soup & widows

I'm directing two ten-minute plays for a local community theatre. It's a ten-minute play fest consisting of seven plays by seven different local authors. I was assigned two plays. One of them is about four friends meeting for soup in order to combat hangovers and fulfill destinical omens. Yes, I made that word up. The other play is about three generations of African-American women who have all lost their husbands to various military action.

The playwright of this latter play came to our rehearsal tonight, which was lovely. She hasn't been involved in the process at all, which has been fine-- she wrote a very good play and we have been content to work on it... but to have her there tonight added an element that was very important. And dear Lord, she is a gorgeous person.

The playwright of the soup play hasn't come to rehearsal yet. I think she's planning to come on Monday evening. I have been having problems with it because the four main characters are sitting at a table at a restaurant and some kind of theatrical convention needs to be employed in order for the audience to be able to see the people sitting around the table. If they all face the center of the table the energy just gets lost. It is a problem I'm currently wrestling with.

Movies

Yesterday, a quadruple-feature.

David and I saw Cedar Rapids. It was funny and silly. John C. Reilly continues to delight me.

Later in the afternoon, I was reading my Woody Allen interview book and decided to watch Another Woman (stellar cameo by Sandy Dennis), then Interiors. Spurred on by a desire to watch Geraldine Page act again, I watched Summer and Smoke. Page does an admirable job of making that prototypical Tennessee Williams southern belle almost nearly believable.

Speaking of movies, I acted in one this past weekend. The working title of the movie is something like The Paranormal Exorcism Project. It is a spoof of Paranormal Activity, Exorcism of Emily Rose, Blair Witch Project, and others. I played Professor Ward, a pretentious academic who reads psycho-sexual undertones into everything. I had a blast doing it, and got a hundred bucks.

But mostly, Let My Movie Career Begin!

Bounty

Peter Masterson's The Trip to Bountiful, starring Geraldine Page, has been one of my favorite films since it came out in 1985. Page's minutely detailed performance, complete with childish tantrums, coquettish flirting, sinking spells, and quiet triumph, is a lesson to me each time I watch it. As one of my acting teachers used to say, "It's all about specificity." And Page is the epitome of specific. For example, in one scene toward the beginning of the film, Page's Carrie Watts has decided to flee her oppressive Houston apartment and nagging daughter-in-law and to revisit her childhood home in Bountiful. She must keep this decision a secret from her cohabitants, who have caught her trying to escape to Bountiful before. In the moment when her son says goodbye to her, as sons say goodbye to their mothers when they go to work, we see Page in a tiny moment of ambivalence as she answers, "Goodbye, Son," knowing that if she carries out her plan successfully, it may be a while before she sees her son again. What Page so masterfully does is, halfway through her "Goodbye, Son," she allows her voice to catch ever so slightly on the "Son," as if she had an impulse to say goodbye to him more completely, but knowing that she musn't give away her plan for escape, she lets the moment go, and the film rolls on.

And then, as a film, it's just so good. It has its weak moments here and there; it isn't perfect. But the final image of Carrie Watts sitting in the back of the car headed back to Houston, her dejection, contentment, sadness and triumph all somehow mixed together on her weary face, never fails to move me.

When I saw the movie for the first time, alone, it had been just a few months since my beloved grandmother had died. Somehow in that final moment of the movie I was blessed with an epiphany having to do with the unconditional nature of my grandmother's love. Maybe it was something in Page's expression in that final shot. Or it could have simply been my projection onto the film because I was still grieving. In any case, I hold the film dear not only because of its excellence but also for the way it resonated for me personally.

This semester at one of my teaching jobs, I have a class of five 7th graders. In December I found a copy of Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful (the play) at Barnes & Noble. We read the play in class. I was happy to note that the screenplay barely varies from the original.

I'm going to make a cutting of the play (30-35 minutes) and we're going to perform this play.

Scooch

Usually a little behind the times: Just read Alison Bechdel's beautiful graphic autobiography, FUN HOME. I had seen her work here and there online, and when this book came out I remember the reverberations, but just this weekend finally managed to read it. Or should I say devour it. So well-done, disarming, childlike, sophisticated, stimulating, inspiring, and most of all, brave.

