Kinderpunk Musings

Growing Pains

2013-04-05T17:30:00.000-04:00

**This blog post is nothing more than my personal opinion, which I am entitled to. It is not at all the official position of Jobsite or any other person, organization, or entity mentioned (or alluded to) herein.**

So, a few years ago a few of the local professional theaters in town came up with an idea to form a league and, among other things, establish an annual award ceremony in the name of one of our best who had recently died.

Some folks were suspect of the motives here. I understood them. I even had some suspicions of my own, I'll admit. Some really resented tying our friend's name to an award, something he probably would have hated. Those people had a good point. I let them know that, and was vocal about it with the larval league.

Still, as I told my own board of directors and key artists, it didn't feel right stepping away. If there was anything nefarious afoot, it seemed that to do so would be to let whatever bad-spectres might exist win. I believed firmly though that for this league to have any credibility or staying power whatsoever that it would need to leave the hands of a few artistic leaders. This needed to be its own independent organization comprised of people who really care about the art and the area. My people agreed, and so we stayed in.

So, time passes, we have two awards ceremonies and a few other events like "unified" auditions (which we didn't even participate in due to timing). People are still mad. I still agree with a lot of the things that these people are mad about. I still would rather try to change things from within. Finally, this independent body begins to take shape. Five people assume leadership positions within the new organization, and not one of them runs a local professional company. That excited me thoroughly. The new head of this body has worked on one of the more higher profile pro theater leagues in the country, so knows a thing or two. A few others are some of the most supportive, team-playingest folks I know.

Now, all this while there have been some VERY vocal naysayers about this whole thing. Still. I've heard, I believe, most of the complaints and have agreed with many of them, assuring folks that there are folks like me who are listening and who are working to change things from the inside. Now there's a whole new leadership body and a new name for the organization. The new leadership listened and has decided to rebrand the award ceremony out of respect for those close to our friend who were offended or thought it not at all in his spirit. Control of where the organization is headed was taken away from the artistic leadership of a few companies that frankly do not adequately reflect the vibrant culture we have here, and who (myself included) would never be fully trusted as an independent body.

So the new leaders invite the old team of artistic leaders in to transition and lay out their plan. I'm listening. I'm watching. I'm paying attention. They're really trying to do right by everyone, but we all know that's really an impossible task. My point is, they're trying. They care. They are actually doing something instead of either a) sitting around talking about things without any meaningful motion or b) just shitting on other people's efforts without being willing to get their hands dirty.

Please stop here. If you are reading this, do not assume that I am accusing you personally of either of the above. This area is really friggin' awesome though at producing people who are good at both. Sometimes simultaneously.

Now, today I have watched a lot of people I know, respect, and care about go at it over a $25 membership fee to the league. I do not mean to diminish anyone's financial position, but, really? I sat in two meetings where this price point was discussed up and down, benefits of that fee clarified, and a pro forma offered up to anyone who wanted to look at it that broke down how many people they'd need to get to buy in at that rate to make the website, auditions, award ceremony plus things like membership cards and all those other little details that cost money work out.

I was impressed.

I saw a BUDGET. A budget, you guys, on paper. SPREADSHEETS FTW. Something I don't believe I saw in advance once over the previous two years.

Now, let me go back t the $25. It's a membership fee, right? Think of it as dues. It's an alliance, a league, these things often have a membership fee. I pay for a membership fee to TCG. I get a monthly magazine and website access out of it.

I think for the reduced ticket prices at area theaters, access to the artist database, entry into the unified auditions and to the annual award/celebration event is a fair deal. Heck, maybe even just for the discounted tickets alone if you see a lot of theater. But, some say that this is some kind of evil strong-arming. People are being forced to do it. They don't want those other benefits. They just want to audition and this is all just lies and trickery. Let me be frank: there are several who believe that the $25 fee is not enough for what people get. I think it's about right, and should be accessible to most artists here in town.

Someone doesn't want to go to the awards? Fine. Don't go. You don't want to pay for an audition? Fine. don't. What about the discount on tickets? Artists are always asking us if we have an artist night, or an artist code. Up to this time, we haven't. We decided though we'd participate and offer people half-off tickets as a membership perk. Other theaters did the same.

Back to paying to audition, look, I don't believe in it either. I get if you have to rent a space or a piano player or make copies or whatever, but I really don't believe in charging someone for an interview, basically. We've never done it, though a lot of theaters really do charge an admin fee for cattle calls, even if it's like $5. It's a weed-out more than anything. Maybe if we charged $5, we wouldn't have 30-40% no-shows to our generals. I dunno. I still won't do it though.

And, I doubt that Jobsite participates in the "unifieds" this year. We have our own way, our own system and our own timelines. We've already cast our season by June, and it's sorta disingenuous (not to mention a waste of our time) to show up and act like we're still looking for people. We have a hard enough time fighting the perception that we only cast from within.

You can't charge an AEA actor a fee to audition, but AEA actors also pay dues, etc, which you may as well look at as a fee. You gotta pay to play either way. You "pay" in many other ways to be an Equity actor in Florida, but I won't start ranting about that again ... yet.

So, I'm looking at all of this stuff playing out -- on Facebook, across barstools, on loading docks -- and it still just feels like there are many who think Emperor Palpatine is hiding somewhere pulling the strings on this whole thing. I sense they really believe something BAD is happening, and that there are ill-intentions afoot. When the leadership of the new-and-improved alliance is asking for help and for feedback, I really believe they want it. I've met with them, face to face, and I really think that they deserve a chance.

When it was just us artistic leaders (and too small a sample of us even at that) steering this thing, I understood the misgivings. It's why I stressed from the beginning it had to be a neutral, independent group (who are doing this all for free, btw). I'm saddened now though that after all of this that it appears that there are those who still won't try to be a part of the solution -- or at the very least stop hucking rocks at those really giving it a good effort. I guess I get the suspicion more than I seem to get the bile. What have these 5 done to deserve it?

We deserve better than people sitting around talking and not doing. We deserve better than having the efforts of those really trying scrutinized and shit on when I don't think they've even really been given a chance. I worry even more that some of these folks might just give up on trying because the tremendous effort just ends up feeling not worth it.

I'm staying vague on a lot of points for a reason. I don't want this to turn into a point by point rebuttal of some of the things I've seen on Facebook today, because the truth is this issue is a lot bigger than this. This whole thing has been brewing up inside me since the original larval league was announced to the press (which was too soon by some people's estimation). Again, I repeat, this is not about a couple of posts today. It's a pretty big issue and impacts a whole lot of people I respect and love, or whom I at least want to see succeed as best as possible because in many ways as an arts community our fates are linked more intimately than many of us really will ever give proper credit to.

You can still hate the league, or the very idea of any kind of league. Cool. I still like you and I hope you still like me. I still encourage anyone who is curious to go to a meeting, and anyone who has ideas and feedback to offer it up. Things like this are going to be ugly, and contentious, and people aren't going to agree. It still seems worth the doing. I've been here a while and frankly the inaction, shit-talking, or shitty inaction has been wearing me the fuck out.

We v. the World

2013-03-12T12:59:00.000-04:00

So, I'm kind of an addict.

If I could, I would do it all the time.

I'd most likely give up all the other things I do just to keep doing it.

Whenever I do it, time simultaneously stands still and moves so quickly I can't catch my breath. Traveling.

Was it the summer trips with the granparents, all those years ago? Maybe. Perhaps romantic attachments were made from so many trinkets bestowed to me from family as I grew up. Wanting so badly to go to D.C. when I won that contest, thinking I'd see first-hand all those monuments I'd pored over in books. The crazy cabby (whose name sounded like "Boh-yea") telling me through intense laughter the story about another fare demanding he "keep bot' hands on da hwheel." Although, there's almost always a a cabby story.

My love affair with travel is Jannus-like, looking both ways. Ruins and pubs. My dear wife humors me as I plot a route that lets me take pictures of everything predating electricity, then we go hang out with the locals for the evening. The more removed away from the "center" of things the more interesting it gets. What was a millenia ago v. 100 years ago v. 20 years ago v. today v. where it looks like it is going. That story is always so much more complex and interesting than what you generally learn in school. And the people are generally far more interesting and complex than typical Murrkan sentiment would leave you to believe. That lesson first really sank in when I visited Moscow in 1995. I imagine I'd say the same thing if I were to go to Afghanistan or Iran or North Korea today.

Summer said to me that once I finish this PhD and get a job that maybe we can take two vacations a year. Wouldn't that be nice? Or just one big one every year. Two months, fucking off somewhere that's not home. Seeing the world. Eating. Meeting. Laughing. Marveling.

Vacations are also about the only time we ever really get time together, as absurd as that might sound. We used to spend most every minute of the day within 100 feet of each other, and even though Summer is now back at an office and I am between home and school it's still not like we're not ever around one another. There's still a difference though. Away I'm not splitting my focus. There's almost no such thing as being alone unless we're on vacation. "Us" time is generally hard to come by. If we're at home, we're never alone with the critters. If we're out it's usually never long before we've run into someone else. Home or out there are a ton of other people always demanding of both our time electronically. Vacations to distant places generally fixes almost all of that.

