Reaching the Ocean

I went to the beach this morning with my family to watch the sun rise. I think this is the first time in all the years we've gone to the beach in the morning that we've actually made it before the sun was past the horizon. It's kind of crazy how fast it pops above the ocean and then peeks in and out of clouds.

The sun reflected off the water, onto the sand and the faces of my family and me. It's amazing how solitary it can feel even with other people when you stand at the edge of the ocean, the shores of the world I know. God smiled through the clouds, waved with the water, and hid in the sand between my toes.

We wrote "Bye 2010" in the sand and watched it get washed away by waves as the sun continued to creep higher in the sky. The last morning of 2010 dawned peacefully, but I'm sure we'll go out with a bang. This will be my first New Year's on the East Coast. I think all others have been spent on central time, though in a few different states, with the possible exception of Arizona when I was twelve. It's exciting to me to hit New Year's at the same time as the ball drop in NYC, not to watch it at 11 pm in my house and then watch the slightly-less-climactic Chicago midnight.

Today I remember all that has passed in the last year. I remember particularly this time last year, and am trying to appreciate how today can be joyous in a completely different way. No one will kiss me and whisper 'I love you' at midnight, and I miss that, but I have my family, and much more for which to be grateful. My life is blessed with many friends and adventures, and so much love.

Happy new year, everybody.

Free Time

I haven't heard back about my plays yet and still have no homework. I don't know what to do with myself. It's a serious problem.

WHAT DO I DO WITH FREE TIME? I DON'T KNOW! If I ever knew before, Playwrights definitely squashed that skill. I like being productive. I like getting things done, I like working on shows. I'm going a little stir crazy with no particular tasks to accomplish. I'm reading a book, I just read a play I might be designing next semester. Not really sure what else to do. Go swimming, go to the library, play games with the family. Sleep. Repeat.

I'm accepting book and movie recommendations for the duration of break. Woo!

Florida!

Florida in December. A new experience. Internet is rare. It's warm, in December, which is confusing to this Chicago native. I should have been writing down all my thoughts the last four days while I didn't have internet, because now I can't remember a thing.

Perhaps I'll catch you before the new year. OH! THERE MUST BE A LONG POST ABOUT HARRY POTTER WORLD!

Sweet Home, Chicago

Yesterday, I read 60 pages of a novel on the plane from New York to Chicago. I've been home for just over 24 hours. In less than six I will be traveling again, this time by car, this time 1400 miles, to visit my little Jewish grandmother in Florida. It will be WARM. It's significantly colder here than it was in New York. I already miss the feeling of being in the city, of having a countless million things to do and such a number of people to inevitably run into, even though I was home for four days at Thanksgiving. I think knowing mentally that this is an almost-five-week vacation as opposed to five days is taking its toll rather quickly. But I think of how fast the three weeks between Thanksgiving and now went, and know I will be back in the city soon. And, over the last year or two, I have come to appreciate being from Chicago. I like being able to call two cities home.

Snow fell today, thick and fast upon the streets so that if one went in somewhere and came out ten minutes later, the first set of footprints were gone. The night is soft and quiet and sparkling under streetlights and a cloudy sky that has turned the whole world sepia tones. Before dawn we will head east, losing an hour along the way, to spend the night in Atlanta. (Oh! The South!) My father is staying home for most of the trip to get some work done, so it will be just my mother and brother and myself. This will be the first road trip where my brother might do a decent amount of driving. (He's had his permit almost two years now but seems to be in no hurry to get his license.)

This will probably be the first time we have gone on a vacation since I started high school that I don't have any homework to do. Eventually, I will find out which of my proposed plays got approved and then get to work on preproduction dramaturgical research, but that may not be until after I get back from Florida, so presumably I have a responsibility-free couple of weeks coming up. The only thing stewing in my head is how to figure out what projects to work on, as everyone wants me to light design everything while I would prefer not to die.

I've been ruminating a lot on relationships, of late (well, as usual, but my alarm is set for about four hours from now and I suppose I should sleep. Perhaps an update tomorrow from Georgia.

Design-O-Rama

So in case you didn't know, I worked on six shows this semester. I struck the last one last night, thus finishing my fourth show in the white box this semester (in which I began production season, way back in October), and could finally be done swinging from the grid, dragging ladders, ripping gaff tape, plugging in xlr cables, checking levels, focusing lights, arranging ground plans, editing cues, sewing curtains, etc. Until next semester.

A few snapshots of this semester.

The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden by Thornton Wilder
Directed by Will Detlefsen
Lighting Design #1

Designer Plastic
created by Dan Stearns
Lighting Design #2

I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix by Tennessee Williams
Directed by Lindsay Hope Simon
I didn't design this.

So that's half of it... The rest is soon to come, but I should really prepare now for my final that's tomorrow morning. Yay!

Body-Blind

Richard Schechner recently wrote an article about the possibilities of gender/race/age-blind casting. In my History of Directing class, we started talking about what roles we would like to play if the entireties of theatre were open to us, regardless of what our bodies said we should play. After we talked for a bit about that, my immediate reaction (that I started writing to myself in my notes) was GENDER BLIND CASTING WOULD BE AWESOME! And then I thought for a second, but then I wondered - Why do we have to play into patriarchal structure? Does this mean women can mostly only have really incredible roles by playing men and that even if women are playing men the theatre continues to play into the idea that the males have the power? I'm conflicted.

Schechner says such casting will not happen right away and when it does it will be a new kind of "avant-garde" - and yet he is the one who says that avant-garde isn't really avant-garde anymore. It is no longer "what is next" or "moving forward" or "at the front" of art. If and when this movement occurs, it will be critiqued by the "orthodoxies" of theatre as a deconstruction of what theatre "is." But I don't believe theatre should be defined as one thing. I'm interested in what theatre does. And it can do a whole new world of things if we can destroy/deconstruct gender in theatre and perhaps that will affect society. Or society will kill it, as it does to so much of theatre.

More impulses for my project next semester... Since I'm obsessed with gender... Here goes nothing. Here goes something.

With One Mind, One Body, One Spirit

Revelations that occurred during voice and speech this morning, written down stream of consciousness style and copied here for your enjoyment and potential brain explosion.

Theatre is work in loving service to an audience - to humanity, created by God. The Greeks were trying to do just that. Share themselves, the human condition, with the rest of their world. Stretching your gift and the art that is serving you to serve others. We make art for others - work hard and then give it to them. The Greeks believe you are not your work but a vessel for it. You can let it go because you never possessed it. And yet it is always within you. The minute you become aware of you, you have a responsibility to it. Theatre/the arts is a gift of communication from God through artists to humanity. Theatre is, in performance, an act of communion. A holy moment of shared connection. Understanding at the deepest human level is actually the highest place of creation. Everything is infinite and never perfect, always shifting, there is no destination. We are in a moment. Everything passes through the body. That is our instrument.  Our instrument for expression, sharing, praying. Things show up on the body because the body can't lie. It tells the truth all the time. Every part of the body is informed. The artist creates from love - a giving and sharing of love. It is all language, whether or not you are speaking. Everything communicates and that's why you have to direct the doorknob. Or maybe why the Greeks didn't really use sets.