This weekend I opened my phone bill and it said six hundred and something dollars were due. After talking to several Sprint operators I realized that lots of calls had been made from my phone to South Dakota, bringing my overage minutes to an unprecedented high. I wracked my brain for South Dakotan phone pals. Couldn't think of any. Was righteous and indignant with the Sprint operators. A few hours later I realized that all those South Dakota calls had been made by me, mostly in the month of January, when I signed up for a 30-day phone meditation. Apparently, "free conference call . com" is not free to the people who call the number; only free to the person who sets up the conference. ARGH!

We have been seeing a lot of theatre. Vanities. Steel Magnolias. Mame. Caucasian Chalk Circle. And we'll see Unnecessary Farce and The Bacchae soon. I wish the theatre we were seeing were a little bit more high-quality. The stuff that passes for good in this town is starting to look pretty lame to me.

Seeing Mame onstage prompted me finally to watch Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame. I loved it. Why did no one force me to watch this years ago?

Tonight I will start rehearsals for two 10-minute plays I'm directing. I'm always happy to start a new project.

A Quote from "Demons" by Dostoevsky

"I do not wish you much happiness-- you'll get tired of it;

I do not wish you trouble, either;

and, following the precept of the popular philosophy,

I'll simply repeat: 'Live on,'

and try somehow or other not to be bored too much."

-Stepan Verkhovensky

2010

Most exciting things that happened this year:

-Got my photo taken to be considered for the Coen Brothers' "True Grit" (they were seeing me for the part of the dead father in the coffin)

-Got a cool role in "A Schizophrenic Love Story," a local movie (and thereby met my goal of being in a movie in 2010)

Most devastating thing that happened this year:

-Got ousted from "A Schizophrenic Love Story" and didn't even get notified about it, which crushed my soul for several days

Biggest challenge of the year:

-Directing "Much Ado About Nothing" (oy vey!)

Biggest reward of the year:

-Playing Estragon in "Waiting for Godot"

-Seeing my relationship with David develop and deepen

Favorite trip of the year:

-Visiting Beth in Portland

Favorite houseguests of the year:

-ET

-Dave Schmader

-Marc & Margaret

Best book of the year:

-Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, which has changed the way I look at food, and to some extent, life

Best music of the year:

-Well, I gave a list in my last post, but I think the record I love the best is still Joanna Newsom's "Have One On Me," because there is really and truly nothing else like it

What am I looking forward to in 2011?

-Writing more consistently and submitting my writing to publications, fearlessly

-Acting in "Hedda Gabler"

-Figuring out what I want to do in regards to "a job" (to teach or not to teach?)

-Meditating and yoga

-Being in a movie

-Seeing Barack Obama come out of his bipartisan funk and kick some ass

Merry Xmas

My Top Ten 2010 Albums:

Joanna Newsom: Have One On Me

Hot Chip: One Life Stand

Broken Bells: Broken Bells

Devo: Something for Everybody

Love Is All: Two Thousand and Ten Injuries

LCD Soundsystem: This is Happening

Arcade Fire: The Suburbs

Bjork + Dirty Projectors: Mount Wittenberg Orca

Cee Lo Green: The Lady Killer

M.I.A.: /\/\/\Y/\

Horrifying

We just saw Darren Aronofsky's new movie, BLACK SWAN.

I am fascinated by the new imagination behind horror films, as evidenced in this movie as well as Lars Von Trier's ANTICHRIST. It is not about serial killers or going into haunted houses anymore, at least not in a literal sense. It is about personal psychological tension and the horrifying beast that emerges from within normal, aspiring, sorrowful people. It is so much more beautiful, so much realer, and therefore scarier than all those slasher flicks. Can't wait to see more exploration of this newly-opened area of film.

Cat Foot

Last night in bed my cat sat on my right foot and hunkered down as if she were willing eggs to hatch. I got a great feeling of coziness and imagined that she was infusing me with her grace and patience through my right foot. Then I imagined it could be my blog post for today.

Minutiae

We went to Austin on 11/11 to see Joanna Newsom at the Paramount. She was lovely. She played 13 songs (2 encore songs). Being a weirdo, I made a list of every song she sang so that I could recreate the concert on my iPod later.

