The Green Room of my Mind

Sorry, this one is kind of emo.

2009-05-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

I don't understand this habit I have of INTENTIONALLY keeping people in my life who long ago should have been allowed to drift away naturally. In part, I blame the internet for convincing me that because, for example, I am facebook friends with someone or they are on my IM list, I still have a reason to talk to them. Even if you block someone on facebook, facebook still gives you the totally open option of unblocking them, which I can't see as logical.

Mostly, however, as is characteristic of me, I blame myself. Why I would want to keep some of these people in my life is beyond my comprehension. It probably has a lot to do with my constantly thinking that I am stronger than I actually am, and being so tough on myself as to expect that I can relate to a person almost immediately as if they never hurt me, or embarrassed me, or disappointed me. I end up hating them because they continually deny me and deny me again and again and again. But I let them do it. I call them immature and crazy and all manner of things ...... but really, what does that make me? Someone who frequently ends up hating herself. Which is too bad, because I am pretty awesome.

So I am making a vow to quit making it easy for people to hurt me in the same way over and over again. I will takes hints better. I will read situations better. I will walk away from anything less than naturally spectacular more quickly. If someone really wants to get my attention, it can be 20% more difficult for them. Whatever. I'm done.

Geoffrey Rush, Jeremy, and the City.

2009-05-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

I went to New York on Sunday and saw 'Exit the King' with Jeremy. Although I saw it at my lowest energy point in a 14 hour trip, I was still captivated by what it did, overall. Although there were some inconsistencies, I thought the translation (co-authored by Geoffrey Rush and the director) was wonderful and timeless, in the sense that although it felt written for a modern ear, it wasn't the kind of Terrence McNally modern that talks about danishes and car phones -- it was simply elegant and to the point, and in a pacing that we are accustomed to. It was such a fully realized world that created dramatic tension but also made larger comments situationally at the same time. There was also a real sense of design synthesis, probably because this production has been workshopped and produced and workshopped and produced a million times, here and in Australia. Susan Sarandon was a little oddly-cast and reticent to make big choices in her "normal one" mold in the middle of all the absurdity. Geoffrey Rush was frigging amazing to watch. I could watch him go through that play 2 or 3 more times. It was like his body was made of liquid, and his voice was right up there with Alan Rickman! I briefly considered stage-dooring Lauren Ambrose, but I think I may save it for Allison Janney.

Seeing Jeremy was nothing short of fabulous, despite his frequent assertions that he automatically injects any situation with a prescribed dose of nebbishness. First of all, it was amazing to realize that I had met Anne and Jeremy at Berkshire Theatre Festival not one, but TWO years earlier, and it seems like no time has passed at all, even though we barely ever see each other. It sounds corny, but I think that is what is meant by 'kindred spirits'. I had a great time walking up and down and around 9th Ave. with Jeremy, talking dramaturgy, comparing notes on our jobs, and what not. It reminded me that I can actually have a great time, and an intellectually fulfilling time, just TALKING to someone smart about theatre. I really needed that reminder, as Saturday was a tough day for me, having lost out on two directing gigs and wondering, once again, where exactly in theatre I belonged. I am starting to feel more secure now.

I am reading Jon Krakauer's 'Into the Wild'. It is beyond fascinating .... the only time I've been able to put it down in the last 24 hours has been to write this, sleep .... oh, and wait, to watch 2 hours of 'Sex and the City' episodes that I have already seen. Oh well. Everyone needs a hobby.

Holy Carp.

2009-05-09T20:10:00.000-07:00

Somehow, the Brown/Trinity MFA in directing consortium decided it would be a fabulous idea to allow prospective students to read the resumes in full of the current MFA class. I don't think I can wait 10 years to go to grad school, and I'm pretty sure no one would hire me for the 35 professional directing gigs that these people somehow weaseled their way into. Also I'm not sure if there's time to be the Artistic Assistant at Steppenwolf and become a Suzuki expert and member of SSDA and AGMA.

I have really just gotten to a point where I want to go back to school. So it's probably time to start studying up for the GREs and hoping that my midling GPA does not keep me out of anyplace worth going to.

I had a chat with myself the other day about sticking with dramaturgy, as that seems to be what fate wants me to do and what most people will pay me a decent wage to do. It also makes my brain a lot less insane and my eyes a lot less baggy ... but am I "passionate" about it? Some aspects, yes, but I haven't been a student of it for long enough to be able to know if an intense study of say, Brecht, it worth it for the sake of said intense study, or only for the purpose of improving my own small attempts at producing him.

And as for teaching ... well ... who the fuck knows if I would be any good at that? I certainly have no desire to teach "kids" under 18, and the teachers that most inspired me -- well, I can't really put them into perspective -- it was like they were my servants of learning or something, particularly in early college and high school. I didn't really care what they did outside of the classroom, as long as they facilitated a rewarding learning experience for me. Because I do like learning. So that's convenient at least, when thinking about school, right?

You Food.

2009-05-08T07:11:00.000-07:00

Apparently this has become my self-righteous food sociology blog. I know, can it get more riveting? ;)

I've already ranted enough about the orders I heard in Dunkin' Donuts this morning, so I won't repeat them here.

OK, I will.

Who can possibly drink an extra large iced coffee extra light with five sugars without barfing? It's revolting. What have we done to our stomach lining so that it can tolerate such disgusting abuse? And it's iced too, so they're in there drinking it down in record time.

Anyway.

I've also noticed something about healthy fast food chains of late. Their particular brand of marketing is really tricky; the claim upon which they hinge being that everything, EVERYTHING in their restaurant is healthy for you, so you don't have to think when eating. What a load of crap. Sure, a thirty year old male body-builder in peak physical condition probably doesn't have to think too hard when ordering, as they are right that they use only lean meats, low fat cheese, and whole wheat wraps. However, he is not trying to lose weight, only to put healthy things in his body. However, that's how they get the dieting 20 and 30-something women to slavishly consume their food day after day. These women think that everything in there will help them lose weight; they really do. I have met them. But, the nutrition facts for U-Food, which are hard to find on their website and nowhere to be seen in their stores, will clearly tell you that the Chicken Parm and Chicken Meatball marinara wraps contain upwards of 800 calories -- only about 100 fewer than a Qdoba burrito minus cheese and sour cream. Sure, it has less saturated fat, but that only induces side orders of "unfries", which, while better than fried fries, clock one's meal in at about 1100 calories. For lunch.

I mean, whatever. I have an odd shaped body and will probably never be "skinny" in the conventional sense. But why do healthy fast food chains have to go making us fatter than ever?

Thought for Food

2009-05-07T11:22:00.001-07:00

Recently, I have the developed a healthy obsession (no pun intended) with reading books on why the way we eat food now is terrible for us and the environment. I'll be the first to admit that I approach my reading with somewhat of a evangelical zeal, having lacked a religious upbringing, it's always nice to have something you believe in that (you feel) actually affects the fate of humans. I am now a convert in the truest sense; I can no longer stomach 100 calorie packs (100 chemical packs), cheetos made by other brands than 365, or anything out of a can that didn't grow on a tree. I actually understand the term "Whole Foods", and why a handful of almonds (which is one. whole. food.) is a better choice that just makes more sense than a small part of a food combined with 16-18 chemicals which twist the whole food around in order to make it taste like something else. As a result, my cravings for things bad for me have actually gone way down, which is a refreshing change. I'm still not good with portion control (at all), but I guess when you get right down to it, I'm not exactly trying to lose 20 pounds. Cake is great. Pizza, great. FOOD IS GREAT. But not the fast food kind, and not the processed kind!

As for the vegetarianism, it is coming along, slowly but surely. I haven't eaten chicken now in almost a month, but that's not the first time I've made it this far. I think it might stick this time, and I've even spoken to my parents about how I'd like their help with this, as opposed to their constant offer of a roast chicken.

It's fascinating to consider the trajectory of food culture in America. So much of what we eat has been forced on us by big business, who have worked tirelessly to convince us that we need expensive meat to be healthy, and that processed corn syrup tastes the best (because it's the cheapest to produce). I've really tried to keep an eye out for the size of my coffee, too. If it doesn't seem like they'd be seen on the street with it in Europe, I try not to drink it. This is definitely an adjustment.

Anyway, the point of this post is not to self-righteously label myself as "cured". I just urge you to take a look at books by Michael Pollan (not a vegetarian), Mark Bittinger (not a vegetarian), Peter Singer, "Fast Food Nation" and "The End of Food". I'm not saying "Change the way you eat, now' because that takes time and, like weight loss, it's something you have to find in yourself. But at least take a look at a variety of opinions on the subject -- after all, we get the opposing view shoved down our throats every day, along with pictures of unreasonably shiny sandwiches.

I don't know, I feel pretty good these days.

Blackbird, Fly

2009-03-18T07:16:00.000-07:00

I think I have found my calling in life, and that is to comment on the Globe reviews of Boston theatre. Haha. No, really. I saw Blackbird last night at Speakeasy. Here is what Louise Kennedy had to say:

*******

The first thing to tell you about "Blackbird" is that I can't tell you much about it.

SpeakEasy Stage Company, which is staging the local premiere of David Harrower's award-winning play, has asked reviewers not to reveal the various twists of the plot. Fair enough; I hate spoilers as much as the next gal. But the problem here is that "Blackbird" is not much but its twists, and specifically the one big twist that's revealed just a few minutes in. Take that away, and what you have is an older man and a younger woman talking about their illicit former relationship.

Mine may be a minority view. Clearly the many regional theaters that have staged the play, to say nothing of the London judges who gave it the 2007 Olivier Award for best new play (over "Frost/Nixon," "The Seafarer," and "Rock 'n' Roll"), have found something in it that I, frankly, just didn't see.

People have praised its poetic language, its brutal frankness, its damaged but riveting characters, and so forth. What I saw was a 100-minute play that aims to be shocking, to assault the audience with raw truths about human nature, but that instead left me feeling emotionally flat, tired, and more than a little annoyed.

Some of the annoyance, I'll grant you, was purely physical. The play takes place in the grimy, trash-strewn break room of an anonymous office building, a setting that Eric Levenson creates in dreary detail, right down - or up - to the giant ceiling panels of fluorescent light. Levenson and lighting designer Jeff Adelberg have aimed these panels directly in the face of the audience, and the lights stay glaringly on throughout the show (except for a brief, "suspenseful" blackout near the end).

No doubt this is a deliberate choice, meant perhaps to heighten our discomfort with the play and its characters. It's less clear whether an intermittent buzzing whine is also a deliberate part of Cameron Willard's sound design, but the combination is certainly as discomfiting as any playwright could desire. The question, though, is whether a dull, constant headache is really likely to sharpen anyone's appreciation of a play.

As for the play - well, as I said, I can't say much. On paper, it sort of looks like poetry, because Harrower has laid it out in short, interrupted lines with little punctuation. On the stage, however, it plays less like poetry than like an acting exercise. The two characters engage in power struggles, interrupt and embellish and contradict each other's stories, and eventually express their conflicting emotions in physical as well as verbal ways.

Bates Wilder and Marianna Bassham execute all these moves with impressive skill. You can see that they have worked very hard on mastering every tic, every hesitation, every interrupted or repeated line with painstaking accuracy. They also enact the play's climaxes and lulls with careful precision; at times they seem to be dancing as much as acting.

But.

There. Is. Nothing. There.

Sorry, I was succumbing to the faux-poetic impulse. Let me put it more directly. "Blackbird" heaves and gasps and thrusts itself into our faces, daring us to declare it repellent because of the nature of the relationship between these two characters. (Still not telling.) But it does not reveal anything essential about them, about ourselves, or about the complicated nature of love. After all the shouting and shaking and stomping have ended, we leave knowing no more than when we began.

And that's really why I can't tell you much about it: Not only because I'm not supposed to, but because there really isn't anything much to tell.

*****

Since her post, many people had commented and claimed unity with her view, stating that the play was boring and cliched, and that if they were writing it, they would have put a new spin on child molestation, etc..... (rolls eyes)

So here is what I said to Louise and to them:

******

I saw Blackbird last night and was largely unable to breathe during its duration. Not because I had never seen a play about the subject before, or even because I found the ending that shocking, but because of what David Gammons and his design team did to bring the text to such vivid life ... other than saying that their choices were "annoying". ... [note to readers here: eesh, I wouldn't have gotten away with that in the Collegian!!!!]

Rather than picking apart the text of the play as if we all have PhD's in dramaturgy, think about the theatre moments created in the production and what they did to us as audience meembers. Una's monologue, in which she describes what it felt like to be abandoned by Ray after their last night together, was, to say it inarticulately, something else. Whether you think the situation is cliche or not, many of us have been there: Disoriented, afraid of the dark, staring out a dark window, terrified that someone we love may not be coming back. I can't pretend to know what the character might have been feeling in these moments, or whether or not she maybe should have been feeling things less "stereotypical". But you know what? Get over it. Stereotype lives. Cliche lives. They are part of our lives and we have all participated in them. Every possible thing that person could have been feeling, even the vaguely cliched ones, was shown to us so well by Ms. Bassham that I felt it *viscerally*; isn't that the closest we can come to a shared experience, to pathos?

Bear with me: A few moments later in the play, during a sudden power outage. Ray has gone out to investigate and Una is left alone, in the dark, disoriented, terrified, staring a huge, strange window. What a visual representation of a phobia brought on by the traumatic memory she just shared with us? This is absolute terror; and, better yet, we are THERE with her. Isn't that theatre? Can movies do that for us? Can books? Can witness accounts?

So please, let down your guards against cliche and stereotype for one minute and consider the effect the theatre created made from the text -- or you are missing out. There's a reason this wasn't a staged reading. If you don't, you're really missing out on some major parts of the human condition that Blackbird exemplifies; the power of raw feeling and what we do because of these emotions. It's not about what someone should or would be feeling at this stage in the game. This is not a workshop. This is a production that was produced well; let's give it its due.

****

For Lack of Better Words

2009-02-23T09:32:00.000-08:00

Two poems from my poetry exchange with Terrell that reflect my life a bit:

________

At the corner of short and long: Walking on the Mass Pike Bridge

It was dusk and was tonight, and so there was a knot
along the ribbon of two roads:
I stopped to stand while walking on them.

Bruise-blue was one road, the urban rooftops rose
like blotches near the skin:
kitchen table, board game box, sighs to heave, short hair, drab kettle.
Waiting.
One breath out for when you come and two breaths out for when you want to go.
A pulsing, gritty, fullness, the underside of a hive:
here all small money can be yours
here your glory is liquid, hot and black and light:
two eyes, a face, some hands, a glass stem in the dark.
Electrifying things.
This is now, This is Now, this is you, you right, and right for just
right now. Short hair is best.
And this is where I live, why I am walking down it.

The other road, down low, two lanes, is tailored taut:
an exacting, smoothed-out overcoat.
With eyes on cars that split through lit-up dusk, to long homes on long streets
and roads I used to sift between my fingers:
Swingset slide and watermelon, fabric pressed, four hearts arranged to keep.
Just staying.
This low one is the road I'd take to get to there -- one road, and three turns -- and now I watch the others
take and take and take ...
But would they like to take me with them? Would they watch me grow my hair out, quiet in their garden?
Would they watch me chew their vegetables, wash myself in dirt to feed their children, go on and
add my heart to what they need to see?
I don't know that I would go.
I know that I am tired in this city dark and want to turn the lights out on the night
so I can breathe.

