Chance > Change

There must be many explanations...wrtings everywhere...explaining why we adopted the same colors for our country's flag as the colors of the nation we desparately fought to be free of...Mother England...and i should probably Google and satisfy my own curiosity: why are the United States of America's colors these particular ones: red...white and blue?

Red for the blood shed to gain our independence? White for its purity of purpose? Blue for the sky? What? I know not why we celebrate these colors today -this 233rd July 4th Celebration of our country;'s birth..but we do: Hooray !

I am particularly celebratory today because we all have a total day off from any required work...show shows, no rehearsals, no nothin'...and the gentle summer breeezes keep the weather at a pleasant feel, the house is well stocked with foods of all sorts ...Peter's family is here to visit...much love surrounds us all...and the waters of our backyard pond gurgle gently and the morning grows older....I was up at dawn, as usual, but this time, i was not "angsting" about things that needed to be done at the office...no..this time, I felt rested and happy about the day that lay ahead of me, and i was filled with a sense of contentment and ease. A good way to awaken....rested and at ease.

Dogs bark in the distance....those pond waters gurgle...birdsong laces the air...and even at rest like this,there is this need to communicate by writing. Who do i think would ever possibly read this? Who am I talking to? And who is listening? Well...i am talking to ME, and I am listening...so there is the definite recognition that i am not alone in here, inside this head of mine..this body....someone else resides here and it recognizes an "I"...it speaks to "me"..and I speak back to "it"...so, even though it seems I am out here on the brick patio alone with the gurgling waters, I am not...a certain cognizant spirit resides within me and I suppose that is my "Soul"? ANYWAY....

THe reason I'm asking is because I juist had anotehr run-in with that busybody "Evalyn Baron" who now and again believes it is all for nought...that nothing truly matters...no one really cares and no one is really listening to anyone else for any reason...so all this manufacturing of meaning we do, this invention of purposes simply infinite formations of games we all play to pass the time...and acknowledgin this is so very restful. It may sound nihilistic, but no....it's not. It's a recognition of what's so in the "real" world...we do invent things...we invent it all..and we name it, and we give it meaning, and we purpose it into importance.....and we all do it, ...rather like the MATIRX notion: it's a world we all agree on, and live in together...and this is how we all get along. We invent all the rules as well....the rules of how one gains power...the rules of love...the rules of agreement as to what is "important" enough to cause growth or pain or illness or adoration...we invent it...and as with all things invented or manufactured: it all changes with the fashion of the times.

So RED, WHITE and BLUE? WHy not??? It may as well be PINK, GREEN , and TURQUOISE??? Or salute a flag of BLACK< BROWN and GREY? and call it patriotic? We imbue even color - especially color - with meaning and emotion....Werner Ehrhardt of the famed EST Training used to say we are :meaning Machines"...we invient it all..we manufacture it all.

Why does this re-realization give me such comfort today? Even asking that question begs for meaning? It does because it does...it relieves me of having to care too destructively about any one thing in life...even though of course I do care pretty much overwhelmingly about everything on a daily basis...so today? I AM RELAXING FROM CARING!

I will love...but I will not care...pure love.Careless love.

And today , I do love the notion of this country of ours....this idea that mankind has the right to be free of oppression...free of harm from others..which of course is a ludicrous notion since no two things can ever exist without one oppressing another.

I need to eat breakfast with the family...more on this sooon, I hope...

love to all on this 4th of July!

When I first began coming into contact with high school kids down here in the SW Virginia, either those who came to be in certain shows at our theatre or others who ventured out on their own and did projects I happened to see, it surprised me that there were any kids at all in this part of the country who not only loved theatre, but were knowledgeable about it.

It's not the popular thing down here in the South (nor was it when I was a kid growing up in Atlanta) to love theatre, the arts or anything else that does not conform to the majority tastes: football and car racing. No judgement in that statement, just an observation of the truth as i see it: high school football teams get more support down here in the South than drama clubs or school theatrical productions. OF COURSE, there are many wonderful people in this region who adore both: sports and the arts...and there are an even more surprisingly large number of people who love arts more than sports...but it took me a while to realize that is true.

