "cleaner" city, even if at times you can't find a trash bin if your life depended on it. Consequently, none of my journals since October mention any homeless people at all. Yet still the fear remains: I was walking to the tube from school the other day and passed a girl seated on the sidewalk, coat over her legs, holding a paper cup. She was had my color hair, my hair length, and looked about my age. And it shook me. I always figured I'd get around to making some piece of art about all of it someday--that I'd write a play about a homeless man, or that I'd play a homeless woman, that I would somehow examine that way of life that terrifies me. It hasn't happened yet.

I'm not an activist. I'm just an artist. While some people identify themselves as both, or feel it's part of their responsibility by identifying with the latter to fulfil some promise of the former, I have never really felt morally obligated to make people feel one way or the other about anything. To me it was just always more important to try to present something as honest as possible, and to just get people to feel, period, which can sometimes be a hard enough job in it of itself. As a society, we tend to dull ourselves a little bit (or more than a little bit) just to get by. I don't want to make up some one's mind about something, but I would like them to think. This film affected me that way. I don't believe I'll go out and help out a soup kitchen, but I may. In the meanwhile, I'm thinking again. That has to count for something.

We'll have no faffing here!

Hullo, all my little loves!

The past week has been beyond full, and I must beg your indulgence in regards to what will now be a very quick, somewhat overwhelming update. Masters programs are unforgiving. Ready? Here we go!

SATURDAY 4 October 2008
--Went to the Globe Theatre during their closing weekend and saw Liberty, a new play produced there this season. It was extremely timely, well written/acted/directed. It was brilliant to see a piece of theatre that was not set in Elizabethan period work in an Elizabethan structure, and somehow be informed from the space it was performed in as well as the time period it was being produced during. Heidi and I, after stopping off to the Globe shop for strange Folio inspired treats (I myself am now the proud new owner of a CD of Elizabethan Street Songs) then went to a pub nearby where it is said was the site of after rehearsal drinks for Shakespeare and Johnson and the like. We also walked briefly through the ground floor of the Tate, crossed the Millenium Bridge, sat by the Thames, and were interviewed by a Korean TV station about a floating work of art. Then home.

SUNDAY 5 October 2008
--Reading and day of rest.

MONDAY 6 October 2008
--First Day of Term. Our day started with meeting up with the whole of our program. There are about 48 of us, which seems both daunting and appropriate considering what were are meant to do (I'll describe the break down soon). We did those small get to know you games--interview the person next to you and introduce them to the group; make a circle with chairs and run around the room if you've done some specific act called out by whoever's in the center of the circle, try to get a chair, and whoever's left standing has to say their name and give another act to continue the game; etc. Then we met up with all of the other masters programs in the Embassy Theatre for one of what was to be several induction programs throughout the week. Here they took us through several aspects of Central life, broke us up into random groups, and sent us off to devise one statement per group meant to define our time here. My favorite, sadly not generated by my own group, was: "Excited to be creative revolutionary sponges, shaking the tree without faffing." ('Faffing' means wasting time--don't fret, I had to ask someone, too.) Then someone who is in charge of something encouraged us to get a cup of coffee or tea with the people next to us who we may never see again.

TUESDAY 7 October 2008
--Met with our individual strands (focus of study) in the morning, so I was with the performers in a space just beyond Central in a nearby community center. Went around with the fifteen other people and introduced myself--I think I learned more about how people introduced themselves and less in what they said. Then we made up a rule re: arriving on time for class. Then all the strands met up again in the space we've been using as our main meeting place and were introduced to our first project that was to deal with time. Then we were broken up into eight groups and sent off to work. (I will go into discussion of this project at another juncture, simply because it was so lengthy, that to put it here would be simply mad.) That occupied most the rest of our day, besides our library inductions.

WEDNESDAY 8 October 2008
--More work with our groups in the morning, and presentations in the afternoon, followed by a discussion with mixed results. The discussion was the most telling part of the day regarding our immediate student body-->personalities shined through, and it wasn't always in the best light, I must say. But hopefully that's just a matter of over eagerness on the parts of some, and things will calm down. Or they won't. We shall see. There's also a great farmer's market out front of the school on Wednesdays and Fridays and I finally found a good cup of coffee. I couldn't rightly believe it. We also sat through a talk by Mischa Twitchin, an alumnis of our program and a founder of SHUNT, who will be leading a lecture series offered to us called "Acts of Intelligence." Should be very interesting, but also very challenging.