Bruise-blue is where I live, and why I am walking down it, but
these days, I will tell you:
I have to do everything.
I even cut my own hair with my own bright orange scissors:
sun shears hacking at their wheat, just too much overgrown.
Can you feel it not-there at my back?
My back I feel is empty like my hands;
and can be open to the knot of life, my life:
cat nudge, warm bed, friend rope, and even bright blue question cries.
Sailing.

At my time I should be much past dusk and crossroads.
I don't know why I think that, but I do.
But now the hair I have is in my hands, and looking out is when I see
the starts of all the days and nights and shorts and longs:
here on this uncut ribbon full of roads and roads and roads.
This is what I can tell you: from here is where I have to
-- just have to --
do everything.

_______

Already

I want to know you already;
from the way your soft flanneled leg
curls around the warm arm of our couch,
to the covetous way that I think you'd react to the air
that I give you to breathe.

To know you, I want this already: to comb
with my nail through the nape
of your neck; to pull and pull and pull until
our bodies snap shut, snap shut.
Then my God! The peeking of a head; that muddy, pinkish orb:
a slice of home, red ribbons, blue dances and whoosh!
orange goodbye.
Our dinners go grey, clipped, salient and frozen, frozen over in time.

I want you already: Your face wrecked on through
with the deep-seat of scream. Balding orphan, terror-wrecked with
hard news that rips you through and out out, and out out, and out.
I want to be the one to keep your grimace safe here in my hands
as you put on the shoes to hoist high up the body and then
to step right back onto the train.

Oh, to go on and see these pictures, as if stepping down a hall,
but from our first sight I smell that this is not This, today.
Your face is a cracked bust of life stopped before now,
and you cannot see what I see or could see.

I wanted to know you already:
the time before we met rings as blue
as a violet, held close to my face.
But
Your hands are two matches with no heads to light
your eyes tiny lamps switched off to travelers at night.
I wanted to know you all ready; all right;
Now I hope (how I hope!)
you forget me.

A very growed-up morning, day, life?

2008-08-05T12:05:00.000-07:00

Living in Brighton is delightful. As predicted, I find it much more more pleasant than Allston if only for the reason that my living room does not feel like an enclosed extension of Comm Ave. Living with Dena and the kitties has indeed been great; I like it muy mucho. Since getting my new camera phone, I have begun allowing Mushkillah to begin her modeling career. I better get a cut of the profits when all is said and done.

Cat personifications aside, I had a very grown up morning today. I decided to get up about 10 minutes earlier and T it to work from the Washington Sq. C line stop instead of the (slightly) closer Washington St. B line stop. For those of you not hailing from Boston, the B line is the slow, rattling, undergraduate cousin of the C line, usually filled with a higher percentage of obnoxious students, noisy tourists and children. The walk from my apartment to the C line stop is almost idyllic compared to my former surroundings. Lawns ... side streets ... those sorts of things. Best of all, the train ride into Hynes was essentially silent. Folks who looked dressed for work or some other local activity were mostly hunkered down reading the Metro or a library book, and we zipped along from stop to stop landing me at the Hynes at 9:40 -- a mere 25 minutes after I'd gotten on the train to begin with.

In the mood for chocolate, I proceeded to Starbucks instead of my usual Dunkies or mug from home, in pursuit of a mocha. There, I bumped into the ASM with whom I worked on Semele and we chatted about her work on Mahagonny at Tanglewood, and how everyone refers to it as the Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany (a dark laquered wood, not a Weill-created metropolis). While waiting for my mocha, I chatted with the barista about the sample cups of Kenya blend coffee which apparently, when consumed with orange, tastes like orange. Instead of suggesting that perhaps that was because it was being consumed in conjunction with an orange, I happily accepted the free coffee and went to work.

Feeling less psychotic, I was steeled my nerves to actually *read* the e-mail from a certain opera company which, after a phone interview yesterday, I was sure had rejected me outright for a snazzy admin. position. The e-mail, titled, "This morning's interview" had loomed ominously in my mailbox since the previous afternoon and, having skimmed it, I had come to the honest and whacked-out conclusion that I had been rejected. In reality, however, they were merely requesting writing samples, which I of course have in spades and so I sent them. Two hours later, my favorite supervisor at work suggested that I talk to the Big Guy about taking on the open full time job in the Fall. Options and quasi-options!

In other, less grown-up news, I finished Twin Peaks at long last. Aside from being a beautiful mind-fuck of a series, it also revived my inner Fan Girl, who had been dormant since the 7th or 8th time I saw Rent in 8th grade. I would be completely happy to go to a Twin Peaks convention dressed in some sort of wacky, expensive costume and suspend reality in honor of how awesome David Lynch is. It's not every day that I want to suspend reality and act like an idiot. Oh wait. Yes it is. :)

44 some odd thangs.

2008-07-29T08:16:00.001-07:00

Courtesy of Margaret! It's like one of those awesome middle school passalong surveys. Yay.

44 "Odd" Things About Me:

1. Do you like blue cheese? As a variety yes, as a condition, no.
2. Have you ever smoked? Yes, I find it occasionally pleasant to inhale a campfire for one or two puffs. Ironically, I took my first hit of pot at choir camp.
3. Do you own a gun? I own the entire Gun Show.
4. What flavor Kool-Aid was your favorite? I was not allowed to drink any aids of any kind.
5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? Ridiculously so.
6. What do you think of hot dogs? They are aptly named. They are both hot AND contain dog.
7. Favorite Christmas movie? Elmo Saves Christmas, when watched with Eli. Elmo learns that if every day were Christmas, Christmas would suck a lot more than he had originally surmised.
8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Complimentary non-fat lattes. Is what I prefer. What I usually drink is black Maxwell House. And occasionally Earl Grey.
9. Can you do push ups? I am not sure I agree with Margaret's assertion that "anyone" can do push-ups. I, in my weakling days, could only do about ten "knee" push-ups, the fake way. I can now do regular push-ups, but not like Margaret's brother and his friend can do 'em.
10. What's your favorite piece of jewelry? I like my polka-dotted earrings that I got at Shooz in Lenox, but the blue earrings I bought with Dena at Claire's are gaining on 'em
11. Favorite hobby? Singing. singing singing singing la la la esp. when I get paid to do it, which is like getting paid to read (which is babysitting).
12. Do you have A.D.D.? Well, sort of. I have the ability to focus intensely for long amounts of time when necessary. I often deem it necessary. However, I have noticed that my job at Symphony Charge has made me very used to a new task or activity habitually arising every 10 minutes.
13. What's one trait you hate about yourself? Jealousy, since I myself am so awesome. Also, hubris.
14. Middle name? Drew, after Daniel Drew, the pirate, who Sean-Michael tells me failed in the pirate business because he did not have a good name.
15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment.
1. I think I have eaten too much fiber today. Uugggg.
2. I don't want to be at work right now. I wish everyone weren't so loud and off the wall. I'd rather be on the wall. Sleeping
3. I am really hot in this pantsuit, both literally and figuratively.
16. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink? Coffee, water, rum.
17. Current worry? That I worry too much.
18. Current hate right now? Money. Money money money and money and its general existence. Also the fact that we don't put the following on our message so that 96% of people could hang up before speaking with a human: "Thank you for calling symphony charge. Lawn tickets to classical concerts do not sell out. Please purchase them at the concert venue and save the $5.50 handling fee."
19. Favorite place to be? Anywhere with friends. It's tawdry, but I'd rather be with friends in the Comm Ave. Shaws than in Tahiti alone. Most of the time. Sometimes I just want to be with a little friend called television ....
20. How did you bring in the New Year? This is a good one-- running around Boston's Waterfront very drunk and barefoot. I'll just leave Margaret's answer for that. Then I talked to David on the phone while waiting for the 66 to start moving, while Steve Buck and Mike Budwey (apparently) waved at me like maniacs and Margaret thought they were craaaaaaazy.
21. Where would you like to go? To my new apartment .... with everything moved into it already ... by magical elves that don't cost $300, beer, or my eternal love.
22. Name three people who will complete this. Goddamnit Margaret, you know how much I like talking about myself! Perhaps Anthony, Ryan or Erin will give this a go ....
23. Do you own slippers? Naw.
24. What color shirt are you wearing right now? Black and awesome pantsuit with charming chartreuse paisley lining.
25. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? if I am getting paid to do so?
26. Can you whistle? Anyone can whistle, or so Stephen Sondheim says, and I believe everything he says.
27. Favorite color? Jewel tones and chrome.
28. Would you be a pirate? I would rather *do* a pirate.
29. What songs do you sing in the shower? I sing that Vivaldi piece from Shine when he jumps on the trampoline that has a difficult-to-find piano reduction. :: snort ::
30. Favorite Girl's Name? Poe
31. Favorite boy's Name? Jeremy, Jordan, Eli
32. What's in your pocket right now? My Chahlie cahd's wikkid in my pawket.
33. Last thing that made you laugh? "Is yaw pawcketbook made outta gold?!" - coworker Joe, on other coworker Leah's ability to buy a plane ticket to belarus.
34. Best bed sheets as a child? Clean ones?
35. Worst injury you've ever had? The brain injury which caused me to apply and audition for three voice masters programs.
36. Do you love where you live? Allston/Brighton has its charms for sure. I think I will like being on a side street better than being in the middle of a strip-mall, so it should be sweet.
37. How many TVs do you have in your house? Solamente uno.
38. Who is your loudest friend? I am my loudest friend.
39. How many dogs do you have? No dogs, but several dawgs.
40. Does someone have a crush on you? Why, are you applying for the position?
41. What is your favorite book? Fiction: White Teeth (Zadie Smith) Poetry: One Stick Song (Sherman Alexie) Non-Fiction: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (David Sedaris) Play: Angels in America, as published in one volume (Tony Kushner) aaaaaaaand 1st Runner-Ups: Fiction: A Specimen Days (Michael Cunningham) Poetry: The Penguin Book of the Sonnet Non-Fiction: Under the Banner of Heaven (John Krakauer) Play: Amadeus (Peter Schaffer)
42. What is your favorite candy? Pear jelly belly beans.
43. Favorite Sports Team? The Lasell College "Lasers", because of their hilarious name.
44. What song do you want played at your funeral? I would like you all to listen to Shoop, as performed by Ellen Degeneres, including the part where she says, "And that's all I know". You should then remark that I knew the whole song.

The lawn does not sell out, how can I help you? The lawn does not sell out. Yes. Thank you.

2008-07-26T09:55:00.000-07:00

Symphony Charge Pie

-- 1 pie crust, leftover from HS friends brunch
5 beaten eggs, 2 of which you had forgotten were in the fridge because they were stuck in the back of the fridge but expire August 3rd so they're still good 2 go.
-- 1/2 cup skim milk from whole foods, which when added to eggs tastes 45% less like water
-- 2 Morningstar farms black bean and corn veggie burger patties, crumbled. Said patties must have traveled: 1) From Shaws on Comm Ave. to Allston apartment freezer 2) From apartment freezer to Great Barrington condo fridge. 3) From GB condo fridge to living room of first house in Madison, NJ for 12 hours unfrozen 4) To and from each freezer in three seperate Madison, NJ abodes 5) From last Madison, NJ abode to back of Dad's car for 12 hours unfrozen and 6) Back to Allston apt. freezer.
-- 2 tablespoons cilantro pesto, purchased in err at Whole Foods, because you mistook it for its nuttier and more flavorful older half-brother Basil Pesto. I hoped, not in vain, that this pie would answer the overarching question, "What the hell does one do with cilantro pesto, exactly?" I'm pretty sure that cilantro pesto as an entity has never done anything much better in its life.
-- 2 tablespoons Paul Newman mango salsa. There's no story to that one. It's just good, and I always have it on hand. I have been known to put it on everything, ranging from Soyful Heart wraps to ... Mushkillah
-- 1 teaspoon of the noblest of Mexican spices, cumin(face)

Pre-bake pie crust at an unkown setting, along with random chunk of cheese dangling from oven grate that looks eerily like a schlong and will eventually catch fire. When crust is warmed, dump ingredients in and swirl around in a delicious vortex of rawness. Bake until kind of firm but not quite ... the texture of a nice bum.

Consume for four days instead of buying more Lean Cuisines.

....

I'll tell ya, this pie did not taste like the Clusterfuck that it was. It was ridiculously flavorful, as well as a full vegetable-based protein. Rather than being a true quiche, the whole just just kind of melded into well-textured melange of deliciousness. Many people think I am a very good cook, and I agree that it is true, but not at all in an Elegant way. I don't really use measurements. I am basically good at strong-arming food into being delicious. Still, I am very grateful for my practical cooking skills, and for the fact that I am moving 100 yards away from a Whole Foods (Whole Paycheck). I am going to learn how to tastily cook all those whole grains that come in their dispensers for cheap.

In other "news" ... my computer, despite the very best efforts of Carlos, has bit the dust. My phone exhibited similar Beth March-like death gasps the other night when I somehow allowed it to become entagled with the soaking wet umbrella in my bag for 45 minutes. So that was kind of ... my fault, but still. It's old and texting has been difficult for a while. Eventually it will need to join my other phone, which fell in Rachael Baumann's toilet, in the Verizon graveyard.

I have two book ideas floating around in my head, one about sex/virginity in our society, and one about meatless non-tofu cooking ... too bad my computer's broken, or I'd be forced to start one of them.

How to Defecate on an Art Project and on My Life

2008-07-05T20:39:00.000-07:00

So, this month at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, the focus of the student-created art in the lobbies is "community". This theme manifests itself in a community knitting project, a how-to DVD on paper cranes, and an "I AM" bulletin board just outside the entrance to the theatre under which there is a basket of paper scraps, pencils and thumb-tacks. One is, apparently, supposed to take a self-affirming moment to write what one is. I don't know. It's tacky, but like those diaries they sell in Barnes & Noble called "All About Me", I kind of have a soft spot for those sorts of things. So, while I waited after the five-minute warning to open the doors after Act I, I read a few. They were mostly from kids, but a few adults had contributed as well:

"I am an artist and I love classic rock"
"I am five and I am smart. I am going to be a doctor."
"I am someone who loves."
"I am someone who lives with the best dog in the world."

So this was charming. And it made me smile a little bit while I was waiting to open the doors.

And then I saw it.

I've been thinking lately how I may need to get out of patron services, a sort of soul-sucking profession into which I got entirely by accident. I will just go ahead and say that what I saw at that moment may have just been an engraved invitation to do just that.

Some crusty, dried up, old bitch had written, "I came 1,000 miles to see 'According to Tip' and there are no fresh cookies?? You lost my vote!!"