Thinking about this trip to Budapest in a few days, and part of me almost doesn't care that I've done a shit job at learning the language, it'll just force us to talk to each other more.

Oh, and this isn't a hard thing to work out, ladies and gents, for those of you who think foreign travel is out of your reach. We're not exactly made of money, and we're not at all fancy travelers. We used a friend who was a travel agent for our first two trips abroad, and as long as you are flexible they can generally work within any kind of budget. Our last two trips have been booked through EuropeanDestinations.com, and the deals we've gotten have been insane. In both instances, travel agents and the university travel office haven't even been able to price our flights for the total package cost of the trip through that website.

Sign up for those travel deal emails. Travelzoo, Kayak, etc. And again, be flexible. We booked the trip to Budapest a few months back on what was practically an impulse buy. The deal dictated the destination. I know sometimes folks think it funny when they ask "Why Budapest?" and I say that the deal was too good to pass up, but I'll go back to the fact that I love to travel and wanna see the world. Makes it pretty easy.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to GTFOOD soon. And to see new things. And to have my wife to myself for a week. I'm sure we'll post more than enough pictures ...

End of the year post 2012

2012-12-28T13:39:00.003-05:00

I seem to be good for something like this every year around this time, the annual end-of-the-year wrap-up blog, also sometimes which comes in the form of a semi-annual "oh I should post more often" post.

It always seems to come when I have a few days off around this time of the year, and so here I am again. Coffee, thought, typin'. I feel like this year there are too many random threads, chads of thoughts running in and out of my mind. This may be hard to follow.

School: Well, this is the easiest place to start. I successfully defended my PhD qualifying exams in August, and spent this past semester trying to get an acceptable prospectus together for my dissertation. This has so far been the most difficult thing I've done academically, but I also feel I'm the better for it and that my dissertation will be the better for it.

I think I have a title: Was it Something They Said? I was originally hoping to graduate in May, after 3 years in the program, which is now looking more realistically something like August. It usually does take folks 4 years, even though it's said it can be done in 3, which was my hope. I'm funded through the spring of 2014, but I'd prefer to get ahead.

I presented on a few panels at NCA in November, and it looks like I might do both Patti Pace and SSCA in the spring.

I have 3 papers that still need cleaning up to be sent off for publication. I need to do a better job of working on those when I need a break from my diss. One journal rejection and one still in consideration for the year. The latter seems promising so I am keeping my fingers crossed. Trying to build that academic side of the CV to better match my professional/practical side.

I love teaching more and more it seems with each semester. I worked in both the Theater and Communication departments this term, and have a lot of ideas as to how we could do some Very Awesome Things if I could make that a more full-time proposition. I'd prefer a spot at USF, but UT would also work. I want to stay in the area.

Shows: Two of the hardest sound designs I've ever done in my life (The 39 Steps, Fahrenheit 451), two and a half very satisfying experiences as a director (RACE, Gorey Stories, and we're only halfway through Hay Fever), and one very satisfying return to the stage as an actor (Closetland). That last one got me Creative Loafing's Reader's Pick for Best Actor, which was extremely flattering. Performed in a very cool Celebration of Resistance at the RNC that got covered by national media, which was fun. After HF in January I'll also direct Much Ado About Nothing, then after that I'll take it as it comes. Play selection for 13-14 is right around the corner, and I should know what the next year has in store for me by March at the latest. I'm going to try to back off a little to allow me more time to finish my diss.

Life: Any chance of a vacation in 2012 was dashed over the summer when the storms wrecked our roof and living room ceiling. My mom came to the rescue saving me a load of interest payments, but paying her back by the end of the year (my terms, it's bad enough borrowing money from your mom, even worse hacing it hanging over your head) meant no travel. Seems though that fate smiled on us, not terribly long after I paid off the balance I owed mom I got a steal of a deal sent to me in an email for a trip to Budapest. We're going over Spring Break for a week. :)

No additions to the house critter-wise this year, and one very sad departure in Summer's Miss Spot. We both miss her pretty face. It may be a rough few years ahead of us with so many senior pets (Elzbeth and Pluto are both over 14 now), but right now everyone seems to be doing just dandy.

Summer went back to her job at the Straz Center, not in defeat by any stretch of the imagination but with some perspective and with personal gain/benefit. She enjoys being more directly involved in the industry where she is, but I know is anxious to get her co-worked back from maternity leave so she can come home before 11pm. :) Otherwise, Summer and I are still in full Cahoots.

My mom is still doing great, apart from recently wrecking her wrist in a freak Xmas tree decorating incident. :) I enjoyed seeing her, Donnie, and the rest of the fam over the holiday.

Personal: I managed to keep off the 60 lbs I lost for most of the year, but the holidays have seen about 10 creep back up on me. I gotta shake that shit off after the new year starts, I bought too many new clothes for anything to feel snug, not to mention I got rid of everything old. :)

I'm messing around with an e-cigarette in my countdown to 40, an age I made a deal on that I'd quit by. I think I can do it.

I go through periods where I feel overwhelmingly spiritual. I don't think I ever really discuss these periods, a decision I think I make not only out of politeness and not feeling like arguing with anyone, but because the feelings are not often articulated into language. This isn't about some definitive idea of a God or an afterlife or your general traps of organized religion but about that which rests inside and in between people and our world. Whatever, it's there. I've been reading up a lot on Pure Land Buddhism lately. I still think perhaps the best way to describe my orientation is Campbellian (as in Joseph, not to be confused with Campbellism). It may be just accepting my own mortality more and more, but this seems to matter to me more with each year. It's not about finding answers for me, it's about considering interesting questions.

I've decided at the end of this year that I want to be a better friend. I've had quite a few chats over the past few months that make me realize I'm too old for this shit, and I've had some good friends for far too long to not do a better job of maintaining them. That requires work. I may not have time to do everything that I want to do, but just like with anything else in my life that I squeeze in I have to make the time. A call or email or text here or there, a plan every so often -- it matters. I think one of the greatest dangers of old friendships is that you really do start to take them for granted, and not even out of malice. If you didn't have to work at them for a real long time it leads to feeling like you shouldn't have to work at them even when it's not easy. That's not the case. Even if the time can't be there for whatever reason during this spell or that, there's at least gotta be some communication. Some effort.

And that's the general state of the union, folks ... hoping 2013 brings you all nothing but the best.

Til next time ...

New Year's Day Brunch

2012-12-28T11:49:00.001-05:00

My group of friends has a tradition of hanging out on New Year's Day while stuffing our faces (one last throe of glory before trying to squeeze back into normal clothes!) and nursing whatever damage we did to ourselves the night before. It's a good day.

Up to this point, my contribution has always been making a giant batch of collards, a specialty of mine. Last year, someone had the great idea to make a Bloody Mary bar. Problem was, everybody decided that was a great idea and there simply wasn't enough to go around. This year though, it appears to be on and folks are chipping in to add to the spread. Here's mine, a recipe I've played with the past few years which has been shamelessly yet lovingly ripped off from many other friends who make Bloody Mary's. We originally called this a Bloody Betty due to the use of gin over vodka, but it appears that this style has many different names (Red Snapper, Ruddy Mary, etc). We just call it delicious.

The vegetarian model, sans sausage or meat sticks. Fancy umbrella has been described by others as just gilding the lily

Make this gin infusion as far in advance as you'd like, but I recommend a minimum of 72 hours. Unscientifically, here's what to do.

1) Get a big wide-mouth jar, like for pickles.

2) Take cucumbers, remove about 1/3 of the skin with a peeler, cut them in half, remove the seeds and then slice into thin half-moons.

3) Fill your jar about 1/3 to 1/2 with those slices. The more cukes, the stronger your infusion.

4) Fill the jar with gin (I prefer Bombay Sapphire).

5) Let it all get happy in the fridge.

Make this mix the day before for best flavor. I also recommend a giant jar. This is per 64oz of Clamato/Beefamato (I prefer the former), you will add (mas y menos - for instance I like a lot more heat to mine, but it's easier to adjust that in the single glass than it is to make it too spicy for others):

3 Tbsp dijon mustard
3 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
3 Tbsp prepared horseradish
2 Tbsp Sriracha hot sauce
5 oz fresh lime juice
2 Tbsp olive brine

2 Tbsp minced garlic
1 tsp celery seed
2 Tbsp fresh ground black pepper

2 tsp Old Bay seasoning
1 tsp kosher or sea salt

For garnish in the glass:

Pickle spears

Pickled okra

Pickled green beans

Green olives

Capers - don't like them loose in the glass? Stuff them in olives

Beef jerky sticks (homemade, Slim Jim, etc) - thread it through olives for extra fanciness

Celery sticks
Hot sauces

Garnish the rim of the glass with wedges of summer sausage and lime. You may also start by putting an Old Bay rim on the glass for additional fanciness/flavor.