I wrote a play based on improvisations that my 7th and 8th graders did, based on mythological characters that they chose. The play is called Therapy of the Gods. It features Pandora as a therapist who helps the various gods work out their problems. At one point it turns into a game show like the Dating Game (Pandora is trying to get Apollo to date), hosted by Aphrodite; and later on, Persephone and Demeter turn the play into a soap opera. The kids will perform it twice on December 3, after an extreme paucity of rehearsals. My hopes are not high, but the play is kind of funny.

I got a cold last week and it seems to be going away slowly now. I have been sweating a lot the last three days. This week is my Thanksgiving break and though it is a little irritating to be sick during the break, it is also kind of a blessing, since I don't have to go to school this week.

I finally took down some of the cruddy blinds in my room (they were filthy and broken) and put up some curtains yesterday. I bought the curtains at Burlington Coat Factory. They're big and dark purple and I'm not used to them yet, but I do like having the blinds down.

My friends Marcus and Margaret will be coming to stay for Thanksgiving, then next week my friend Dave is coming for three weeks. He will be performing his one-man show at a theatre here at Trinity University. So I have been sort of cleaning up and rearranging things for the past few weeks in preparation for these visits.

Since being sick I have had some intense dreams.

Last night I slept for only three or four hours and the rest of the time I creeped around on Facebook. Life is so weird.

The Eternal Shuffle and Swipe

I would like to find a copy of Donald Fagen's masterpiece "The Nightfly" remastered. But I don't think it's been remastered. I looked online and there are dubious foreign versions of it. And versions with lots of initials that I don't understand. If anyone finds one, let me know.

Last night I cleaned the shelves in my room for the first time since I moved here. You may remember last year when I re-energized a whole corner of my room by moving the shelves around and putting a chair in. But even then I didn't clean the shelves, I just moved them. So last night I finally took everything off the shelves and apprehended the dust bunnies and re-distributed all the detritus found there... some to the trash can, some to other rightful positions. I took my stereo equipment and the speakers and put them in the dining room, where I've been keeping the LPs anyway, so maybe now I'll use it more. The CD player, perhaps from sheer disuse, has stopped playing CDs. But the turntable, tape player, and receiver work fine... poor old dinosaurs that they are...

The thing about cleaning is, as soon as you start doing it, you keep finding more things that need to be cleaned. Your eyes and nose become dirt sensors. And everything is covered in dust. It's a good thing really, because my closet really does need a lot of work, and the kitchen blinds over the sink, I noticed last night, are coated in dust. Blet. Dust is weird and disgusting.

Another thing I did last night: dusted off my old LPs and decided to display a few of them in my room on a ledge over the window:

Rickie Lee Jones, "Girl At Her Volcano"

Crowded House (first one)

Prince, "Around the World in a Day"

Elvis Costello, "Imperial Bedroom"

Cyndi Lauper, "She's So Unusual"

ABC, "The Lexicon of Love"

And at the end, the triple LP of Joanna Newsom's new album, "Have One On Me."

Admittedly, part of my cleaning frenzy has to do with my friend Dave, who is coming to stay with us for a few weeks in December while he performs his one-man show STRAIGHT at AtticRep here in town.

I need to clean the fan blades today.

On Sunday I attended the 20th annual Alamo Theatre Arts Council Globe Awards Gala, which is San Antonio's little version of the Tonys. I have decided that the gala is a study in the Ridiculous and the Sublime. There is always something great and wonderful (my high school drama teacher Sam Gilliam's fantastic introduction of this year's lifetime achievement honorees Bill and Frances Swinney), and there is always something horrendous (a performance from a local production of Sweeney Todd). You just have to be able to stomach both extremes. I was given an award for playing Estragon in Waiting for Godot, and whether that's sublime or ridiculous is not up to me to judge.

Re-starting

This morning I started thinking I wanted an iPad so that I could draw cartoons on it.

So I started to look around online. The cheapest iPad I could possibly get would cost more than $500.

Then for fun I started looking for applications for drawing that might apply to iPads.