It's all connected. All a cycle. It's all about a shared experience and love.

When you don't have text, the performer has to just be the story. So why not be the story with your whole being even with the text?

All this lead to a discovery of exactly what I want my project to be next semester, and now I just have to find the play that has the story to go with it. The story that tells my story. They're all the same story. It's all one. (This is why I should really be doing The Serpent, but that will have its moment, outside of school, when I really can tackle working with about 20 actors.)

Then Colleen mentioned unity and I thought about it in a religious sense and went, "Oh DUH, I'm a UNITARIAN."

Okay great. And now Hedwig makes even more sense and why I love that play makes even more sense. And really, I'd just like to direct Plato's Symposium which is not a play.

Mr. November (I Won't Fuck Us Over)

Oh hello, November! In fact, we are on the crest of December. It is not terribly surprising that I haven't written since about a week before productions began, aka since I went into constant rehearsals and tech processes for the remainder of the semester.

Things I probably would have written about, were there 36 hours in the day instead of 24 (and 25 that one day when daylight savings time ended, but I drank away that hour):

• Lighting Will's show (sub category: dealing with apathy)
• Halloween (sub category: I'm dating someone?)
• Lighting Dan's show (sub category: WTF I BLEW UP THE WHITEBOX)
• New relationships
• Roommates
• Directing a play (sub category: goldfish other sub category: being an artist)
• A certain lighting designer I'm absolutely obsessed with who bought me dinner two weeks ago
• HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS (sub category: my childhood and lots of complicated things about growing up in the Potter generation - this would probably have been several lengthy posts)
• Church and more church
• Thanksgiving
• Chicago (sub category: going home)
• Starting a theatre company

I returned to the NYC from Chicago this morning - my flight was at 6:45 so I've been up for almost 14 hours now, and it's not even 7 pm, and I lost an hour coming here. I spent the day once I got here taking care of my miraculously-still-alive goldfish, unpacking, cleaning the entire apartment compulsively, and building sound cues for one of the shows I load in tomorrow. It's nice to be settled back in and still have a day before classes start (even if that day will be 14 hours of running back and forth between Tisch and Playwrights).

There will at least be a blog or two soon with pictures of the shows I designed and my show (thus also encompassing things about lighting design and that designer I like). And there will absolutely be a blog about Harry Potter. Isn't there always?

It Gets Better

My friend and I made this video as part of our midterm for a Religion, Sexuality, and Public Life class. Critical analysis forthcoming.

Oh, A Truth.

I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge this afternoon, from Brooklyn Heights to Chinatown. I think, in all the times I've walked the bridge, this was the first time I was alone. It's something I usually do with people about whom I care a lot. Today was a glorious day, not too hot or cold beneath a cloudless sky. But it was odd to be alone, watching all the couples and families pausing for the token photograph of hair blowing in the wind over the East River, the Statue of Liberty or the Manhattan Bridge in the background. I took my time, I took some artsy photos, because that's what I do when I walk places, I document architecture that will continue to befriend me when no one else is around.

I'm going out tonight with specific intentions. I am aware of trying to be something, and I don't like trying to be something but I guess that's what we all do, all the time.

Yesterday I watched Finding Neverland with one of my best friends for the first time since I think before I started college. That movie is so beautiful, but I never really thought about just how well done it is. It's incredibly artful, and it always makes me cry. And it did, and last night I felt particularly lonely, even while sitting with my best friend, because I felt the people who were missing. I've been having trouble shaking that lonely feeling, so now I'm going out to surround myself with a bunch of people, most of whom I probably barely know and a few I know a little better.

I thought I posted this before I left. I guess not.

In the Dark a.m.

There's a lot more to do when you're relaying the word of God.

There is something Greek about this play after all. Something bigger, a calling.

I wonder if my roommate's phone is going to play classical music all night.

Before the Lobotomy

Every year Playwrights feels the same, and different. As a first year, everything was new and exciting and the single floor of this building squeezed between Walgreens and Blue Man Group was the place where I was going to fulfill my dreams with these new teachers and friends I had been given, who were, as far as I was concerned, the only people in the world. A few other colors crept into that package and swirled with the blue cellophane wrapping that had been placed on my life. I spent too many hours in dark rooms with no windows, feeling like I knew nothing and everything and could change the world one day because of what I was doing right then. I started to forget how to exist outside of my neighborhood. I found the greatest friend I have ever had.

Second year, I returned to our two floors of this same building, where 70 new people were now me and I was now someone else, expected to have new friends and know more things, but I was still home. Salty and Elsa still sang in the mornings and pretended to be on the Titanic by pushing themselves down the hallway on bins full of blankets and mats. I smiled at faces I knew and loved and my heart broke each time I left, which was rare. I spent probably at least 75% of the hours in the day within the confines of our two floors, sleeping in places meant for walking, doing homework in social lobbies, forgetting real life except when it smacked me in the face. Emotions sank into my bones and took hold like cancer of the blood, both the strongest love and deepest despair I have ever felt in my life. I still recognized this place, but the corners and crevices were filling with memories I sometimes wanted to escape.

This year, Playwrights is different. Familiar faces are absent and in their places walk strangers who I can't get to know by invading their African dance class, because there is no African dance class. I have, thank God, returned to some of my freshman teachers, making things feel familiar in a place that sometimes feels foreign. I still cannot leave, I still don't want to leave, but sometimes I realize I am a stranger, too. I am not the girl who walked in a little over two years ago with no idea what was in store for her.

I was this:

And now I am this:

These two years have flown by and yet somehow seem longer than all of high school and junior high combined. Pepper still dances, oranges are still terrifying, the cycle continues.

I'm directing now. I suppose that might make me a Director. I prefer the Playwrights motto, gesamptkunsttheatermensch, whole theatre artist. This semester I am: lighting designing two shows, set designing one show, sound designing one show, directing a one act play, and assistant directing three new one act musicals that haven't been written yet. I'm also working on a monologue from a Holly Hughes performance art piece, and already having a blast. I'm seeing theatre, for free, as much as possible. I'm obsessing over Kevin Adams (probably seeing American Idiot for a fourth time this Sunday; it's embarrassing). Trying to figure out what yellow light means. Wondering why my leg started tremoring when I was typing my monologue this morning. Planning to meet someone really sexy soon. Hoping to procure funds for everything I want to do. I'm walking all over the island. "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" likes to play on my iPod when I happen to be walking home past midnight in the rain. I'm reading, a lot. I'm teaching Sunday school to preschoolers. I'm working hard as ever, but actually having fun.

A walk across the Brooklyn Bridge is due soon.

This is Not a Test

This might be the incoherent post and then maybe tomorrow or sometime soon I can write an articulate one.

