Grown Up

It's probably time to stop reading high school-set YA novels when you find yourself nervous that the main couple won't work out their fake relationship before the end of the semester - and realizing the anxiety comes from the fact that she needs him in order to pass Calculus, and he needs her in order to pass English.

'Awww: Homecoming! Sweet. Kiss? Very nice. Now STUDY!'

#GetOffMyLawn

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Images

I've been recognizing lately that I have what I think is an unusual mental hang-up - rather than the mental state that believes a person is heavier than they are (leading/contributing to anorexia and such), I have the opposite. I seem to be of the firm (ha) impression that I am actually slimmer than I am. I look in the mirror, and, while not overjoyed, I feel like I look just fine. And then I see a picture of myself and am completely horrified. It's been happening with some regularity.

Just this past weekend I was at a family wedding, and a relative insisted on some 'headshots' of me. They posted them on social media yesterday. I had thought that I looked well - I had altered a dress so it fit better around my hips and belly, it was an excellent color/pattern that looked great with my eyes, and I had a cute new pair of shoes. Then I saw the pictures.

My sewing skills are distinctly lacking (and the hem definitely hit in the wrong place) - and in the pictures taken I looked tired, bloated, and - in one - thoroughly pregnant. In the mirror I can see my cheekbones. My face is round as an apple in the pictures. My hairstyle, which I generally like pretty well (aren't most of us constantly in some sort of 'growing out' phase?) did me no favors. The dress didn't match my eyes at all, if you can see them under the blobs of flesh, and everything is plump, puffy, dumpy, and, well - unappetizing. I've been telling people for years that I'm not very photogenic - and I've seen wonderful pictures of heavier individuals who are still very attractive and intriguing. Those pictures seemed to show clearly why no one is, or, in recent memory, has been, attracted to me - not only do I not look pretty, I don't even look interesting.

Cameras lie. Mirrors lie. Everything 2D 'lies' - it just can't show you what 3D eyes can. But pictures also remind us of what we did or didn't see, and since we spend increasingly more time online looking at 2D images on a screen, those images correspondingly increasingly come to represent, to present, the 'truth' of what we think we see. It's in some ways similar to the grasp of 'facts' that we are being told is the new reality: even if something is scientifically (factually) true, if enough people believe it isn't than it's not.

Isn't it better, though, for truth to come from the inside of something, from the knowing and being of something, rather than the deceptive appearance of something? I had a hard night, and a hard day, after seeing those pictures, and I have to remember that the truth of me is not found in the pictures of my face or body. I have to remember to keep finding myself interesting, even if no one else ever sees it. How could they, really? That's not what I look like.

So once again I'm planning an exercise program, and cleaning out my kitchen to stock with healthier foods. I've got to say, though - a third of a carton of Ben & Jerry's cleared my headache this morning, even as I was throwing away junk food.

And the up side to all of it - I will never have Trump or any of his supporters ever try to grab or hit on me, which is actually a huge comfort. Silver lining!

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November 9, 2016

Today at work I wrote a 'thank you' letter on the theme of 'peace on earth'.


It was incredibly difficult.


Painful, even.








2016 is the worst.


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Actor's Nightmare Vanquished (Mostly)

At some time or other, nearly everyone has a dream that they are thrust completely unprepared into an extremely uncomfortable situation. Maybe you showed up naked to school. Maybe you got to a meeting at work to give a presentation, and suddenly you worked for a totally unrelated company. Maybe you went to church and were handed a manual and told to teach the adult class with no preparation. (Okay, that one happens in real life more often than you think – it’s not such a big deal when it’s the kids, though.) If you participate in theater, you arrive backstage to find that you are going on immediately in a role that you have not rehearsed, and probably never seen the script. This is so common in the Arts field that it has a name: the Actor’s Nightmare. For all that a stage manager is technically supposed to be able to fill in for any role at the drop of a hat, this really doesn’t actually happen. (When it does, it’s part of a meta-theatrical play; see Noises Off.)

The closest thing to a real-life Actor’s Nightmare happened to me yesterday – and I survived.

(Dramatic, much?)

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A few months ago I decided that I needed to get out of the house, needed to participate in theater again, needed to try to get back onstage, even. I auditioned for a Shakespeare festival put on by a local children’s theater; I had attended one of their Shakes festival plays in a previous year, but that was all I knew about it. The plays were to be Henry V and Taming of the Shrew; I knew Kate was a long-shot, depending on how old the casting went, and with almost no female roles in Henry I figured The Chorus was the only possibility. I couldn’t decide which way to go, so I memorized a monologue for each part.