We serve Mrs. Fields cookies. They're fine. They just come in fucking wrappers because we spend most of our time thinking about how to produce good theatre. I am sorry if I fail to see the humor in his/her little "joke". It kind of makes me want to vomit blood that this person would actually take up space on a community art project, decorated mostly with sweet little statements by children or adults who trying to be positive and creative, to BITCH ABOUT THE REFRESHEMNTS NEW REP SELLS. How fucking sad is that?! How fucking selfish?!

I know you might think ... "It's just a lame art project in Watertown. It's not like she's writing her grocery list all over the Mona Lisa". And I know that. But what happened to "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"? Why do people who want to look at a community art project have to listen to some crusty old bitch whining about a pre-packaged cookie? And why the fuck is that cookie so important?! What about the fucking theatre that she apparently came 1,000 miles to see??

Worst of all, there's a Panera RIGHT NEXT DOOR. They have an assortment of fresh cookies because they are purveyors of baked goods. Fuck.

So I wrote, "I am someone who tries to be here now", took a deep breath, thought about making it through July, and opened the doors at the blackout so they could all come pouring out.

Ugh.

"Zees apartment better have many mirrors in wheech I may regard my fabulous self." - Mushkillah

2008-07-03T22:47:00.000-07:00

After 12 days that may or may not have felt like my entire life, Dena, Simon, Mushkillah and I have finally found an apartment! It's a basement unit on Summit Ave. in Brighton in between the B and C lines, and has SO MUCH to make up for being in a basement: FREE LAUNDRY (right in the basement no less!), exposed brick, tons of storage, a private entrance, Whole Foods 100 yards away, and, my personal favorite, a breakfast bar!! Observe!!:

Isn't it cute?!

Tell me it's not cute and I'll punch ya in the babymaker.

I feel extra positively rosy about the whole thing, because I am also proud of the initiative Dena and I took in finding the place, evaluating it, comparing it with others, negotiating for a sane rent, and ultimately paying the first, last and security deposit all by ourselves.

Plus the chairs from my living room are going to look really cute in the living room .... and we're going to put decals in the muddroom ....

Ahem.

Fiscal responsibility rox, kids!!

Even though it's still the summer, I'm raring for this (academic) year to commence. I'm finally going to get a voice teacher and maybe even another job, and finally act like I know the lay of the land.

Which I do.

Heh heh.

I said lay.

Mmmmmm Lays.

Directed musings.

2008-06-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

So I've gotten to an interesting point in my petit career. It seems like I already have a couple AD gigs for the fall, they're in various stages of gotten-hood, but they've been loosely confirmed, plus a good shot that I could pick something up at a few other companies with the connections I've recently realized I have.

However, I think that due to my love of structure, enjoyment of things well-organized, and a desire to be around quality work, I have gotten addicted to ADing. It's also been an invaluable experience in terms of learning how professional theatre actually works, in addition making really awesome connections and having a ridiculous amount of fun. When I started ADing, I was a bit at sea, having trouble answering questions like: "Where would I direct?" "What space would I use?" "What shows are both good AND good for a small space and small company?" "Do I really know what I'm doing?!" I'd poured a lot of energy into The Importance of Having Men Audition at Gazebo Players, and I was feeling a little let-down and deflated. I had a few ideas, but I mostly wanted to tag along somewhere until I'd learned the rules.

I haven't learned 'the rules' yet, per se, but I have learned a general outline of the rules. I have ideas now, a desire to produce my own work, and a desire to get into grad school sooner rather than later which requires, you know, actually directing.

To that end, I contacted a small local company to which my friend and co-worker has mucho connectiones. I had noticed that there were only three shows in the season, so I asked if they might consider hosting me some time in the Spring of 2009. He wrote back promptly saying that I had an impressive resume and he was glad that I had gotten in touch, but that they had no more room in the season, and that I should AD or design something and then we'd talk about next season. This I understand, and was actually quite excited about, because they're a relatively well-established small company that rents space in a great location and has press coming to see their shows.

But then I realized .... it could be as late as Spring 2010 that I'd get to put this play up, and that's way too late. If I have a show I want to produce, I should found a company and produce it. The problem is there are SO many small companies with no funding floating around Boston right now. I don't really have administrative support unless someone reading this wants to comment and volunteer. I'd rather not spend all my time incorporating myself, booking space, and making sure people actually see the damn show, when I could be working on actual things pertaining to directing a play. Can't all these tiny companies play together? Weren't they all started because someone wanted to direct something? It seems egregious, and I can't help but be jealous of actors who want to act ... pick a company, any company. I know, I know. How's that for an over-simplification? But still ....

Anyway, these are all excuses probably born out the fear and sort of isolation I feel at the prospect of having a Cottilion Ball sort of thing for myself as a director here in Boston. Which is all the more reason I should stop whining and do it.

"I am in 3rd grade; I am a GROWN-ASS WOMAN!!" - Paraphrased from the Maury Povitch show, circa July 2007.

2008-06-10T19:17:00.000-07:00

Below are some key musings from my recentely-recovered 3rd grade journal, in which poor Mrs. Houston was forced to write back as a way to motivate to us to practice our cursive. Apologies to those of you who have already been subject to my jenius, but it's just too good not to share with those of you have have not yet encountered it.

January 6, 2004
I can't wait til my dentist apointment! I know I've been brushing well! I hope I get a good report.
(Even at a young age, I was eager to please AND delusional!)

Jan. 11, 1994
Over the snowdays I went sledding with Rachel and her sisters. I went to the book store and got a bible.
(oy!)

Jan. 14, 1994
I like learning multibucation. it is fun. And it's a little easier to do the subtraction.
Mrs. Houston: A lot of people agree with you. Still, you have to learn subtraction. You'll need to know those facts all your life. If you know subtraction, then you'll be sure to always get the correct change, and you'll be able to balance your checkbook some day.
(Really? REALLY?!)

February 2, 1994:
My mother is helping with the costumes for Harriet Tubman [epic school play]. She will be backstage too -- if it's all right with you. I am child number 2. I am very excited!
(My mother begins exercizing her theatre jones, and I find my place in the Best Supporting Actress club).

February 3, 1994
I can't wait til all this snow melts! I can't go outside to play, I can't ride my bike, I can't ride my horse. Actually, it's not my horse, it's the stable's. But I can't go see her or go ride her.
Mrs. Houston: You must miss her a lot. Unfortunately, the groundhog saw its shadow. I hope it's just superstition and that we won't really have six more weeks of winter. What do you think?
Me: I think the ground hog is probably right. I wish he weren't. But I'm happy we finally got to go to the pond. Last time we found a dead rat. I thought it was pretty funny!
(I have no words ...)

February 8, 1994
I can't wait til we put on the play! But I'm glad this not the day before it, because I forgot my script! I'm such a nut [drawing of a nut].

February 10, 1994
I pretty much have all my lines memorized for the play. The first line I have to say is, "You see, our teacher told us to a report on a famous black person, and we chose Harriet Tubman."

February 14, 1994
Today is Valentine's Day! To celebrate in my house yesterday we made cookies and dumped frosting on them! [Again, how little things change ...] Then we exghanged presents. Today I'm going over to my friend's house who lives in Norwood, and while the grownups go out to dinner, we are stuck in the house with my friends 8th grade sister. But I still cannot wait to see both of them. I just hope that Kaitlin -- that's the sisters name -- will let us play Netendo.

February 15, 1994
I am so so exited about the play. I wish we could just get it over with, because I know all my lines and I want to still remember them by the time we do this thing. [Hah!]
Mrs. Houston: You know your lines very well. Unfortunately, not everyone is ready yet. More practice will help make the play extra terrific. [yeah right.]

March 4, 1994
I am so mad that it had to snow! I want to have the play!! But at least we will get to rehearse in the gym! [.... great!!]

March 9, 1994
I hope the play is not posponed. I really hope that there is school tomorrow. You are right. Alot of people are getting sloppy about singing songs.

March 10, 1994
I am going to get Doofus [stuffed penguin, class pet to be passed around nightly] over the weekend. Tomorrow I want him to see the production. [Hah!] So maybe you could hold him in the audience?
Mrs. Houston: I need both hands to be free so i won't be able to hold Doofus. Maybe you could put him behind Andee's chair so that he'll be present but not visible. After all, I don't think Harriet Tubman ever saw a play in her life.

March 11, 1994
I had lots of fun in the play. But I was so embarassed when I forgot to turn on the mike! [Classic ...]

March 16, 1994
I am diasppointed that the play is over. Oh well, at least I still remember everbody's lines in the play! [Oh you have no idea, 3rd grade self]. I also remember the songs. I sure had a lot of lines to learn myself. [Hah].
Mrs. Houston: You have an amazing memory. I have a suggestion: How about using that great memory to learn your math facts? [NOT BLOODY LIKELY!!] You'd zip right through those time tests!

March 21, 1994
I am the mother pig in The Three Little Pigs. I am wearin ga pig mask, even though Matt said I already looked enough like a pig! [Let's hope Matt was flirting ....]

March 30, 1994
Friday is April Fools Day, it's also good Friday. I think while I am at the doctors office I will think up a few practical jokes to play on my parents. I've only tricked the with words before.

April 5, 1994
I had a good easter. I found out who the easter bunny is. It is my mom. This year I shared the egg hunt with my dad. He is Jewish. But he was pretty good anyhow. (HAH!)

April 12, 1994
My mother is the producer of a play called Hello Dolly. That is her next play in the theater company she belongs to. She also has a place in the chorus where she belongs, she says. I am very excited about the show.

April 29, 2004
Yesterday I went to Mom's brush-up rehearsal. A brush-up is when you have on rehearsal to brush you up. To help you rememebr the show. Beacuse there is two more shows to go. At brush up you play jokes on people.

May 2, 1994
Yes I went to all the performances of the play. They were all good. I am thinking of being in the next preformance that has kids in it. I like theater a lot. Do you? This July I'm going to see Phantom of the Opera. It is my favorite play. My favorite part is the music.

:)

Sono Commosso!

2008-06-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

Although I am back, screwed out of my job and totally broke, NJ Shakes did a lot of good for me. I think I finally learned what the job of a director is of a large cast, large tech show in a resource-laden theatre. Essentially, it appeals to me, and I finally know that I want to be a career director, and not an academic one (primarily). I also want to do some auditioning because hey, theatre is theatre, and I kind of miss being in a cast. Basically, it cemented my identity as a Theatre Person, the last dregs of "Maybe I'll become a Baroque opera star after all ...." faded away, and I am very, very grateful. It was wonderful being around such a positive group of people who wouldn't rather have been anywhere than where they were. Plus, they all loved me as much as I loved them, and that never hurts.

While in NJ, I began living an inadvertantly healthy lifestyle which I intend to attempt to keep up while back in Boston. Although I was working 12 hour days for no pay, I walked to work, walked to all my errands, ate Lean Cuisines with more regularity than regular food, and rarely ate out. Not a lifestyle that is really condusive to urban living, considering it would take me an hour to walk to work and beer and fried fish are essentially this city's mainstays .... but something to learn from at least.

I was just offered and accepted the position of AD on New Rep's production of Cabaret. Rehearsals began December 22 and it goes up January 11, so my head might explode as Margaret aptly put it, but I think it's going to be *spectacular*. I'm also psyched because I have this huge burgeoning interest in the different ways theatre and music can be used together, and this will be the first musical I've ADed.

Finally, if you know or are yourself a 32-year old early career actor in Boston who wants to Adam Rapp's Nocturne with me, let me know ..... It's a beautiful play. Too bad A.R.T. figured that out only 7 years ago. No one ever said my timing was good.

"Fuck off, you're not the man!" - the British fellow playing Rosenberg (about rejection).

2008-05-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

I would like nothing more than to win the battle with my demons of neuroticism and my patron saints of overthink. Perhaps it IS me who is making me miserable and no one else.

But I would like to also proclaim, in a bratty, horrible, selfish, non-perspectived way that so far, I have THE WORST romantic track record OF WHICH I HAVE EVER HEARD. I just have bad luck. It has little to do with neuroticism, or a lack of the risks that I work so hard to take thereby quelling my head demons to a point when even they can root for Me until I inevitably get shot down Again.

After almost 24 years of the seat to my left being empty, of game-playing and women's magazine aggression and energies poured down the drain, my impetus to get back on the horse is really starting to wane and I don't know what to do about it.

Would you really be able to stop worrying about it, if you were me?? Really?!

I don't know what's with the question marks. This post is pointless and I'll probably delete it within 24 hours. If you reply, I'll probably write something like, "I've had it worse than you!" And you'll get mad and rightly so because who am I to assume.

So, forgive me if I just can't be the picture of ruddy-cheeked optimism anymore. I'm not 16. I'm not 18. I'm not 21. This is getting kind of scary.

Monet?

2008-04-15T13:42:00.000-07:00

Huh.

Since posting about money, two funny things have happened.

1) I have successfully bargained my way into ADing Amadeus this summer at NJ Shakes for a month. Free housing is included, and, better yet, I get to keep my job when I get back here, thusly rendering it unnecessary to look for another job whilst trying to be artistic. I'm so excited. I'm going to treat it like an artistic retreat. I won't have to worry about patrons or working at all. I'll just go to rehearsal, do dramaturgical research on Mozart, and read plays in preparation for my intent to direct one this here summer. Plus hopefully use the free gym and a practice room!!

2) I lost my debit card and realized how much I miss it. So eat that, o money-bashing self. :)

Money dearest.

2008-04-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

To make an extensive story somewhat brief, I had to turn down NJ Shakes' very nice offer, largely for fiscal reasons. This was an odd sensation for me, disorienting and annoying, like a time-change or something. I am not entirely used to making decisions based entirely on money. That is to say, my money, and not my parents' money. Usually, when an artistic opportunity presents itself, I'd prefer to run at it, arms outstretched, oblivious to the fact that I might have to eat oatmeal more often than I'd like to for a few weeks. I gave up my actual job twice just this calendar year for assistant directing gigs that payed next to nothing, and always managed to pay the next month's rent. As Tim Gunn would say, I "made it work".

So, naturally, I thought I could do the same with NJ Shakes and their four month long no pay no income buy your own food offer. I had a preliminary deal with Emily Peters' brother to sublet up in here for June and July and I figured that since they couldn't house me until May 5, it would be worth paying May's rent just to have somewhere to live for those 5 days where I tried to pack up my entire life and leave town. Well. They later rescinded May 5 and let me know that April 28th was really my only option, and that it was quite the dealbreaker. I hemmed and I hawed about various things one and the other for about four days before I decided that I could not sign that contract.