I AM OBSESSED WITH KEVIN ADAMS. It feels like the beginning of a relationship when you first start seriously dating someone and you want to be with them all the time. I want to be looking at Kevin Adams' lighting all the time. And I want to learn how to do that, how to be that visionary. He controls my breathing and my heartbeat when I'm watching a show he designed. Unfortunately for performers sometimes, his lighting is far more interesting than anything else happening on stage. I said to a teacher of mine, maybe he's too good.

But really, this man understands color and color in light and light in rhythm in a way I have not seen anyone else do. (In the Heights comes close during 96,000, but that's it.) I started looking at his website tonight and couldn't stop. I just wanted to find contact information, but instead I spent an hour and a half drooling and squealing and gasping over the photos on his site. There is no contact information to be found, by the way.

But how can you not be inspired by this:

Artistic Integrity

Let me just say I thought about writing this blog last night, but decided to wait until the wine had worn off.

Yesterday involved a crisis of artistic integrity for me. I signed on to a project as the hypothetical lighting designer (if our production weeks worked out) back in April for a dear friend of mine. In return I asked him to be my set designer. All of this took place before we had any idea what shows we would be directing. He ended up picking one of the few Thornton Wilder plays that I chose not to read when I was reading the library's entire anthology of Wilder's short plays, but fine. We had a design meeting a few days ago and Will convinced me that the play, or at least his production of it is interesting.

Last night, as I was about to settle in to some home-cooked macaroni and cheese made by Amy (before going out to get vanilla to make cookies for my design meeting that is today), I received a phone call from Will. He told me he cast his show, but something in his voice didn't sound happy/thrilled/relieved like we always feel upon discovering our casts. Then he said he felt he needed to tell me that he cast Joel. He wanted me to find out personally from him, not the group e-mail he sent out after. I appreciated his awareness of the sensitivity of the situation, and told him I had to think about this and I would let him know soon if I could still work on the project. Commence crisis.

I am an incredibly responsible person. Particularly when it comes to theatre, I tend to do about as much as the hours in the day will allow me. I complete what I say I will do, often at the expense of other things that are probably just as important but always fall behind in the wake of a theatre emergency. So now I had to figure out what was the most mature and responsible thing to do in this situation. The obvious answer would seem to be that of course I should do the show, because I said I would and because Will's show is earlier than everyone else's and because no one can find lighting designers this semester.

But it's trickier than that. Because I also felt it might be the mature thing to do to tell Will I couldn't work on his show because I just can't handle being in the same room as Joel at this stage in our (non)relationship. I didn't want to agree to stay on the project for the above reasons only to end up bailing later because of the emotional strain.

This resulted in a long conversation with my dear friend Michael who had to be my saving grace in Colleen's absence. I decided to stay on the project, because I would probably hate my life more if I allowed my artistic integrity to be tainted by such a stupid situation as this that I would if I worked on it and just had to deal with Joel being in the room. It is unfortunate that working on the show has become the lesser of two evils instead of something I'm really excited about. It is unfortunate that I am now certain I will be spending a certain amount of time in the same room as the one person I have been staunchly avoiding since I got here.

Last night I drank a lot of wine. A lot.

This will be something to be proud of, that's what Michael told me and I believe it (not the wine part). Maybe in some miraculous way this will solve the problem instead of fostering it. Who knows. Not I. This is in God's hands, now.

Beyond the Hudson is Jersey

Classes begin in a few hours; I am a junior living vicariously through freshmen. I have grown up and moved and not moved. I cling to experiences like a baby blanket.

The Blue Group thread is really (really) funny now that we're not first or second years anymore.

Sometimes I wish I could relive things with perspective. I think that's why I like rereading books.

I know I have a lot of friends but I kind of wonder where they go when they all seem to disappear.

The city is beautiful and gritty and beating. New streets are mine. Places are becoming nothing but memories, people becoming strangers. Strangers becoming friends. Empty spaces filled only in my heart.

Life needs more candles and prayer, walks over bridges, moments of silence and skyline sunsets and sunrises.

A moth flew in through two inches of open window and took refuge on the air conditioner that I think is broken that has been turned off for three days because it is so nice outside and gets just cool enough at night to make blankets feel really good.

My breath is changing, blossoming in city air, catching at moments. But there is always another inhale. Sometimes I have cloud-lungs of sorrow. Sometimes I think I can feel the lung collapsing that the doctor told me is already partially collapsed and isn't a big deal even though it sounds like it is.

French toast is a good temporary cure for inhumanity, coffee makes me feel like a person.

I have romantically disorienting dreams that make me confuse unsettling fiction with unsettling reality.

Home is a familiar stranger and an empty space, 70 new people and change.

The Great Christian Debate (of Harry Potter)

Over the last couple weeks, I have been thinking about critical essays and secular versus sacred criticism. I haven't read a lot of religious criticism (though I've heard a lot of it from zealots on TV) but I've read more critical essays of books, movies, etc. than I can possibly count. Lately in particular I've been reading various defenses for or against Harry Potter, written by members of Christian religious communities. That's the specific example I'll be working with, but what I'm interested in is the result and in/validity of religious criticism of secular texts.

The books I read (or attempted to read - most of them were impossible to get through) were as follows:

-God, the Devil, and Harry Potter by John Killinger (pro-Potter, written by a minister)
-The Bible and Harry Potter by Richard Abanes (anti-Potter, written by a minister)
-The Gospel According to Harry Potter by Connie Neal (pro-potter, written by a former youth pastor)
-Baptizing Harry Potter by Luke Bell (pro-potter, written by a Monk!)

The only one of these books I could stand (and didn't get to finish, because I left for school) was Bell's book. Abanes' arguments were unsurprisingly frustrating and illogical, but I was surprised to find I also had such a hard time getting through the Killinger's and Neal's books. The theory I started to come up with was that trying to analyze Harry Potter as Christian Literature when it is nothing of the sort doesn't really work.

Neal states in her introduction that she is using the same deductive methods that anti-Potter critics use to prove their points to defend the books. She points out that if the same evidence can be used to prove opposite arguments, it's probably a pretty pointless fight. For that exact reason I only made it through about 60 pages of her book.

The same was true of Abanes, who consistently pointed out every instance of any child or teacher lying or doing anything remotely "sinful" or imperfect. He cries out against J.K. Rowling's thinly veiled connections to people of the real world who were affiliated with Wicca or ancient sorcery, claiming that children will discover this connection (read: look up obscure names that even I, as incredibly avid and now grown fan have not researched) and want to emulate these people of the real world. He managed to make at least three references to names I couldn't even remember having read, and I've read the series more times than anyone I know - and I have some serious Potterphiles for friends. Perhaps he's giving my generation and the generation after me too much credit. I skimmed Abanes' book, eventually skipping the chapters that analyzed in depth each sinful or dangerously suggestive act of the first four books and moved on to his greater critique of the series as a whole.