At the audition I ran into a friend of mine, a girl I knew from a different theater who, coincidentally, also has short red hair. We were the only two in the audition group, and she had performed at that children’s theater before and was familiar with the directors and producers. She was asked to go first, and it was lucky she did – she auditioned with the Chorus monologue I had prepared! I followed up with Kate the Shrew, and I felt like we’d both done quite well. Turns out she was cast as the Chorus/Narrator in Henry V, while I landed the part of the Widow in Taming. (You’re not familiar with the part? No big deal – she has no name, just ‘the Widow’, and only shows up with six-ish lines in the last scene to fill a structural conceit. Nifty.)

The rehearsal process was… interesting: our director was a 70-year-old grandmother who just wanted Shrew to be ‘funny. For the kids.’ She had no concept that the content might be in any way problematic for a modern audience, and when I suggested a way to ‘flip the script’ so that things veered toward ‘girl power’ and away from ‘domestic abuse’ she looked at me blankly and then said she didn’t want to add any ‘layers’ to the play. (Because heaven forbid we should do anything to make sure the parents that brought their children to the theater ALSO enjoyed the experience and didn’t have to answer any awkward questions about content later.) The director did add a couple of walk-on bits for my character in the first act, and had me singing opera (badly, my contribution) in the second so that it wasn’t such a surprise when she showed up in the last scene. I would have found that a creative, fun approach, except that the director was also trying to re-create a production of Shrew that she had done who knows how many years ago. (That generally doesn’t work, FYI.)

Anyway, I learned my song and learned my lines and because my character was rather obnoxious and chasing after a younger man in order to re-marry I decided she had a nasally laugh and spoke with a Jersey accent. The director didn’t get around to blocking the final scene until a couple of weeks before we opened (and with every-other-day rehearsals that didn’t leave much time for run-throughs) so she didn’t hear my delivery until after I’d been working on it for weeks. She hated it, and wanted me to go British instead. Oy. Oh, and she also cast her 25-yr-old grandson in the part of the guy I was chasing; he was in another show and missed the first half of rehearsals, and decided on sight that he didn’t like me. At all. (He had also played that part in his grandmother’s previous production of Shrew, so he was able to pick up his lines and re-instate his character very quickly, which was nice for him.) He did everything in his power to avoid speaking to me, argued with me if I did make a suggestion, and has not once, to date, used my name. Good times.

We finally got to the opening show – I was also participating in the morning show for the Festival (the potential subject of another, shorter though perhaps even more rant-y, post) and we’d had to come even earlier to get another tech run in before opening that show. Then the girls were in the dressing room, hair and make-up-ing and trying to make costumes work, and the director came in for a pep talk. She hugged me and gushed at me and told me I was the ‘Most Improved’. Quite frankly, I was a little offended (I’m still trying to let go of that, actually. That’s on me). Two masters degrees, 10 years coaching competition Shakespeare teams, no character direction from her until two weeks before we opened, and I was ‘most improved’ with my two-bit part and a scene partner who preferred that I not exist. Lovely.

Honestly, all of this has nothing to do with my ‘Actor’s Nightmare’ experience. I just wanted to get it all down so I’d remember how not to treat fellow actors, how to behave as a director, and how to think about the audience.

In the meantime, Brooke (red-headed friend) had been rehearsing with the Henry V cast. With rehearsals on alternating nights I didn’t see people from that cast if they weren’t also in Shrew. Brooke was heading up the Costume Repair booth at the upcoming Comic Con in Salt Lake, and I signed up to volunteer for a few shifts since it sounded fun. (Yep. NERDY.) We had initially talked about Brooke understudying for me for the one performance where I had a conflict (one of the other gals ended up doing it – Jana’s not as big as me by any stretch, but she is bigger than Brooke and so could fit in my costume and can sing). Brooke realized that it would be very difficult for her to handle her Saturday shows and her Comic Con responsibilities, so she asked me to cover for her for one performance of Henry.