To serve: add roughly 2 oz of the gin to 4 oz of the mix in a large glass over ice. Garnish that thing til it looks obscene, Enjoy, rinse, repeat.

So, what are you going to do ... ?

2012-06-12T11:12:00.000-04:00

I have theater friends and communication friends. Then I have friends and family that are just that. Not hooked up with art or academia. A consistent question I get asked, pretty much no matter who I talk to is "So, what are you going to do once you finish your PhD?"

It's a good question, and I think maybe I've only really begun to sort out what that is. In that process, I've also just figured out how incredibly fucking lucky I am. A lot of folks will say that doctoral work is just a paper chase, you're in there for the letters so you can get a better job, be paid better, be taken more seriously or all of the above. That's not inaccurate.

For me, I took 12 years off between my MFA and beginning my PhD. I also switched disciplines.

Well, sort of.

And I think this is where many get confused, which after I explain often generates the above question. That's fair. In a nutshell, my PhD is coming from a Communication Dept. Yet, I work professionally in theater, have an MFA in theater and keep talking about that I look at "Performance Studies." That sorta confuses the shit out of some. A lot of folks think I'm getting a PhD in Theater. Even some of you I've corrected more than once. :)

Specifically within Communication, I am interested in performance studies, resistance and social change. This is what I'm essentially zeroing in on for my dissertation. Specifically I'll be looking at the figure of the subversive stand-up comic in relation to those 3 things. See? I'm not even looking at theater for my dissertation, but I am looking at performance.

This might not be that far off from my initial impulse when I was working on my MFA and applying to PhD schools in Theater for Performance Theory. I was interested in comedy then, too, but more in looking at the evolution from the Greeks to the commedia to the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the like today. I'm still looking at comedy, I'm just simplifying it to a single speaker in front of a live audience.

The performance studies text I teach to undergrads sums up what we do in performance studies from the discipline of communication as three-fold. I think this is as tidy as it gets, even it doesn't get it all: communication looks at performance as a method of inquiry, an object of study, and a way to talk about all human communication. Note there's nothing in there about professional training yaddyadda. I did that. My MFA was to train me to be a professional actor and teacher of acting. Now I'm learning to be a scholar, and more closely link society as a whole, individuals, unique communities, to my work. In studying performance I'm not just looking at the event as aesthetic but as rhetorical, symbolic. I am looking at how these events transgress or reify societal norms, dominant power. I am learning to be not only a more critical receiver of messages, but also a maker of messages.

I've also discovered in the past few years that meaning is not something that's fixed. A play, a movie, a song, a simple statement, our relationships, our national identity -- anything interpreted to be "meaning" out of any these things is co-constructed, and that means things are a lot less certain that Enlightenment-based ways of knowing would like to have us believe. This is also part of the critical process -- remaining open to ideas, to surprise, to possibilities, to be able to negotiate tensions and not just essentialize things to hierarchal binary to make it easier for us. This is how we end up with inequity, injustice, and most of the horrible shit whatever dominant group has inflicted on those with less power since we've been upright.

As a theater company, Jobsite has from the beginning wanted to encourage people to be citizens, not just consumers. Well, if we want to have a conversation, we have to meet them half-way and we have to listen. We have to encourage and we have to challenge. In studying that thing we have that allows us to get information, ideas or feelings out of our heads and into someone else's, in studying Communication, I not only become a better person but a better artist and producer.

Wow. Sorry for some of the rambling, and I know I still haven't answered the magic question from the first paragraph. I see it like this:

I plan to keep doing this. All of it. I don't think I'm ready to quit making art and just go put on a tweed jacket with fancy elbow pads and grow a cool beard. I'm also not going to complete this great paper chase and walk away the academy because I got what I was after in earning the title Dr. Jenkins. Studying performance (all of our various performances -- how we perform self, identity, group membership, culture, resistance, and even texts) is making me a better person and artist. The work I do in the theater is feeding back and informing my academic work. This feedback loop is widening my eyes to be more critical at every other message I'm being bombarded with -- from the talk of politicians to the visual rhetoric of a magazine ad. Feedback loops within feedback looks. Systems. An ecology.

I can continue my stage work. I can write on that academically for either theater or communication. I can continue my communication research and scholarship building off of my practical performance background. I can continue to teach future generations of citizens, practitioners, critics, and appreciators -- despite the form that the message takes.

That's pretty fucking cool. And that's what I plan on doing when I finish.

The writer in me thinks I should go back and edit this, make it prettier and clearer. The blogger in me is just going to hit publish though, I can always come back and clean up this brain dump later ... :)

Random Monday Blather

2012-05-14T11:51:00.001-04:00

Things that I've seen lately that I think are related:

Increasing disassociation (avoiding the more blunt "rudeness") of individuals from whomever they are around publicly in favor of communicating with a portable device (this covers people sitting at the same table texting to the person talking loudly on their phone with no regard for their surroundings). I can be just as guilty of the former as the next guy. I'm a compulsive iPhone checker. As my friend Shawn says though, I "don't have the phone app" (I don't like talking on the phone), so you're not usually going to catch me talking to anyone ever. "No one exists but me."
Entitlement issues not related to electronics. On Wednesday and Sunday this week I sat in a live theater where people around me felt it was completely ok to sit there and talk to each other during a performance, even when shot scornful looks or outright shooshed. I've also had countless experiences standing in front of an audience full of people before a show pleading my head off to get everyone to silence their devices, only to have little digital orchestras firing up just minutes into a performance. On Saturday I went to a concert where the woman behind me completely refused to sit down and STFU (this was an acoustic evening with Chris Cornell in an intimate, beautiful old theater) in the second row no less, and even after security dealt with her twice she alternately yelled "HEAVEN," "PLAY HEAVEN" or "I LOVE YOU CHRIS" every 12.5 seconds. There was also much shooshing and shitty glances. No effect. "The rules do not apply to me."
Speaking of entitlement, I am seeing it on both sides of this argument about Cappy's, a pizza place I don't even go to (for a whole stack of unrelated reasons). I really do get both sides of this whole kids in public argument. But even as much as I may not be a fan of kids fucking it up for me when I'm trying to enjoy being out, some of these people are being unreasonable. Still, there are enough parents out there who just believe their kids should be able to run wild to stop me from defending parents. Just a few weeks ago on a Friday night I actually had a parent give me a shitty look and eventually move to a different area of the patio at a bar I frequent because I was smoking and most likely dropped an F-bomb. I actually think it was the smoke that moved them, which I get, but they came over and sat near me. My broader point is I was at a bar. At close to 10pm. Don't like smoke and swearing? Don't take your kid to a bar and hang out outside -- the only place you can smoke. "My point is so right that I will not only carry it to the extreme, but completely demonize your point"
The inability for many of us to be able to actually hold down a civil discussion without it turning ugly (politics, religion, child-rearing ...). See the conversation above online about the kids. This isn't new. This is essentially Carlin's point about how everyone drives faster than you is a maniac, and everyone who drives slower than you is an asshole. Still, how can we not learn from this shit?

This sorta goes beyond Deborah Tannen's The Argument Culture. It's not just technology. Or bad parenting/upbringing. Or because we're rotting somehow as a species. It is none of these things. It is all of these things. Because we can connect with anyone at any time across any distance; because we can watch whatever we want whenever we want it; because we're on-demand, wired, instant, global.

We don't have to be neighborly, though it would of course serve us all better to be better neighbors; if I can be on the phone with my wife in New York, I don't have to be in the checkout line at Sweetbay; I can bond or bate on a messageboard and feel good about myself in relative comfort, so why do I need to try to be a community member and actually work with people in ways that can move us all forward?

And we take it all for granted, all for granted. Or make excuses. Kids will be kids. You don't understand what it's like for me. Those are all old-fashioned rules. The world has changed and so has the way we interact. It's weak to change your mind, a character flaw to see someone else's point. You win or you lose.

Winners and losers. Reality TV. Sports. Game shows. Elections. Ratings. Sales. Market share. Awards. Hell, Game of Thrones.

Have we always been so black and white? Has it always just been winning and losing? Does fantasy like Game of Thrones or historical fiction like Rome just paint a revisionist history/alternate reality that justifies the new world we've constructed, or is it just reminding us it's always been this way?

Ned Stark seemed so noble, more about virtue than vengeance and, well, we see where that got him.

Is this some existential crisis? Some crisis I am finding in our estrangement from some Eternal Thou? Some Verfremdung?

Is it even new?

I'm pretty sure we've been bemoaning our collapse as soon as we got upright. It does feel different though. I feel like I see a difference. But am I? Or do I just see it all differently?

Maybe it's not either/or, maybe it's both/and, what I feel like everything is coming down to.

And that's my Monday morning muddle ... just thinking out loud.

Privilege, difference, and why it all still matters

2012-05-04T12:53:00.001-04:00

So, last night I stepped outside the front doors of the theater on break during RACE. I'm standing there, minding my own business but it's a busy concourse. There are after all 4 other performance spaces in the building. An elderly white woman is standing there examining the 3-sheet (the very large poster next to the front doors). Her even more elderly husband approaches and creaks out "What the hell is is this?"

