"You used to be alright/What happened?"

Okay, this blog has gotten a little off topic, what with the Suzuki notes and the comic book conventions, so I figured now would be a good time for a little check-in* regarding where I am with the school process, etc. So here we go.

• I'm not excited, no. Please stop asking. The question comes up a lot, with knowing and expectant smiles on people's faces. But aside from my classmates who recognized the school's name at my Suzuki intensive the other day which brought out a bit of pride ("Here are people who really get where I'm going"), I have to say normally my reaction is a polite "yes," but inside I'm all, "not really." It's still too distant and too much of an unreality to be exciting, aided in part by the list below.
  
• I have not filled out my FASA yet. My room is jumbled mess, and somewhere, underneath the sizable dumping ground at the foot of my bed, in front of my dresser, in the great bosom of dirty clothing and discarded stuff (all sorts) buried, is my tax folder that I need to fill out my FASA. I haven't cleaned my room in almost a month, so I've not yet unearthed the paperwork. Filling out a FASA also requires a sizable amount of time, and that I just do not seem to have. Ever.
  
• I have not applied for my Visa yet. This costs $200, and I don't have it to spare, so I'm putting it off and putting it off and putting it off, while not putting away they monies I need to pay for it. (Lack of discipline regarding money is pretty flagrant with me, and has kind of been a life long problem. I was hoping I would be more responsible by now, and that it wouldn't follow me through this process. It has.)
  
• I still have no idea where I'm going to live. Which is troubling. The school is associated with the University of London, and while student housing is somewhat available for grad students, you have to make an appointment to see the space you'd be living in beforehand, and sign off on a paper saying you're okay with it. I am not able to travel to London before term (I'll be getting in literally a day before school starts) and so have no opportunity to do this. There is some kind of list serve that current students use to post available rooms for other students, but that's also with my acceptance paperwork, again lost in the room somewhere, so I haven't gotten onto the board. Also I'm in denial, and that's done it's fair share of keeping me away from actualizing anything like this.
  
• I'm still not technically a yoga teacher. Here we come into the "unfinished business" category. Besides having some loose ends with certain individuals in my life, there are some logistical things that need sorting out. One of these is my yoga teacher certification. I did a teacher training intensive in January, and due to my insane schedule that month (8 hours of training for five days a week, working part time three-four days a week, rehearsing two plays...the mind boggles) I opted to not do any of my homework, since we can hand it in late. I also, however, did not do my take home test. Part of getting ready is to secure my diploma from Yoga Works, so when I get over to England, I can try to get a job teaching, or maybe have the opportunity to teach privates (under the table=no British taxes!). But getting the diploma involves me sitting down and doing a month's work of homework, and a test that takes about two weeks to finish. And I'd have to pass it. I'm daunted by the paperwork (again: PAPERS!!!) and trying to excite myself to do it is hard, hard work.
  

Have I become, as I feared, one of those people who list out all of their problems on their blog and take no action in their life to affect the change necessary?

Maybe.

(Shit.)

But instead of that, I will try to use this as a check list for what has yet to be done, and hopefully it will help me step up and take some responsibility, once and for all!

That's what adulthood is about, isn't it?


*For the record, I hate the phrase, "Check-in." Saying "just checking in," however, seems acceptable, and has a lovely place in my heart, left over from a year of driving up to my friend Amanda's house and calling up to her window from the drive way, "Just checking in!" and then staying for dinner. Double standard, I know. I don't care.

Suzuki: Day Two

(This entry is going to be more note-like, as I'm basing it off the ones I took this evening.)

More feeling old, but today it seemed less obnoxious.

The girl who was working hard to really work is still doing it, and it's almost distracting. It's also affecting her work--her statues are predictable, you can tell she's pre-planning them in her "ready" position. In this same vein, I am working so hard to just let myself be: stop worrying what Robyn, Steve, and Peter think of my work; stop worrying about being "right"; let go of whatever ideas I have about where I'm supposed to be since I'm older and have done this before. Like yoga, Suzuki is meant to be constantly learned, never mastered. I'm trying to remind myself of that, and shut off those hyper-perfectionist urges.<--They're going to get me in trouble in grad school, more in the realm of making me remarkably unhappy than anything else (I am also super competitive, so these kind of things are hard).