I attended a rehearsal during tech week and the opening performance, taking entrance/exit notes and writing down any changes. I copied out the lines at least twice, as I’d read that hand-writing notes helps you remember things better. (I think it did help.) I even bought a prop old-school looking blank book to carry, so I’d have my lines and movement notes with me all the time to glance at between narrations. What I didn’t have was a costume or any kind of rehearsal time.

We had two weeks between opening the Festival and me performing in Henry V – with no more tech/dress rehearsals, I had nights free to work on lines and figure out what to wear. There was so much to stress about: older means ‘it’s harder to memorize’, I couldn’t fit into Brooke’s costume and didn’t have time or the contacts (or inclination, honestly) to find something similar in my size, and in looking for a different take on costume (plus book!) found a different take on the presentation. It was fascinating, and CRAZY. I went with all-black, with boots and a leather skirt to relate back to the guys’ costumes and leather pieces. The text lent itself to using the book really well. Brooke and I had talked through (almost) everything, and since the narrator never interacted with any of the characters from the play it looked like all was as well as it was going to be.

Holy cow, it was nerve-wracking. I performed the morning show, then performed in Shrew, and in between I was writing out lines and practicing the Shakespeare monologues. Then before Henry I tried to get onstage to walk through entrances and exits; I had about 8 minutes before I was kicked off for fight call. And then – GO; the first third of the first act I spent onstage, trying to be sneaky about checking my book for cues while making it look like I was following the action as if in a storybook, or something. Offstage, finally – breathe, and get ready to help somebody with an unrehearsed costume change. The big monologues were in the second act. For one scene I was a couple of seconds late getting on because I was checking to make sure I knew where I was entering from; and during another monologue I kept expecting things to happen while I was talking and nothing did. Turned out my final line was the action cue, and I didn’t know I just needed to push through. Ah, well. The last big monologue was the roughest; I had to switch out a couple of words I couldn’t quite remember, but I stayed on topic and carried on (which is HARD with Shakespeare!). The epilogue was a nice strong finish.

Some things: I had been so nervous about the Henry director not approving of my costume and/or my approach to the character because it wasn’t what they’d rehearsed – and for the first time, he didn’t attend the show. (Which is fine, directors shouldn’t feel like they have to attend every show once it’s open – I was just so nervous and then it all worked out so well and he wasn’t there!) The Shrew director is also the Artistic Director for the theater; she had been there for Shrew (and came in to the dressing room to annoy me afterwards – I feel bad about that too, but I was so nervous! And hungry!) and also for the first time didn’t stay for Henry V. I finally had a performance, an un-rehearsed performance no less, that I was really proud of, and she didn’t see it! SUCH a weird emotional roller coaster day.

Note: I happen to be a really good cold reader. Give me a scene or block of text, and I will immediately make a strong choice, incorporate movement and interactions with other characters, and just go for the delivery. I think that’s a big part of why this worked – it was very much like an extended, metally-prepped, cold read... that was at least mostly memorized.

The fallout was that while it had been intensely nerve-wracking, it ended up being quite satisfying. The Henry cast was quite impressed (or, at least, very supportive and complimentary – it was relatively rare to have other actors on stage when I was narrating, so unless they were listening for cue lines backstage there wasn’t much of my performance for them to experience. Still, they were lovely). Remember my scene partner from Shrew? The 25 yr-old who thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips? (A reference he is far too young to get.) He is in Henry and served as the fight choreographer. Did a great job with the fights, truly, and is definitely not as good an actor as he thinks he is. Somewhere near the middle of the second act he walked past me backstage and said, ‘Good work, girlie.’ Yes. GIRLIE. Still no name. It was a good thing he was moving and that we were still doing a show or he might have gotten slapped. After the show ended he followed that up with, ‘Really good work. Y’know, except for Harfleur – by the time you got to the ‘gunner’ line we were all rooting for you!’ (That had been the scene where I was expecting battle-prep to be happening under my lines, and I was a little choppy because I was trying to give them time to get onstage. Unnecessarily, as it turned out.) So maybe it’s genetic in his family to say something intended to be complimentary that ends up being condescending?

Note to self: never follow up a compliment by pointing out the one thing you think they did wrong.

My parents came to see the show, and they were amazed. They hadn’t realized I’d be narrating the whole thing, and they really liked my performance. (And I’m not even qualifying that with ‘…because they’re my parents’.) As I left the theater (still in costume, because – why not?) I walked past one of the actors and his family, and they stopped me to give me kudos too. They were very nice, seemed really impressed. I looked at the actor (Cole, I think his name is) and laughed, ‘Should we tell them?’ and he replied, ‘Nah. Just savor it.’ Smart kid. Good actor, too.