As his feet come to a stop, he looks up and then offers up "Oh, it must be for black people" before tugging at her sleeve to continue down to their destination.

I laughed, but at the same time I was disturbed.

This really gets at the core of privilege to me. Particularly of its invisibility. I talked about this last night at rehearsal, but it seems worth repeating. So this doesn't turn into some kinda thesis, I'm going to try to limit this to bullet points. Leave a comment. We can continue a conversation there.

Anything with even a fairly diverse cast automatically becomes about diversity. This is just generally troublesome. For instance if I chose to do a postmodern approach to Shakespeare and throw race and gender out the window and just cast it the way I want, it becomes a statement. One that will be interpreted widely different from person to person. I will be accused by some of sullying the Bard, by others for ignoring "realities" of race and gender in our modern times, and still accused by others of being too PC/EOE. Of course there will still be others who might think I just gave the parts to the best actors who had the best chemistry. This isn't even really my point.
Certain shows automatically get labeled as "for" some certain segment of the theater-going audience, and when you point it out, the straight while (and often masculine) privilege is SCREAMING at you. That way of being is just so entrenched that it's invisible, and that's the worst part of the whole thing. Because it's invisible and has been in place for so long, there are those (like straight white men) who will tell you it doesn't exist. Nothing to see here. Move on (Let's be honest, who has *never* heard from the dominant group that someone in the margins just needs to "get over it.").
So how does this manifest? Not many accuse David Mamet of being a a "white" playwright who writes "white" plays for "white" audiences. I have never had a friend of color, or a woman, or a gay friend ever say to me "Oh, that's a white/straight/guy play." Yet white people give themselves a pass or disqualify a piece's relevance by saying that something is *for* blacks/women/homosexuals. As if they'd be completely lost the whole time or that somehow the work is automatically somehow less interesting. Isn't a good story a good story? Isn't solid craft solid craft?
I do not have a formal case study or anything, this is largely anecdotal. But, I've been doing this long enough to have a lot of damn anecdotes. I can see it on faces, hear it in voices, see it in empty seats in the theater: "this play is for them." Yet the reverse never proves itself true. Despite the male bias in the theater since jump (playwrights, parts for women, directors ...), women still buy more tickets to the theater than men. And for anyone who wants to start pointing out the Menopause the Musicals and Crimes of the Hearts of the world, there are still a bajillion Glengarry Glen Rosses and Hurlyburlys for each one of them. I have never talked to a black friend and seen that look in their eyes or heard that tone (or the very words) that has said "Oh, it's for white people?" I have never talked to a person about seeing a show and lost their interest when I bring up that a man and woman kiss at some point in the show.
Quick sub-rant: and while we're talking inequality, why is pretty much just fine to show a naked girl on stage (front or back or both) but the second a guy's junk is visible you'd think we were sodomizing livestock in the theater?
The answer to all of this is privilege, privilege, privilege. We (I say we as a white straight dude) take it all for granted. We're used to seeing people who look like us, who live like us on TV. And for every representation I get miffed about in terms of class (the white class stereotypes, or the stereotypes of bikers as criminals in SoA) I can flip to 499 other channels and find good wholesome nice white straight people. That's obviously not always the case. People outside of white heteronormativity don't get to just shut everything else out around them. Some might (for which they will be labeled militant or radical for), but it's a real labor. When we make those comments and decisions ("Oh, it's a black/gay/girl story, it's not for me") we're just enjoying being us. Enjoying our privilege. Continuing the cycle. Supporting the invisible structure.

Do not misunderstand me. I'm not talking personal taste ("I just hate musicals"), I'm not talking about lived experience ("You know, ____ happened to me, and I just think that's going to be too close to home") , I'm not saying anyone is blatantly being -ist. I'm saying its crazy to think that a story cannot possibly interest you or be of relevance unless it's about people who look and live like you. It's awful to keep playing into binary and hierarchy by making everything so divisively straight/gay, white/other, masculine/feminine with the first of each of those pairings being the unquestionably dominant and the other necessarily subordinate and therefore rightly able to be ignored. And it's maybe even worse to try to act like difference doesn't exist or that we've somehow moved past it all, because all that does is make this all even more invisible and strong.

Ok, that's enough. Comment away. It was just on my mind ...

Superslaw

2012-04-16T08:22:00.001-04:00

So, I've been making some variation of a cole slaw for several months now. First, I was really digging on the flavor of all the Taco Bus veggies (cabbage, radish, pickled red onions, cilantro, lime juice) and so decided to make a slaw of sorts from those ingredients. It was quite good. Next, inspiration came from New World Brewery's slaw that they serve with their weigh-yer-plate BBQ buffet. It has a bit of a citrus kick to it, uses more traditional cole slaw veggies but adds white onion. I'm not precisely sure how they dress it, but it's a bit sweet, a bit more tangy. It also uses cilantro, and I pretty much will eat anything fresh that has cilantro in it. Yeah, yeah, those of you who don't like it say it tastes like soap, and we'll just agree to disagree.

So anyway, this slaw recipe I've been making has slowly been tweaking itself, and last night I just think it was something special, so here goes. One day I'll learn to measure. This is rough.

1 bag of pre-cut traditional cole slaw vegs
1/2 bag of the angel hair cut cabbage
1 bundle of green onions, chopped
4 jalapenos, sliced very thin into 1.5 in or so strips
2 large ribs of celery, sliced very thin
a big handful of cilantro leaves. chopped
rice wine vinegar (I prefer the roasted garlic variety)
ponzu sauce (I prefer the lime flavored variety)
lime juice
black toasted sesame seeds

In a very large resealable plastic container put in all of the above veggies, toss. The dressing of this salad is where I need to start measuring, it's very much still a process of Ouija preparing right now. I do know I am adding 2-3 tbsp of the lime juice first and likely about an equal amount of the ponzu (perhaps erring on the side of a little less than than the lime you added). The rest of the dressing is really the rice wine vinegar, and I've typically added it twice. First when prepared, and then usually a bit more a few hours later after it seems I didn't add enough. I would be careful not to overdress with the vinegar, or it's just going to pickle everything in about a day or two. Everything should be wet, but not soaked/swimming. Top off with toasted black sesame seeds, toss again and enjoy. Can be eaten pretty much immediately, or let sit in the fridge for a few hours, which is my preference. I think it's about perfect after 4 hours. Well-flavored but everything still has crunch.

Experiment yourself!

Seder dinner beet gazpacho

2012-04-05T17:56:00.002-04:00

This would be the recipe for a monster sized, giant dinner party portion. 1/4 this for a normal preparation. Yes, I know I could just 1/4 what I did below, but I am lazy (and this is a pretty stout pot of gazpacho as listed below). I've also edited what I changed after this was finished, as I felt like it needed a little something extra.

3lbs beets, peeled and cut into 1/4 in slices
3 granny smith apples, cored and cut into 1/4 in slices
1 large wh. onion, cut into 1/4 in strips
2 huge leeks, only the white and light green parts, cut in half lengthways then chopped
3 large sprigs of thyme
3 large sprigs of dill
12 tbsp of cider vinegar
6 tbsp ev olive oil
2.5 cups water
salt and pepper to taste

Cook leek, beet, onion, apple in a pot with the oil for about 15 minutes over medium heat.

Add the vinegar, water, herbs, S&P, bring to a boil.

Reduce to simmer for 40 minutes.

Puree this mixture in a blender and chill.

Then chop in blender 2 large cucumbers, 1 large red onion, 2 large red bell peppers, roughy 4 more tbsp of fressh dill and a mighty handful of parsley, combine well with the chilled beet mixture. I recommend refrigerating at least 4 hours for the flavors to combine. Should be fine to sit overnight.

The first time I made this I felt like it was a bit thicker than I wanted, so I added about 24 oz of water to the pot and stirred well after it chilled. This really did make a ginormous pot, and unless you're entertaining a large group or just really like beets, I am sure you can 1/4 this recipe for a normal meal.

I also found that this needed a fair amount of salt, and fresh black pepper really complemented it well. I think I used 2-3 tbsp of salt in the initial mixture, but easily added 4 more tbsp after it had all chilled in the fridge for a while. For this size recipe, I would probably start with 6 tbsp of kosher/sea salt and then take it from there. I likely also used 4 tbsp of fresh cracked black pepper.

Serve with an offering of additional salt and pepper, cider vinegar, plain yogurt and fresh dill, parsley and thyme to personal taste.

Another vacation pic ...