There are a few reasons, I suppose. The first and most off topic is that for 2 days before they made their offer, I had been coming to a series of realizations about my performance career. A year ago today, I was singing every single day for several hours, analyzing music poorly, and learning lines for Into the Woods. Today, I listen and think more than I sing, and I am losing my voice in the sense that its endurance is greatly lessened by the break I've given it over these past few months. It's still lovely and colorful, but for only about 20 minutes. Imagine that. Oy. Anyway, I never stopped and realized what was going on last summer. I needed money and I had none, so rather than fight the law and have the law win, I decided to get a job at a theatre in the Berkshires like all my friends were doing. While there, I decided that I would settle in Boston just in case I, ya know, wanted to go to that prestigious grad school that wanted me to join them in the Fall. I learned some music over the summer, but that's when the lessening of my voice really began. In the fall, without a voice teacher or even an apartment, I decided it was time to get a church job at which, I of course, sucked and was a total wreck. Going to a first paid rehearsal while one is in the process of moving one's entire life is never fun! So I quit that and decided that that was "it". I had a few other paid gigs in the early fall but decided that largely I just didn't cut it.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa. I never stopped and said, "I am scared shitless of this amazing early music city with all its wonderful early music singers." I rationalized an awful lot to get out of feeling shitty about the fact that I did not feel ready to attend the holy grail of the kind of Voice I want to do in Boston. I mean, one could look at it like this even: Girl sings at college and elsewhere, girl gets into grad school, girl has no money so takes day job, girl is unaccustomed to doing things for money that aren't in her artistic field, girl arrives in Boston wanting to sing, girl gets scared shitless, girl quits.

Anyway, that's a very one-sided life story, but the realization at least convinced me that I asbolutely need to find a voice teacher her. I can't keep just letting my voice go to crap. It's too important to me. I suck at theory and I still have nightmares about singing Gesualdo with my ESTEEMED bcf colleagues who were about ready to eat me alive for the first two weeks, but I also learn a lot with each challenge I put myself through. Just by moving here and becoming involved through the back door, I have learned that there is a vibrant community of people who don't necessarily want fame, but want to sing and play emotional and intelligent music.

Therefore, I am glad that I will around here for most or all of the summer. I said I'd get a voice teacher out in the Berks last summer and never did, and I do regret it. The second reason for turning the whole thing down was that I also did the very objective math and would have had negative 540 dollars in my checking account (all the money I have to my name) at the end of teh summer. There's no point in destroying your entire life for the sake of being creative so that you have to come back and work an intense desk job just to be able to live somewhere again.

That being said, I want to always make authentic choices. I want to find, and be able to do that thing that I would do if I could not fail. That, I think, would be singing. However, I'm also sick of being treated as if I have the I.Q. of a toaster oven by patrons on the phone. I want to get the highest degree I possibly can in something so that I can spend my days with smart and creative people all the time. Do I want to make money while doing this?

I honestly only want *enough* money to feel creatively fulfilled.

Some people have so much money that it makes me laugh at myself when I feel "luxurious" during pay week when I buy two pairs of shoes and Once on DVD and say "I like having some money!" But then again, what IS "some money"?

Where do you all stand on money at our age? It's one of those horrible little things that can define who we are, but is also a gauche topic at a dinner party. How much do you see yourself having? What do you want to do with it? Not do with it? Do you think our society has become increasingly materialistic since we watched commercials and read magazines when we were 13? Can someone survive in American if their primary motivations are neither love nor money?

Maybe it's just a sneaky way of finding out who actually reads this thing .... but it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

Sigh.

Sometimes I feel like a salad, shaken up with some new dressing in the to-go box of Kenyon, and then dumped out on the big white plate o' life. Don't you??

Indecision Pt. II 2008

2008-04-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

It's somehow comforting to give this entry that title, seeing as how I eventually resolved Indecision 2008 Pt. I and someday, too, will see the resolution to this.

So.

I have been offered a Directing Internship at the New Jersey Shakespeare Theatre .

Hoorah!

Being that my goal is to be a super-cool theatre professor one of these days, something like this would be a great opportunity. I would, specifically, be assisting Joe Discher, the Associate Artistic Director and an avocational singer like me, with his production of Amadeus (!!) and then spend the rest of the summer (May 22-August 11) preparing a few scenes and short projects with the acting apprentices, sitting in on classes, other rehearsals, doing dramaturgical research and masterclasses, Q & As with artists .... blah blah. Great opportunity.

However ....

They want me there on April 29th and would release me on August 11. That's in about 20 days, for those of you fluent in calendar. The internship will cost me nothing, with the exception of $925.00 for housing and the inability to make money for 3 months. By my shoddy-like calculations, living on a budget of $40/wk (some weeks more, some weeks less), I would emerge with approximately $500.00, assuming I have to swallow May's rent and utilities, which I probs do. The good news on the money front is that my parents have offered to pay for housing, so I definitely can't ask them for help with the May rent. As for June and July, I have a pending pending offer from Emily Peters' brother, and that may work out, depending on a number of things.

April 29th!!

I don't know though. That's how this business is. And if I can't handle the heat, I'd better get out of the kitchen. Into ... what other kitchen I don't know. Lately I've been deluding myself with the fact that I should make myself pick some art form that allows for steady, one-place work until success finally hits big some day. Ha. Although I've been unsure about careers before, I'm pretty sure that the fact that I like to read novels does not make me a novelist.

Reality is that I want to be a professor with a Doing focus. I could go to grad school for dramaturgy or whatever and teach history for the rest of my life, but I think I would start to question, in about 8 years of it, why exactly I was spending my life with all this Stuff if not to profit from it artistically myself. And I guess that's a good sign that Lifestyle only takes on so far, and that I shouldn't be afraid of the slightly tenuous first five years of this lifestyle, because I think ... I think I know ... that it will lead to what I want out of life.

I still plan on using NJ Shakes, as lovely as it is, as leverage for urging Williamstown to get its ass into gear, so that could be exciting too. That starts on June 12, and it's in the Berkshires, and it's $500 cheaper, so I could just die ....

So it will be an exciting week, but not as exciting as the next one, if it turns out that I'm quitting my job, cleaning out my room, and heading to New Jersey.

In other news, I was so very happy to hear about the results of the drama honors day awards:
Newman: Drew Schad and James Miller for Godot
Woodward: Cait for 3 Days (yay!!)
James E. Michael Playwrighting: Knud, who's play combined structure and imagination in a very advanced way.
Ashford: Marielle Ebersole, without whom Turgeon basically wouldn't have been able to finish up his last show at Kenyon.

All in all excellent, almost Fair-based choices, which never happens. Bravi. :)

Non-earth shattering revelations that everyone and their mother comes to.

2008-04-03T12:10:00.000-07:00

My parents are moving out of my childhood abode in Medfield to pursue more urban pastures in JP. Coincidentally, their new condo is on the same street as the one on which Margaret's mother currently resides. This really produced few emotions in me, to be honest, other than being glad for my parents since they hate the suburbs, and a slight tinge of sadness that there would no longer be somewhere that I could go to sort of escape my current life and retreat back 12 years into my former self.

Well, last night kind of took care of that, as I realized that, even if we continue to own 62 High St., such was no longer possible. It really was, though, up until about Christmas I'd say, a place where I could go and kind of pretend that doing nothing but using an eliptical bike machine, eating hummus, and watching reruns of Top Chef was an acceptable way to live my life.... that I had no future goals or aspirations, jobs, papers, or anyone in my life that needed me for any reason. A calming, incubator-like way to live one's life for four days, a maddening, cosmology-shaking way to live it for twenty-four (i.e. winter break). Nonetheless, I remember mostly the former, and so when I was feeling a little fed up with getting run half-run-over by minivan taxis, the sound of the T horn, the creepy guy in College Convenience who undresses me with his eyes when I buy vitamin water, and symphony patron after symphony patron, I decided that a trip back to Medfield would be the quickest fix toward my much-needed Vacationland.

My mother picked me up at 6:30 outside my apartment, but we didn't get back to suburbia until about an hour later. My mother was hungry, and when my mother was hungry she is not quite from this planet. So we stopped at Thai world and split some appetizers and curries, and by the time we got back to my house, it was too dark for the anticipated nature walk, and my father was getting ready for bed so no voice practicing. So, I was able to watch a few episodes of Top Chef with my mother which was fun, as was going to dinner with her, but these activities are not quite site-specific. Furthermore, my room looked like a community theatre props and costumes storage closet. The last people to stay in there were actually Sally and Kaitlyn from Chamber Singers. Their thank-you card, apparently forgotten by my parents, was left on the floor next to the trundlebed, and I took a moment to feel bad that Sally had to sleep with her head one inch away from a broken air-conditioning unit. There are these three baskets in the corner of my room that contain pretty much everything I ever did in high school, from jazz choir to one-act directing to English projects to Amnesty International. I have a funny little habit of picking a thing out of the basket randomly, as if it were a big sloppy deck of cards, and jokingly deciding that the nature of said object is what I should do with my life. Sort of akin to the "where should I go on vacation?" game which involves the spinning globe. (Last night it was the sheet music for "I could have danced all night". I prefer to think that the answer to my dilemma was thusly dancing all night, and not playing Eliza Doolittle).

Anyhoo, I then settled down into my oddly dressed twin bed and did what I did what I always do when I'm home for a time ... reread some of my old diaries. After all, why else would I write them if not to provide myself with sensational reading, a la Ms. Gwendolyn Fairfax. Lately, I've been pouring through them for things that strike me as common themes and things that might help me decide what I should attempt to devote my life to at this point. Last night's leafings were no help. The diaries are consistently broken down into about 4 subjects: 1) Boys 2) Whatever theatre-type thing I was doing at the time 3) My weight/various diet issues 4) General angst at my parents and other children. So, among other observations, I noted that when I am singing I "control my experience", but also that "4 years ago I was too young to understand the symbolism of the fiddler in fidder on the roof [apparently by 8th grade I had gotten the hang of that] and that I needed to find more people that understood the quote, "If Wokoma came back now, he'd be so pissed off" by Sherman Alexie. It's pretty much the same now.

I realized that it was useless to go searching for the things I most enjoyed in my past. I enjoyed and was privileged enough to do many things. But I was never pressed and I never pressed myself to try to figure out which of these things might translate into a career and which would stay better as a hobby. Watching Top Chef last night, I found it funny that so many Americans cook but watch professionals do it on TV, so many Americans also play football, but watch professionals do it on TV. How does one in high school or college know how what one is doing will translate into a career, unless one goes to a career-focused college like Emerson or Northeastern .... who knows. I didn't. So here I am, realizing that the decision is up to me now, and I'll only become more confused if I rifle through the annals of my innermost thought from 8th grade.

Most of all, I realized that my Life is no longer something I can Escape. Which I think, ultimately, is good. I own it, and it has enough bells and whistles, however mildly pathetic, to constitute as My Own. I am invested in it and would be sad to see it go, ultimately. I can Relax, but I can't escape My Life.

Huh.

Out like a lamb

2008-03-31T13:46:00.000-07:00

**Please note, this is not me saying I AM A VEGETARIAN RIGHT NOW, as I am in no place to throw out food that was purchased for me ..... this is just me realizing something that I should have realized when I pretended to realize it. And me trying to live a more conscious lifestyle, is all. **

When I was 18, I became a vegetarian "for good" because I had gone to the Peace Abbey in Sherborne, MA, learned about Gandhi, and learned that chickens are cute and that pigs can play video games. "Oh boy," I thought, as a dug into my cling peaches and dry cinnamon toast at breakfast that morning. "This is going to be easy, fun, and fashionable. Plus, it'll save tons of animals to boot!"

Five years later, I was eating beef in an Ethiopian restaurant and paying off a much-anticipated "lamb date" on my credit card bill. Sure, that happens to most people, you might say. A loss of idealism or just giving into convience and a good, solidly textured meal. I had stopped being a vegetarian because one day I realized that I had literally zero emotional or political connection with it. Sure, chickens were cute and pigs could play video games, but what good was I doing, exactly? I was not interested in prosthelitizing or chaining myself to slaugherhouse machinery, and as far as I knew, the factory farming industry was as strong as ever, whether or not I ate that chicken strip. Disconnect. So there it went.

On Saturday it was cold, and I was glad to hear of my co-worker's plans to go to the Super 88 Asian Market on Commonwealth to buy a whole duck. Rock on, thought I. A ride home. We headed towards Allston/Brighton in her car along with our other co-worker, singing along to 90s music, talking about the evening's plans, and just generally letting off steam. We were having so much fun that I decided that, instead of getting dropped off at the top of Brighton Ave., a short 2 minute walk to my door, I would go with them to the Super 88, even though I was broke. I had never been there, after all.

As we walked into the store, customers with bags zoomed past us on their way to cook on Saturday night, and little kids ran around in the dank and carpeted foyer which joined the market with a noodle and bubble tea fast food court. Most folks were of the Asian persuasion; actually only about every 8th or 9th person was not. My duck-searching co-worker being in a hurry to begin preparations for her annual Turducken, we sped toward the back of the store, bypassing the items that, if I had come to the 88 on my own, would have interested me the most: noodles, sauce, nuts, Pocky, popsicles and pears.

As we reached the back of the store, the colorful posters, prices and advertisements gave way to the natural gray, cement walls of a Back Room open to the public. Lit like the art direction of Twin Peaks, the room had a totally different feel to it than the front of the store. It meant business. This was where you went to get your meat. No fucking frills.

Because we were having a little trouble locating a duck despite our rooting through the bin of whole chickens next to calf's liver, my co-worker went to ask for assistance, leaving me and co-worker 2, both lapsed vegetarians, alone. It wasn't really a question of whether we could help it ..... just by standing in the middle of the room our eyes fell on about 4 or 5 different cuts at the same time. The one that I think might stay with me forever is the cow stomach lining, white, light and porous like a coral reef, packaged up with saran wrap and sold for four dollars. Something I truly felt disprectful even looking at. Then there was the unrealistically large cow tongue, the size of a table leg, the sour-cream-like container of cow blood, the rough goat meat cut into circles for convenience. Kiddie pool sized bins of lobster, plastic containers that look like grandma's recycle bin filled with whole, dead fish.

Then, we made the mistake of following our co-worker toward the very back of the back of the store. There, we found a butcher counter, full of short ribs basically still attached to the cow's body, murky-colored liver and brain, tongues, and gray pig ears. Packaged cloven hooves that, although if sucked on probably contain nutrition, can't taste like much more than bone and dirt. I don't say this to sound dramatic, I say it for clarity: it smelled like death. I know what blood smells like, and it smells like that.

Because there were no people around to offend, my other co-worker and I basically wretched and made our way out of the way back. Finding refuge in the dairy aisle, we busied ourselves with inspecting the packaged salads, only to find that they, too, were filled with orange pickled duck feet, roe, and giblets.

I thought I might have to leave, but it looked like our friend was almost done with her duck hunt, and so we cooled our heels by the turkey and chicken legs, packaged like the ones in my freezer, which we deemed, "safe". But then, as I looked toward the back of the store to check on my friend's progress, I realized that none of it was "safe". It was all the same. And the fact that we, as Americans, are able to go to Shaw's and purchase meat that looks prettier and brighter and more nicely-packaged than that is incredibly dangerous. We are able to and we LIKE to disassociate and disconnect the food on our plate from the undeniable act of violence that put it there, and that breeds aggression and desensitization from violence. I'm talking you and me -- relatively Priveleged intelligent Americans with no reason or need to perpetuate a cycle of violence that mostly prays on the poorer Americans who do the killing anyway.

Violence without consequence. This is an incredibly dangerous trait to breed in a society where domestic violence rates are high, handguns kill in an instant, and technological innovations make it harder and harder every day to govern our lives with any kind of moral compass.