That evening myself and four of my classmates (Heidi, new American friends Melissa and Diedre, and new British friend James) saw the Barber of Seville, performed by ENO. This is, of course, the opera company whose Improbable-conceived production of Satyagraha I continually swoon over. Alas, this production was nothing like that. Everything was fine--well trained voices, decent set, nice staging, fine design albiet some questionable lighting choices. But it was in no way exceptional. And the production itself was translated into English, a language that rarely lends itself to the musicality of Italian, so that made it a bit rough. I was not terribly impressed, and the experience has put me off opera for a bit--at least watching it.

THURSDAY 9 October 2008
--Back to the Embassy Theatre for more advice on how to write a thesis and use the library. I skipped out on the second half of the morning with Melissa, who also was pretty sure she knew how to use MLA formatting (it was a review), putzed around the main street near school, and bought a toy:

(My mother is reading this blog right now and asking aloud to the heavens, "LEA--if it's So Expensive to live over there, what are you doing buying toys?!" Alas, I live in another country now, and her cries will fall on deaf ears. {"But Mom--he's SO CUTE! And I bought him at Woolworth's--they still have them here--so he was cheap. AND HE'S SO CUTE!!! Anyway, I bet Dad understands..."})

After our skipping which bled into lunch, we were back with our program, broken up into four groups this time, and led through our technical inductions. Then a short stop off at Ye Old Swiss Cottage for a couple pints, and then a long walk to Primrose Hill, just north of Regent's Park and the London Zoo, for a program-wide picnic. I pitched in with a few others for a bucket of KFC (I am not joking) to bring along. Those particular classmates have endeared themselves to my heart. We stayed until dark, and then made our way back to the tube, some of us heading home and others going over to the SHUNT lounge. I'm saving that excursion for next week.

FRIDAY 10 October 2008
--We had a day off from school. Most Fridays will be reserved for work in our specific ensembles, but since they don't exist yet, we had off. Heidi and I went to an art opening with a friend of hers who's studying at Goldsmith's. There were eight pieces and one performance artist who wandered around the room. The exhibit was at Hold & Frieght and was part of an art exchange: last year, English students had exhibited in Germany, and this year German students were exhibiting in England. I was not a fan of several pieces, but there were two that I enjoyed, the chief one being a video project called, Ivo Burokvic--The Life of the Fake Artist as a Young Business Model, by Paul Wierbinski. Wierbinski was appalled by the greed that was running the art world--Did you know there was an artist who sold ninety cans in 1961, each containing thirty grams of his own shit? About a year ago, one of these cans was sold for 124,000 Euro. Wierbinski responded by creating a pseudonym, Ivo Burokvic (a name he felt was appropriately Eastern enough), took a single photograph of a shopping mall, photo shopped it a little, mailed it to China, paid 600 Euro for a Chinese artist to replicate the picture on canvas, and then submitted and sold it at auction for 14,000 Euro. Genius.

The weekend has been pretty lax in theatrical experiences. I did make it to the Clink, this odd little British prison museum along the Thames. But otherwise, just some forced jogging around Russell Square, some walks around the neighborhood, and MOUNTAINS of reading to do for school. So here we are. Or here I am. Where are you?

NY Event Number Eleven: Finally seeing modern dance again.

My friend and yoga cohort Melissa is a dancer and relatively new to New York (that's her, above). She's been here since September, and after a few frustrating months things are starting to come together in terms of her career. On top of her three jobs, she also takes class, rehearses for the couple shows she's in, and even occasionally goes to yoga. Whenever I get upset about my schedule, I think about her, and my life suddenly seems just a little bit easier. After months of promising her I'd catch her work, I finally made good and caught her show Hearsay at Dance New Amsterdam this weekend.

I know almost nothing about dance, and actually have some personal baggage regarding modern dance so this won't be any kind of review, or even an informed reflection really, but I would like to identify the elements I really loved about the work, the same elements I'm going to try and include in my own work as I go on with my life.