2012-04-01T11:13:00.003-04:00

Feeling nostalgic about traveling. This is me and Summer Bohnenkamp outside of Sacre Coeur in Paris in the Monmartre area, where Amelie was set. :)

Awesome is awesome

2012-03-31T12:40:00.004-04:00

I love this picture. My awesome wife and partner-in-cahoots, Summer Bohnenkamp (I have to say the whole name, almost like one word, SummerBohnenkamp), in Prague last August. :)

2012

2012-01-01T08:50:00.002-05:00

I don't really do resolutions. They seem like they're a setup for failure. I like the part of the Scout Oath that goes "On my honor, I will do my best ..." it just gets wonky for me when the next words of that are "to do my duty to God and my country" since I'm not really that religious or a chest-beater.

I admit though that I do really love the "On my honor, I will do my best" part. That's all most of us can ask for or be expected of, right? Doing our best?

So, I offer a full alternate version of the Scout Oath for 2012.

On my honor, I will do my best
To do my duty to my environment and community
And to obey the Golden Rule;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically viable,
mentally awake, and morally respectful of the incredible variation of our species.

Ok, that last bit is clunky. Call it a work in progress.

In brief, I want 2012 to continue the climb that started in 2011. As I said in my last post, the past two years have blown on a lot of levels. I don't have much of a beef with 2011, it was pretty good to me.

+ Keep doing well in school: Knock the bottom out of these quals in the spring, start my dissertation in earnest as of May, continue my dedication to becoming a better teacher
+ Keep refining Jobsite as an organization. This means doing the things we need to do to give us financial strength and long-term viability while not forgetting our commitment to what makes us artistically unique.
+ Get back to a 2011 commitment to try to do new things more often. Summer and I were good about it for a while, but we sorta slipped off.
+ After reaching a goal weight I fought hard for, continue to look for the ways to be more healthy. This is the stickiest wicket as it could turn real easy into "give up meat, stop drinking, quit smoking" and so on. These are the sort of resolutions made and broken year after year that make this ritual a bit meaningless. Committing myself to generally attempting to be more healthy is setting myself up for more success. Smoking is bad, we all know this. If I do not quit, I should continue to cut back. I don't eat that much meat. When I do though, I should try to make sure I know where it came from and try to have some assurance that it was handled the right way. Eat more real stuff, local stuff, less stuff from chains and packages. These may sound like little things, but they're not.
+ Generally try to live day by day to be a better person, friend, husband, son, student, teacher, artist, citizen. This is done moment to moment in tiny choices that ultimately can have huge consequences.

***

Well, shit, I took a break to go grab coffee and got distracted by this story. Now I feel like it stole the thunder of where I was going to go with this. :)

I've got ingredients to go forage for anyway, there's a giant mess o' greens in my future, and a day-party with good friends. Always a good way to start the year.

Where does time go? Tick. Tock.

2011-12-10T13:58:00.004-05:00

I guess this is going to be like one of those letters people write and send out around the holidays to let folks know what someone's been up to for the last year. That's sadly what this blog has become.

I'm to lazy to go back and look, but I'm pretty sure I've mentioned in this space before that since I've gone back to school to get my PhD I don't do much reading or writing for leisure -- it's always work, work, work. That's not to say that I don't enjoy some of the stuff I write, but I just don't have the time.

Time, time, time (see what's become of me...)

I must be at that age where time means way more to me than it should. In oh so many ways.

People at school are always commenting that I must never sleep, or that they just can't comprehend how I'm handling school and Jobsite at the same time. Truth is, I've practically got every minute of the day scheduled. That's how. I get up earlier than when I had a day job. I work through most weekends. But that's ok, it gives me this balance I need of being able to finish school and not take a leave from Jobsite.

That said, having my time micromanaged to the extent it usually is makes me enjoy things like winter, spring or summer break like a motherfucker. I told my buddy Chris (who just finished his first semester of his MA and is also involved in Jobsite) that he'd enjoy the month of December in a way he never has before. He laughed at the time, but brought those words back up to me as he left campus on Thursday and said I was right.

So, I find it funny that on my first true day off for winter break that I'm sitting here writing. I guess maybe I'm just too trained to get up and write.

I'm already thinking ahead in time-bites: in February I will help develop my questions for my qualifying exams that I will take in March, in April I should be a doctoral candidate, in May the next show I direct goes up (RACE) and I will also begin writing my dissertation, in July I get back on stage for the first time in way too long (Closetland), in August if it can be worked out I would love to go on a vacation with Summer before what is hopefully my final year at USF.

Looking back on 2011, there is a lot to feel good about. 2009 sucked balls and 2010 wasn't a whole lot better.

We lost our beautiful baby girl Mina to bone cancer, but we also brought Gigi into our home, and while no one is ever a "replacement" she's made our house brighter for being in it.

I hit a goal weight I didn't even think was possible after I hit 60 lbs shaved off in about 18 months. It's been a few months now that I haven't been dieting and I'm happy to report I'm keeping it off. I've never in my adult life had a waist size that was equal to my inseam (34). At one point I wore an XXL t-shirt, and now I'm buying M or L, depending. I have pretty much always been big. Always. It was part of my identity on so many levels. I'm still sorting out who this guy in this body is, or if this is just a transitional body and I'm going to either try to lose more weight or reshape myself somehow through exercise. I dunno yet, so I'm just waiting for that aha! moment to come.

I presented at my first conference (NCA) and am starting to send things out for publication. It's never too early to try to get that academic resume built, and I feel like I'm late to this party so am trying to make up for lost time. The piece was about my dad's last year. About our fucked up relationship, well, to be more accurate our fucked up communication habits. I've never written anything like that, much less performed something that personal. I've got mixed feelings about it. I stand by the strength of the work, but part of me still can't help feeling like that kind of work is just therapeutic wank. But, maybe I'm just not giving it enough credit -- there's something universal, galvanizing about how we deal with loss.

Summer and I went to Prague in August, which was amazing. Such a good time. We stayed in one place for a week, so we felt like we got to really know the city in a more relaxed manner than my normal Griswaldian Vini Vidi Vici way of touring a new country. I hope that we are able to continue doing these trips if not every year, every other year. I love travel. I love seeing new places. I love my world. I come back from trips like that more connected, less jaded. We can be a nasty race of germs sometimes, and I need things like that to remind me we can be pretty damn ok sometimes, too.

A few years ago, it seemed that everyone we knew was getting married and having kids. This year is a second round of that. It must be cyclical. I think about kids sometimes, not like in some yearning pining way, but in maybe a weird way. I think about getting old and then start asking myself if I really think I'll be able to fend for myself when I get up there in years. I know some people relate that (getting old) to the idea of children -- they will be those who carry on after us, or that see us through our elder years as we see them through their infancies. I saw a very old adorable couple in New Orleans at the Gumbo Shop. I really think they had to be at least mid-80s. Frail but still glimmering. They were dressed up (she in pearls and floral print, he in a jacket and bow-tie) and having dinner. I was remarking at their table manners, how properly yet effortlessly they were behaving at dinner and then I went on to make up a story about them. No idea if it's true, and I have no real reason to believe any of it is, but it comforted me as I sat there with my wife -- a good 50 years separating our tables.

The story I made up is that they're retired with no children and no real living relatives to speak of. They see the world together, and sit across from one another like that as often as they can, as in love as they day they met. He in his bow-tie and she in her pearls.

Yeah, yeah, I get it. I know who's story I want that to be. I can't help but smile ear to ear though when I think of that couple. Reminds me of Archibald Macleish:

They have only to look at each other to laugh--
no one knows why, not even they:
something back in the lives they've lived,
something they both remember but no words can say.

Don't go reading anything into that last bit as getting an itch for a baby. It's just something I think people are bound to think about. It's a natural thing. As much as I might worry about what happens when I get old, I counter that with the life I have now, and the life I want in my immediate future, which is not at all conducive to raising a child without having the dough to have an au pair or something. My works are my children, so are my students to a degree, and my critters.

If we do subconsciously take care of little people in the hopes that one day we will be taken care of, I put my faith in my very non-traditional, non-blood family.

So I'll let this blog post be my transition from the year to this month of respite before I do it all over again. I look forward to taking care of my house, relaxing, thinking, dreaming, working with my hands, trying to let my mind go quiet.

Keeping my fingers crossed about you, 2012. Do us all a solid, will ya?

What I'm Up To

2011-05-22T13:24:00.002-04:00

I am pimping this damned awesome show that's running, reasons to be pretty.

I already posted over to the Jobsite blog, so go read it over there rather than me doing a straight-up cross-post.

The show is on stage for 2 more weeks and is a great time. Hope you can make it.

Performance Resistance Reflexivity

2011-05-03T12:53:00.002-04:00

Here are the videos from our group project day. The first is the instructions given to the class, the second is what one group recorded as a result of the instructions. This was a riff on several things. The short film Popcorn that Dr. Butchart brought into class, several of the readings from recent weeks, and the instructional video had elements of LOST combined with inside jokes and general shenanigans. This was a fun day, though I might have like more talk about the activity. I had several questions that day from recent readings that I asked, and didn't really get the feedback I'd hoped for. It was in that moment when I realized perhaps how I overemphasize others' interest in notions of performance or resistance. :)

Self-portraits

2011-04-21T11:44:00.002-04:00

2009-2011

Liberation

2011-04-21T11:36:00.002-04:00

Several weeks ago I posted saying that I felt I had reached a paralysis point. This was a general assessment of the semester as a whole, how busy I'd become, and how all these new thoughts working through me were just adding up to me freezing up. Not sure what to do or where to start.