So, I finally got it. It's not about the fact that a chicken is a cute and a pig can play video games. It's about consciousness. It's about connecting yourself and your deeds to the violence that you cause. It is being a consciensous objector to an industry that makes it very easy for people to disconnect entirely from acts of violence that are being commited for their own gain. Growth hormones, downed cows, McDonalds, veal calves, sexual abuse of animals on the kill floor. This is about objecting to an industry that, despite the jobs it has created, provides terrible working conditions for humans and way too many instances of egregious animal abuse, aside from the part where they, you know, kill them. I guess it makes me an idealist once again when I say that I'd rather unemploy Americans temporarily than let them continue working in an industry where killing for others is their only means to survival. And it makes me even more of an idealist to say that we can get there someday, if we want to and we work hard enough.

It's not even about compassion for animals, entirely. It's about compassion for ourselves and for the planet and a belief that, as evolved humans, we can use our more fully developed faculties to let our existence make a positive difference.

So, that all happened rather suddenly.

Last night, the playwright/performer of Pieces was asked by a Palestianian woman, in tears, if she would give up the idea of a Jewish-only state in the name of peace. I expected her to jump up and say, "Yes! Peace is what I want most of all!" But, she didn't. I have to say her hesitancy surprised me after knowing how strongly she craves peace. But of course she said it was the hardest question she'd been asked, she said, and it would be an incredible sacrifice. She said she would sit with the question. She was honest with the woman; she was honest with herself.

I don't have a homeland that is being torn apart by apartheid. I have a freezer full of chicken legs from 2 weeks ago. So I sat with my question for a little while. And then I stood up and said, "It's not going to be easy and it's not going to be fun and it's not going to be fasionable. Lots of people are going to make assumptions about me and lots of people aren't even oing to care. But I need to make as much change in this as I can make. I don't think I can give this thing my money any more, and I know I can't put it in my body."

Place-Sick.

2008-03-13T19:50:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to be place-sick? Whatever. I am.

30 Things I Have been Missing Lately, about the Berkshires:

1) The way a face looks outside at night. Smoke, laughter, stars.
2) The Tanglewood lawn, in ways other than talking about it on the phone
3) Eating food outside. Wooden tables.
4) Albert's. Nothing like it.
5) The glint of a lake.
6) Hot pavement and SoCo on Railroad St.
7) Anne's car with tons of musical theatre CDs everywhere
8) The Pittsfield Museum foreign films
9) Sitting around a table getting shit-faced with awesome creative people
10) Porch swings
11) The sound of the door snapping shut in Lavan (annoyed the fuck out of me while I was there)
12) STOCKBRIDGE COFFEE.
13) Michael's Karaoke
14) The Countess and Rumpy's. The popcorn there.
15) Siam Lotus and "TAAAAAHHHH FOOODD!!"
16) Sunny freedom Sunday drives to NYC
17) Mountains
18) Baba Louie's barbequed chicken pizza
19) Pie Heaven from Stew
20) The shower next door to my room
21) The sombrero on the wall of the Unicorn box office
22) Tons of free cheese all the time/ARRANGING
23) Acoustic night at the Lion's Den (haha).
24) Scene-It
25) Kegs of Berkshire Brewery Pale Ale
26) Hearing the song "Beautiful Dreamer" from onstage in LVC while in the box
27) Beethoven House Music
28) Riding in golf carts all over Berkshire School
29) Rolling down hills with Patrick and Dan and then eating Loafs.
30) Pretty much everyone I met there, ever.

Today at work, the BSO did "Discover the Berkshires" downstairs in another part of the building. When Theresa and Michael returned, I asked if BTF was there. They said yes, and I kind of hesitated because I wasn't sure if I could even emotionally handle the whole thing, but my desire to see the lovely Ryan Chittaphong right downstairs in my place of work kind of cancelled that out. So down I went, and there he was, surrounded by the posters and logos I was used to looking at non-stop, looking spiffy and representing the festival. So funny to think I met him as Jeremy's roommate, the development intern with whom Stew used to play badminton. It was awesome to see him, and we chatted a little bit about what's up at BTF, and he suggested I call Pete to inquire after the status of ADing and such things. So, I just did that in order to leave a message right now, and not catch him off guard if he wasn't ready to deal with my wheedlings. I feel a sense of closure now, because I doubt he will reply and exclaim, "OMG, I totally forgot. Here's a job!" But maybe, something .... I don't know.

It's tougher to deal with than I imagined; the potentiality of being seperated from this place in which I spent the last two summers, unquestionably the best two summers of my life. I feel the way about the Berkshires that most people feel about their hometowns, summer camps or about somewhere iconic like New York City or San Francisco. I know that most of my fondness for them has to do with what I did while I was there, and yes in my opinion, there is no better place to be creative in the summer months than out there, BUT .... I also crave its degree of non-chain-driven authenticity, its subtle but amazing little bits of nature hanging right over the main road ... even the bizarre, back road bit of Pittsfield with its funny little pawn shops and soft serve shacks. Knowing things about it. It being small enough to sort of hold in my hand. Coming back to things, things changing, things staying the same, clear nights and being inspired.

They say a place like that has charm, and I guess it has charmed me, quite literally.

What to do ....

Creepy: A Synonym for Patron

2008-03-07T09:38:00.000-08:00

This here is real American drama, kids:

Adrienne: Symphony Charge, how may I help you?
Patron (in creepy androgenous voice): Do you have 22 dawlaw tickets?
Adrienne: For which date?
Patron: I don't KEEE-UUHHH.
Adrienne: Uh ... no. We have 29 dollar tickets though ....
Patron: That's the lowest you have?
Adrienne: Yes, that's not partially obstructed.
Patron: What about pahtially obstructed?
Adrienne (increasingly creeped out): 14 dollars.
Patron: OK well I had to give up my credit cahd and I wanna take a woman, so I'm gonna uh .... I'm gonna go that route.
Adrienne: .... OK!
Patron (creepily, as if on Are You Afraid of the Dark): So I'll be seeing you .....

(hangs up).

A Flurry of a Good Day

2008-02-10T13:05:00.000-08:00

Today's weather alone deserves at least at attempt at documentation. Four seconds ago was probably the first time that this New Englander has ever experienced what I am now calling Snunder: a terrifying combination of snow and thunder. Four minutes ago, on my walk back from the gym and particulary on my walk TO the gym, we might as well have been in the damn Florida Keys (except without all the flabby old people and nail salons). It's like the weather is trying to get all of its pissyness out in one fell swoop before settling down for what is sure to be another swelteringly tropical summer. Oh New England, you variety pack of Doom.

Despite the inconsisentency in the weather, today has been consistently good. It started this morning with brunch with some of my choir girls who I haven't seen since December 22. After sleeping til 10, I got dressed and scurried on down to catch the 66 bus, prepared to wait alone in the half-rain/half-snow combo we had going on, but instead I found one said choir girl, Laura and her boyfriend Rishi, and so had some company. They live across the street in the 13s of Comm Ave., and Laura is a former voice major/fellow pants roler as well. We really need to hang out more. We headed down to Z Square where other choir girl Jenny, the Brit, had made a reservation for five. Soon joined by Miriam, who it turns out had suffered a similar "kicked-out" fate to mine, we proceeded to catch up, discuss internet dating, travel, music and politics over omelettes. Z Square is good and shockingly cheap for such a "posh atmo".

After saying goodbye to those cool folks, I popped into Curious George to visit Margaret, who toils there in exchange for free books and of course, money. Starving, she begged me to provide her with a bagel from across the street, which I did, and would have done anyway, but today I also procured an illustrated Midsummer's book for Eli at a handsome discount! Considering his most recent artwork featured Bottom and Titania falling in love, he should enjoy this. I, for some reason have decided that Eli's Valentine's Day gift needs to make up for all the other holidays I've missed with him this year. Hopefully the authorities won't read too much into this.

Although I wish that the story could continue with "And then I went into Urban Outfitters and found a pair of awesome charcoal boot-cut jeans for 8 dollars," it does not. I did, however, encounter a friend from the very, very, distant past while at the 66 bus stop in the square. While there, a girl approached me and asked, "This is a weird question. Did you ever do UnCommon Theatre stuff when you were younger?" And I said, "WHY YES!" And she said, "I think we were in Peter Pan together!" And it turns out that we were indeed, and we were actually friends and fellow "Injins". :) How great! So we chatted at the bus stop, and on the way home, about UnCommon, about theatre and opera in Boston, about the G & S society at MIT and about law school, grad school, and other stuff too! We did exchange numbers, and even though it's possible I'll never see her again, I might. And it was a fun bus ride, and always bizarre to reconnect like that, even though I feel like I might as well have been a different person back then.

Tonight I'm off to see "Shakespeare's Actresses in America", written and performed by Rebecca Maggor with Erin, and then maybe to Margaret's to watch Pride & Prejudice, the mini-series. I think I'm finally ready for it. Bring on the fop!

Hopefully this week will be as nice, and I don't know ... that's all for now. :)

Ahem, MememememMMMEEEEE.

2008-01-25T21:44:00.000-08:00

Opening Credits: ME, singing Brahms' "Rote Abendvolken" from Zigeunderleider. So, the opening credits consist of me singing about some gypsy walking up and down a road obsessing. Perfect!!
Growing Up Montage: "Speravit, anima mea" sung by the Chamber Singers. This is not the best recording we ever did of this piece and it's a little tentative sounding, so that really works for the whoel growing up thing. Also, it's about hoping for things but mostly it's a tonal trainwreck.
High School: "Best Imitation of Myself" by Ben Folds. Tis true that in HS I was but a shell of who I am today.
College: "I Fought the Law and the Law Won" by BUDDY HOLLY (originally and thusly recorded). Well, I used a lot of Buddy Holly in shows to good effect. I also once was stopped in the street up by The Ganter (Nate, you may recall this), and got us all off the hook by stating that I was from Massachusetts.
Waking Up and Morning Routine: "Stepping out with my baby" by Tony Bennett. "Can't go wrong cuz I'm in right?" Well, at least I'm in the right pair of pants.
Driving: "Trouble", Coldplay. Yep. Piano, whining, regrets. Sounds like a late night suburban drive.
At Work: "21 Questions" by his majesty Fiddy Cent!! How perfect. Everyone has 21 damn questions when they call me.
Falling in Love: Hahahaha. "All lampo del armi" from Handel's Guilio Cesare. it's only Julius Cesare's bad-ass battle cry. Did I mention he's usually played by a woman??
Breaking Up: "Everything in its right place" Radiohead. Thom Yorke says this is a love song. "Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon."
Getting Back Together: "I See Monsters" by Ryan Adams. Hm, this is a tough one. I guess I coudl relate it back to neuroses, or the "monsters" one sees when one isn't with the person one wants to be with.
Dinner with Family: ME, singing Pres des remparts. This is a tricksy little aria where Carmen gets Don Jose to untie her with the promise of sex. I'd probably have to trick them into dinner, anyway.
Wedding: "My Friends" from Sweeney Todd. Hahahhaa, yep, at this point I'm more likely to marry either my friends or sharp inanimate objects. ;)
Life's Good: "God Put a Smile on Your Face" Coldplay. Did he really?
Mental Breakdown: 'Learn Your Lessons Well" from Godspell. Creepily perky and yelling at me. Sounds about right."
Flashback: "Billie Jean" by MJ. Well, aside from the obvious reasons .... it was written in like '86 ... I think it has the perfect blend of paranoid and rose-colored nostalgia
Birth of a Child: "Henrietta" by the Fratellis. Is the child's name Henrietta??
Final Battle: "Fare thee well, attractive stranger" from Iolanthe. ;)
Death Scene: "The Ascent of Stan". Ben Folds. Well, at least I'm going up, not down.
Funeral Song: "Like Spinning Plates" Radiohead. Hopefully the live version. I think I really could listen to that for all eternity, so I'm good with that.
End Credits: "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd". Like many good stories, it'll end where it began. :)

January.

2008-01-07T09:27:00.000-08:00

This morning, it was nice to wake up to an e-mail from Sam Helfrich, a cell phone voice-mail from Linda O'Brien (production manager at Opera Boston), and a home-phone voice mail from Amy Kitchin, Audience Services Director at Boston Lyric Opera, a company which, despite my completely dogged degree of persistence in my quest to work for them, has never called me on the phone before now. I didn't even pick up the phone when I saw the label "Boston Lyric Opera" because I was so sure it was a telemarketer.

For about a month now, January has loomed in my mind in this sort of stone-carved, Monty-Pythonian way. Last night, I stared at the ceiling for about twenty minutes, trying to exhale all the nervousness out of my body while still retaining the nerve.

I am probably going to gain five pounds this month, and most definitely lose some hair, and I'll probably cry at one or two or three commercials. But things are happening!! And when it rains, apparently it pours.

I should really buy an umbrella for non-metaphorical rain, too. ;)

"The theatre, the theatre ... what has happened to the theatre? Especially where dancing is concerned."

2008-01-02T12:50:00.000-08:00

Erin and I randomly watched the DVD of my production of Pirates whilst swiffering floors the other day. Sure, there were huge glaring problems, tempo inconsistencies and one or two costumes which might have been better suited to hang from the acoustical shell, but the backs of the audiences heads consistently bobbed with laughter -- and the good kind at that. So, this brought me to notice one thing which inspired in my quest to find a consistent vision for "Ernest" ......

When faced with a script like "Pirates", I saw it as one of my primary obligations to make sure that my audience of intelligent and sophistocated people had FUN at the theatre.

I had been struggling so much with whether to update Wilde. I don't know why I was thinking so hard about it, because really, when I look at just the *text*, I don't know what would be more fun than sticking to its original setting. Yeah, updating it might help tell the story a little bit for a few modern viewers, but I don't think this play will be terribly well-served by anything that makes its behavior more dignified or normal.

So that settles that.

When I did I start considering having Fun in the theatre the least important thing I could do on a stage? It might not be the *most* important, but I like to think it promotes at least a little bit of good in society, at least in helping to facilitate a small, if skeptical, belief in magic and faith in people.

New Year's Resolutions

2008-01-01T13:52:00.000-08:00

I don't think there's anything wrong with New Year's Resolutions really, cliched as they are, we all need a little check-in time with ourselves. Here are a few of mine:

1) Conquer my fear of directing my own show in the Real World while staying true to myself and producing something I can be proud of.
2) Quontinue in my Quest for Qulosure, until such a thing happens or such a time arrives which makes me feel I have it.
3) Don't stop going to the gym, especially in January.
4) Eat breakfast! The purchase of veggie sausage patties from Trader Joe's ought to help facilitate this. Spend less money at Starbuck's and Dunkin' Donuts.
5) Give my time or money to something political, and make an informed choice for all votes.
6) Reach out to my brother-from-another-mother-but-also-kind-of-from-the-same-mother, Richard, who lives across the street.
7) Get back in touch with Kristen. I miss her ...
8) Learn how to meditate or do some yoga.
9) Stop Putting Things Off
10) Keep the above nine. ;)

What're yours?

Thank you, San Francisco Chronicle, for making me feel a little less alone.