One of the interesting things about a lot of dance work is the use of space. Many choreographers seem to have an understanding of seeing the whole space, and they don't isolate movement to one specific area, unless very much intended. This is harder to do with intricacy in a dance show than with staging a play, which can be made easier through the usually realistic movement of the actors, and an understanding of their motivations: "He would move away here because she said something nasty and he became intimidated." That sort of thing. An idea of shape does come into play, but not nearly as much as it does for dancers, who are constantly creating it--in the scope of their movement through the space as well as, of course, within their own bodies. What's also interesting about the use of space is how you can create little pictures--groupings of people doing different specific actions, put together to make one larger picture, noticing how those actions compliment, inform the others. Anyone who's ever seen a musical's opening number probably has an understanding of this visual. But here it was terribly apparent, due to the abstractness of the gesture and movement involved. And very interesting.

The director/choreographer used sound in voice overs and pre-recorded lesson plans of tips on how to get through your business day. I thought that was pretty interesting, and hearkened back to an idea I had had about my grad school auditioned piece that I didn't fully realize. I hope to go back to it in the future. (<--is that phrase oxymoronic: "back to it in the future"? Or just ironic?) However, she did have the dancers speak a couple times, and I was reminded that this is an art form that does not usually train a person how to speak on stage. Conclusion: Dancers probably shouldn't talk. (At least, not on stage.)

The lighting was great--oh, the power of gobos! And predominately from the side, like any good dance show. (General lighting rule: When you light the body, light from the side; when you light the face, light from the front and above.)

Another aspect of movement that was terribly affective and aesthetically interesting was having the dancers do small gestures en masse. This is something else I want to play with, particularly with a piece I'm currently working out in my head, set to Muse's "Map of the Problematique." Having a group of people do one small gesture all at once gives that gesture added value and brings focus to it. That's what I got from it, anyway.

Lastly, I was reminded of the overall bodily control of a dancer, and was reminded of my personal awe of it. It made me miss working out and all the yoga I used to do when I had a consistent practice (I was in killer shape last summer), and it also made me want to take a dance class. It also reminded me how important this kind of thing is to me now, as an artist, in terms of trying to use it as a means of expression. Which is good when you're going to grad school for physical theatre.

So thanks for letting me in on the not-so-secret, Melissa. Merde!

"Know These Things: Shouldn't You"

Today I head back to my alma mater after a couple years of self-imposed exile in order to begin a Suzuki workshop. Suzuki, for those of you who don't know, is a form of movement that falls under the heading "physical theatre" in that it largely tries to produce a story and evoke a reaction from an audience using some form of stylized (though not always standardized) movement--something that isn't quite dance, and is definitely not realism. And it's usually light on dialogue. For an overview of Tadashi Suzuki, developer of the method, and his theory of practice go here.

I have done an intensive like this before with the same instructors actually, and am eager to re-examine it after some time away, and especially before I go overseas to study other forms of "physical theatre." I thought it would be a nice send off, and a good way to stay focused while I'm not actually acting in anything, which always makes a performer a little depressed: you're not doing what you're pretty sure you're meant for, so you stop seeing the point. In anything.

I don't think tonight is going to be easy, and those who know about the style may join me in lamenting the pain of one's quadriceps during the process of conducting it (if you don't know, you just have to trust me). I'm hoping I can hold my own amongst all the kids--a lot of the students will still be earning their undergrad, and despite our near proximity in age, I have a real feeling I'm going to feel like the old fogey in the back. And at twenty-three and eight months, that says a lot. Maybe only about my more neurotic tendencies...

But I'll try to make an effort to work past my age paranoia, and blog about this as much as I can, with any thoughts I think will be useful and hopefully lasting in my work in the future.

"You fuckers think just 'cause a guy reads comics he can't start some shit?"

This title is a little misleading and obviously profane, but I love the movie, and it's not completely inappropriate.

Today I went to Philadelphia (the city with the strangest layout EVER) to a Wizard World convention. Wizard World is basically a company that runs a series of conventions for a mish mash of sci-fi, comic, fantasy and the like. I'm not really hooked into the convention circuit (I'd never actually been to one till now, and this one wasn't all that huge), but a friend of mine and fellow Battlestar Galactica enthusiast Logan, who follows this blog, found out that there was a very special BSG guest working the VIP section of the convention this weekend: Katee Sackhoff.