It should be noted at this point that the first three of the four books I read were all published around the same time - between late 2001 and the end of 2002 - in the first major lull between books since the series had come to America. This was the break between books four and five, when the first film had been released, and Harry Potter mania was reaching unprecedented heights and breaking unbreakable records. Bell's book was just published in June of this year, and thus has the advantage of being able to use the second half of the series in its analysis. While the series' themes are of course well established in the first four books, it is truly in the final chapter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, that all of the messages are made glisteningly clear. I have written some on this before - the importance of love, friendship, loyalty, and fighting for goodness.

John Killinger understood all these themes, good, Christian morals, of course, but he was as extreme as Abanes, though in the opposite direction. I made it through about 100 pages of his book, though the going got tough when he started explaining how Quidditch is a metaphor for life. (The golden snitch is the fluttering, difficult to grasp, best moments of life, and Harry as a seeker has an uncanny ability to do such, which apparently says a lot about who he is as a person. Perhaps. But, really. Come on.) Killinger simultaneously presents Harry and Dumbledore as Christ figures, making a few long reaches to pull obscure Bible details into the books and grazing over most of the characters' imperfections.

The magic of Bell's book is the ability to marry the true Christian ideals that shine through the novel with recognizing that these books were never written to be Christian morality tales. He does not try to convince anyone that Harry Potter's life is a metaphor for Jesus or anyone else, but merely draws parallels between morals of Bible stories and the events of the Potter series. He never says Harry is like Moses because he got dropped off in a basket, or tries to prove that his scar is an important Biblical mark. His arguments are not in story and event parallels, but in moral and theme.

Moral (no pun intended) of the story: It doesn't really work to criticize literature as un-Christian if it wasn't intended to be Christian in the first place. Conversely, it also doesn't work to prove that books are perfect Christian morality plays when they weren't written to be Christian literature. the Potter books aren't one or the other. It seems that some members of the religious community believe that books fall into only two categories - Christian or anti-Christian/Satanic/Dangerously Magical. The problem is, as with so many things in life, things are never that black and white. Many many books are not written with any pro- or anti-Christian agenda at all. (This is probably not a newsflash.)

In some ways, critiquing Harry Potter through a Christian lens is kind of like critiquing Islamic writings through a Christian lens - the rules and the values are not the same. The rules of the secular world and secular writing are not the same. J.K. Rowling never said, "Look, I wrote these cool books, with these kids that everyone should be like!" Because really, what kid wants to read a book about perfect children? No one. Abanes complains that the problem is not so much the misbehaving children but the adults who do not properly punish bad behavior. Well, perhaps. But one of the reasons so many kids like the books is that in many ways they are a magically tweaked version of our real world. It's relatable, with overarching themes that promote a better world.

Perhaps it is surprising that the most balanced (and I think effective) analysis of the books came from a monk - a legitimate Benedictine monk who lives in Wales. Yet he understands better than any other author I read that there is something in between on the continuum of Christian/non-Christian literature - and that the in between is sometimes not even on the continuum at all.

It's nice to gain a little perspective.

Know/Feel

Chuck Klosterman wrote in his essay "Through a Glass, Blindly," (found in his book, Eating the Dinosaur) that "Observing someone without context amplifies the experience. The more we know, the less we are able to feel." The rest of the essay continues to argue this point with examples relating to voyeurism such as watching people who live in the apartments across the street from you to how a movie once watched can never have the same impact a second time.

His argument is logical, I get it. Who doesn't wish they could rewatch their favorite movie for the first time, not knowing what's going to happen next? How often do I wish I could reread the Harry Potter series with fresh eyes, not knowing everything that's coming in the next book, or chapter, or page, or sometimes sentence?

But I disagree with his assertion. Sometimes having no context means having little meaning. Now, my design teacher freshman year proved to us that our minds will create stories and context with as little as three chairs in a room. His goal in the exercise was to prove that we don't actually need actors emoting on a stage; my classmates and I were all perfectly capable of creating situations in which we felt sympathy with the chair that was being abandoned by the other chairs, or afraid for the two chairs that were being attacked by the third, or concerned for ourselves being cornered by the chairs. But I still think that part of what makes ending images of so many books and movies and plays so impactful is an understanding of how they relate to earlier themes and images of the story.

When I reread the Potter books now, having already read each of them more times than I can count, there is less suspense. There is less mystery. I know that Mad Eye Moody isn't really Mad Eye Moody, and that Sirius Black is a good guy, and that Slughorn told Voldemort about horcruxes. But knowing the whole story, from beginning of book one to end of book seven gives me insight into plenty of things I must have missed before, like mentioning Sirius Black right in chapter one of book one. Certain moments, like Neville standing up to Harry, Ron, and Hermione, mean more, because I can see it as the start of his friendship with him and his growth into a brave and successful student and friend. This summer as I read the books I ran across moments that are secretly important later and mini explosions in my stomach would erupt - LOOK! SHE TELLS US RIGHT HERE, BUT WE WON'T KNOW UNTIL BOOK FIVE! SHE IS SUCH A GENIUS! I couldn't know when I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and heard Hagrid tell Dumbledore about Sirius' bike that Sirius Black would be the pivotal, title character of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

I'm trying to figure out how to conduct an experiment in which an audience watches a scene without context and then with context and figure out which has more emotional impact. This is not about intellect, this is about our capacity to feel. Don't we feel even when things we expect happen? This is a very young work in progress.

Trapped in a Tree Trunk

A lot of things are changing. I'm apprehensive about this semester, because I can see it being so different from my entire last year at Playwrights. I will not be spending any time with the two people with whom I spent 90% of last year. This is confusing and a little depressing. Sure, it's time to "make new friends!" but I didn't really attempt to do that all summer; I just sat around the house.

I keep reminding myself to have faith. And I do. I will continue to survive, and I still want to get back to PHTS more than anything, even though I am afraid of the completely unfamiliar and uncomfortable silences that I know will accompany the familiar heartwarming feelings of being back where I belong.

I wonder about mistakes. I hope everything is okay.

My soul seems split, over many things, between "OHMYGOD AWESOME!" and "ugh why i hate everything." I'm not really sure what to do with that, except let it exist and wait for it to wash away.

It's kind of silly how when someone is already hundreds of miles away, going hundreds more miles away doesn't really affect things much. But somehow, it does.

A Nomadic Existance

For the last ten days I've been on the road with my family journeying from Chicago to
various points in a generally north-easterly direction. I haven't slept in the same place for more than two nights in a row since sometime in mid-July. My computer stayed home on this trip, so I haven't been posting even though I've been writing a lot in my head. I'll be home for a night tomorrow and then I'm off again for dive days to a UU conference, so I'll basically still be out of touch. It's been sort of a nice change, I guess, not being glued to the computer, but I've also been lonely and wishing for more contact with my friends.

I'm typing this on my iPod, which is much less satisfying and simultaneously more difficult than typing on a computer, so I'll leave my "I'm alive" check-in here for the night. I am grateful I at least live in a suburb of Chicago and not Pittsburgh.

This is Where We Dream

What is theatre? This post has been a long time coming; I've been intending to write it for probably about a month or more now, but I saw another show tonight that reawakened my need to talk about it.