2008-01-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/21/DD04U1E8B.DTL&type=movies

Reelism.

2007-12-30T08:49:00.000-08:00

I saw the movie. And, feel compelled to write a follow-up blog as I said I would. Unfortunately, this one's not going to be filled with epiphanies about my closed-mindedness or of self-flagellation under my desk: "DELIVER ME! TIM BURTON!!" .... oh WAIT, you cut that from the movie ....

To begin, I almost feel like I shouldn't even *write* the rest of this, except to say this: If they made Dreamgirls into a movie and cast people in the roles who looked just right, but had been pulled from the world's leading graduate musical theatre and opera schools, you'd be pissed, right? I don't mean to manipulate you, but it wouldn't really sound quite right to your ears, and you'd leave feeling that perhaps you'd missed something, but you just didn't really feel a need for the strange innovation which you just saw? I'm not talking about marketing here, before you point out that they were able to be true to the Dreamgirls style beceause it's what people want. I'm talking about you, and your reaction, so that you might understand how I feel. After all, it's a pointless hypothetical, isn't it?

Well, that's how I felt about this movie. The reedy, whiny, unpleasant "voices" of too many of its actors, not just computer-generated HBC, made it completely impossible for me to appreciate most of Tim Burton's choices. Furthermore, his and Mr. Sondheim's cutting the film down to 1 hour and 57 minutes, perhaps unnecessarily, made the whole thing feel rushed, robotic, unfeeling and under-nuanced. His "artful gravitation" toward the blood and the throat-splitting felt ornamental to me because the film's original message of "man devouring man" was lost due to a total dehumanization of everyone in the film.

"By the Sea" was visually appealing, but the total lack of chemistry between the two up to that point -- much less at least on a business-partner level -- than I've seen on the stage, made me keep my overwhelming "I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANY OF YOU" hat pasted firmly to my head. The cutting of "Kiss Me" and a host of other young lover-related things made the two seem a little too much like little mosquitos floating around the real plot. "A Little Priest" was devoid of joy a) because they sounded like they were having a lot of trouble with the lilting melodies and weird rhythms of the song for one and b) because unlike onstage, they didn't have to make their fun, so it became a scientific song about pointing out of the window and deciding whom to cook and eat. I'll keep "Silence of the Lambs" for that. "Epiphany" fell slightly flat for me too, though Depp did OK with it vocally, because one of my favorite parts of that song has to do with My feeling as a member of the audience being fucking freaked out, and watching Mrs. Lovett be, as well. Burton chose that one as his "Let's move it to the street" number, and I ended up feeling taken out of it, and the whole "out of body experience" just made it seem less real.

Pirelli and the Beadle were both wonderfully cast, but I just missed their character tenor identities and I think it took away from the characterization something that was not supplemented. Much less fun and much less creepy.

All right, so realism is not Burton's thing. Too bad, because the one thing I think that could have been served by a film version of this is that the city itself could have been accurately represented. Not so. Swirly buildings aside, my favorite utterly-laughable moment is when the Beadle throws Anthony out of the judge's house and then beats the crap out of his face, only to have Anthony rise and sing through his bloody, broken teeth. Yeah, Anthony's a little silly, but I usually end up feeling for his side of the story because he's dignified and passionate in his own way, and really wants to take care of Johanna, who's story we know a lot more about onstage. A lot of it for me, also has to do with his voice. Here, he's just a whiny guy who keeps saying the same damn thing over and over and over again, hardly ever actually interacting with Johanna before he risks his life to get her out a mental institution. What a douchebag.

While we're on realism, a lot of people have been upbraiding me for my desire for better voices in the movie. After all, would the "real" Mrs. Lovett have had a great voice? No. Well, they would not have broken out into song either, so ....

Finally, is it too brazen to suggest: With all the New York Times articles floating around, I think we've been tricked to a degree. Sure, Sondheim and Burton can come up scores of English major bullshit reasons as to why songs were cut, the most obvious being that they don't advance the plot. But when you strip away character entirely because a song doesn't advance the plot, you're left with something that feels, as I said, rushed and under-nuanced. Sondheim's not an idiot. How dare we suggest that he write things that could have been trimmed away with the fat? Therefore:

Dare I suggest .... that songs like the Judge's Johanna, like Ah Miss and Kiss Me and the Ballad were cut because THEY WERE TOO HARD?? If so, and I think it's a real possibilty for at least a few of those choices, shame on them. At least own up to it, or realize you can't stand the heat and get out of the kitchen.

So maybe I'm alone in my reactions and maybe I care more about Broadway than Hollywood. But I'm fine marching to the beat of my own drummer on this one.

To quote Beauty and the Beast, "If it isn't baroque, don't fix it."

Squeamy Todd. Read, for some clarification on Me.

2007-12-27T08:44:00.000-08:00

OK, no, I haven't seen it yet. I am seeing it tonight after a much-anticipated half-priced meal at Grendel's Den with Anthony. Further updates will certainly follow. I have to say, I've been kind of obsessing about it. The movie, not the food, though they do make a mean pesto. I wish I could be unadulteredly excited about the film, but instead I feel a nervousness more akin to the first day of work, rather than in anticipation of nightmares about Johnny Depp dressed as a throat-slitting cosmologist.

Why so glum?, you might ask, and indeed, many of you have. Johnny Depp, pinstripes, Sondheim, gritty, dirty, Burton-izedly accurate London .... and Sondheim signed off on it, so what could be amiss? Let it be observed that based on the previous sentences, I do see the positives inherent in this artistic collaboration. And it isn't the cutting that bothers me -- I myself have been known to streamline material to help it tell a story -- and I trust Burton to make moviemusical choices that I can stand behind (there's always the obligatory 'this scene usually takes palce in a room but let's move it to the street). In other words, I trust Sondheim as an orchestral adaptor and Burton as a director ....

But I can't help but feel that this movie is a step backward for the art of American opera. I was able to articulate my grievance as soon as I read this sentence from A.O. Scott's New York Times review: "Mr. Depp’s singing voice is harsh and thin, but amazingly forceful. He brings the unpolished urgency of rock ’n’ roll to an idiom accustomed to more refinement, and in doing so awakens the violence of Mr. Sondheim’s lyrics and melodies." It's not the first part of that second sentence that I have trouble with; it's the second. Sweeney Todd has been produced by some of the top opera companies in the country and it is on baritone Bryn Terfel's list of his top 3 favorite roles. Now, I hope Mr. Scott will forgive me if I am wrong, but I am not sure that he has listened in depth to Len Cariou's performance, or to Bryn Terfel's performance, or even to Michael Cerveris's performance, and certainly not to the most powerful performance I've ever heard, done by former-Javert and amazingly terrifying Todd Alan Johnson in 2005.

So, to use a melodramtic phrase, how dare he say that an untrained "rock 'n roll" voice "awakens the violence" in Sondheim's music? This is what most people want to think, and now the most-read newspaper in the world has confirmed it. Great. Just because Mr. Depp is choking on his own uvula and screaming his guts out, does not mean that his singing is more emotionally-charged or even more violent than a well-trained, intelligent voice full of color, technique, and, yes, ANGER. It can be done, folks. Who's seen Wagner? Who has seen fucking Sondheim (who listened to Britten who listened to Wagner, but that's beside the point).

And now, everyone who is simply afraid of opera and opera singers, and even what I like to call helden-musical theatre, will sit content, knowing that the "rock 'n roll" voices of the day, the NON voices of the likes of Mrs. Helen Bonham Carter Burton have been able to take a work of art out of someone else's medium and "shake the dust off of it" or "lighten it up" or "tell it like it is", and that makes me ANGRY.

Come on, people. It's not a medeival trope. It's Sweeney Todd. It doesn't need that much dusting off. I'm all for updates, for emotional truths, for beautiful art direction. But Sweeney Todd is an American opera, or at least one of our best American musicals. Now American cinema has dressed it up and funded it really well. Great, right? NOT GREAT. Because Burton and, dare I say it, Sondheim himself, have robbed Sweeney Todd of one of its defining characteristics. It's now a "rock opera" with Crooners instead of Singes. It's Angela Lansbury, Patti LuPone, or Diana Ruskin, these people are better than Helena Bonham Carter. I know that Sondheim usually picks actors who are actors first and singers second, but come on .... it's a little bit of a stretch, and it smells like Money. And if there's one thing Sondheim doesn't need more of, it's probably that.

So, we've taken Sweeney and changed it into something where music matters less than almost everything else. And that hurts my sensibilities, I'm sorry to say, and I'm objecting on principle. Because this Sweeney is indeed accessible, because this Sweeney is bloody and devoid of all the beautiful and challenging restrictions of the theatre, the vast majority of Americans will probably pick this one when they think Sweeney. It's exciting and beautiful, but it's not quite Sweeney ... the Sweeney that already exists and IS violent and IS moving. Worse than bad community theatre, this one is so in the public eye that I can't help but see it as a kind of big Wal-Mart blocking eight lovely little country stores right behind it. I fear it will breed more anti-opera, anti-musical theatre, and maybe even anti-intellectualism in our already spoonfed culture.

Call me insecure and jealous if you want. It's happened before. And I might enjoy the movie tonight, as a movie. But it's not an opera. And I want my opera back, because I want America to hear it.

Lyrics I really heard this morning

2007-12-02T10:42:00.000-08:00

Leave, leave,
And free yourself at the same time
Leave, leave,
I don't understand, you've already gone

And I hope you feel better
Now that it's out
What took you so long
And the truth has a habit
Of falling out of your mouth
But now that it's come
If you don't mind

Leave, leave,
And please yourself at the same time
Leave, leave,
Let go of my hand
You said what you have to now
Leave, leave,
Let go of my hand
You said what you came to now
Leave, leave,
Leave, leave,
Let go of my heart
You said what you have to now
Leave, leave...

- Glen Hansard (Once).

Whinings.

2007-12-01T11:59:00.000-08:00

I'm frustrated with myself because I feel like I just blew a phone interview that I really wanted. I'm also frustrated because he just did not seem convinced that I could do something simple like props paperwork, just because it took me a while to recognize the term he used. I talked to my mother and she said that it sounded like I was too general when describing my strengths. She also said I did not sound "haughty" enough but she often says that I do not sound "humble" enough. It's certainly hard to strike a balance, and therefore it feels quite hard to gain credibility and get one's foot in the door.

Maybe I shouldn't beleive that my mother knows everything about the world. But she acts like she does so it's easy to believe.

Maybe that's the secret to phone interviews. Hm.

I have to be in Lynn tonight for 5 hours singing horrid music. I am cold and feel sick and I hate today.

Thus ends the whining.

Marketing Musings

2007-11-23T10:26:00.000-08:00

Here at the BSO, we have a couple of programs designed to make classical music Sexy to people of various categorized ages. First is Repartee, which is designed for "fun, curious" individuals aged 21-35. So this is marketed either at students who are not intrepid enough to stand in line at Rush and get the really good seats for 9 bucks and awkwardly scan the room for that special girl with whom they can have a conversation about varying degrees of political dissidence in Shostakovitch symphonies, or at happily married/coupled thirty somethings who come for the free cheese.

We also have Bolero, which is a "high-spirited program" for individuals over 40 who I guess our society deems "the older set". This makes a little more sense because the assumption on the BSO's part, I'll bet, is that people of this age who would voluntarily attend the BSO are of the certain socio-economic class that they are there just for the social networking and will perhaps buy a subscription next year.

I recently turned down a baby marketing gig at the Ballet, and something has begun to irk me. I used to thank my lucky stars that we don't live in Vivaldi or Mozart's time, where most of the money-making music was commissioned by the church and used in sacred contexts. But right about now that seems sort of refreshing.

I'm sick of admitting that something that I like so much personally just because .... I do .... has to be shoved down people's throats in fun, flirty little packages to survive. It will not be long before opera, one of my favorite art forms, is affected. It's always teetering on the "make it accesible without changing its essence" precipice

I know, call me impractical or whiny, or whatever, but consider the premiere of the Rite of Spring:

This music, which was helping dramatize a story which no one was quite ready to hear, was so ... well, UNmarketable that it incited a fucking riot, and only Schoenberg could be heard yelling over the screaming right wing pundit equivelants that the music itself was actually sort of good. Not sort of good -- rather, essential, revolutionary. An instant classic. Something that would define a generation.

I guess I'm a bit down in the dumps about the practical aspects of contemporary opera and symphony. What appeals to me about straight theatre is its ability to morph into an art form which is basically controlled by its creators. Good opera, grand opera -- whether it is from the classical period or something like Picker's American Tragedy -- its fate is ultimately dependent on a board of directors whose fortunes were probably made very far away from the creative drawing table. Some donors I've dealt with are lovely people ... but the majority of them are crusty, crazy, alchoholic, and a bit out of touch with, well, everything. How could one not be when 1,000 is "pocket change"?

Why do we live in an arts culture frighteningly similar to 18th Century Court Patronage?

And that makes me sad pandaz.

Thanksgiving, before the triptophan gets to my brain.

2007-11-22T19:11:00.000-08:00

I can't remember the last time I consciously enjoyed Thanksgiving as much as I did today. Turkey and its trappings aren't usually up there on my list of favorite foods, but my cousin Janet made this ridiculous turkey with butter/mushroom/sage glaze that almost tasted like steak. It was ridiculous. Her son, my cousin Alex, made both amazing shallot mashed potatoes, and balsamic/red wine sauteed onions ... plus the standard pumpkin flan. After months of Boloco chicken caesar wraps eaten alone hunched over a book, this concentrated dose of home cooking was definitely what I needed.

Also, said cousin Alex and I have really gotten to a place where we can relate and kind of be friends with a small f. He and I like to sit around and talk politics/books/movies with the older folks, and it's a nice change from just two years ago when he would rather have seen the football game than other humans.

Speaking of politics, my father and I had the mini-debate with Mom about her blind idealism regarding Barack. Don't get me wrong. I have far from made up my mind yet. In fact, I don't even know where either candidate stands on the death penalty. But, on some level I instinctually believe that Barack won't make it for 2008. For 2012 I think he might be able to waltz right in, but perhaps only after Hillary prepares American for someone who is not old, balding, male and white. It will be interesting to see if Oprah comes out for Obama, because he may suddenly have thousands of middle aged woman converts who previously would have stuck with Hillary. I plan to really research things, read the memoirs, watch the debates, and really make my vote count, now that I have time to think about things that might actually influence my life, instead of ... Statistics.

We also talked a bit about the difference in their generation vs. our generation when it comes to post-college activity. I am really not sure which one is better, if either, but it is interesting to consider the main difference, which seems to be: They were focused on staying young, while we really seem to focused on growing up. A 9-5 and an early bedtime was the goal for many of us upon moving out and starting to pay exorbintantly high rent. For them, it was what they avoided. That of course resulted in many years of aimless wandering and a very late decision as far as life plans went.

So I don't know which one I prefer ..... but I do kind of miss dancing on tables. And in cages. ;)

"So ... when do you think I'll be able to do all this online?" - A patron, referring to the eventual loss of my job.