Sackhoff plays Kara "Starbuck" Thrace on Battlestar Galactica, and apart from being a really great actress (who also has the benefit of working with really great writing, it must be said), her character is totally bad ass, complicated, the lead gun of the Viper pilots, and generally fucked up in the best way possible (except for this season, where she's borderline psychotic, which is troubling). In short: I think she is the coolest, and after Princess Leia, she is next on the list of "Scifi Characters Who I Would Like to Emulate in My Life." She's even above Xena--that's how you know it's serious.

In any case, she was reason enough to get me out to the capital of my least favorite state (I'm from New Jersey, this kind of prejudice happens) and finally attend a convention. Other great attractions were Garth Ennis, writer/co-creator of Preacher, lots of random fandom merchandise, and PA Jedi, that demonstrated their own choreographed lightsaber fights and drills, and offered up maybe the one redeeming quality of the state that you never visit, you just have to drive through it to get somewhere else. I have to tell you, the fights really weren't bad, and I enjoyed the fact that they took themselves so seriously.

(The bottom picture was a pre-choreographed fight, being done by people who I believe were Not associated with PA Jedi. The best part was right before the "kill" was going to happen, the little boy on the left there {see him?} ran in with his light saber and stabbed at the attacker. Cutest. Thing. Ever.)

I'm a dork, borderline geek. It's something I keep pretty close to my chest, but those who know me know that it's true. I'm not a HUGE geek, and far from the designation of "nerd," which seems to require an extra level of dedication and girth of knowledge that is beyond the circumference of my cranium and my patience, and I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. There was a bit of shaming in elementary and middle school from my friends regarding my dork/geek interests--I learned early on that Star Trek: The Next Generation ("TNG," as we call it, in the circles I barely frequent) was not going to make me any more popular or any less awkward, but I still see my enjoyment of it as a real release and important in my personal development at that time in my life. But due to the initial shaming, I never really let myself develop my geeky side fully, or made it develop it in more acceptable ways: musical theater, an innate knowledge of Shakespeare, etc. (Reading that back, neither of those is actually any more "acceptable" are they?) So now, when I'm in a room full of true geeks and nerds, I get intimidated. I've never played Dungeons and Dragons. I cannot program HTML. I do not LARP. I tried reading comics when I was younger, but found I was too overwhelmed by how much I didn't know, the mythologies so vast and had been going on for so many years before I was even born, and I kind of shut down on the idea. I fear math. Essentially, I hide my dorkiness and geek tendencies because, quite frankly: I feel like a fake. I haven't the pedigree. Or the balls.

And on that note, there's also something about being a girl in that kind of environment. Women always have to reach a hypothetical bar set by men, it seems, and here it is no different. In dork/geek/nerd society, two ideas seem to exist about women:

1. That they have koodies and know nothing about the world, such as why it is so important the Federation crack down on violators of the Prime Directive; and
2. That they are massive sex pots, with HUGE breasts, that go around hunting prey in form of animal/man/beast/alien/living dead/what-have-you, in a chain metal bikini with nothing but a sly remark and maybe a claymore to hold that material up. (And let's face it: the costume is already too small.)
   

Both views seem pretty sexist, pretty immature, and the latter one pretty...hopeful? But in either case, it sets up a precarious set of ideas that makes it hard to infiltrate geek society and still be respected. And still be recognized as a woman. And as it happens in my case, also as a straight woman. Which is probably why I love Starbuck so much--because her character can do all of these things.

But getting back to what is supposed to matter in this blog, what does any of this have to do with art or me? Well, here is a whole sub culture of people who gather because of their common interest in a specific kind of art. They decide what is acceptable, what is cool, and what is not. They show, in an unapologetic way, the force of an audience. And that force is something that any artist who wants to make a connection and any kind of commercial progression in their career has to tap into. This is also why I think crowd psychology should be studied in theatre school.

And again, as addressed earlier in this blog, the identity issue: a chief reason people enjoy art is because they identify with characters. They can see themselves (or would like to see themselves) making those choices, winning those battles, getting the girl to take off her chain metal bikini. And in no subculture is this more blatantly prevalent than the dork/geek/nerd one. (We'll save a larger discussion on LARPing for another time, but you follow me so far.) The same thing that happens on stage happens between a boy and his comic book. Or so we hope.

I admit the end of this entry is a bit ramblesome, but it was just a really cool day, and I wanted to share it with you all. Now grab your gun and bring in the cat!

That was a Battlestar Galactica reference right there.