I found an application called TabletDraw that I was able to download right to my computer for free. It costs $35 for a slightly more advanced version.

I haven't posted any sketches on this weblog in years, but I am hereby revitalizing it. I am going to start posting my doodle efforts on my drawings blog again. Please visit and see my magnificent handiwork.

Death Schmeath

According to some Experts, everything is pretty much dead. With eyebrows arched cynically and eyelids wearily at half-mast, they declare, for example, that The Novel is dead, The Short Story hardly lived, Theatre was dead long ago. This is a horrible declaration for someone like the young Believer, who actually believes people, to hear. This puts the Believer’s mind in a tailspin before it loses all control and goes skidding into a ditch. “All those things must be dead,” the Believer thinks, horrified. “There’s no chance for me. I came along too late.”

Yet on further examination, and upon re-playing the YouTube interviews with said jaded Experts, the Believer suddenly understands that it isn’t the Novel, the Short Story, or the Theatre that is dead; it’s the Expert. The Expert’s already had his moment; his wings have felt the air beneath them; he has basked in the sun, and now the sun has set, and it’s over. So what the Expert has done, essentially, is projected his own death upon the art form as a whole. Because the Expert’s novels are no longer appreciated, his short stories are no longer published, his plays are no longer being produced, he has no other recourse but to imagine the death of the entire thing, rather than the more personally painful admission that his own particular career is over within that discipline.

It’s an understandable predicament: nobody wants the game to continue after his time is up. But the game does continue, and it’s an irresponsible, bitterly harmful, presumptuous thing he’s done by declaring the game over. Shame on the Expert. He should find a job in some other field, learn a new trade, start over, do something productive, rather than decry the things being produced today as post-mortem obfuscatory babble.

As long as something is being produced, as long as there are aspiring Novelists, Short Story writers, Playwrights and Actors, as long as people want to do these things and are trying to do them, well then, these disciplines, Sir, are Alive and Well (well, at least as well as they’ve ever been).

How dare you declare their death, for whatever reason? By erroneously declaring the death of these disciplines, you shatter and suffocate living dreams of Believers who haven’t had their time yet. This declaration is tantamount to a death sentence, or, more bluntly, murder.

the pictures in my room

It always starts the same way (with full awareness of the extreme nature of the word “always”): the pungent pang of desire. Desire for what?

To make something, to change something, to improve something, to deconstruct something. But always, always, the desire stops its information there-- it doesn’t tell you what it is. The desire does not even know what it is. The desire does not know what it desires. It only knows that it wants. It is up to you to pick up the desire and run, as bravely as you can, in whatever way your nose leads you. Because the desire is mute and burning your hands.

Nebulae

Time to post something else.

Today I had lunch with one of my ex-students I have a particular affinity for. I ended up giving him my iPod. (I have another one.) I was concerned about him traveling on 9/11. At this moment I'm thinking his plane is taking off from the SA airport and headed for North Carolina, where he goes to college.

My desire to write seems to be growing; however, that's all it is-- an empty desire to write. I really have nothing to say. Or maybe I have too much to say, and it's all disconnected stuff, and I despair of ever knowing how any of it will fit together. Of course it's not my concern how it all fits together, at least not until I have something TO fit together. But it would be just too healthy and productive to think that way and actually write something.

But who knows?, I have been known to be healthy and productive in the past. I wrote three journal pages. It could be a turn-up.

Understanding

I don't really think that understanding life and people is a possibility. I say this because the older I get, and the more I ostensibly understand, the more I realize I will never really understand much of anything. Humans are a puzzle. Existence is a big mystery.

One of the few things I have come close to understanding is that life seems to be mostly about balance-- striking a balance in almost every situation, staying true to your vision and at the same time being open to compromise. As my yoga teacher told me, everything in moderation, nothing in excess.

However, a problem I often encounter is one of empathy: I can almost always see a situation from each point of view. Though this is in many respects a strength, it becomes a problem when I am tasked to make a decision. Each party has a point. One party will be the winner while the other party will lose. In this case, balance is almost a crippling attribute-- just as I comprehend the sweetness of victory, I am struck down by the bitterness of failure.