Since being back in the not-quite-midwest, I've seen a number of shows at small theatres in Chicago, plus Billy Elliot (in a small-for-Broadway-but-essentially-Broadway-style house), and, tonight, My Name is Rachel Corrie at a little studio theatre at St. Louis University. The show that got me questioning what theatre is, however, was an experience called What's it Like to Be You? in which the "actor," I guess we could call him, gets some information from volunteers from the audience before the show and then just has conversations with five or six of those volunteers over the course of two hours or so. He calls them up on stage using index cards they fill out with a few of their interests or an anecdote. When I saw the show, I was entertained but perplexed and wondered what made this thing "theatre."

Of course, two years at PHTS directed my thoughts to Peter Brook and his philosophy that "I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across the empty space, someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged." By these standards, certainly people intentionally coming to watch someone entertain them, even just by having a conversation, is theatre. But then I started asking myself what I expect theatre to do. Because I watch people have conversations all the time without framing it as theatre. So what's the difference?

At the performance I attended, the last woman who came on stage spent a significant amount of time talking about how she had just recently started valuing herself as a person, even though she's in her 50's. She told us about losing her daughter to cancer at age 9, about her abusive mother and rough childhood. And I thought, theatre is about connecting people to the stories of their lives and the lives of others. That's complicated enough for me for now. Maybe tomorrow theatre will be something different.

Tonight though, it was that same thing. My Name is Rachel Corrie is the true-life story of a woman who went to Palestine and was killed by a bulldozer there in 2003. The play was constructed by piecing together her journal entries (fun fact, edited by Alan Rickman). The play is her story, the story of witnessing suffering as a privileged American. It's not trying to be political or take sides in the Israel-Palestine war. It's about opening your eyes to lives different from your own.

And I want to act, because I want to be those stories. Acting class and I haven't meshed well. But I still love acting. I still want to be an actress. I want to be a lot more than that, but that's still part of me too.

Relationships are complicated. I'm suddenly very confused.

Harry Potter and the Choice to Love

This is my first blog post in quite some time, and it's not turned out to be at all what I expected as I've thought about and mentally started composing many blogs over the last few weeks. But here it is.

Not everyone will make the same choices in life. In fact, no two people can make entirely identical choices. I'm pretty sure that's not mathematically possible. And how does one make the "right" choice? It becomes complex, because who gets to decide what is "right?" And how can that "right" hold true for all people? It can't.

I make my choices with few apologies. I chose a school in New York City, far from my family, with a non-traditional program and a non-traditional campus. NYU is not the right place for everyone. PHTS, while the only place I could possibly be, is absolutely not the right place for everyone. So what validity is there in judging another's choices?

Lately I have been thinking frequently on choice and free will in relation to destiny and calling. I believe people are called to do things. I believe in God and the Universe having bigger plans than we can see all at once. But I don't think I believe in fate - that something will happen no matter what choices a human being makes. I realized today that the difference between destiny and calling is the element of choosing to follow it. J.K. Rowling says in in Dumbledore's voice in the second Harry Potter book, and she says it again (in many ways) in the fifth, sixth, and seventh books (and probably in the rest as well, if I went back and looked again): "It is our choices, Harry, that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities." The prophecy says "neither can live while the other survives," but Harry has been called to destroy Voldemort, regardless of what the prophecy says, and he chooses to answer the calling and be the end of Voldemort - not because he heard the prophecy say so, but because he always knew he would, and he must.

As I think I have said before, I am called to love. Like Harry, love is my strength, my greatest weapon against the demons in my own head and against all those who underestimate it, though it is perhaps the underestimation of love that can make it so painful to those who feel it so strongly. I was eight years old the first time I read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Dumbledore spoke those wizened words and only thirteen when I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and learned of the prophecy, but here I sit, twenty years old, and more impacted now by the children's story than I think I was when I first read it.

I've read the whole series - particularly the first three books - more times than I can count. I grew up with these kids. Harry was born in Rowling's brain the same year I was born. The first movie, in which the kids were eleven, was released when I was eleven, and the final book, to which I now find such a connection, arrived when I was seventeen, like Harry, Ron, and Hermione. I can remember very little time when I wasn't obsessed with Harry Potter, even before the movies, even before the books were popular in America. My childhood seemed to end when I finished The Deathly Hallows for the first time. But there is always something new to be discovered within Rowling's pages, lessons to be learned, and so I try. I choose, as Harry does, to try and to learn and to love.

And I Have Found What I'm Looking For

It's been over two weeks since my last post, but I have been a busy lady. I have spent a lot of time helping a friend with her photography business (I'm sort of the administrator now), but most of my time has been spent poring over plays voraciously trying to decide what to direct in the fall at Playwrights. My proposals aren't due until July 1st, but my local library is closing for 2 weeks after tomorrow, making it much more difficult to access excessive amounts of dramatic literature. For weeks now my desk has been crowded with numerous stacks of plays, collections of Greek works, skinny modern dramas or pairs of Pinter plays, huge, hardcover copies of the collected works of Shaffer, Wilder, and Williams, and a deteriorating copy of "The Noh Drama" which looks like it hasn't been off the shelf in decades.

I wasn't necessarily planning on making my decisions before my library closed, but I figured it would be useful to already have a substantial list of potential by then. Tonight, however, I think I finally struck the play I wanted. It's a little Tennessee Williams play, at times humorous, at times lyrical, fiery and human. I'm really excited about it, and I haven't really felt that way about other plays I've read. There's a couple I got some ideas for as I was reading that I liked and will probably end up proposing as my second and third choices. I've come a long way from my first weeks of reading solely Greek works to yesterday when I read 10 Thornton Wilder plays after several days of skimming morality plays, Gertrude Stein, Harold Pinter, and countless others.

I'm very much looking forward to a break from the work (though I took one for a few days because my brain was starting to hate everything it read) - I've been sharing my leisure reading time with speed dating playwrights, but I'm ready to dive into Harry Potter again. It's been a year and a half since my last series read-through, and as my books live at home during the school year, I've got to get through them this summer before the first half of 7 comes out in film form in November. (5 months from tomorrow!) Also, Augustine and I have been on a break for far too long. He and I have some catching up to do.

Chicagoland experienced one hell of a storm today. It's been raining at some point of almost every day for the last 3 or so weeks, leaving it humid and gross outside after 9 am regardless of the temperature. Now, as it's getting dark, the skies have cleared a little and it looks magical outside.

There will be need soon for a post about ideal/theoretical love vs. living love and how that has suddenly explained to me, at 20, why Harry Potter has mattered to me so much over the last 12 years. I'm not particularly inclined to wax philosophical at the moment, however. I'm just going to shake hands with Mr. Williams and then catch up with an old friend with a scar on his forehead.

Compassion

I've been intending to read The Unbearable Lightness of Being for about a week now. It's been sitting on my desk; I kept picking it up, reading the first paragraph, and getting distracted. Tonight, however, I took a break from reading Greeks and Noh drama and quirky little plays by Percival Wilde to refresh myself with a novel. What I found in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, however, was much more than what I expected.