NY Event Number Nine: Going to an art opening.

I went down to East West Books tonight after my meditation class, to see a series of paintings called "The Madhubani." They were all hand drawn and painted by women--it's actually a tradition that has been passed down from mother to daughter over the centuries. They depict mostly various Indian gods, or some meditation on Indian philosophy/religion, and in that way, they seem to function almost as a prayer, as well as being visually stimulating. Apparently the paintings that you are most drawn to in the exhibit showcase something in their subject's energy that extends to the specific energy of the viewer, and that's why some paintings intrigue you more than others. The one I was most into sits to the right of this text, known as Jaladevi. The description is as follows:

One of the rarest images in the collection, Jaladevi (Goddess of Water) is the presiding deity of the primordial soup, water, rivers and oceans. She is also the Shakti force that breeds life in water and the living goddess who supplies nourishment to all forms of life. She sits on a crocodile among smaller water creatures (frog, fish, snail, water snake, salamander) holding lotus flowers in her hands and wearing a lotus crown. With her hair flowing in the water current, her benevolent smile and forward gaze is a blessing of nature’s bliss to all who worship her.

I do like the sea, it is true, so being drawn to this picture makes sense. I guess. I always walk on the edge of being a "true believer" as it were. But it's still pretty beautiful in its intricacy.

I hadn't been to the East West bookshop before this, and was really impressed by the amount of stock they had--books, crystals, natural musical instruments, home decor (I think I'll be going back for some bells I saw there, apparently designed to keep away evil spirits, but are also hand made and really cool looking), and a cafe/art gallery upstairs. Everything a modern day spiritualist needs is here, from sage to burn, to rune guides, to Buddhas in every shape and color. I think I'll be spending way more time in this shop, if only because of the novelty.

So often we forget about the divine, yet it is something that shapes our lives every day, whether we believe in a higher power or not. If we believe, how we display or don't display that belief or acknowledgment of that power shapes our lives just as much as some one who does not believe in such a thing. The idea of the divine has shaped and produced art on so many levels over the years, whether praising it or reacting to it, and therefore must be respected as a viable source of inspiration for the production of work. But nowadays, try to weave a little divinity into something, and you're often shuffled around with the label "Jesus Freak" or something else. I hate a morality play just as much as the next person--they're usually really dry, and they all end up the same way, don't they? And there's nothing less interesting than predictability.

Is this dismissal of work that has some kind of theological base occurring because we fear offense--we worry people will be hurt by our expression of something? Or do we work to create a "universal" spiritualism, something vaguer than a morality play, say, to make it accessible, and hope that we've somehow covered everyone's bases with what we've put together. This seems futile, as everything will offend at least one person for some reason no one could have thought of, before that person came along and got offended. So why is religion such a hot issue? Is it because much of the work done around/about religion is propagandic somehow--if you believe,"x" will happen to you; OR, if you don't believe, "y" will. How does one create work that provides the wonder, the awe, the release, and the appreciation that most strictly religious work is meant to inspire in us, and make it less...religious? Is that possible? And would it be nearly as powerful if you cut the whole ethereal thing out of it?

I don't know the answer to this, but it's something to think about for possible future projects. One thing is sure: without a concept of the divine, the exhibit I saw wouldn't have existed. Neither would the Sisteenth Chapel's ceiling, for that matter.

What it takes in this day and age.

After having stolen the gapingvoid.com widget from zuzu*s petals, I was exploring the site and came across this little gem. I liked it, so I thought I'd throw it up here. He expands on each of his points here, but I figured I'd just post the list.

Keep the faith, people.

"How to Be Creative"

So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are some tips that have worked for me over the years:

1. Ignore everybody.

2. The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours.

3. Put the hours in.

4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.

5. You are responsible for your own experience.

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.

7. Keep your day job.

8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

11. Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.

13. Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.

14. Dying young is overrated.

15. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.

16. The world is changing.

17. Merit can be bought. Passion can't.

18. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.

19. Sing in your own voice.

20. The choice of media is irrelevant.

21. Selling out is harder than it looks.

22. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.

23. Worrying about "Commercial vs. Artistic" is a complete waste of time.

24. Don’t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.

25. You have to find your own schtick.

26. Write from the heart.

27. The best way to get approval is not to need it.

28. Power is never given. Power is taken.

29. Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due eventually.

