Real Life

I volunteered to usher last minute at a play at The Rattlestick last night. Ushers are called an hour before curtain, and house doesn't open until half hour, so I mostly spent half an hour sitting in the theatre (because it's in a west village brownstone and there is no lobby) watching the crew/team set up. This play is the third in a trilogy and on Saturdays and Sundays they run all three in repertory, and thus have to changeover between each play. I could easily pick out the SM and ASM, the hair/make-up person, a couple crew members, actors, the house manager, and the director (who was there, I imagine, because they just opened this past week or so). It was remarkably akin to what long days at Playwrights are like during tech/performance runs. I'm not sure if it's comforting or not to know that the "real world" is not that different from what we're doing in school on a daily basis. I kept hearing things the team were saying in passing, and kind of sheepishly nodding my head in a knowing way - yeah, I know changeover sucks. Yeah, I know that's got to be perfectly clean and the angle's got to be just right, and we don't want to see that part of the blanket yet. So, on the one hand, I'm clearly being very well trained to deal with what making theatre off-off Broadway will be like, which is encouraging. I have the tools I need. (Classes at this point are really more reminders of our first three semesters than they are new ideas, for the most part.) On the other hand, it's a little discouraging to know I'll be dealing with the same crap out of school that I have to deal with now. There's not enough gaff tape. That light keeps getting knocked out of focus. Why are all those lights coming on instead of just that one? CHANGEOVER. Ah well. I'll take the blessing of the education and just use it to make good art the best way I can.

So then the audience came in, and then the play happened. I think I was sitting next to a critic from The New Yorker. I peeked at a few of his notes, curious what he thought since there were several moments when he seemed particularly intrigued, but also several moments when he was bored. This was an Adam Rapp play, and I know his work rather well at this point - there was a phase in my life where I read every play and novel of his I could get my hands on. (These haven't been published before.) I know his writing style, and he grew up about fifteen minutes from where I live, so he often makes references to things I know well, like towns and highways and such that I grew up with. I know there will probably be nudity, ineffectual women, sexually frustrated men, and more than likely excessive bodily fluids behaving badly. (All of the above were present in this play, as they are in almost every one of his plays.)

When it was over, I thought about what I could say to Adam about his play - he was in the audience. "Great work, Mr. Rapp, I really like your writing." Well, that is far less true now than it used to be. He needs to figure out how to deal with women in real life or stop writing them in his plays. And even though they are not all the same play, there is much about his style that is predictable.
"Well done, Mr. Rapp." Fine, but he hears that all the time, so why do I need to say it?
"Why did you write this play?" He would probably just glare at me. He's really antisocial and doesn't like talking.
"I once wrote you a letter; I've been interested in your work for a long time." Most likely would just be awkward.

I mean, if I had Adam Rapp to myself for an hour or two, I would have plenty of intelligent, in-depth questions to ask. There are all sorts of stylistic things we could talk about, or we could talk about the south suburbs of Chicago, or about the challenges of writing plays that don't change location, which he likes to do a lot. We would not talk about his brother, even though that's the reason I started reading his plays in the first place. I have questions about what he thinks about the world and the future (well, less so after the play last night). Just like big questions about life. But I had nothing of consequence to say in the moment when I could have said something. Perhaps a certain teacher of mine would be proud I no longer have to talk anytime the opportunity presents itself. Ooohhh, more growth. Lalala, school works, or something...

Home

I find it much scarier to return home than to leave it.

Birth, the Beginning of Mother Issues

Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck? For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest, With kings and counsellers of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves; Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver: Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light. There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul; Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures; Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave? Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in? 

Job 3:11-23

Words

Eskimos have a lot of words for snow.

I think if we made up a language, Playwrights kids would have a lot of words for sleep deprivation, while rest/sleep/nap etc. would all be one word. Design and collaboration would probably also have several words. There would be a word for that feeling you get when you're still up working on your (as an example) design homework at 3 am and have rehearsal for your directing scene at 8:30.