So, when I began to discover the kids who truly love theatre in this community, i was sufficiently humbled, as I realized: there are kids EVERYWHERE who love theatre ...not just in urban regions on both Coasts...not only do they love it, they also know about it, as the Internet has provided quick and thorough access to all things theatrical to any and all who want to know about them.

THen, some of the kids who I began to know here kept in touch with me and came to see me in NYC, and have gone on to study and enter theatrical professions everywhere...so far, they have stayed in the urban centers they went to school in, but who's to say they won't come back to this region and enrich it with all they've learned??

So, when I was asked to be Director of Outreach at this great theatre, it opened the doors for me to concentrate on growing our education and community class programs in ways that would (hopefully) benefit both our community and our theatre. And as we end our Week #1 of 2009 Summer Classes and Workshops, it's pretty terrific to see how many great kids have given so much back to the people who came to watch their final week's work. Yesterday's "Music Man" 26-kid presentation (portions and songs from that swell show...my favorite show, really)...thrilled all 80-some people who came to see it! Proud parents and grandparents and sisters and brothers and cousins, and friends...

Thanks to the Coomes Recreation Center who gave us all the extra space we needed to make the Intensive work well! Five days, five hours each day, and the kids (led by the wondrous David Alford) learned so much material and did it amazingly well, considering all the limitations of time and experience,etc...AMAZING!

Then there was Ellie Mosser's K-2nd Grade PLAYING ON THE STAGE CLass...their final presentation: "THe Mystery of the Missing Macaroni", compete with costumes they made and characters they invented on their own! Lovely!

We have two more weeks of classes planned and they are totally sold out! So more tales and adventures to come...but I simply had to write something about the generous and large, energetic spirit of theatre that is alive and well everywhere in this part of the world!

So terrific.

After a rigorous WIZARD OF OZ rehearsal time filling all of last week, the play that I'm in this summer is back into rehearsal today, for a good chunk of hours. Good idea, since we begin tech rehearsals as soon as OZ finishes theirs this week, and then we open too, and our Summer Rep will be off and running!

South Korea is exploding nuclear bombs in testing and our world is another step closer to annihilating itself in a thorough and sad fashion.
Makes me so mad, I want to slap Korea across its national face! Like the immature and stupid little child of a nation that it is, behaving like the brat that feels left out....how sad for us all. Ah well, such is the temporary nature of our very existence...

A gray day here....after several restful days of the Memorial Day Holiday, and I am ready for what is scheduled by Fate to come our way. The Summer season here promises to sell well, as OZ will be popular with families and SHOWTIME AT 1ST BAPTIST will sell well to church- going groups. So, after the rather low attended Spring season, we deserve good full houses. Hard to believe that we are already halfway through 2009.

Soon our SUmmer Classes and Workshops will be underway (they start the week of June 15th), and they promise to be very interesting, especially since it's an unusually busy schedule, with more classes than usual, and more different sorts of classes, such as two Theatrical Make-Up and Wig Workshops taught by our generous Wig master Ryan Fischer....and also a Musical THeatre Intensive Workshop, where the kids will work for 5 hours a day for 5 days! Taught by David Alford...this is a new sort of "class" here. I am excited to see how it goes.
All of it.

ANd I want to start a new section of the Adult Acting Class as well....at the same time continuing the class that just ended its first session....there seems to be a need and a demand.

Need and demand are what Outreach seems to be made of, and I have learned a lot about community in this job.

I'm grateful for that.

And why in hell did they name a TV show after that Emerald CIty? Particularly a TV show about a prison? Oh well, that's a topic for another blog entry, especially since I have never seen that particular cable show and really should watch it before presuming to write about it.

BUT back to the title point: what is it about THE WIZARD OF OZ that has attracted generations of us to fall under its story-telling spell? Of course, my generation and the one just before it, were the ones that grew up watching the famous movie of it in theaters, then in our homes every single year , year after year...I vividly remember being terrified and angry at that Witch with green skin...and feeling the absolute desolation that Dorothy was feeling when Miss Gulch took Toto away from her to do only-GOd-knew-what to the poor pup....my little girl brain teemed with horrifying possibilities. Year after year after year, since it was an annual television staple.