Now, as you could probably guess, I'm not much of a frivolous reader. (I'm not much of a frivolous anything. It's a little bit of a problem, actually.) Even the things I read for fun tend to be several hundred pages of intellectual drama, cultural analysis or something. So I wasn't expecting this to be fluff. But far beyond non-fluff, I'm finding (in the first 35 pages that I've read thus far) compelling philosophical debates that (of course, because this is how life works) tie in to a lot of what I've been thinking about and exploring lately. One I'm interested in but going to discuss later is "Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for a shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman)." So chew on that with me, and I'll get back to you with more thoughts on it soon.

The other concept I'm grappling with right now is this:

For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

I learned (thanks, book!) that compassion, in Latin-based languages comes from a combination of the words "with" and "suffering," but in non-Latin-based languages it comes from "with" and "feeling," giving it a far greater range of meaning and subtracting the negative connotation of the emotion. And I've been thinking a lot lately about not knowing how to help people I want to help, about not knowing how to do more when I feel like there is more to be done. There is always more to be done, and it is terrible to see a need and not know how to fulfill it. I have thought for a long time that one of the most devastating things in the world is when two people who love each other can't figure out how to love each other. I've seen it happen over and over in my life. I'm starting to learn how to work it out for myself, but that doesn't solve the reciprocal problem, and I don't know how to be a part of that solution yet, other than to keep doing what I'm doing. That's a start, I guess.

The premise of The Unbearable Lightness of Being seems to be that it seems easy to be without weight and happy and full of light in the perhaps only life that we have, but in fact if our actions have no weight because this is it and then it's over, what is the point? This is counteracted with the theory that all moments are continually recurring to some recurring result, so that as they keep happening the amass a weight, a consequence.

As I seem to think about everything, I wonder why do something if it doesn't matter? A teacher of mine tells his students that you have to decide that your work matters, because no one will do that for you. And once you decide that it matters, it does. I think people have to decide that their lives matter. This year when I was severely depressed, I realized I couldn't go anywhere, because I was working on 3 shows and involved in half a dozen group projects in school that would all get kind of screwed if I suddenly disappeared. My life may have felt like crap, but it was worth something to someone, and worth something to me, and I had a purpose.

My obsession with purpose and value and worth (and my "Why bother being in a relationship if you don't believe it's not the love of your life?" question) is part of what causes my constant battle with the concept of summer, at least in the last three years. Before the summer of 2008, I was in a show every summer and teaching at a summer arts camp and possibly taking dance lessons. All those things got interrupted before or by college, and I've had a hard time finding a summer job these last few years and thus often feel directionless in the summer. Granted, I have plenty of work to do, NYU Playwrights always manages to find assignments that should be done during break. But in this stage of the game, that work is only serving me, and I need it to be more than that. That's why my acting suffered freshman year in place of my directing scene, which held me accountable to other people. It's partially why my COW suffered sophomore year in place of a million things that involved other people. But eventually this project will involve other people, and regardless, it's what I have to do to have anything to do third year. It's just hard right now, when it's just me in a room with a stack of books two feet high spanning 3000 years and 3 continents. The blessing and curse of drama is its breadth. And the only constraint I've been given - time length - is the one that's driving me up a wall.

I want to make art. I don't feel like I've made much art in a while. Second year seems to be, for a lot of people, about making a lot of disposable art. There's no time to get attached to things. But I try to treat classroom projects like work I would make in real life and making that much work that fast that disappears that quickly is exhausting. My directing project is something I'll have with me for a while. I think it will be really good for me, the way that Hedwig was my outlet last semester when I didn't know where else to turn to get out of my head. Right now though, I don't feel like an artist. I feel like a weird kid in a strange room making jokes about Aristophanes that no one would find funny. I saw Billy Elliot yesterday and was hit over the head with how much I miss dance. I love performing and somehow being in theatre school seems to have taken that away from me a bit. I'm not concerned about my choice to go "directing track" at Playwrights. I'm still really proud of my decision and the way I've articulated who I want to be as an artist for myself. But art school is weird. Grades are a bizarre concept, and we're doing what we're going to do in life, sort of maybe, and it's all just an experiment, but such is life.

This blog has wandered a lot. Clearly I have too much time in my own brain. Dare I say it, I think I'd take a job at Starbucks over sitting at home most of the time.

My friends don't live here anymore. But that's a story for another day.

Transcending

I started writing a poem today in my head and thinking about all the love poems and poems about love that I've written over the years to and about various people. For a moment, I felt bad that some of the poems I have written could apply to more than the person for whom they were originally intended. But then a thought that I think I have known for a while is true but which had never articulated itself in this way came to me: Love transcends people.

Once when Joel and I were having an argument and I was explaining to him how love and our relationship were so important to me. He asked me if our relationship was not about him, and I explained that it was about him, that it was through him that I had learned and was continuing to learn so much about love, relationships, and sharing that with the world. I told him it was about him and it was bigger than him, because - and this part I'm adding now - love is bigger than people, it's God's work through people. I'm still not sure he understands what I believe that to mean. Love is a gift; it's the greatest gift we are given. It's what makes people matter and thus life worth living.

Thankfully, I am filled with more love than ever before in my life, for more and more people, regardless of their feelings in return. I'm watching that love manifest itself in many different ways, ways I never knew it could. It's beautiful and I'm grateful for it every day.

I'm watching Julie and Julia and thinking about loving things like cooking. Julia gave a lot of people - Americans, mostly, I suppose - the gift of French food, because she loved it, as many people love food. Actually, I discovered last summer that when I have the time, I actually love cooking. But most of my friends and I love theatre. And our acts of creation are acts of love, the magic that happens when a group of people commits to making something that didn't exist before, because they love it and (hopefully) believe in each other and want to give their gift to others.

I miss my friends and I miss New York, but I feel so damn lucky to live the life I live and to be learning what I'm learning. I'm grateful that I can enjoy washing the kitchen floor of all things. I'm grateful that even though my best friend is far away and will be going farther, she and I keep in constant contact and teach each other new things every day. I'm grateful that I can love but give myself space when I need it. And if you're reading this, know that I love you.

In Praise of the Simple

Today I washed the kitchen floor. No seriously.

It's Sunday, but I didn't go to church this morning. While I had a good time at church last week, I have discovered that my home church, at least in the summer, isn't usually the kind of worshipful place I'm looking for right now. So this morning, since none of my family wanted to go, I stayed home. After some tense time with my mom (who for some reason was deciding to be annoyed that my dad and I didn't get up until around 9), I started doing some chores to hopefully lighten the mood. After some basic cleaning and a dismal attempt at mopping the floor, things got down and dirty.

