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.