2007-11-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

I suppose it's the end of the "weekend", which was a very pleasant one, despite the slight interruption caused by, you know, working Saturday.

Friday evening, I was invited to my friend Jenny's flat in the South End for a dinner party. I say flat, because Jenny is English, and speaks like Kate Winslet. She works in the Pru in advertising, and her company pays for the majority of this beautiful apartment, which is well-lit and well-furnished and just sort of idyllic in the way of single girl flats. She made a delicious Japanese marinated salmon, sticky rice and snow peas, and requested that we each bring a bottle of wine. There were ten of us, the dinner party was about 4 hours long, and at the end of the evening, half of a bottle of wine remained.

You would be correct if you assume that an entire bottle of quality red wine in the form of 7 glasses resulted in me, at 12:35 am, hurtling down Dartmouth Avenue, hopping gaily over puddles in my high boots, just sort of waiting for the Copley T stop to appear, which it eventually did, in the form of two little green reptiley lights flashing in the distance. I tried to read David Sedaris on the train but was too drunk to even focus on that, and narrowly avoided interviewing a fellow passenger about his decision to purchase Snapple Earl Grey iced tea, and whether he thought that was really the right choice.

Haha.

I worked all day on Saturday which was sort of one of the more entertaining times I've been paid to sit in front of the computer since the unveiling of "June is Bustin' out All Over" c/o Shaun Kelleher over the summer. People here are nutty on Saturdays; totally their fun selves, and because no one thinks we're open, it's rarely harder than taking sharp things from a baby.

That evening, I had a lovely evening with the Terrell. We ate soup and pasta in true vegetarian fashion (oh, how I remember ye), and then, finally, saw Vampire over in Watertown at Whistler in the Dark. It was uh .... not Aristotelean, that's for sure. It was elegant for a black box show, and included many strong aesthetic choices, although I was not, most of the time, aware of why they were being made. That, however, may have been the fault of the script more than the production. I did like the script, but I must say that I found its use of an Idea as a through-line not because it was an Idea, but because it's really hard to write a satisfying arc for an Idea, so the end ended up feeling just a little Meh. Some good acting though, and I love being in that space, the black box at New Rep ... which reminds me!!:

I *finally* got an Assistant Directing gig. I'll be assisting the director of Pieces which is part of a new play series called "Their Voices Will be Heard" at New Repertory Theatre. Zohar Tirosh is a contemporary Israeli-American playwright/director who is based in New York. Apparently she is really great to work with and I am excited. The only decision to make is about my job .... I don't know if I'll be in good enough to just ask for 15 days off, unpaid, but in any case, this is kind of what I've been waiting for, so I am definitely going to do it. To that end, I turned down an offer from Boston Ballet to be their Group Sales/Marketing Assistant, figuring that if I made a real commitment to the artistic side of things, something would turn up. ;)

I'm also the new Production Assistant for Don Giovanni with the BOC. Although I wanted to Assistant Direct, this will be a good way to be around opera and its opera-philes. And hey, I miss going to rehearsal. :)

Thanksgiving is coming up. In general, I'm having trouble coping with/understanding the fact that Thanksgiving is now just a day instead of an entire week dedicated to me sleeping and sitting on my ass as much as possible. Oh well, I suppose it's good that my brain and body aren't sagging under the weight of things like the entirety of the History of Western Theatre or, say, Sweeney Todd tech week (also a formidable and historical force).

I misplaced *coff coff* some checks at the ATM the other day. Only Erin may be witness to how completely stupid the mode of misplacement was, but the point is is that they are on the way back to me, somehow, miraculously, on little wings of joy, rent, and cash.

Wonder of wonders miracle of miracles, someone in the airforce just called me ma'am over the phone. Hey, that almost fits with the scansion ....

Percentages.

2007-11-14T12:50:00.001-08:00

According to my mother's DNA test, she is 3% Sub-Saharan African, which makes me 1.5% black. Sweet-ass.

Also, eating bacon apparently raises the colon cancer risk by like 21%.

:(

Sad pandaz.

Laundry and Thirds.

2007-11-13T20:06:00.000-08:00

Today I sold a ticket to Osvaldo Golijov's mother. Golijov is a locally-based Jewish/Latin-American composer who wrote a piece of regrettable minimalist choral music I sang at BCF, but also one of the songs about the moon which Lauren sang in this past year's recital, and a pretty sweet opera. Anyway, his mother was not responsible for any of this and is quite adorable and lives in Newton.

I am home today for a bit to do some laundry and learn 90 (yes, 90) pages of Christmas carol harmony. I am hoping it is basically singing Christmas carols .... only a third lower.

I read "Doubt" finally last night on the T. I was so riveted that I did the whole feet spread widely apart risk barrelling into dude next to me just to turn the page thing. It was a short play, but almost cinematic. Shanley is so good at showing through dialogue that I almost envisioned the whole thing set, as it is, in a drab Catholic middle school, but with secrets and desires and personalities and insecurities sort of floating around the characters all the time, like little tinkerbells. In this country, there are so many things to fight about, to care about, and to sacrifice oneself for. Sociologically, it is hard to imagine caring so much about some of them until someone like Shanley can literally plunk you down in the middle of things and force you to care, big time.

We had our first "holiday concert" rehearsal last night at CpM. I was afraid that I would, as has been the cast of the last 5 years, not really be ready to Feel the Spirit as they say. But the music we're doing it really legit -- Poulenc, Pinkham, Handel, etc., and if there is some kind of musical/mathematical formula for joy, they have to have discovered it and put it in there. I think the concert will be something that's really good for me to do. I have to find my own way to celebrate this time of year.

How I learned to ....

2007-11-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

**BLOGGER'S NOTE: Ex-Kenyon folks, please feel free to comment on your post-Kenyon feelings/thoughts/emotions, without or with sympathy. I am just curious to know what you're thinking, how you're dealing, advice you have for me. But do be honest. **

Here we go:

Whoa.

After, um, 2.5 hours sleep on Thursday night following my equally-long Requiem concert that evening, I awoke on Saturday at 3:50 AM to pack and throw myself on another airplane toward Gambier, starting a weekend which would leave me entirely sleepless until 4 pm Sunday afternoon, at which point I would sleep straight through the night until 9 am this morning. Talk about the early bird special. The early Drunk Bird special.

On the way back to the airport at 4 am on Sunday morning, I tried my very best to stay awake in order to keep Erin company. I succeeded only about half, the most amusing part of my efforts coming when Erin asked me a question about someone at Kenyon and I proceeded to explain their situation. Halfway through my explanation, I realized that I was a) half asleep again and b) discussing whether or not this freshman Koke had a "subscription". I didn't even have to be at work until Tuesday and it was bleeding into my brain already. Anyway, I very much doubt he does have a subscription to the BSO.

The weekend was .... I don't know. It was great. In some ways I worry it was too great. There, I said it, so you can all save your hushed suggestions that perhaps I am still too attached to school. It was great to use a shared vocabulary again, other than one involving flexpasses, patron numbers or train destinations. It was great that so many appreciated that I had come back, and it was great to see Stew and Anna do their thesis (I cried), which was a remarkable show. It was great to be in a place that made me feel things. Good things, happy things, proud things, sad things, things based on experiences and people and not on just Myself.

It was great to know that something that had been intelectually discussed and analyzed and decided against still existed with someone else despite our best mental efforts, even if that means it was also a bit agonizing. Just a bit.

Kenyon is the place where I did things that I am the most proud of to this day. I am not the logical, sensible sort of person that is "proud" of "making a life" here. In many ways, i did the easy thing anyway. I know the city already. My parents are a T ride away if I forgot a skirt. I would like to be in a Place that I can go back to and be glad that I graduated, that I can go back to Kenyon and and be glad I did too, because that would be easier for me. I don't mean a real place, because Boston is great and I'm often happy that I am in Boston instead of Gambier, and the people I know here from Kenyon and high school and wherever else are great, too. But I guess I often do not feel fulfilled anymore, and that is my own fault, and not theirs.

Erin was saying in a past blog that she felt worried about going back because Kenyon is no longer home and she is afraid she no longer has a place there. That sounds normal. For me, it's the opposite. Which can't be normal. Every time I am there I feel as though I have Come Home, as though I have a Purpose and Potential. I also feel Novel and, not gonna lie, that helps too, since things have a tendency to get monotonous and anonymity-shrouded during daily routine here (".... the destination of this train is .... government center). I am no longer a beautiful and unique snowflake, etc.

Most of all, Kenyon provided me with what I miss most of all -- a big community of friends, working toward a common cause (survival). By the way, I hate eating alone. Some people don't mind it. I do. I am so sick of it.

My job is fine, it really is. It's not like the other one and does not require Dire Action. But it is one's typical Ticket Work, boring but with the potential of horrid screw ups around every turn, and pays so little that it leaves me worrying about money all the time (so, seemingly, does not alleviate the one stress that work indeed should). And it's not Kenyon. And yes, I do remember how much I complained.

How strange to think that 6 months ago I didn't have to give a thought to paying rent. And that I thought buying my own food would be novel. My dad says I am chronically unhappy, a trait which, we both agree, must have been inherited from him. I think, personally, that I am just Dumb and that I would be happier if I stopped screwing it up (whatever that entails).

I talked to Jon (Tazewell) for about twenty minutes before the play started on Saturday, and he told me basically the same things that Daniel does. I did ask him to elaborate on whether he felt I needed to do anything different to build my resume if I am someone interested in academic theatre. He said no. OK, fine, whatever. Here I go, joining Stage Source to put on my first rickety production. What does it mean that my favorite part of directing is working with the actors and not the designers? Why don't I ever think about what I want my shows to look like? Why do I think about it all the time now but not while it mattered? Why is it that the career of a succesful director is no more stable than the career of an opera singer? Am I doomed to be an Assistant Director forever because that is what I like doing?? I am so frightened of the pretense, of the need to Make a Name for Myself, of everything Riding On everything.

Eh. Breath. Through research, I have discovered that I actually should seriously look into dramaturgy, seriously. As a second thought, being Mehleis (the beyond-awesome English/Theatre High school teacher/director who both saved and changed my life in HS) keep popping into my mind, as they have been for like 5 years. Again, not a bad way to make a living. I am a person who enjoys teaching, who enjoys showing others how to find their creative voice within the context of a, basically, right way to do things. I am a person who also enjoys the magical combination of routine without drudgery.

In any case, any case at all, I should join Stage Source and I should do SOMETHING in 2008 that no one has to give me permission to do, other than the building renter. ::Picks up 'Streetcar named Desire, puts on adapting hat, stares at text::

Anyway, if there's one cheery thing that has come out of this entry, it should be that I love and appreciate People most of all. Thank you, everybody. I like you, a lot.

Requiems and Recidivism

2007-11-09T09:52:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been a long week. The kind of long week that makes me fully re-program my Gmail calendar in order to ensure a lack of Fuck Upitry in my schedule, which forced Erin and I to abandon the weekly grocery shop and hover over bowls of starch before running once again out the door to the snail-like arms of the B line. That is to say that the B line is slow. I don't presume to know anything about snail appendages. (Do you??)

I layed around on Monday and babysat for Erin's baby friend Dylan in the evening. All together, not a difficult day. However, I woke up on Tuesday morning and realized that real life had resumed, with a vengeance. At work, I learned all about those first day mistakes that seem ridiculous to me, even now on my 4th day. Wrong days for the parking garage, price class discrepencies, exchanges set up as regular sales .... oy vey. Oh, the learning process. So that was SuperFun. The rest of work passed rather smoothly, and then I zipped home to grab my Ames/Faure scores and head over to Old South for my first choir tech week rehearsal for a concert of "two moving works".

I love requiems, as you can probably tell from my facebook religious views, so I was feeling like I was in for a fun evening after a tough day at work.

WRONG. The artistic director was, without going into too much bloody detail on the world wide web, not to my liking. He simply seemed to hate working with amateur singers, and I really, really, really, really don't understand why you would want to work with amateur singers unless you liked it. It's a non-profit, volunteer organization. He can't be getting paid that well! He spent the evening barking, mocking, and condescending, claiming that "no one, not a single one of [us]" was prepared, or listening, or doing it right in general. I broke my back for him all night, and he wasn't even technically aware of my existence, in terms of me as a person in time and space.

Sigh.

Damned if I did not miss Doc that night.

It's gotten better this week as I've learned to tune him out. I'm not sure if I didn't notice it as much at BCF because it did not apply to me back then, but I know now for sure that is NO EXCUSE for speaking to amateur performers as if they are trying to destroy the music one is making with one's paid orchestra and soloists, whom you've engaged to help sell tickets.

There are members of the choir who could sing those solos just fine.

So who's concert is this, anyway??

In any case, I had been feeling pretty down about life, future, and the state of things during the middle of the week, and ended up losing it to my mother when I met her at Boston College to pick up my concert skirt. My poor professor mother who had been advising students at Lasell College all day had to listen to me whine and cry about my priveleged life for 20 whole minutes. What really caused my breakdown, as I explained to her, was that my difficulties are all really my own fault. And, although I search and apply and follow up daily, I am still not doing anything Artistic, at least in an official context. Until I do, I will feel as though I am still paying for my mistakes, even though I have forgiven myself.

She was sympathetic, but told me to buck up and volunteer, which I am working on doing. :) She also invited me to something pretty amazing:

Last night at Lasell, my mother hosted an event called "And Still We Rise", which is a traveling troupe of players who are all formerly incarcerated, and all of whom received their masters degrees while still in prison. My father and I were expecting a little bit of sort of hokey performance art to be sure, but what we got was actually deeply affecting, well-directed, and acted so well that even I, who hate to say "oh, so and so doesn't need to act! they can just be!", was saying just that. The performance basically ranged from their life stories/explanations (not excuses) as to why they made the bad choices that they did, their daily routines in prison and how hard it was to maintain self-respect, self-love and dignity, and then the ball and chain which follows them around still, even though the law technically says they have paid their debt to society: the CORI.
These folks, obviously, were all about CORI reform. They were not saying that criminal records were obsolete, only that the CORI are far too descriptive and accessible to employers who don't even know how to read their multi-paged codes. Some states, by law, will not even consider applicants that have a CORI, even if it's for a misdemeanor, or from 50 years ago. It literally follows you around for the rest of your natural life. I know that there are some you who might say that that is fair, and there might not be anything I can say to change that. But, at least from a legal perspective, consider the fact that the law says after X amount of years you are "free". Not to get Valjeanesque about it, but that's not true where the CORI is concerned. You have lost all your due process, and the Masters degree you worked so hard for behind bars is, in most cases, useless. Think about that.

After the performance there was a talk-back, and Lasell criminology students asked questions like "How is it fair that you killed someone and get a free masters degree, and I have to pay and I haven't killed anyone?" The performers and two of my mom's former students answered the questions eagerly and respectfully, and afterwards they talked honestly about how they really loved that the questions were asked, because over everything else they appreciate directness and honesty. Afterwards, two of the fifty-something female performers came up and group-hugged my mother, and I have never been so proud of anyone in my family.

