As if things couldn't get any better...

...several friends old and new reached out to me today to lend support, an ear, a shoulder, and even offered monies. Thank you all. And the best news is:

Someone found my wallet. I should be able to pick it up as soon as I arrange a meeting place with said savior.

But thanks to my parents, to the Central staff (who I've no doubt will not read this), and to my England (not all of them English) friends who supported me through the day during a huge time of trauma. And thank you to Amy and Sean for your online support!

Just remember the Killers: "Everything will be all right..."

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 Twelve: Practicing yoga in Times Square.

About five years ago, the Times Square Alliance decided they would celebrate the more neglected of the two Solstices. The Winter Solstice arrives on December 21st, but is often grouped in with the celebration of various holidays, and of course Times Square's biggest yearly event, New Year's Eve. However, the Summer Solstice, particularly in Western culture, usually goes by unnoticed--presumably because its celebrants were predominately pagan and that just didn't mesh with main-stream Puritanical rule. So any rituals that went along with the day were squelched over time and/or forgotten. The idea was to commemorate the longest day of the year, and give the sun its due for helping sustain our lives. So the TSA founded an event where yoga (the physical practice of which of course includes a linked sequence of asanas called surya namaskar, or "sun salutation") would be practiced throughout the day in order to do just that. At the first year of this event literally one person showed up. This year, at the first class of the day, 8:00AM on a Saturday morning, I practiced on the island in Times Square between 44th and 43rd street, bordered by Broadway and 7th Ave. I was one of 300 people there just for that class.

I heard about the function last year from Douglass Stewart, an instructor at the studio I work at and one of the teachers I practice under whenever I get the chance. Douglass actually co-founded the event, and after I missed last year I was determined to make it--especially as I don't know when I'll be back here for the Solstice again.

It was a lot of fun. The TSA had a number of sponsors for the day, who all contributed to large yellow goody bags that were stocked with items that included a Solstice t-shirt, Snapple antioxidant water, Fiji water, Body Shop samples, and several SoyJoy bars--and none of which were the dreaded Mango bar, which I find personally disgusting. The first 500 people at the event (of which I was one) also got a free mat from Danskin, which was too slippery to practice on there, but will no doubt break-in after a light vinegar wash.


I did the first class of the day and the final class of the day, greeting the sun coming up (I actually woke up at five that morning, so yes: I literally did this thing) and saying goodbye to it in the evening. The evening class was particularly cool because we started at sunset, and by the time we were done with our meditation and svasana, the sky was lit only by the lights in the Square. (I was actually in my meditation, sensing these flashing lights beyond my closed eyes, and thought I was on the brink of discovering something--but of course it was just an ad for Inspired by The Bible Experience.)


Tranquility is hard to find, no doubt, especially in this city of over eight million people. Yoga is about balance, part of which comes with balancing the mind. Like the second sutra of Patanjali tells us, "The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga," leading us to the third sutra, "Then the Seer [Self] abides in His own nature." It's a challenge to do this at anytime in the city, but like the ad above asks, "Can you find it in Times Square?" And I did. Somehow having everything else going on around me allowed me go into a deeper space of self. Aside from the occasional loss of focus (looking up in trikonasana and seeing what I can look forward to on upcoming episodes of Grey's Anatomy), it was definately one the more enjoyable practices I've had in a while.

I saw a lot of people I knew at the event--teachers, clients, and friends, (and this super model--I am NOT kidding {Boys: do more yoga. You will meet women.}) and I feel blessed to have been able to be a part of this NY yoga community for my time. These individuals have taught me a lot about life and myself, and I hope I can honor those lessons in the time to come, no matter what side of the pond I'm on. Namaste, my friends.

(NOTE: All photos, except for the Solstice ad itself, were taken by Cathy Lilly.)

"...and I realized as I was talking, that I was boring myself."

That title is a phrase I have sadly uttered when recounting a couple bad dates to friends afterwards, where I realized I had been going on and on and on because the guy wasn't offering anything up, so I just kept talking, and at some point realized that I was even boring myself working so hard for a reaction. This is one of the many reasons why I never date.

After blogging CRAZY consistently at the beginning of this month, I went on a brief hiatis. Part of it had to do with my schedule, which did not allot for enough time to make a thoughtful blog entry, which I try to achieve when writing here. But another, larger part was:

Blogging about Suzuki bores me.

Now, don't get me wrong: Suzuki itself does not bore me. Not in the least. But the specificity it was taking to discuss the method made writing the entries not only remarkably time consuming, but also really really dull for me to write. I like discussing the theatre, I like discussing performance method, I like sharing what I learned, but these things I like doing IN PERSON. To put it here, to do it so much and in such a detailed, crazy way just makes me lose interest. I may go back and blog specific stuff, but not today, not right now, and maybe not ever. So don't hold your breath. But here's an overview of what I've been up to whilst away.