30. The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.

31. Remain frugal.

32. Allow your work to age with you.

33. Being Poor Sucks.

34. Beware of turning hobbies into jobs.

35. Savor obscurity while it lasts.

36. Start blogging.

NY Event Number Three: Seeing a dress rehearsal at the Met.

Thanks to the company I work for, I had the good fortune of sitting in on the afternoon dress rehearsal today of Phillip Glass's opera, Satyagraha, which will mount at the Met in two days. The title is actually a combination of two Sanskrit words and is the name of the practice of nonviolent resistance used and developed by Gandhi (so says/confirms the wiki, to which we all bow). It's music is quite beautiful, and this new production originally staged in England (w00t! I knew I picked the right country to move to.) by the English National Opera and a company called Improbable, who I am slowly falling in deep artistic love with, really struck me. So much that I felt the need to blog about it. Incidentally, if you like Neil Gaiman and know The Wolves in the Walls, Improbable produced it for the stage as a "Musical Pandemonium." Enough said.

But give me a moment to explain something: not only is this a New York Event, but it is also a piece of great art. As it will be a while till I get to England, I feel like I'm going to have to talk about other things here in the time being, without diverging too far from the original, founding, and central idea/purpose for this blog. Under that heading falls, I think, an opportunity to discuss the kind of work I'd like to start producing once I get to England. Specific ideas and topics that I'd like to produce art about will likely remain hidden from this blog--I am pretty private about stuff I intend to develop, always worried about artistic thievery (it's true: I'm a paranoid fuck). But discussing form and methods of production I think are totally okay. And if I see something that really works, to the point I really want to share it here, then I will. It's all the excuse I can offer. I hope that will suffice.

The opera uses the original Sanskrit text of the Bhagavad Gita, a really wonderful epic poem and Indian religious text. One of the reasons I love operatic music, the little that I know of it, is because it’s often written in a language that is not English. Because of the foreign language, and the sound that operatic singing produces (far from normal speech), what is being said textually and directly, is less immediately accessible to the audience. (Unless, of course, you know Sanskrit.) This affect makes language as a tool here secondary, and forces the theatre artist to convey with body, vocal production (we’re talking about the affect of sound here, not the words themselves), staging and other theatrical affects (lighting and the rest) paramount in portraying a story that would be incomprehensible to most on a simple, spoken level. It should also be noted that this production is done sans the Met Titles usually used for performance, and instead projections of short sections of the English translation of the text are thrown onto the back wall, giving the basic overview of what’s being sung as opposed to a line-by-line interpretation.

This kind of dismissal of language (though it must be acknowledged that language does provide the opera structure and aids in the conception of some of the specific staging the Skills Ensemble pulls off beautifully) I think can be likened to circus, clown, and strict physical work--basically anything that is performed sans or sans distinct text--in that it asks the audience to respond in a more primal way, associating the bodies on stage with their own bodies, identifying with them, projecting themselves onto the journey the stage characters make more directly than they would for a piece where dialogue is used, which can be colored by regional accents, implied meanings and cadences by the actor, etc. In this way, non-text based performance can be more universal, even when dealing with a specific story, ie: Ghandi's. The program I'm going into deals a lot with developing original work, without coming from a place of text OR working with ancient text and developing work out of that. It was exciting to experience first hand such a brilliant work dealing with those principles.

Something else here, which I touched on briefly above, is the element of sound in performance. I love sound because it's so isolated, and can often be one of the most powerful elements in terms of establishing setting and mood--I know it's a movie, but I'd like to give a nod to Alien here as one of the best examples of this. It's something I had wanted to play around with for my grad school audition piece, but ran out of time to develop my idea fully. Hopefully I'll be able to revisit it and experiment how to make shape with this element in the upcoming school year.

But getting back to what was produced here, we're not just talking orchestration, which worked a lot to drive and maintain tension through the story (Glass loves his repetitious themes, no doubt), but also vocal performance. The thing about vocal performance, likened to the above idea about an audience's relationship with movement, is that it is something the body can physically and organically produce. It's resonate (literally, figuratively) because it is in the audience's capacity (in most cases) to do that themselves, again playing on the universality of that method of performance. Being a yogi, I do believe that different energy is produced and sent in different tone and pitches of sound, and that's something I'd like to explore as well.