I am understanding Buddhist philosophy more these days as being less spiritual/esoteric and more physical/practical. Getting worked up about things, desires, expectations and grievances, is hard on a body. Detachment is more health-friendly. During the last week of MUCH ADO rehearsals, I had heart pangs several evenings, and one evening I even felt numbness in my fingers and shooting pains down my left arm and shortness of breath. Everyone must have been wondering why, in the midst of all that chaos, I was yawning... the body's attempt to get oxygen, to slow me down, to detach.

This week I started classes at St Luke's, where I am teaching 3 times a week. I was quietly excited about our first class and had a great lesson plan prepared. Imagine my surprise when there was an all-school assembly during the hour that was supposed to be my first class, an assembly no one had bothered to tell me about. I sat there dejected, puzzled, waiting for my class to show up. It was fortunate that three seventh-grade girls did come to my class, either rejecting or, like me, not knowing about the assembly, and we had a great mini-class together. Today I'll have my second class, and though I shirk expectation of all kind (yeah, right!), I do look forward to a larger attendance. But really, there are only 13 kids in the class, so 3 is not that far off.

and on the other hand, "Pitch-Perfect!"

Argh. I mean, ahhh.

Crrrrrrrrrritic!

ugh.

Ongoing

Opening night of our play was good. We had two reviewers there. We'll see what they say next week. One of them will be incisive and will actually have something to say, I hope. The other one will use phrases like "hits just the right note" and "does a jaunty turn as..."

I am attempting to get my clothes back from the movie people. I had left some of my clothes with the costumer, thinking I would be in the movie. They have been unprofessionally non-communicative with me about this. What a massive and ongoing disappointment. Not that I'm invested emotionally anymore. I just want my jeans and shoes back. (If this behavior is any indication of how L.A. works, then I thank my lucky stars I never moved there. In fact, I read a great interview with Bill Murray, one of my favorite actors, where he said he would never live in L.A. again. He said all they're out for is fresh blood, that's it.)

I have been offered three directing jobs that I am unsure about. One is to direct The Arabian Nights at a well-reputed theatre in town. It would probably be wise to take this job, because their client base is maybe a little different and would get my name out more, and also the guy who runs the theatre seems to be a real pro. The second job is the third installment of the 40's film noir trilogy; I directed the previous two, so I feel sort of obligated to take this job. The people are sweet and fun, the atmosphere is unprofessional and I don't get paid. You can sense my ambivalence. The third job is directing Corpus Christi (the Terrence McNally play which poses Jesus as a gay man) for the best-funded and most poorly run theatre in town. This job would pay, but I'm not crazy about the play, and I don't like working in that theatre (dangerous wires, rats, dank spaces, crowded dressing rooms, etc.). I do however have a soft spot for the artistic director, who has always been good and kind to me in the past.

I need to finalize all these decisions in the next couple of weeks.

It is nice to be wanted, and I appreciate my own ability to see situations from all points of view, but that doesn't make decision-making very easy.

Man is a giddy thing.

Our Much Ado About Nothing opens tonight. On Sunday we had our tech day from 3:30 to 10 pm. Our Don Pedro, a good actor who for whatever reason wasn't able to learn his lines (Dyslexia? Mental block? Self-sabotage? Substance issues? Plain old laziness?), was fired when he showed up to tech day 1.5 hours late. We were able to re-cast his role from someone else in the play, and that actor's role was in turn taken by someone else in the play, and that actor's role was in turn taken by our stage manager. Though it was horrible to fire him, he seemed to expect it, and the play seemed to begin breathing better when he left (like the day I rearranged the furniture in my room). The play is pretty to watch and with such good actors. I am proud of it. I have that weird feeling of "glad it's opening" mixed with "not sure I want to let go yet."

I have been going to teacher inservices all week, some at St Luke's and some at St Mary's Hall. That has been OK, at times bad, reminding me of why I quit teaching, at times good, inspiring me with new ideas.

Two of my favorite things are the worst things I could possibly consume: coffee and cigarettes. It's not that this is news; it's just that it's the first time I've begun to feel the detrimental effects. Blet.

Here, apparently, is the actor that replaced me in the movie I was cast in. Which is pretty funny. Heh.