I feel like I've come out of the other end of that, but not because any of those things have necessarily changed. There's still two weeks of the semester. I still have 3 very large papers due (one of which I feel "done" with, one which is nearing that point but the third I haven't even started), and I still have all of my end of semester grading on deck, not to mention the show I've been working on which opens May 12.

If anything has changed, it's likely that I feel like I've given in. Not in a defeated-throwing-my-hands-up-way, but really more like in a I'm-doing-the-best-I-can-and-therefore-things-have-to-work-out way. I am ok with not having a strangle-hold on certain aspects of my life right now. Truth is, I wouldn't have had that even if I'd made myself believe that I had.

And, instead of allowing all this to freeze me up, I'm trying to allow the generative aspects of this uncertainty come to the fore. This isn't a laziness or a cop-out (I think I say things like this a lot when talking about this subject because I've always been told/believed this style to be passive and lacking direction, when, truth is, I feel like that's totally not the truth anymore) but just a different way of looking at the same things. Now, what was once stifling has become liberating.

****

Perhaps in supplement to my paper I should also offer another bit of an update on my rehearsal process. I'm not sure I have room to fit this into the paper itself because I am already over the page range we were given and I'm trying to work on cutting it down, not adding to.

Last night after our run through of the show, S and I (the AD) went out for a pint and to compile thoughts from the run to pass on to the actors. This was a really fascinating conversation full of reflexive turns: in addition to the reflecting-on-reflections I've already mentioned in the paper (backtalk about talk about a memory), and the discussions of directorial choices/steering/collaboration which I've also already talked about, we got int0 a conversation about how our personal relationships can really inform how we "see" things in context of rehearsal and how those relationships really color not only how we "see" their work but how we relate to them in the process. I guess an easy parallel to draw might be that if you were to see an actor or performer of some sort deliver an interview or speech where they are espousing an ideology or peddling a cause that really rubbed you the wrong way that you might carry that over in your head when you see that next performance because whatever that resistance is that you had to their out-of-performance context gets carried over to the in-context perception.

This of course works the other way as well when you just simply "love" a performer for their work as a performer or activist or what-have-you that we may carry that rose-tinted vision (we have several metaphors for tainted vision, don't we? Green with envy, rose-colored glasses, seeing red) onto their performance where someone else not so smitten may not see anything of the sort.

In either case - being blinded by a love or not able to see past "hating" on someone we can really do some damage here by creating blindnesses.

So that was a lot of the conversation, talking about specific actors in specific contexts and particularly as a director how we have to keep looping back and having these conversations. Otherwise wouldn't it be far too easy to "go easy" on one performer who you may just happen to really like while "beating up on" another who may have just said something to make you mad one day? I think we learned a lot from each other as well as ourselves through this open discussion, and I think it's going to prove valuable to the overall process.

This week in Reflexivity

2011-04-03T15:58:00.002-04:00

I am really excited about the possibilities for my paper at this point, and am finding more and more in the readings that I think will help inform my paper. This is all great news.

As far as rehearsals go, this heightened awareness that I am carrying around with me is really changing my work, and in positive ways. I am by nature attracted to scripts that contain great ambiguity, that show the conflicted nature of our species and the ever-present complications of our relationships - to ourselves, others and ideas. This has always been a challenge, since I was also taught as a director that you have to be not only "in charge" but organized on on-point to an extent that has created a paradoxical space between the way I work and the material I typically choose to work with. This has in the past meant that I have walked into a process with a lot of restrictions in that I have already analyzed a script to an extent that I have a clear line of what I believe is going on in the text and where I want to go step-by-step to the process to get there. This has not allowed for the most collaboration between my actors and myself as is possible when I approach things from a slightly more open, reflexive position.

Neil Labute, author of reasons to be pretty, paints pretty complicated and conflicted characters. In one way, none of his characters are the most likable people and often their actions can be relatively "ugly" (so there's some irony in his title). So through my traditional approach to my work I am removing a lot of that ambiguity going into process by my attempt at coming into rehearsals with a high degree of certainty, then spend a lot of time trying to sell everyone else on my vision.

This process has already been one that has had me asking far more questions than I normally do. And not in some Socratic manner where my questions are not really there to be answered but to subtly lead. I am far more open, receptive and interested in what the actors who are physically and mentally embodying these characters think and are discovering in the moment, and the results, I believe, are more rich than me simply simply transmitting direction towards a predetermined ending point.

This is not to say that I did not do my research and analysis of the script. But, this time I found myself looking for paradoxes, complications, ambiguity, antithesis, spaces for possibilities. I regarded these as positive, and not enigmas that I had to give distinct form to before working with actors and designers.

It's liberating, and I'd be lying if I didn't say it's also making me more "vulnerable" (an uncomfortable place to be for me sometimes) at the same time. It's making me work not only more closely with my colleagues, but to a large extent much more in "anguish" than before because I am really making a strong effort to look at things from as many angles as possible, while not claiming to own any knowledge that is better than those I am working with.

I had an acting teacher once tell me that the only "wrong" choice you ever make as an actor is the one you never try. The reality of working in professional situations doesn't allow that very often though since the emphasis is on a final product and so there's a lot of pressure to attach to a "right" choice quickly and then polish it as much as possible.

This is, I'd argue, a ground-up approach to directing and one that I think is possible of much richer, cohesive results. I look forward to talking about these things in this paper.

That's all for now, I should get to cracking on all of these papers that are smothering my mental space. :)

22 days? Really

2011-03-29T14:31:00.003-04:00

I think I think about posting to this journal far more than I do it. This is one of my problems with journaling in general. Too much (?) thought and too little action.

Looking at the calendar, it shows that's 2 weeks of class that I didn't write on.

It's not likely a sufficient assumption to think that I can make it up, so let's see what comes out now as I try to think back on the past few weeks while filtering out that which is not on topic. I can free write for days, so it's best I work with a more limited circumference ...

I just finished The Vulnerable Observer and was pretty moved by it. There are some larger issues in there that I feel like I also struggle with. I was in a very bad accident as a child which left me legally blind in one eye and that gave me years of problems in school and with headaches. I had a lot of sympathy for her struggle in that regard. I was also very accident prone and spent about 6 months in various stages of castware on an arm and a leg from two different mishaps that I had within a month of each other - which was also not very far removed in time from the auto accident - so there really was a lot to relate to on a personal level.

The idea of vision becoming restricted from a stagnant point of view really resonated for me as a metaphor. A favorite expression of mine in regards to a previous employment of mine was "you look out of a dirty window long enough and it you forget what it looks like on the other side." Similarly, when our view is limited - even if not by our own choice or doing or if it is intentional or not (and I can think of cases where any of those options exist) - there are serious consequences to that.

On 125 she says that she always knew she's tell this story, but kept censoring it. I am currently struggling with that with several narratives that stem from my childhood, and one that is much more recent. For someone who by and large exists as a teller of stories, I have a really hard time in telling my own in those same forums. I feel a lot safer behind the words of others, and often think that my stories - though integral to me - are perhaps of not much interest to a wider group, or that these things that have formed me are either not really that unique or interesting. Worse, that I might be making too big a deal over them, and so the act of actually telling them would result in that being pointed out to me.

I submitted an abstract for a performance panel on loss to NCA just last week in an effort to push myself over this hurdle. If it gets accepted I'll have to see it through, and so will have to commit one of these stories to the page and make myself vulnerable to the experience. I'm not convinced had my desire to participate in NCA this year not been this strong that I would be agreeing to this right now.

I can agree with the Miller citation in the piece that "coming to terms with one's childhood is a process of mourning." I also feel Behar's need to "find others with whom to share my grief."

And the final thing I'd like to note from this piece is the imagery she employs at the end about how driving in circles in Ann Arbor force her to consider these things she's been holding on to, and how that process prompted her to have that reflexive turn, though she never calls it that. Her loop was not without end, but has allowed her to continue forward in a changed capacity.

The past two weeks have had me pushed pretty far out of my comfort zone. It's a combination of factors from my theater work to my own self-doubt about my abilities as a serious doctoral student. The resultant anxiety has had my mind cloudy and my body exhausted as if out of sympathy for state of my psyche.

I know I wrote not too long ago about feeling paralyzed, and this current feeling is perhaps a continuation of that but at a new stage. Paralysis to me implies a numbing, this current sensation is far more active.

Observation: I've begun rehearsals for the next play that I am directing, reasons to be pretty. I've already noted a change in my approach, which I may explore in my paper but I'd like to relay anecdotally now. Typically speaking when I direct a show I have all of the movement patterns pre-ordained and written out in my script prior to the first day of rehearsal. Our jargon for that is blocking. Directors tend to "pre-block," work completely "organically" or somewhere between these two poles. Either extreme, like any extreme, can be problematic for performers which makes sense when you consider the basic principles tied to either would be either to much structure or no structure at all.