Okay: last thing. This production really demanded a lot of the ensemble, and I loved that. Watching an entire company build the setting that they're going to be performing in is a wonderful performance tool, and constantly engages the audience in experiencing the transformation that is a key element to theatre entirely. Along with the Skills Ensemble (aerial, puppet, and circus artists employed for the production to do the business a singing chorus member would be unqualified to do), the chorus is in charge of setting some of the stage dressing, and it just totally worked. It was really powerful imagery, particularly due to such an en masse grouping covering the stage of the Metropolitan, with simple but direct movement. And I loved it.

Re-reading this post, I have to say I am the master of the run-on. Sorry about that guys, but look forward to more of it in the future.

Anyway, if you're in the NY area, save your pennies and catch this if you can.

"How come I end up where I started/How come I end up where I went wrong/Won't take my eyes off the ball again..."

The classical program rejection letter came yesterday. I wasn't home--I had Heidi open it and read it to me over the phone. Then I asked her to destroy it, throw it out--I didn't want failure in the house. (Let's forget about the state of my room for the moment, which is its own failure in a way.) I have to call her to confirm that she did so.

The last time I got a rejection letter from a college I was on my way to my high school's cabaret auditions, wearing a purple prom dress and probably too much eye make up--I'm from New Jersey, it happens. It was actually a rejection from the college I ended up attending, the college I ended up getting my Bachelor's in Theatre Arts in--I gained entry into the department after one semester as "undeclared" and another audition. But regardless, the initial letter about near killed me. Since I had been expecting this letter this time around, and partly because of the previous admission letter, probably explains why I'm feeling the affects of this rejection less so, if at all. Having been able to avoid the offending artifact itself is also super great.

This entry was going to go in to my reaction to the rejection, some consideration of what it meant then, what it means now, what it means to do classical theatre versus the kind of theatre I was accepted to the school for, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, but I find little point in all of this. I also find anything I have to say comes out sounding superfluous and silly. Maybe because it falls into the overly "self-indulgent" category I'm trying to avoid. Maybe because I don't know how I feel about it all yet. I know I'll feel jealous of my classmates when I watch them doing those plays, speaking that text, but then that's generally how I roll. I'm jealous of everyone in a play that I'm not in, especially when it's a really good play and all you want to do is get up and join the fun. I'm Bottom, damn it: "Oh let me play the lion too!"

But maybe my lack of dramatic reaction, besides having pretty much known it was coming, is because what I want as an artist has changed. It used to be "all classical theatre, all the time"--this was of course, after the "all musical theatre, all the time" phase. And then it was just about any good play that utilized good Stanislavsky/Strasberg/Adler/Hagen/Meisner technique--take your pick. Then about a year ago, maybe more, realism got boring. REAL boring. KCruger can vouch for this one. I stopped wanting to work on straight plays, modern or classical, because nothing satisfied me. I wanted to create; something new, something of my own, and something that didn't depend on words or dialogue delivery to encompass what was going on with my character(s). I wanted a larger theatrical gesture, but didn't know how to get it. I still don't.

There's something about creating work that is solely your own--not necessarily solo pieces, but being the (mostly) sole creative force behind a work of art--that is ultimately terrifying, yet in the end seems to be the only thing that will be at all satiating to me. Figuring out how to do something like that at 23 though, seems impossible. And while I'm the kind of person that normally sees some daunting task and will literally almost kill herself trying to succeed at that, while performing 18 other life threatening feets at the same time (just ask me what I've done the first three months of this year), I find suddenly: I am tired. I don't want to work that hard all my days. And I'm too young to be this weary. Luckily for me my ambition always overcomes my exhaustion. I only hope that experimenting with so many disciplines as we are slated to next year, many rooted in dealing with the physical life of a character/creature/"thing" on stage, I'll find what works for me. And hopefully it will work more than running around in a bodice ever could.

But bodices are real fun...

I guess the danger is to assume that when you're not studying or performing classical theatre, that you don't do it anymore. That it goes away. This is obviously not true, and there are Lots of examples as to why, and having finished a fairly successful production of Much Ado About Nothing just a week ago after missing out on the Shakespeare for about two years, should just prove more how it doesn't just go away. But how does one make room for that kind of performance with what's to be studied? And how can the two aid each other, in performance and in the classroom?

I guess we'll find out.