Normally we only mop the floors with our Clorox mop, one of those ones where you put the pad on the bottom like a swiffer. Well, really, that thing is useless for cleaning any floor with any sort of texture, and the flooring we chose to put down in our kitchen when we remodeled it 8 years ago unfortunately seems to look kind of dirty no matter how well you clean it because it has so many little grooves and the tile itself is several shades of white and gray and light blue. So today I decided to really clean the floor. I made a water and bleach solution, got a scrub brush, and got down on my hands and knees and did some good old-fashioned cleaning. It took about an hour to get the whole floor done with this more thorough method.

About halfway through, though, I started thinking about servitude and a conversation Colleen and I recently had about being on earth as servants to God. I didn't used to believe that, but I think I'm starting to now. And as I was staring at the floor, scrubbing away, I was honestly filled with joy that I could be doing this, to better the home I've been given to live in. This also fell into place with a fight my mom and I had a few days ago in which she pointed out that I didn't seem very appreciative of all the help she and my grandmother provided in getting me packed up and out of my dorm in a timely manner. I realized that while I had been extremely appreciative those couple days, it really had fallen off of my radar pretty quickly afterwards. So I was glad to be slowly repaying my mom for all her help by doing some simple chores around the house.

I'm not trying to prove myself to be some golden child of redemption. Really. I'm just learning to appreciate the smaller - and sometimes dirtier - things in life. On that note, I think there's a bathtub that could use some bleach, too.

Absence

I have become slightly overwhelmed in the last 24 hours by how much I miss my friends, New York, and Playwrights. I almost cannot comprehend it. It really really hit me yesterday what a profound absence there is in my life right now.

As I have probably said, perhaps numerous times, to anyone who is likely to be reading this, I am terrible at saying goodbye and leaving. I always have been. From the time I was little and we would go visit my grandparents, I would cry - hysterically - every time we left, probably up until I was in junior high. Granted, my grandparents didn't live ten minutes away; they live 100's of miles away and we only saw them a few times a year, but still, my brother never cried, and I don't think it's particularly normal for a ten-year-old to cry when her grandma leaves after visiting for a week. Well, as the years have gone by, I've gotten better at leaving, and certainly at not crying (Playwrights strongly excepted). Still, I feel a pang any time I leave a place I'm attached to when I know I won't be back for a while, including my house even when I'm on my way back to New York.

Leaving this year was harder than ever, because I've formed more friendships and more meaningful relationships than I've probably ever had in my life. And, simultaneously, I have continuously fewer and fewer friends back home as people move, or stay at school or fall out of touch. My last six days in New York I hardly slept at all because I was staying out every night spending as much time with friends as possible. I didn't want to sleep through anything when I knew I could sleep later in the week (and then I did sleep, more in the last two weeks than pretty much ever in my life). I actually only felt a little sad as we drove out of Chinatown on that Tuesday night after I saw Medea. Most of the sadness had come in waves over the last couple weeks, as I sat in final classes and appreciated the conversations I had there that just didn't seem to happen elsewhere, or the spontaneous genius/hilarious things that Playwrights people say when you least expect it. Though you should always expect it.

The Thursday night before I left, after the opening of Gemma's show and after I got food with my mom and grandma, I spontaneously decided to go to a housewarming party of sorts at my friends' apartment on the Lower East Side. After almost getting severely lost in Chinatown (I nearly ended up on the Manhattan Bridge), I arrived, sometime around 12:30 I think. I had a great, chill time with a bunch of dear friends and could not have been happier to be on a bed squashed between the two residents of the apartment. Much merriness ensued until around 2 or so when a "vaguely hispanic" (Will's words, not mine) woman came and was incredibly antagonistic towards Will who handled it really well before shutting the door in her face and then worrying that the police were coming. Anyway, just before this, I had settled into a conversation with Matt, a yellow group kid and really the only one I didn't know very well, which was the instigation of our conversation. We decided to keep talking and ventured out to the mysterious LES subway in the middle of the night, slightly buzzed and incredibly sleep deprived, and made it back to his dorm where we walked in on his roommate and some girl. So we went to the on campus Starbucks; bless it for being open 24 hours during finals time. Then we sat, and talked, for another four-plus hours until it was fully light out. We talked about school, New York, Playwrights, coffee, and Harry Potter. And finally, when we decided we should probably go to bed since people were getting up, I walked him back to his dorm on the west side of the Park and then hopped a subway and a bus home to settle into bed around 7:30 for about two hours sleep.

The point of this story is simply that these amazing things happen with Playwrights kids, because we just get it. There's something about us that seems to allow most of us to connect to each other really quickly and deeply. Matt and I keep in touch constantly now (and bond over severe Starbucks deprivation, since we actually have to pay for it back home). The majority of Playwrights people have got this thing - I don't think you can articulate what exactly it is; it's kind of magic in that way; but it's something that gives us a spark. Or rather, we had some spark that brought us to this place where crazy, magical things happen and art is born. And I have seen that birthing a theatre piece can create as strong a bond as anything else. I have never had a bond with anyone like I have with my best friend, and I wouldn't trade that for anything at all in the world. When I don't know or understand anything else, and when I hate pretty much everything (which is rare, nowadays, but still.) I know that she loves me and that she and I will truly always be there for each other, and that means the world to me. Truly.

On a separate but related note, there shall soon be a blog post in which I argue with myself about whether it is noble or foolish to continue to love someone who does not return the blessing.

Air

I have not been home for two weeks yet. Well, actually, I suppose tomorrow marks day 14 out of the city. In any case, I am fiending for whatever Playwrights laces their water with that makes me want to be back there already. I have just barely finished the semester of my program that my (Obie-winning!) directing teacher says is harder than grad school, and yet I can't wait to get back to my city, my friends, my work, my life, my home. I love my house and I love my family, but so much of my life is in New York now that it is harder than ever to leave it and harder than ever to be home. Sure, I've lived in this house my whole life and so I've created 18+ years of memories here, but somehow the not-quite 2 years of memories I've made at Playwrights hold just as much significance. I guess the thing about college is once you reach this stage, you're the one making choices about your own life. For the first time, I'm really deciding where to live and who my friends will be and what my environment will be like and what I'm going to do. Maybe that makes it matter more than things have in the past.

Earlier this week I had coffee with a friend from home. With the exception of the play I saw on Friday with my godparents (a couple my parents met through church), this friend is the first person outside of my family that I have spent any significant amount of time with since being home. Part of that is because I have been terrible at keeping in contact with people from home over the last two years. I didn't have all that many friends here in the first place, and I connected so much more deeply with people at Playwrights that I didn't work too hard to maintain friendships at home. Consequently, when I come home there are few people I am looking forward to seeing or who are reaching out to spend time with me. Thus I have spent the last two weeks in my house or running errands, pretty much. I read a 500 page book in four days. I've slept about 1,000 times as much in the last two weeks as I did in the entire month of April and the first week and a half of May combined. I desperately miss my Playwrights friends and the unexpected moments of beauty that happen on the streets of New York.