* * * * *

So, there it was. I worked through a show with energy and, apparently, charm – had no catastrophes even though I was expecting at any point to forget lines since there was no muscle memory for them, and even found a look that worked with my character choices. And none of the artistic staff saw any of it. (One of the ushers, a super-nice long-haired boy, told me my outfit was 'adorable'.) Ah, well. I’ve been walking around for the last 24 hours randomly realizing ‘I really can do hard things’ and recognizing that that experience was more of a performance rush than anything I’ve done in Shrew or the morning Shakespeare show. I don’t want things to be that stressful – when learning a part, especially at short notice, always start with the hard monologues FIRST! – but I would love to someday play the Chorus in Henry V for a whole run.

That was the closest I’ll (hopefully) ever come to a real-life Actor’s Nightmare, and we all made it through with the performance intact.

And now I wish there were video, or at least pictures, just to prove to myself that it really happened.

* * * * *

I did trip and fall during Shrew, gauging my kneecap and shin, so maybe I’ll just take a picture of my purpling leg to prove I was truly there. Nothing like bruises to demonstrate you’re living the actor’s life… or so I’m told!

Talk about your falling turtles... Watch out!

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Thoughts on Extremism

I woke up this morning in an odd place - metaphorically, anyway, as I was actually home in bed. There was a slight headache involved, and, most oddly, a distinct sense of fear. This is highly unusual, as (among other things) I live in a very, well, 'protected' area - last year, for example, one Saturday morning I heard fire engine sirens outside my door. Turns out that just across the street the corner of the roof of the separate garage building caught on fire - was smoldering, at least - and, I kid you not, FIVE different fire engines showed up. This is not normally a neighborhood to be nervous in. So, it wasn't external fear. I got online and found out about Dallas (having spent the previous day in disbelief about Minnesota and Baton Rouge).

And I asked - what is going on in America that these things are happening? How are police officers still (ever!) shooting non-violent... well, I can't say 'offenders', because certainly in what seems to be a disproportionately high percentage the victims gave no offense. Where were the tasers? (If they had had tasers we would definitely still be having some SERIOUS conversations, but at least so many fewer people would be dead.) How is it that snipers are targeting police officers who are supporting, literally supporting, a peaceful protest, and that people are celebrating their deaths? Who are we and how is this happening?

- Gun control: Stop it. Fix it. Now. Too many people have too many guns. A friend has been tracking on Facebook every day a child or other family member that has shot themselves or someone else because they innocently, inadvertently, got their hands on a loaded gun. He's doing it to make a point, and that point is HORRIFYING. If you cannot properly secure, care for, and keep a loaded weapon out of the hands of a child, you should not have a gun. If all gun owners could properly secure, care for, and keep a loaded weapon out of the hands of a child, kids wouldn't be accidentally killing themselves, their friends, their family members. They don't, kids are, and it has to stop. Yes, yes - you're responsible, you're educated, you're careful. Guess what - FAR too many gun owners are not. If guns were not so easily accessible (and DO NOT talk to me about laws and screening and all that crap - it is still TOO EASY) cops might not be so nervous about even routine traffic stops. Jumpy cops = bad news.

- Racism: Stop it. Fix it. Now. It just makes me want to get all swear-y to think that anyone is, consciously or unconsciously, holding the color of someone else's skin against them. Every individual on any security force ever (not to mention everyone else) should be utterly mortified and appalled that black parents are having to teach their children 'how to survive an interaction with a cop.' And racism, in jokes, behaviors, any indicators WHATSOEVER must be met with zero tolerance by every single police force EVERYWHERE. Freedom of speech, of expression, what have you, cannot be incorporated 'on the job' when that job is to protect the public. ALL of the public. Black, white, LGBT, old, young, ALL ALL ALL. Wear your damn body cameras, officers, and hold yourselves to an even higher standard than the public holds you. I am so sorry to add pressure to what is already an incredibly intense position, but there is so little public trust anymore - and that just makes everyone even more nervous. Jumpy public = bad news.