In any case, I tend to work between in that I will establish basic patterns with pictures contained within at key moments that I really want to accomplish on stage, but then allow the actors to often fill in the blanks and work more organically to connect us from one picture to the next. I will often require that the actors get my patterns down before moving away from them, my justification being that they need to learn the structure that I'm going for before they begin to disrupt and adapt. In the end, what I often get is not usually that wildly different from what I initially "saw" in my mind anyway. Every so often though, I am surprised by what I'm given.

I want to be careful though that I am not making a claim to knowledge that I am excluding the people I work with from being able to possess. As a director I may have a vision, but I work in a collaborative, collective medium.

In blocking rehearsals for rtbp last week, I caught myself getting frustrated with actors who after being given blocking began to adapt it relatively immediately. The past me would have stopped and asked them to go back, reiterating that there would be time to explore and play later. Working with the principles that I am trying to embrace now though I stopped myself from stopping them and simply gave what they were bringing a chance. The playing field immediately felt more level, and the group more unified. Even if an actor instinct was not as appropriate for a moment where I was really trying to accomplish something else did not work, who am I to stop it without even giving it a chance? By doing it the old way I was in fact forcing others to completely replicate the way I saw things before allowing them much of a voice. And, after they've been indoctrinated in essence to the way I see things, am I not possibly still limiting what they *may* be able to see?

To return to the earlier metaphor, my own direction can become a dirty window.

Random bits

2011-03-06T09:53:00.003-05:00

I feel like this journal entry will bounce around a bit. I am looking at 4 notes in my folder, and I'm not really convinced that any of them go together. Well, we'll see where we go.

The Buddha

I watched this PBS documentary last night and enjoyed it. Well, I'm pretty sure I fell asleep before it was over, but I saw enough of it to be allowed a general opinion.

I'm not really Buddhist, though I know I wear Buddha charms quite often. I can't really say with certainly any more that I "am" (there's that verb again) anything in the strict sense. I spent a long time trying to figure out what that might be, and I think I'm of the age now where I'm totally ok with practicing (or at least willing?) a mixture of beliefs. It's the aspects we find a little universal from narrative to narrative. What Campbell referred to as the Hero's Journey. Buddha obviously fits into this tradition. So it's the "idea" of Buddha that I'm most attracted to. Quoth the lost 13th apostle Rufus in Dogma

"I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea, changing a belief is trickier. Life should be malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant.

So the thought that came to me last night, which may not be quite an epiphany to someone who has perhaps been a practicing Buddhist for some time is that this notion of Reflexivity seems pretty crucial to Buddhist thought. To bend back on one's self and examine. To learn not only from this life, but all lives, to circle back in order to ask those hard questions. And there is also a paradox inherent in this, or so it seems. To bend back and reflect on one's self, to fully grasp the dukkha (suffering) one is presently in as first step to understanding and perhaps transcending that dukkha. The paradox comes in when you consider that it is also core to Buddhist thought that there ultimately is no self.

And could one consider the meditative act as a reflexive tool? It could be argues as a total-being reflexive turn.

Pang, Steier, theater

I was also struck by the Steier quote in Pang's article for this week:

"we understand and become aware of our own research activities as telling a story about ourselves."

You may, very easily, change out "research activities" for a great number of other personal decisions we make and the statement holds its truth. I was thinking primarily of choices I make in choosing/directing shows. But I suppose you can substitute "choice in clothing" or "religious practices" or "leisure activities" and it's still just as accurate. To be sure more of us would think it less strange that those personal examples would say something about us than a work-related example, but that likely says something about how many of us split ourselves into an individual and a professional who never get together and hang out.

I am aware though of the stories my choices tell. It's of course easier to sort through what the story is trying to say after the fact than it is while it is still coming together.

I was also considering a few threads from Pang and Jorgenson in relation to my directing work. Pang talks about her association with her subjects influencing the project, and Jorgenson talks about the shifting relationships between researcher and the interviewed, particularly in the instances where she was pregnant and somehow part of the "team" and how that seemed to really change the hierarchal dynamic going on in the interviews to be more on a single plane.

These threads led me to think about my work as a director and where the overlap may be there. I have noted that actors tend to respond differently to two classes of directors: those who are Capital-D Directors (those who only direct and are pretty clearly on the "other side" of the actor line) and those who would consider themselves artists who lowercase-d direct. I consider myself the latter as I am not necessarily a trained director (but a trained actor who took two directing courses across those 6 years). This is a broad generalization, but maybe something to explore later, but I might point out that it seems to me that actors respond better to and create more of a unified true ensemble in circumstances where they work with lowercase-d directors. Similarly, it's easier for it to become "us and them" with Capital-D Directors. This relationship is of course constructed and maintained from both sides. I do not imply at all that it's only the actors or only the director responsible for this. It is truly a mutual product.

Fun stuff

I really only wanted to note in the journal the idea brought up in class about multiple perspectives, perspective in general, and how different positions give you different views and different eyes see different things. This is exemplified on TV when we consider the episode that employs this device of showing a single event through all of the main character's eyes - typically to comic effect. I can, just off the top of my head, think of a good half-dozen shows that have done this over the years. My favorite perhaps is the episode of the X-Files, Bad Blood. This episode is even centered around getting at "the truth" - the two FBI agents are attempting to "get their story straight" on what happened in a small town.

This device is so common I suspect because we do fundamentally understand this notion of perspective and allow for us all on a personal level to be able to see things as individuals. Somehow though this has not moved to a point in our collective psyche where more do not question concepts like "truth," "certainty," "scientific fact" and so on.

Please watch this video, it's less than 2 minutes long. They even admit they got the idea from an old Van Dyke Show episode.

Mulder: "What do you mean what am I going to tell him? I'm going to tell him exactly what I saw."

Scully: "Well, tell him exactly what I saw"

and later

David Duchovny: "How I would conceive of Scully conceiving of me ... How Mulder conceives of himself ... "

Possibly Maybe

Since this class somehow inspires songs, here's the one that I couldn't get out of my head during this week's class - Bjork, Possibly Maybe:

"Uncertainty excites me
Baby
Who knows what's going to happen?
Lottery or car crash
Or you'll join a cult"

Paralysis Point

2011-02-19T17:30:00.002-05:00

Call it pre-Spring break burnout (Ok, it's still 3 weeks away, but that's close enough, right?), or perhaps it's taking 2 PhD seminars (which I was not advised against, but honestly should have probably paid more attention to) AND Burke in one semester. Perhaps it's even just my own self-doubt that I'll actually, eventually, pull this semester off as I stare at deadlines and a mountain of papers.

The result is simply that I just feel paralyzed, which is stalling me on projects I may (or so I'd like to believe) have otherwise already started. I'm not *technically* behind on anything, but I feel like I'm just barely making deadlines. I don't like working that way. It makes me paranoid. Too much pressure. I'm sure that speaks on some level about my preference for feeling like I'm in control of a situation as opposed to the other way around.

Or maybe I simply fear showing up to CIS one day and everyone insisting that I Have No Clothes.

Pressure

Pushing down on me

Pressing down on you

No man ask for

Pressure

...

It's the terror of knowing

what this world is about

watching some good friends scream

LET ME OUT

- Queen, David Bowie "Under Pressure" (excerpt)

I could really use a day or two to allow my mind to go quiet. I think from that point I might come out the other side (once looped back and headed again in a forward direction) that I will be much more productive.

I think I may have just talked myself into giving myself a mental health day tomorrow. Now, let's see if Jenkins allows me to actually do it though ...

***

Once I began considering all of the ways that Reflexivity can (and has) informed my practical work I've been moreso attaching thoughts to the administrative/organizational aspects, most likely since that is the hat I am currently wearing. On March 19, I go back into rehearsal as a director (what was that I was just saying about feeling buried with school? Oh, and I'm now going to have less time to keep up with the reading/writing that already feels overwhelming? Woo lard.) and I am hoping that I have more thoughts there. Looking forward to it, actually.

This is not to knock the organizational applications of it, I just think that I am going to be more excited about how this plays into notions of collaborative creation and to my own process.

That's an odd paradox. I'm complaining about feeling buried now but I'm looking forward to having more to do, thinking it's going to be somehow liberating and give me a new burst. And you know what? It probably will.

I'd like to speculate though that there's a reflexive process at work with a great many actors. There are a lot of planes of thought and recognition that have to happen, and to even talk about makes it seem a far more complicated thing than most would likely give it credit for.

An actor first and foremost is always working through their own personal orientation. In a scripted play they then have a text, but which the many actors in a show as well as the director could all have different interpretations of. So we now have X # of frames in operation (X of course being the # of people involved). Any skilled ensemble is going to spend as much time as they can though "getting in the same frame" and it's arguable in general or in specific cases if this is accurate (or even possible). Add to this potential resistance from an actor towards the director's frame, and even a director's inability to co-create that frame with an ensemble an you can easily find a muddle as a result. Actor-Text-Character-Director-Actor-Character.