Language is a curious thing. I've been thinking a lot about Judith Butler and theories of the construction of gender and how our language has forced it into a coded binary that doesn't effectively describe our reality. What is reality beyond language? Performance beyond language? Oh wait, I wrote a sermon about this... it's religion, and it's theatre, and they're quite alike.

Embarrassment

I still can't spell embarrassment correctly on the first try. It's always missing a letter. Anyway.

Anne Bogart (I want to spell her last name with two g's so badly.) is a genius goddess.

Here I am, trying to figure out what I'm doing with my life, or even just my play (I guess they're really the same thing), and in waltzes Anne with all the answers and understandings.

When you grapple with something that is just out of your reach, you find yourself entangled in something that you haven't yet mastered.

Also,

If I adopt the attitude that the project is an adventure larger than anything I might imagine, an entity that will challenge me to find an instinctual path through it, the project will be allowed its proper magnitude.

 Oh and,

A director cannot hide from an audience because intentions are always visible, palpable... You must have a reason to do what it is you do because these reasons are felt by anyone who comes in contact with your work. It matters how you treat people, how you take responsibility in a crisis, what values you develop, your politics, what you read, how you speak and even which words you choose.

There are several more. But I shall temper myself with that for now, because I now need to figure out what I'm doing in my rehearsal for class tomorrow... Lalala can't I just do my play? (Also, can it be set in the 80's? I mean, it kind of can. And I kind of want to kind of set it in an anachronistic 80s. Yeah? Okay.)

Searching

It has something to do with leaving home and finding home somewhere else. It has something to do with getting away from the familiar, and allowing the familiar to become unfamiliar. Coming home and realizing all your high school friends are gone, that that life is gone. That your relationship to your parents has changed. That the kid you were when you left has gone through a death too. What if the ghost is the journeyor's former self? When we leave home, do we leave parts of ourselves behind?

"The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God." - Demian, Herman Hesse

That's probably relevant. It seems it always is, in my life.

"...for by acting the god, by presenting his external form, he becomes the god, the form fills with its content, and as the god he performs the acts that fulfill the divine will with all its beneficent results for the community." - The Treasures of Darkness, Thorklid Jakobsen

That also has something to do with it.

Figuring it out, a little at a time.

Immediacy

Sometimes things that are taken forgranted by my generation baffle me.

This comes to mind today particularly because of Christina Aguilerra and the Super Bowl. No one was watching the Super Bowl in my room, but thanks to Facebook, my roommate found out about Christina's national anthem flub pretty immediately. And then, thanks to youtube, before the game was even over, she was able to watch the embarrassing moment online. (As I type this post, my roommate is talking about how she can't believe it happened.)

There is no margin of error anymore. There is no room to make a mistake. What perhaps might have once been a small newspaper article that got half-read by the types who read newspapers became immediately accessible to pretty much anyone who has the internet. How do people survive the public eye? I have no idea.

An Ode to Billy Hart

Reasons We Are The Same Person:
1. My entire history at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School, excluding my color group.
2. I am a skilled gift wrapper, and like wrapping gifts.
3. I taught myself piano at a young age.
4. I love Halloween.
5. RENT was my first Broadway musical.
6. I pay for my own vacations that aren't with my family.
7. I half hate those fortunes in fortune cookies that aren't really fortunes, they're random advice.
8. I have concerns about money.
9. I love Johnny Depp movies.
10. I have wanted to be a drag queen for a long time.
11. I like boys more than girls, but I like girls too.
12. I have this one really cool impulse image that I used for a show...
13. I sleep in a ball.
14. I enjoy watching Project Runway and Tabitha's Salon Takeover
15. I LOVE the Amazing Race, and I'm going to run it in 2012.
16. I am a narcissist.
17. I really like the movie "The Little Princess."
18. I don't believe in getting sick.
19. I've been dancing for forever.
20. I'm probably a lot smarter and cooler than you.

Happy birthday, Billy. <3