One: I bought my plane ticket. It actually cost about $120 less than I had anticipated, partly because I bought it through STA Travel, and acquired the below card, which is meant to get me discounted rates for various travel-type things. (And 10% off at the Mac store.)

Not the most fetching picture of me, true, but I was unaware that they'd be making the card up right then and there and had no other picture to give them.

I was so happy about the plane ticket being so cheap that I went to Forbidden Planet and bought this:

I still say I'm not a nerd, but probably just a fangirl. And it was only $6.99-->I needed it!

It also turns out that I will be able to go to my bff's wedding ceremony, but will need to leave IMMEDIATELY after pictures are taken, and go straight to the airport to make my flight. Intense.

Two: I cut Suzuki Monday night to do a scene for my roommate's directing class at HB Studios. I haven't acted in a while, despite my prowess as a GPS unit, and it was both fun and foreign to go back to a script and try to build a character and whatnot. It was the first scene in Proof, a play I love and would kill to be in. I actually played Catherine in another friend's scene in college, so it was fun to revisit her in a different place. Maybe someday I'll play the whole thing...

Three: I did more Suzuki. Tuesday and Thursday night, I was back, marching, slow tempo-ing, and learning a dance that dealt very interestingly with focus. I will try to backlog these later, but again: I just don't feel like doing it right now.

Four: I talked to someone who knows better. I went to see Hamlet this past Saturday, and after being rescued by my friend Tim, an electrician at the Public who brought me to the electrician's office to wait out the rain, he invited me to go for drinks with the crew once the show was called. An older actor in the cast, who's pretty successful on the NY boards but who will remain nameless here because name dropping annoying, stopped into the bar where we were at and sat next to us. Tim introduced me, mentioned I had gotten into Central, and the actor congratulated me and started to give me advice on what to look at in terms of British acting when I was in England. It was a great chat, he was a super cool guy, and I felt reassured in a way I haven't been in months to go on this adventure. It was totally needed, and I feel really lucky to have friends who garner me the chance to have these opportunities. So, thanks Tim and Heidi.

Five: I found someone else going to England for grad school this fall. We had gone to HS together, and had known each other, despite the fact that she is two years older than me. She already knows where she's going to live, and pointed me in a couple directions, which was great. I happy to know someone else going over, to maybe bounce travel ideas off of, and to have as a "safe person" if trouble happens overseas. And I could always use another Facebook friend, which is where she located me. So here we go, Liza.

In my spare time, I've also been seeing some friends, giving feedback on some one's play (like a good little dramaturge), wondering about BSG, trying to figure out who would be reading my blog in Austria (I see you, thanks to Google Analytics) and trying to make myself read Pinter. Could I really do all these things and sleep, and write about Suzuki with such specificity while at work?

I don't think so.

NY Event Number Five: Visiting the Brooklyn Museum

My friend Brooke and I do something we like to call Sunday Dates. It started out about a year ago, when we started hanging out outside of work (where we met and continue to spend the majority of our time, together or apart) on Sunday evenings, the only night either of us seemed to have free and also when neither of us had to work the next day. So every few Sundays or so we would get together and do something that at least one of us hadn't done yet. Because of our schedules and various other to-dos, we've occasionally had to shelve the "Sunday" part of the date, and do something called Weekday Dates, which never seem quite as cool as the concept of Sunday Dates, despite being just as fun. This week we went on a Saturday Date (which is not as much fun to say as either Sunday Date or Weekday Date--I blame the number of syllables) to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Every first Saturday of the month, the museum is open and free between the hours of 5PM and 11 for an event called Target Saturdays. There's usually live music, occasionally performance art, and other special presentations (film showings, etc.) surrounding the common theme of the evening. This night it was "Japan in Brooklyn." My bff (I know I'm twenty-three, but I can still say that, can't I?) Kate was in town from Boston to visit, under the guise of looking for bridesmaid dresses for her wedding (we never actually got to it, though we did brunch Sunday morning and then saw "Iron Man," which, to me, is almost better than a wedding), so I grabbed her at Port Authority, and we headed down to Brooklyn in the evening.

The Brooklyn Museum of Art is a pretty impressive building, as is most of the substantial surrounding architecture in that area--the Soldiers' and Sailor's Arch and the Brooklyn Public Library are right around the corner at Grand Army Plaza, and the beauty of Prospect Park I think cannot be debated. It is simply fact. Actually, the BPL reminds me a bit of the fascist architecture in the E.U.R. district of Rome.