I rode home with Mom, Mom's former student Richard who bounces at Ruggles across the street and lives down Comm Ave., and Mom's other student who has only been out for about 2 months. They're awesome guys, but in particular it was fun to finally feel like I had siblings. When Mom turned out of her own campus and went the wrong way to Route 30, she announced "I went the wrong way." And all three of us responded "Surprise!!" It was cute. All snarkiness aside, what we had most in common was our admiration for this woman who is our mother.

I feel all right going into this weekend. I'm vaguely energized enough for the concert tonight, and I hope the audience likes the new piece as much as I do.

You should come and hear a lot about death. It really makes you think about life.

Ici, ca va.

2007-11-05T10:21:00.000-08:00

Just returned from the first real Vacation Vacation I have had in a while: Montreal with my two dearest high school friends Alison and Katherine. I've had depressing "days off" when various jobs don't work out, and hibernation periods of a few days after various life stages end and other ones are about to begin, but due to comps and work and Chamber Singers tour and stuff, I haven't had a Vacation Vacation since probably .... just before Senior year to DC. I guess that's all the vacation normal people get anyway. In any case, this weekend was just what I needed in a lot of ways. Montreal is a gorgeous city, magically devoid of chains, but still with everyone one needs in one place. I will use ABCs rather than go into all the gory details:

A: Alison! Lives in Montreal in a tragically cool neighborhood that we could come visit. :)
B: Babka, chocolate. Our snack upon arriving. A delicious and auspicious beginning. Also bagels and Business Breakfast.
C: Comic book people. I didn't know much about the Type, but it is a Type apparently just like Drama People or Voice People. They are uniformally nice, under 150 pounds, and use phrases like "HOLY SMOKES!" in everyday conversation.
D: Drawn & Quarterly, one of the most famous graphic novel publishing companies in the world, where Alison interns!
E: English. The language most waitstaff defer to when they hear our first non-deftly handled R sound.
F: Franglais. I HAVE DECIDED I AM A FRANGLAIS MASTER!! I know just enough French to mix it with my English in a manner which sounds cavalier and casual enough that I sound like I am bilingual and just really lazy.
G: Georgia, Vermont. The charming locale in which I left my cell phone for a half hour at a rest stop and recovered it from a messianic maitenance woman.
H: Housing. Alison's apartment is really nice and homey. It reminds me of the urban dwellings of my cousins in DC. It's basically the top floor of a brownstone, the kind of thing with really ornate glass doors and a raised tub shower.
I: Ici ca va. Alison said this to the cabbie once, in a slightly innapropriate yet effective use of French. It became one of those bizarre private jokes all weekend.
J: Jesus. Alison's 35 year old roommates had a religious party a few years ago when David, one of the two roommates, turned 32, "The age of Jesus". There are last supper mock-up photos in the bathroom.
K: Katherine! I fell out of contact with Katherine this past summer, and I am so glad we are back to being good friends. She was one of my first real friends when I was new and awkward in 6th grade, and I think, after hearing my mother's tales of her recent High School clique reunion in New Mexico, that we'll be friends for a long time.
L: Long walks. Alison walks just about everywhere, including 45 minutes to work, so we joined her in that this weekend, and it was really nice to not feel like a bump in front of a computer. It was windy and great outside.
M: Mont-Royal. The mountain up which we hiked on Saturday to get to the very top of Montreal and look down over the view while my feet tingled in subdued fear.
N: Nonna. Italian for grandmother, and part of the name of the restaurant in which we ate on Saturday night. 30 bucks for a prix fixe menu, but not a rip-off at all. We even got cookies!
O: O stands for West when you've crossed the Border, which turned out that it was good to realize.
P: Pendleton. Megan Pendleton, another high school friend, teaches elementary school art now in Vermont and drove up to visit as well. It was good and strange to see her. She is doing what she has always wanted to do with her life since I have known her, and she's happy. I wonder if it's a gene.
Q: Quebec. I don't know much about the Quebecois seperatist movement, but I am going to do some reading about it because it interests me. The language laws, which dictate that all signage must be in French, and almost everyone's dual fluency (in Montreal that is) really strikes one in this place stuck between Vermont and the rest of Canada, both English-speaking countries to be sure. I wonder what it must feel like to know that the language that you identify with both politcally and personally is hugely in the minority, mostly by choice.
R: Roommates. Alisons' 35 year old roomates, Manuel and David, are awesome. David is a computer programmer and Manuel is a chef. They are best friends and live in this sweet little apartment, cook brunch together. It's a definite case of hetero guy love and looks to be a lovely existence. They also posses Samurai swords. They watch the Discovery Channel and the Food Network and yell things at the TV such as "THEES FEESH EES NOT SEXYYYYY!!"
S: Selling drugs. As we were waiting for Megan to come meet us at the botton of Mont-Royal, we were cavalierly approached by a really enterprising Narcotics Marketing Professional who asked, "How are you? Do you need something extra to enjoy this beautiful day? Drugs?" Straightforward and direct.
T: Thai star. Home of the world's worst and most empty thai food restaurant in rural Vermont in off-ski season. Katherine's noodles tasted like they were covered in ketchup and death. We saw a lot of Rural Rutland after my brilliant idea, on the way home that we attempt to access the Berkshires from the butt of rural Vermont. If you ever need to know how to get back to a major highway from the literal middle of nowhere in Vermont, just ask me.
U: Unbelievable pie!! I know it's cheating to use an adjective. But I have to write about the pie somewhere. Katherine bought a pie from this bakery in Somerville: Apple/pear with walnut stresel ..... add vanilla ice cream and holy crap.
V: Vermont. I am serious, I know everything about this frigging state now.
W: Water. I remembered that the only person that likes water quite as much as me is Katherine, bonding over our mutual love was refreshing (haha, bad pun).
X: X-pensive classical music Used. That's OK, I bought it anyway because it was one of those charming used CD and book stores and they had Lamenta della ninfa by my friend Claudio M.
Y: Youth. We did a lot of talking about high school and the way we used to be and the things we used to do. When you're around a lot of people from that time in your life it's really easy to remember what you thought your life would be like by the time you were your current age. It led to a little reflection on what it means to actually consider myself an adult now. I think I hardly knew MYSELF five years ago, and only what I WANTED. Which is different.
Z: After last weekend, I think it's safe and convenient to say that I'm zealous to go back. :)

Resolute Resolutions

2007-11-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I received the following note in my Gmail box, forwarded to me from friends of my neighbors for whom I appeared as The Countess last Saturday. They thought I might enjoy reading it:

"Thank you so much for such a
wonderful Halloween party and soup night. The children had a great time.
Imagine how much Olek enjoyed the Haunted House that he woke up 3 nights
in a row shaking & without being able to speak. When we calmed him down
he was telling us that the "Countess" was appearing to him constantly.
Good job guys!!!. I'll pass you the future bills for therapy."

They were right. I did enjoy reading praise about myself. There's a shocker. Maybe I should be a performer! What am I doing with my life!!? Haha.

I had my first real day at work today, during which I actually picked up the phone. Or pressed the button which allowed me to speak to humans on the headset. I did OK, I think, judging from the fact that Duane removed himself from his observation perch after only about a half hour. Among the gems from today were a very sweet woman who thought that Golijov Dvorak was the name of one person (it's the last names of two composers, used as the title of a concert), and someone who actually wanted to sit through Les Troyens (moneyed laugh). Anyway, it's really great that I am selling classical music and that we get to listen to rehearsals in Symphony Hall over the intercom. I just wish I didn't have to work so hard to supplement it.

Erin's Mom took us to a DELICIOUS repast at The Daily Catch where I had black squid ink pasta, which is delicious and homemade and does not taste like the squid ink with which it was colored. It was definitely one of the best meals in recent memory consumed by me.

Along with this jaunt from, basically, Allston to the Common to the Waterfront and back came with much walking around the windiest, most beautifully lit, most orgasmically beautiful parts of my city. The landscape down by the water and by the park is just so gorgeous in an urban way. Everything is tall and statuesque and stacked up on itself, and there is so much life around it, people, and causes, and the reasons it all exists. All this is juxtaposed with natural beauty, like the moon on the fucking harbor and the way the wind feels. It's beautiful.

So this spurred a resolve in me: Spend more time in Boston, Boston. Allston has its charms, but I must spend more time in the City. The next time I have five hours free and I need to go to CVS, I should pick a random T stop, hope that there's a CVS there, and explore.

I like this place. It makes sense to me.

Welcome to the BSO.

2007-10-31T13:26:00.000-07:00

Not surprisingly, the Boston Symphony Orchestra is a little bit of a nicer place to work than some other organizations into which I have dipped by metaphorical money-making quill. Upon arrival, I was briefly shown around and the title of the blog was uttered which made my little nerd blood cells tingle, and then back downstairs for an entire day of training and observation. AND, there are three supervisors in the room at all times, which is, like, completely foreign to me. Help? Support? I'm sorry, have we met? Anyway, basically my job is to sell tickets and set up exchange forms which someone actually does, use the ticketing system to have people's tickets reprinted if they ask, these kinds of things. Entire other offices handle group sales, handicapped seating, subscriptions ....

It's nice, but it doesn't pay the rent by an embarassing margin. and may become monotonous very, very quickly. Pending things happening in 2008 of the AD nature, it might find itself being temporary. I need a Sugar Daddy. or a Spenda Step-Daddy. Or whatever. That being said, I turned down a $75 dollar alto section leader sub gig because Erin's mom is taking us to Legal Seafoods. Food, you are a cruel mistress.

Men Behind Curtains.

2007-10-27T19:29:00.000-07:00

I used to sing hyms for money both in Gambier and a few times here in Wellesley. Not being religious by nature, I was always astounded by the amount of Technical Theatre involved. Sure, they didn't lower Jesus down from the fly rail or make a tomb gobo, but there were lighting effects, entrances, and a script to consider. The number of times Jane Lentz ran up and down those stairs to check and see if the choir needed candles to carry, the bottle of Palmolive conveniently located next to the communion chalices, the fidgety eleven year olds waiting in the hallway to march out into the sanctuary and become acolytes, and even the two-hour choir rehearsals I sat through just to help the other parishioners not feel so shy about using their voices to praise God, all reminded me of a well-rehearsed play. In retrospect, I was probably able to notice most of these elements because I did not believe in it all myself, and therefore was not quite swept up in the effect.

I realize that if a sacred prop was not in its right place, a page lost on the book of common prayer, the wrong reading read, parishioners would not stand up in their seats and renounce their faith. Likewise, a theatre audience would not vow to never return to theatre because of a single technical glitch. But too many glitches, and the thing -- the play, the proclamation of faith, whatever -- just no longer exists. And that's a pretty big responsibility to take on.

It's pretty amazing the amount of behind-the-curtain work, artistically contrived or not, that has to go into making people believe. But, once it's there, we do indeed believe. Pretty nifty. In general, even more than being made to think, I think people like to be made to feel things, almost supernaturally, and this is one of the things that makes making theatre fun. Speaking of which ....

Tonight I played The Countess at Madison's (my 11-year old neighbor)'s Halloween-themed birthday party, which took the form of a Haunted House. Basically, my job was to make myself look like I had just crawled from the grave, using their available makeup, lie down in a coffin, and then scare the living shits out of them as I screechily emerged from said coffin. Then, I headed over to The Countess's "Blood 'n Breakfast" (I came up with the pun -- thank you; thank you), where it was my duty to try to convince the youngsters to sample some of my fresh products .... that is, after I replenished the bottles with fresh "blood" from Madison's mother, sitting in a chair behind me, fiercely hoping that the dyed-water pump tied to her collar would operate when she squeezed it so that I could say "LOOK AT THE BLOOD DRIPPING FROM THE VICTIM!!" and not have it be awkwardhe .

It's not easy to scare the living crap out of a bunch of ten-year olds desperate to seem cool in front of each other. To that end, we had a bonafide rehearsal at 4:30, and in between "takes", Madison's parents would run around to all the stations (Grandpa as the scary clown, Grandma as the wandering, gauzy ghost), frantically giving suprisingly Aristotilean notes like "On that first 'GET OUT OF MY HOUSE' dad, you can really go crazy -- really scare them there -- try to get them to leave!" And then there were the blocking notes like, "really let them see the blood squirting .... Mom, how can we get it so they don't know you're real ... so they don't see your face?"

Even though they paid me in $40 bucks and two pieces of cake, I still actually had a great time. I'm so glad I'm close to home sometimes, even if I'm not doing just the most scary and ambitious thing I can possibly think of, so that I can feel connected and part of these kids' lives still.

More significantly, it was wonderfully heartening to be doing something collaborative, selfless, and, at its heart, completely and utterly ridiculous. As I sat up in the coffin, with my hair in my eyes and my cape in my face, trying desperately not to let a girl whose diapers I changed 6 years ago recognize me as Adrienne, I realized that this was sort of play-acting concentrated. Our only job tonight was to make these kids feel so afraid that they forgot that they were in a suburban house they'd been in a dozen times before, with parents and care-givers and support all around. And we succeeded! Perhaps the best part is that they put themselves through it, and I really respect that in a kid. ;)

So what keeps us from jumping up, like Anton the Spanish-accented, adorable, 7 year old skeptic and yelling, "I KNOW YOUR TRICKS. I KNOW YOU!!"? I don't know entirely. But I'm glad that we don't.

I should mention that I scared the crap out of Anton about 20 seconds after he yelled that.

Happy Halloween.

Reason No. 348 why I love Boston:

2007-10-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

Tonight on the T, as Erin and I were returning from the production of Figaro scenes mounted by the Boston Opera Collaborative, we encountered some of the most unusual personages on our local subway line. Among them: A skanky Little Red Ridinghood (one must wonder what it was she was planning on riding this evening), Quail Man (MAN MAN man man man), Peyton Manning, a credible impersonation of James Bond (although he just reminded me of Chamber Singers tour), and a very loquacious Flasher. Erin and I sort of rolled our eyes and discussed what a perilous public health hazard it would be if Gambier residents had to take the T to get to Shock yer Mama. And as the kids witlessly extolled the virtues of Jaegerbombs, each other, the Red Sox, each other, and Jaegerbombs, I must confess I took a trip down Stereotype Lane and pegged them merely as lucky, directionless, Booze Majors.

Until I heard the Flasher ask his friend who may or may not have been attempting to portray K. Fed which section of Ear Training he was in, and, furthermore, what said section's opinion of the Movable Do vs. Fixed Do controversy was? Which modes had they covered so far? The Flasher was a music major it seemed, and could probably give me a run for my money on your basic Music 121-122 test.

Here's to you, Flasher, for you are positively Myxolydian.

The evening of scenes, in general, was sort of pleasantly blanketed by random encounters, whether they were verbal or not, with new Boston music acquaintances. From the Susanna in the Mozart scenes, who is also the artistic chair at BOC and the person with whom I have a meeting on Sunday, to a friend of Colin's who is apparently an excellent pianist and coach at BoCo, to a tenor whom I met at my failed audition for The Cantata Singers but was nice enough to make conversation with me, to the audience of other people who felt like spending two and a half hours listening. Everybody was young and everybody loved opera. It was pretty cool.