- 'All Lives Matter': Oh good grief, really?!? STOP IT. FIX IT. NOW. To anyone using that slogan/hashtag - EDUCATE YOURSELVES. You cannot call for the base standard in opposition to something that is not even meeting the base standard! When someone says 'Black Lives Matter' they are not saying 'White Lives Don't Matter' or even 'Black Lives Matter More Than Yours' - they are saying 'Fix this specific problem BECAUSE all lives matter! And black lives have not historically, and often are not presently, included in that "all"!' So recognize and support that 'Black Lives Matter' even as you are standing securely and smugly on your 'All Lives Matter' base line. Duh, idiots. Duh. Black Lives Matter. Police Lives Matter. Until everyone gets it, these have to be pulled out from 'all lives' and addressed separately. LISTEN. And also, shut up.

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One of the fearful trains of thought I circled around with this weird morning came from thinking back to Orlando, to Istanbul and Bangladesh, bombings/mass murders that are still only days old themselves. And I thought, 'I wonder what the percentage of Islamic extremists - as they seem to be responsible for all the recent horror in the Middle East - is in comparison to the percentage of incidents of police brutality and civilian shooters here in the U.S.'

There is something about 'extremism' - I don't know what it is. Is it a kind of emotional drug? Is it an adrenaline rush from holding power over someone else based on a religious or philosophical belief? Is it an overreaction to some particular fear the extremist is experiencing? Any or all of these questions could apply to the bombings, the police shootings, the sniper shootings in Dallas. Extremism is not just religious (and how 'religious' can your extremism be if it's justifying you killing other people? NOT RELIGIOUS, is the answer), it is also cultural and media-baiting.

It's as if society has become an extreme sport, as if the players feel like they're living in a video game. There's no 'reset'. There's no 'power up' or 'next level'. And they are such a small percentage of the population - and they're still ruining things for the rest of us. Don't let the bad apples win. Don't fight with people online (or in real life, heaven forbid) about current events, about politics (shudder), about any of it. Shut up and listen, really listen. Support. Donate. Give your time, your smiles, your hugs, your kind words - especially to those you might normally disagree with. It is fine to disagree - but don't let the differences drive you to extremes. We have seen, all too well, what happens there.

Watch out for falling turtles - now more than ever.

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Remember

I have a copy in my wallet, at my desk, and in my house. And now here.

Think. Always.

In the News...

What a long, strange month it's been.

The world is crazier than ever, with a mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando - we used to ask for the politicians to wait at least 24 hours before jumping in, but it looks like we're going to have to start begging for half a day. The gun control fights (no debates in sight) have been raging, with the usual slinging of 'greed' and 'hypocrisy' and ''Merica!' and not much focus on generating actual - or even proposed! - solutions to the epidemic of shootings that are going on. Not much real talk about the poor victims of the shootings, either... Not in Orlando, or the other shooting that happened just hours later. Not nearly enough talk about real people.

The current political climate is an absolute madhouse. There's a potential Libertarian candidate that sounds like a bastion of sanity by comparison to the Democratic and Republican 'candidates' (look 'em up), and he's got a couple of policies he's hawking that will make sure he's never connected to a critical mass even though everything else could actually work. Over in the UK 52% voted in a referendum to Leave the European Union, shocking the living daylights out of the rest of the world ('Huge majority!' screams some headlines. Um, 'No', says I) and sending the 48% who wanted to Remain into something of an emotional backlash.

An alligator attacked a two-year-old on a Disney resort beach in Florida (never happened before in 45 years there), and the Internet swam around in its favorite pastime - blaming the parents. It was awful, all of it. The Stanford Swimmer rape trial sentence made a mockery of the 'justice' system, though the letter written by the victim went viral and is amazing and empowering. Victim-blaming abounds. An expose in Chicago about systemic, ongoing abuse by an artistic director of a theatre company brought out 'those women should have known better' and 'actresses should take responsibility for their own situations' comments - and not just from a male reporter (who was fired), but also from a friend of mine over lunch (who... was not). The article also highlighted the actions of a group helping non-Equity companies create standards of behavior so that clear boundaries and expectations are created in similar artistic endeavors.

It's been ridiculously hot for June, and it's hard to sleep.

It's been a rough month for everybody, basically.

Oh - I had a really good performance review and got a small unexpected raise, which was lovely... I just don't have anyone to tell about it. So, y'know - goals. Also, trying to make the world a better place.

We could really use the help.


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Watch out for falling turtles!