And Judy Garland was as iconic a Dorothy as anybody could ever want: those liquid brown eyes, sadder than the deepest little girl sorrow, brimming with silver tears, and her lush red lips proclaiming her adolescent innocence even as they invited countless gay men to imitate them in years to come...Judy Garland suffered for our sins and was not afraid to show the pain of it, so naturally, when Frank Baum's myth met that of the silver screen's stunted darling, yet another legend was born, and for me , that partially accounts for OZ's sticky appeal: it was sung to the heavens by a girl who knew how to act the hell out of a pretty and yearning song!

But as I sat and watched our theater's final run-through in the Big Rehearsal Hall last evening, just before it launches into what promises to be a most challenging tech week before the show opens on May 29th, they had me the minute Toto ran onstage into Dorothy's arms in the first seconds of the Overture! My tears began to flow! Much the same way they did when I went to Disney World at age 50 and saw those iconic creatures walking around for the first time within my reach! I saw them, floodgates of childhood slid open without a creak, and I was back in the living room at 2180 Edison Avenue, watching Sunday night television and Daddy was cooking his spaghetti sauce in the kitchen. Sometimes one is 8 years old so quickly.

And last night, when Trish M. came wriggling on as the green-faced witchy one, and i heard those time etched lines again, I felt that same stomach churning I used to feel watching Margaret Hamilton stick her sharp nose into the air and sniff for Dorothy.....

Is it because WOZ tells us that our need for home is all that finally matters , or should matter? And since we all have homes to begin with, no matter how temporary or shabby, HOME is something we all need to know is there to remind us we truly exist?

Or does the OZ story speak more directly to our human ability to create dreams out of our realities: the common figures in our everyday lives become the saviors in our dreams. That tall man we know as Father becomes the flawed Wizard who we nonetheless love...our brother becomes our Tin Man who finally has the heart he was never really without all along...our Mom becomes the very best of Good Witches....and our cousins help us along the road, no matter if they are made of straw or not....and that meek person inside us, really does have the courage of a lion after all, when the chips are down.

Really, there is nothing quite as revealing as a final run-through in a bare and end-of-week hall, with everyone endlessly tired and overworked and an enormous mountain to climb looms in front of them: no sets, no lights, no costumes, except for the awkward and necessary pieces actors need to rehearse in....but here we all sat, watching our myths dance before our eyes, and combined with the well-worn and practical talents of this good acting company, so used to working together, OZ's story came thoroughly alive, even if the local Toto did wander off on the wrong side of the stage every now and again...the combination of clever minds our company is filled with, legendary music and the sheer fizz of actors doing what they love, no matter how tired they are, resulted in a thoroughly optimistic feeling within me and I was comfortable accepting the fact that one never really does need to grow up after all: we can all stay green forever!

Grey-sky Sunday,and this is not a bad thing, since my main goal (besides mountains of laundry to do) is memorization of SHOWTIME lines and if the sun was shining as it was yesterday, it would be too too tempting to go into the garden and never come out. So, gray ? Yay.

While the rest of my world sleeps (is there any thing so comforting as two warm and fuzzy pups snuggled next to you on a comfortable leather sofa? Sleeping the sleep of the innocent creatures of the world? Full bird feeder right out the window here, and the Avian Cafe is open for breakfast this somber morn, though I have noticed birds seem to lose their appetites when it's about to rain. Wonder why that is.

ANyway: I need to write about my Adult Acting Class that had its last session this past Thursday night at the luxurious and comfortable home of one the class members. What a great evening. ANd what a great class it was.

Actually, it still is, as we have all agreed that it must continue in one form or another, since everyone in the class had such a great time. We have been meeting every Monday and Thursday evening for 5 weeks now, and for some in the class, it has been an important and unique chance to get in touch with very creative needs within themselves.

This Adult Acting Class is the first of its kind given at this theatre, and when I began to discuss it with various members of the community, it immediately seemed a great idea: people got very very enthused and my list to inform-in-case-we-started-a-class began to grow.

When i first put out an ad inviting people to join, my phone began to ring right away, and soon I had my 6 men and 6 women I wanted to have (plus two "auditors who have helped with all class needs, and who in the process got to act and work as well).