And on top of it all, I have essentially no "homework" this summer, for the first time in about... seven years. Of course, I have to read plays and figure out what I'm proposing to direct in the fall, but that doesn't feel so much like an assignment as reading with - in theory, this is thus far unconfirmed - a deadline. Once we directors get an e-mail from the third year directing teacher about what she wants from us, I'll feel more like I have a sense of direction. Right now I've got to figure out how to create some structure for myself because I feel like I'm floundering without one. I'm currently focusing on Greek plays, but I should probably expand my focus, and yet I don't want to be wading through piles of plays I'm not interested in. For now I think I'll stick with the Greeks and when I have more information I'll figure out how to branch out. My (hopefully) stage manager, Glen, is doing his best to be support as I get frustrated with the local library for not having what I want, when I want it. The NYPL and the Playwrights library spoil me. As I'm currently waiting for a delivery of plays from the inter-library loan system, I'm working my way through Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, which profoundly challenges my brain. I'm about 40 pages in and still not really sure what, if anything, is happening, and happily my vocabulary is being expanded, but if I can't catch on soon, there's no way I'm going to make it through the remaining 500 or so pages. Not gonna lie, rereading the Harry Potter series is in fact pretty high on my list of things to do in the next month.

--This post took a break for a couple days--

In play proposal-development land, I'm slowly wading through every Greek play I can get my hands on. Those Greeks liked to write long plays with lots of people and few speaking women. I may have to venture outward...

The weather here has been great and my mom and I have been taking my dog for long walks, which is nice because I miss walking. But we go on walks and hardly see any people. I miss the sheer quantity of people I come into contact with every day in New York. There's always a surprise, something to laugh at, some art happening in a subway or in front of the Cube, or a Mariachi band outside Soup 'n' Burger.

I had an interview for a job at the video store earlier this week. And I'm working on a Starbucks application. I need something to do this summer to keep me busy and get me in contact with some people. My hopes for the Tisch job are dwindling; it's now a week past when we were supposed to hear back from the Special Programs guy, though he doesn't seem to be a particularly expeditious sort of fellow. As far as I know, no one has heard yet. In the meantime, I've got to keep busy. I realized yesterday that I thought my depression from April was over, but I've been so apathetic the last two weeks that I think it carried into May in a quieter, more dangerous way. Time for some activity. Some fun. Some something. Whew.

An Anniversay

October 2nd, 2009
The Pillowman
Finnian's Rainbow
Hamlet
Dog Sees God
Kandinsky at the Guggenheim
The Panic Show
A Steady Rain
December 10th, 2009
Ice skating in Bryant Park
Nightmare Before Christmas
The Holiday Party
Ragtime
Not the Addam's Family
American Buffalo
Art Institute of Chicago
Museum of Science and Industry
Sledding
Balls
RENT
Brianna's Birthday
All that He Was
A Play on War
The Hidden Sky
Alice in Wonderland
Reporting Live

And pretty much every Playwrights show
Or fundraiser party ever.
And more lunches
And dinners
And sleepovers
And Spring Awakening rehearsals
And Dunkin' Donuts runs
And laughs, jokes, and hugs
Than I can count.

I haven't forgotten.

First Report from the Homestead

I'm back in the 'burbs, until further notice. I will hopefully have a job back in New York in July, through Tisch working with high school students, but for the next six weeks at least I'm back in the house I've lived in my entire life.

Today I took my dog for a walk (because that's the only way I really get to do any walking here), and as we were walking through a field by the park I always played at when I was little and always walked home through in junior high, and took a couple boyfriends to in high school, I was thinking about having been stationary for so long. Literally in the same place for 18 years of my 20-year-old life. (Oh right, I turned 20 on Monday. But more about that later.) For as long as I can remember I've always been restless. When I was in elementary school, I couldn't wait for junior high. When I was in junior high I hated it and couldn't wait for high school. I hated high school less but by halfway through freshman year I was ready for college. High school, like everything before it, bored me. Forgive me if I sound pretentious for saying so, but I only had about three or four classes in high school that really challenged me. For those classes I am thankful, but even with 8 AP classes over the course of 3 years, I still managed straight A's in high school and I don't feel that that's as big an accomplishment as it sounds.

The thing I loved most about high school - and to some extent junior high - was my conversations with teachers, and that has crossed over into college. I have always seen teachers to be incredible resources that most students leave untapped beyond the classroom. Still I have learned as much if not more from having individual conversations with them than in their classes. I still meet with a group of my teachers when I come home each year; two English teachers and a math teacher, all of whom know my family pretty well at this point because they all had my brother as well. What I frequently talked about with them, though, was my need to get out, to get away from this place - by my freshman year I had articulated that I wanted to get away to New York. We talked about frustrations with students who didn't understand how valuable the opportunity to learn is, the chance to be in school and gather all the knowledge you can before you have to go out into the dreaded "real world" and work for a living, not just learn.

My desire to learn is part of what made me such a successful and serious student, which is still true in college, almost to my detriment. I can do the work, sure, but in art school it's about more than doing the work; it's about having heart and emotion and letting things breathe. It's ironic that, for such a voice and speech junkie, I have a hard time physically breathing but also letting my work breathe. I'm too concerned about getting the work done to give myself time to think about it and just let it happen. Now that is partially a product of my personality but also the result of the structure of second year at Playwrights. There is simply too much to be done, to some extent on purpose. I'm hoping in the third year I'll learn to breathe. After our panels with our second year faculty we had to fill out an evaluation thing for NYU about what we thought the teachers said to us complete with our goals for improving on each of their critiques. I literally wrote on my overall goals for next year: have fun, laugh, and breathe. Among other things. But I'm sure that will shock/amuse/concern some NYU administrator if they actually read that paper. But I was being serious. As always.

So here I am, desperately pushing forward, but still back in my little hometown. It was a fine place to grow up, but I've always had bigger goals than these streets. I don't need a lawn if I'm close to a city park. Definitely don't need to drive on a regular basis. Prefer to walk and bump up against strangers. One of the bittersweet blessings of Joel breaking up with me and the unfortunate fact of having to sleep in my distant bed every night was the frequent walks from my dorm to class or elsewhere. I loved looking down streets I had never walked and wondering what I might find if I had the time to wander in a new direction. I truly believe there is magic in the streets of New York. Something is very special about this city I love so much.

I'm trying to enjoy my time at home. I'm enjoying sleeping, and the comfort of my bed and my own room, and not having 8 million things to do or being stressed out by homework assignments. I'm loving having my dog cuddle up in bed with me while I read a book for fun. But at the same time I miss my friends and I miss the pace of the city and the stimulation of school. And I'm stressed about finding a job for the summer, because living in my dear city requires money.

I was going to talk about my last days in New York, but I don't feel like it right now. I'm going to escape back into the pages of The Lost Symbol for now. Maybe another post will appear later to continue to distract me from unpacking my too-much-stuff in my not-yet-clean-again room.

I miss Joel, and I miss Colleen, and I miss my teachers and my friends and the booth of the Moss and walks home past midnight and 2 Bros and 16 Handles and David on the corner and Kmart and rooftops and friends' apartments and drunken subway rides. And I'm carrying around a little sadness, a little hole in my heart for those things. And I'm breathing.