The featured exhibit was of Takashi Murakami's work (hence "Japan in Brooklyn"), but we skipped that because we'd still have to pay to get in. Kate and I started on the first floor ("...a very good place to start...") in the African section which was pretty cool and had a lot of great masks. We moved upstairs to the Decorative Arts area and met Brooke, and we meandered through various exhibits of home decor as art, or art as home decor, whichever you prefer. One of the really cool parts of this section was seeing whole rooms transplanted from homes and displayed in a museum, in order to showcase design choices from various periods and locations. I can't imagine what it would take to disassemble a room, and then construct it to its original layout in a new space. This just seems very strange to me--it's not just furniture we're talking about: it's floorboards, it's walls, it's crazy. And in one of the rooms there was a toy Noah's Ark with all of the animals circling into it, two by two, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Then we went to the Egyptian floor, which was less exciting to me. While I really love the mythology of ancient Egypt and do appreciate some of it's art just in terms of the shape and boldness of much of it (hieroglyphics are awesome, and all the adornment reminds me of something I miss a lot from the ceremony of the Catholic mass: the drama and spectacle that comes when man tries to capture the divine), I have a severe and strange prejudice against the desert. I hate sand. I hate Westerns (except for "Tombstone," and only then because of Val Kilmer as, let's face it, he is the only redeeming part of that film.). I could not get through "The English Patient," or "Lawrence of Arabia" despite my affection for both Ralph Fiennes and Peter O'Toole, and it took a while for me to warm up to "Firefly." Also I dislike the jungle. Perhaps in a past life I was buried alive in sand or devoured by a crocodile in some lost swamp, but whatever the reason, whenever I stumble upon these types of exhibits I tend to shut off. Kate and I were also getting hungry, so we bounced soon after exploring one of the interactive computer touch screens installed in the wing, and celebrated our own "Japan in Brooklyn" by eating sushi a few blocks away from Grand Army Plaza.

Some things taken away from this experience to consider in terms of creating art at a later date:
1) The transformative power of a mask.
2) And isolated room, put on display. (Honestly, this is kind of a stolen idea {try to find something on the Tartuffe McCarter did last fall} but still something interesting to consider...)
3) That toy Noah's Ark image, and other implications (children understanding disaster simplicity as something that just happens, before they learn to ask why), as well as our relationships with toys and how they change as we get older. Or, still perhaps more interesting, how they don't change. And can anyone do anything with toys on stage now without being called a Julie Taymor poser right off the bat?

Despite my misgivings when it comes to Egyptian displays, I'm happy to get out and let myself be exposed to what other cultures and people have produced because it keeps my own gears turning. I'm trying to stay available, and one of the great things about Sunday Dates is that it forces me to do so. They are something that I will miss an awful lot when I'm away, in part due to the company.

Which brings me to something else: part of the reason I've been doing anything at all these past few weeks in terms of taking advantage of the city is because of my friends, getting me out and taking me places. If I were left to my own devices, I would seriously not do anything except watch Netflixed movies in my apartment all the live long day and avoid my abusive cat. How will I find the gumption to get myself out of my Anglican hovel to see any of that new city, without these people near me? I suppose there are other friends to make, but I will miss a lot the friends I have, and the friends I've just been finding over this past year.

Aw, Brookes. You'll have to visit me some Sunday in England!

"...I know what I'm needing, and I don't want to waste more time..."

It has been hard, lately, to get myself to work on time. I'm usually pretty punctual in all things, but now I'm slipping into a kind of senioritis concerning my day-to-day life, my excuse seemingly being, "Well, I'm moving to England in October, so what does it matter if I get out of bed right now? Or shower once I do? Or do my hair/make up/nails/wash my face/brush my teeth/eat breakfast/succeed at anything else in life generally?" Well, it does matter. What also matters is that I'm leaving New York for such an extended period of time and still, after living here for so very long, have not having taken full advantage of the city. So now, in a last ditch effort to really get something out of this experience, I'm trying to make up a list of things to do here before I go. What I have so far:

1) Fold origami boats and sail them on the sculpture fountain at Lincoln Center.
2) Visit the Bronx zoo
3) Visit the Botanical garden
4) See a movie in Bryant Park, Finally.
5) Have a picnic...somewhere. But like a real one, with a basket and everything.
6) Attend a lecture on something interesting.
7) See professional dance in performance (Because I've only done that once in my life.).

I'm stuck, which is ridiculous given my subscriptions to both Time Out and the New Yorker, but I'm opening up the floor to suggestions. It could be as simple as "Eat at this restaurant," or as romantic as, "Watch the sunset from this very spot." So my friends: what have you got?

NOTE: Visiting the following are out, as I've done them either on school functions or dates or day trips with my parents:
--Walking over the Brooklyn Bridge
--Going to the Empire State Building
--Visiting Ellis Island
--Visiting the Statue of Liberty

Anything? Anything? Bueller?