Well, honestly, I had no idea how deeply involving this class would soon be for everyone....including me. I now know that everyone thought it would be more of a social thing, where I would talk about acting and we would dabble in the work. But instead, this first Adult Class was, from its first session, just as I had intended it to be: a real instructive acting class, opening its members to the possibilities within themselves, and using acting techniques to do that opening. I taught it as if they were professionals wanting to become better at what they did...and this caught them all in quick and personal ways: they knew, from the start , that the more they put into it, the more they would get out of it. And they never stopped working hard on all the scenes, monologs,etc i gave them.

The results were amazing for us all to watch. Plus, ti put them to work in an art form they all clearly had wanted to be part of for a long time. This class did truly seem to contribute to their lives, and that is why they all seem to want to continue it. I am glad for this.

I'd love to talk about individuals in the class and brag about how their work went deeper and deeper into their abilities, thrilling us all in the process. But I am respectful of the pubic blogging form, and of their privacies as well. I learned long ago not to mention students' names in my blog. Suffice it to say: this first Adult Class for aspiring actors worked well, and it will continue.....with joy...I may need to start another section of it as well. Lots of people were not able to get into this first one.

I am grateful for the chance to have gotten to know these unique 14 people better. And they have all been so generous in their feedback and gratitude and lovely gifts as well! One dear man brought me the most luscious bouquet of peonies from his family garden...gorgeous..another dear woman gave me a pewter box with my name engraved on the top....another wonderful man wrote a letter to the local paper praising the class for how it served the community...etc.etc. And so it has been: this class seemed to be an idea whose time had come, and as a result, it served well those who were part of it.

I know it served me wonderfully, and for that I am, as ever, grateful for all I learned from it.

More about it soon.

Labels: theater and all that

"...I'm goin' away with my friends..."...that plaintive old song from a movie that starred a not-yet-tired Liza Minelli...something with 'Cuckoo" in the title...not "One Flew Over..."...not "Time of the..."...Anyway, one of the very best things about our time here right now: Saturday mornings...because both peter and I chose not to be a part of the full-time acting company on our return here (the actors - either extremely fortunate or dismally over-worked, depending on how you look at it, and what stage you are at in your acting career)..the actors here work all the time. One day off a week, and the rest either on stage or in one of our several rehearsal halls...the work never stops, as in a year, some 19 or so shows are produced for the paying public...so this audience (large for some shows, smaller for others) requires product, and our actors are the product! So, they have one day off a week to get all life things done in, and that day is often spent memorizing lines...truly , for the motivated and interested actor, there is no better artistic life than the one for actors here.

That being said, as I am in a different place now in my life, a place where I want more time to experience life itself, not a life backstage and in dressing rooms getting ready to go on stage, it is best for me and for Peter as well tht we not be members of this wonderful acting company, but rather have the jobs we do have in the Administrative side of things, with an occasional visit to the artistic side of things....(I'm in rehearsal now f or one of our summer shows, and I am enjoying it very much...audiences will love this one...).

So, Peter and I have had some actual married couple time with each other and it's been so nice...having leisurely dinners together at nice restaurants around the area, going to movies where we can be entertained instead of entertaining others...(last night we saw the fast-paced ANGELS AND DEMONS, with a delicious sushi dinner beforehand) andLife take son a different shape when there is more time to call one's own.

I do not begrudge all the years I spent in pursuit of my acting career...how could I? Those years gave me everything , made me everything I am today, and i was fortunate to have such good times. But now, there are oceans to explore, either real or figurative...and time to wander through...I want this time, and I want it with Peter. And RR has been gracious enough to give us both that time. I am filled with gratitude for that.

Now, I have come to look forward to my Saturday mornings, after a full week either in my office or in rehearsal and my office...now, Saturdays mean more to me than 2-performances and an unsatisfying dinner break...Now, come Saturday mornings, I can go away with my friends, if I want to...so far, being close to home and having the every-so-often luxurious pedicure at "the Martha" is all my Saturday mornings can bear! ANd I am off to have one now.

I just needed to rhapsodize about Saturday mornings a little before going to have my toes done! (where I will, what else? STUDY LINES for this little play I am in, as part-time member of this very nice acting company.)

Love to all and to all a good Saturday!