Thought of the night from Steve: Your exit from stage is just as important, if not more important, than your entrance. True in acting and true in life.

The girl pre-occupied with her appearance came with her hair down in cascading waves. I wonder how much longer that will last.

There's one girl, Kelly, whose work I Really like. You know she's just finding things as she goes, and she's letting herself experience the work while doing it. She's fully present and invested--but not Overly invested. She also has a killer yoga practice.

Peter worked with my sub-group today, discussing the value of space. While the focus can fall greatly on the architecture of the space you're working in, we also looked at creating value of negative space by using a partner to sculpt an image. We worked with a partner, one person doing the manipulating of the image for a time, and then switching. The key here was that the manipulator had to use their body fully to create the shape with the other person. When they stepped away from the space they had been taking up, displayed by the shape maintained by the clay-like partner, that space would have value because you knew something used to be there. But you couldn't just move your partner's body around with your arms. If you used your whole body, you were really partnering with them, rather than just applying a shape. You were, in effect, dancing with them. I really liked this exercise, even though I don't think I did it all that well--I got stuck taking my partner into the same places, and felt a little embarrassed of some of the shapes I got her in. When you're working with people you barely know, and suddenly you have to have contact with them, you find out pretty quick how much of a prude you still are. At least this is my experience. So anytime a pose felt intimate for whatever reason, I got worried, "Is she cool with this? Is she uncomfortable? I hope she's not." Hopefully, she wasn't.

At the end of today, I mentioned my school to someone and a couple of the kids piped up--they had heard of it and congratulated me. It was really rewarding to have people recognize the school (so few people actually know about it here, which still surprises me every time) and to also be impressed by my admittance. I'm proud of having gotten in, but usually downplay this pride because I worry about coming off like a jerk. So it was nice to have some validation, and from a truly unexpected source.

I think for the future I'm going to stop calling them "kids" and start calling them "classmates." I'll make an effort anyway.

Suzuki: Day One

(WARNING: These entries will end up being more personal. Unavoidable.)

Got into the space and felt Old. So OLD. And that seems silly at twenty-three years and almost-but-not-quite eight months. All these undergrad students, most it looked like hadn't gotten past twenty yet, all friends, all these familiar greetings ("There she is!") that I remember when I took the intensive with my friends three years earlier. The sense of solitude hints at my feelings about grad school a little too well. I'm the only one from that session to return, and know no one, save the instructors, who I was flattered to discover actually remembered me--one teacher came over and greeted me, and it made me feel much more at home in what is now a foreign environment.

The work was the same, but getting my body used to moving that way again is just as difficult as it was three years ago, though I like to think the yoga experience has actually helped in at least understanding balance a little more, specifically the work the whole body is doing in order to maintain it. But my habits are still my habits, and I'm still working on them: letting go of the tension in my jaw, working but not WORKING!!!, maintaining a far focus (which I find harder as time goes by and the nearsightedness gets worse {still no glasses or contacts}), and ceasing judgment of myself and others (fucking judgmental mind...).

Last night we did a warm up, kind of a dancey-yoga, and then worked on marching as a whole, and then split into three separate groups. My group gathered in an upstairs rehearsal space that is separate from the large hall where we start the evening, and worked on extending ki, weight on the underside, and relaxation. Let me try to explain for those not familiar, and for the sake of myself:

1. Extending ki is essentially taking the focus off one's self and extending energy outward. Steve, one of the teachers, said this great thing: "Seeing in successful looking." We experiment with this by standing, just standing, and having some one push us slightly. Usually a person just standing will waiver. But the next step is to take a focus, look across the room, see some small detail--the dust on or shape of a pipe, whatever. Some one tries to push you again, and suddenly you barely move. Because your focus is off yourself, you're more actively engaged, and instantly you're grounded. This is obviously something you need as an actor, and as Steve reminded us in class, the other person in the scene is usually the most important. We do the same exercise by holding one arm palm up, extended straight out and having someone try to bend it, or palm facing the ground with a person trying to push it down. Your focus is usually coming from a sense of center, and sending energy up from that place, passing through the arm, extending to the point you are seeing. Here we often experimented by having the subject (arm-holder-upper) focus on a person standing across from them. See a specific detail about their neck, and you can keep your arm straight. See how they're noticing your hair, and suddenly with the focus back on yourself, your arm bends. It just happens. (Unless you're really good: There's actually one student older than me, Heath, probably in his late thirties, early forties, who has actually taught Suzuki. We are in the same group and he was my partner {the two fogeys}, and he was good even when he was supposed to be bad. In those instances, he would work to stand "STRONGLY," and that effort usually worked to unground him enough that he would waiver.)
2. Weight on the underside works on grounding and balance. Have some one focus their weight on their heels, push them, and they'll start to fall over. Have them readjust their focus to distributing their weight to the center of the foot closer to the ball, and they'll be steady. With the same idea, have some one sit on the ground, have them focus on the tops of their legs, and when you push them they'll move. Have them stay in that same position, but think about the place where their thigh touches the ground, and they're steady. Same thing works on a chair, or in variations from moving from standing to sitting, or sitting to standing. This is actually the place where the yoga has helped me the most, as we often have to move one part of the body while keeping another part stationary, maintaining a wide, steady balance the whole time, making that action possible. So being aware of where your weight is in order to do that helps in this exercise.
3. Relaxation is not about releasing entirely, but maintaining energy that isn't taxing or restrained. If you release entirely, that's just flaccidity, and nobody ever seems to want that. Steve's example: "Relaxing entirely on stage is essentially this (falls on floor in jumbled heap)." You can't act like that. But it's important to know where you're holding tension in your body so you can release it and make yourself more available to act/produce an action. It also frees up your body to do character work--there are only so many physical choices and shapes you can make with your shoulders up to your ears, or pushed down as far as they can go, for that matter. And of course, a relaxed body makes breath more available.

The three ideas are linked, in that if one works they all will: if you extend ki, you'll relax and have your weight where it needs to go, and so on. So if you can just do one, you're still doing a lot.

Aside from watching myself work last night and marveling how far I've come and not come, I mostly found myself noticing the kids, and laughing at what I saw--not in mockery, but in familiarity. There's this one girl who was decked out in Lululemon. I didn't notice her really speaking to other people, and in all of her work, you could tell she was trying Real Hard. She reminded me of myself in a way, and it made me both smile and feel a little sad. "Let up a little!" I wanted to say. "Find friends here!" Another girl was obviously there more concerned about how she looked, moving with intended body language, but I couldn't figure out who she was putting on the show for. This girl bothered me--"Don't focus on that! It's not important and it doesn't last, and here is not the place!"

And then there's this third kid, Jake. Jake is not the same as my friend Jake who did the GPS play with me, but one of the many MMC undergrads at this function. He seems like a pretty cool kid. We're in the same sub-group, and had a chance to work together. Every time something clicked for him, his entire face just lit up, like it was the coolest thing he'd ever experienced. You could see him gaining the confidence and the wonder all at once. And it was totally infectious. No wonder older people are often attracted to younger ones: watching their discoveries is wonderful and reminds you just what is happening around you and how lucky you are to be a part of it. It's like really seeing again, instead of just looking. And there's something about the lack of fear and self-censorship about Jake having that reaction--I'm totally guilty of always trying to come off professional and end up having very cerebral reactions to what happens to me in art and discovery (this blog could make that argument all on its own). But here is some one who can just celebrate the really amazing change you experience in discovering this work, and really enjoy it. I miss that--just letting myself enjoy something, not having to qualify it by examining WHY I like it. That's what my therapist is for, anyway.

Being around these kids (I keep calling them that, but it's really because I feel SO OLD, not because of any pretension {at least not conscious pretension...}) makes me also think about how I had wanted to teach at one point, and think I still do...someday. There is something, though, the responsibility that comes with teaching that I'm afraid of. What if I get it wrong? What if my students hate me? What if I become one of those teachers I hated, who got into it only to hear themselves talk, not because they wanted to help minds develop? How to be sure? I guess you never can be. But I might risk it for a student like Jake. Maybe.

He also complimented my mis-matched socks, which gives him another point in my book.

"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.