We now approach the space where an actor playing a character is in the direct act of working with those other actors playing characters in a "hands off" sort of rehearsal where I director won't stop and start. Like a run through of an scene, act or the show. We now have interaction of these actor-characters and certainly it's going to be hard to locate where one begins and another one ends.

We finally get to the final step (which should never be the afterthought but to often is) of adding an audience who literally have a frame forced on them though they walk in with their own orientation. They are now being asked as a whole to see things the same way, the same way that the director will likely say was the "right" interpretation of the text that they "coached" the performers up to accurately. (So, so many issues of reflexivity to consider here in "interpretation" "translation" and "direction" that already my head swims - questions are only begetting questions)

What precisely the hell is going on then? Internal and external issues within the individual (audience member, actor), between the actors and audience, between the actors and the direction and the text and that possibility of character as self as well as other simultaneously who is also encountering other actors who are in the same exact predicament.

As the semester moves forward and I get into rehearsal I will make a point to take notes where ever I can on what I'm seeing (and not seeing(, the questions that I am asking (and not asking), and what is possible (or impossible).

See, just thinking on this has my heart and head lighter than when I began. Somewhere along the way I stopped feeling sorry for myself and am actually now wearing a smile.

Though I still think I'm going to give myself that mental health day tomorrow. The yard needs tending, and I need quiet.

Dichotomy or Symbiosis?

2011-02-17T10:43:00.003-05:00

A few of this week's readings discussions of reflexivity, particularly in regards to making muddles, relativism|reflexivity, possible impossibles self|other, truth|fiction, got me thinking about this Ray Bradbury poem that I remember from when i was a teenager. Of course a quick search through a few online library didn't turn up the whole thing, and I believe that the science fiction magazine I first read it in is long gone ...

In any event, I found a chunk of it (if my memory serves this is only about 1/3 to 1/4 of it), but here goes:

From The First Book of Dichotomy, The Second Book of Symbiosis

"Einstein? Or Christ? My prognosis?
Dichotomy? Symbiosis?
What's clearly seen, or just half-seen
And Man trapped somewhere in between.
. . .
Now with God's priests do we mock fact?
Or with great Physics dare attack,
Shake stars, knock moon, then smite the Sun.
And only with pure Reason run?
To which the bio-chemists boast:
'We've trussed and laid the Holy Ghost!'
Church pew? Pure Lab? My last prognosis?
Dichotomy or symbiosis?
To pick just one? I find me loath,
Try this for size;
A bit of both?"

There are some other ideas present in this piece that I think relate to class: humanity's cyclical relationships with deity, with science; the split between the scientific and the religious, man as scientific "observer" of God's creation, or are we a participant?; the paradox created by acceptance of symbiotic systems like god|human or scientific|spiritual; the spaces also created for (im)possibilities by those same paradoxes.

Now I want to find the whole piece. This idea came to me very late last night. I may need to hit the library when I get to campus ...

Siegle's Loop

2011-02-13T13:31:00.004-05:00

In addition to finding it amazing that I had a harder time getting through the readings using literature as a frame of reference than I did the piece by the economist, perhaps the other biggest takeaway from this past week's reading is the loop that Siegle diagrams on page 2 (The Politics of Reflexivity).

Dr. Steier and any other colleague from class will have a leg up here, because I am being too lazy to scan the page for other people, but I will try to describe it, and why I took so much away from it.

For the most part, "reflexive turns" are diagrammed to be circular. A straight line (a certain course) is maintained until it loops back upon itself, crosses itself and then continues in the same straight line. See the loops below, but ignore the text, I'm really only using this to show the pattern.

This was ok with me until I saw the way that Siegle diagrams it. Siegle refers to it specifically as a reflexive circuit (instead of loop or turn).

Ok, so I've changed my mind. I will use the picture, but I've taken a least-resistant path of just taking a picture of my printout using my phone. Here it is:

Now, what I most grokked on about this is the way that the loop is shown to not only cross through the original path in the creation of the loop - but how when the course is resumed it is not running on the exact same path it was before, but a parallel course to the original.

(You can see my little arrow I drew in the space between)

So not only is the new path informed by the reflexive loop, which seems to say that once you make that turn that when you get back on track you won't be quite the same, but I also really like the notion that with that reflexive turn that a space is created between the original course and the new course mapped via the reflexive turn. What can we find in that new space? what other opportunities does that afford us?

That's pretty cool, isn't it? Well, it was to me anyway. All this off a "simple" drawing. The image conveyed more to me maybe than anything else this week regarding the topic of reflexivity, and I'm not at all sure if Siegle was aware of the possibilities in that illustration - they aren't really discussed.

This week in Reflexivity

2011-02-06T14:43:00.002-05:00

This might end up reading like a list. I'll just go with that.

Dr. Steier: I have something that I'd really like to write about which may be better suited to a journal, or one of these short papers we're to write or even the concept paper. I am unsure and will write you about it. It's been a pretty large part of my personal reflexivity (encompassing both my personal and theater lives) this week and believe it to be really relevant. Whether or not it's "scholarly" enough is debatable, but to me it is a very big deal.

* I really enjoyed both Kitchen Stories and The Lives of Others. Honestly two of the best films I have seen in a long time. Talking to a friend last night, we both agree that KS has the potential to be a great stage play. I will talk more about these films in the paper due for the coming week.

* TLoO took all but 15 minutes of class, so we didn't get to have much of a discussion, we discussed what the discussion wasn't and what we would write on. It seems as a group, once again, your instructions were tossed and hive-mind won out.

* Something about writing the Commenting on Myself post has made me feel more secure in the decision we just made to adopt another dog. I related it in a way to the idea of the single loop as found in both Pels' One Step Up and Siegle's The Politics of Reflexivity. Just one step, one pass, as opposed to allowing myself to fall into an infinite regress of self examination, doubt, and motive-sussing. I also realize I may just be attaching to the justifications afforded to me and the decision we took on via these articles, but hope the fact that I'm even aware that's a possibility means it isn't necessarily so.

* In a strange turn, I found Soros' The Theory of Reflexivity as regards economics easier to get through and digest than a lot of what Siegle and Pels were trying to say about literature. Whodathunkit. On closer scrutiny, I think I have a better grasp of those pieces. I really only got to understanding much of Pels after looking up Actor-Network Theory, which I was completely unfamiliar with. I wrote on page 5 of Pels in large writing that I really wanted more specific, tangible examples.

* I used to be a much louder human being. I liked to talk. A lot. I think I did a decent job of shutting others down - in contentious situations I actually enjoyed it. It became part of who I was perceived to be by all around me. "Larger than life" "ballsy" "tells it like it is" "doesn't take any shit" "cocky" - you get the drift. Like Borges and I, it became a split identity. I had to play that identity in certain situations where it was expected of me. This wasn't just out of fulfilling my role in the group, but honestly it was armor. I was safe being that guy. It also covered a lot of things underneath that wouldn't have been the best things for a group of others in their teens and 20s to see.

I have, for a few years now, really tried to train myself to be a much better listener. This too was for a variety of reasons. I wanted to listen to my girlfriend (now my wife) because I was genuinely interested, I wanted her to know I was genuinely interested, and I figured if I really took the time to listen to her I'd be better for it and less likely to bungle the whole thing. I also tried to become a better listener so that I could be a better artist-as-collaborator instead of just as Puppetmaster, and so that I could be a more effective administrator since I was simply overwhelmed with the whole he-said/she-said dynamic, particularly in a field such as mine that can be so emotional and social by nature. Recent developments here is where I am with the idea that I stated above.

This whole notion of Reflexivity here feels to me like a missing piece of my own process. Of tying together myself, others and situations. I already feel a splintering of "me's" past the objective me and subjective me that I used to base things on. I now feel a bit like me (who plods about the earth), Me (who others seem to interact with), (me) that's perhaps living in the space between those other two me's and a "me" that is attempting to look at and feedback upon these various me's like some sort of systems check.

Welcome Gigi

2011-02-06T14:32:00.003-05:00

We got a new resident yesterday, Gigi, a 137-lb Neapolitan Mastiff. Probably easiest recognized as the breed of dog Fang was in the Harry Potter films (not the books - that was a type of Dane). She's a big, lazy sweetie.

I quite literally stumbled upon her while online, and her story was not only sad but really seem kismet in a way (see the Commenting on Myself post). After the visit on her turf a week ago, she came over to visit us yesterday, and I suppose it goes without saying it went well. She got along with the cats, the boys, seemed to not mind the digs - and so we're all settled in.

It's been, for what I realize has only been 24 hours, perhaps the easiest integration of an animal into our home ever. She's pretty perfect in that regard. The (incredibly nominal but I'll mention them not to seem too Pollyanna) downsides appear to only be that she drools like Niagra Falls after a drink of water and snores like a chainsaw. Not at all the end of the world. This is why we have tile, pergo and vinyl furniture.