Mary Poppins

At some point during every Christmas I spend at home, I inevitably pick up one or more Mary Poppins books and binge read.  This time, I was struck by a passage from Mary Poppins Comes Back.  In it, the newborn Annabel talks to a starling:


"I am earth and air and fire and water.
I come from the Dark where all things have their beginning.
I come from the sea and its tides.
I come from the sky and its stars, I come from the sun and its brightness.
And I come from the forests of the earth.
Slowly I moved at first, always sleeping and dreaming. I remembered all I had been and I thought of all I shall be. And when I had dreamed my dream I awoke and came swiftly.
I heard the stars singing as I came and I felt warm wings about me. I passed the beasts of the jungle and, came through the dark, deep waters. It was a long journey." - P.L. Travers

The starling chides her and says that she will never remember all of this as she grows.  No human can.  Sure enough, she forgets.  But at this closing of the year, as we assess our paths and map out our futures, let us all remember that we came from the Dark where all things have their beginning.  Let us all remember all we have been and think of all we shall be.  May we all feel warm wings about us.

Blessings

As an actor, I tend to have a flurry of shows that occupy my thoughts and take up a certain amount of energy.  The scripted shows have been painstakingly memorized and prepared for and the improvised ones have been dutifully orchestrated.  When I show up, though, I simply perform.  Somehow, the preparation, the struggle and the weight of everything is not foremost on my mind.  I just go to the theatre and do my job.

These last few days before my holiday break have shown me a different side of performance, though.  The side of the director and teacher.  I have three shows in three days where my role has been to prepare my cast to shine as bright as they can in front of standing room only crowds.  I have worked with each ensemble for months and these shows have been the culmination of their extraordinary dedication.  After last night's show, I was exhausted.  After tonight's show, I was exhausted.  After tomorrow's show, I expect to be annihilated.

What I didn't fully realize (until having three of these shows back to back) was how much I invest in each of the shows I direct/teach.  I live and die by every individual's performance on that stage.  When one of my cast/students have a "win" onstage, I celebrate.  When I see them before the show and their face says "I am scared," I agonize with them.  My job at these times is to make these brave actors ready for their journey to the stage.  I would sooner cut off an appendage than have one of my performers feel unsure.  If I somehow let a class/cast go onstage not feeling like they will OWN that performance, I have failed.

So, for the past few days, I've been totally wiped out.  I swear to god, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Beijos

In 2008, I assistant directed an Augusto Boal play (the world English language premiere of said play, but I digress...into self aggrandization, apparently) and was exposed to many different aspects of the Brazilian theatrical culture.  On the heels of that production, I sort of kind of desperately wanted to visit Brazil.  One day, in front of a few professors and some students, I said as much.  Timidly, and with no real conviction, but I DID say it. Within a matter of a couple of weeks, I was being shepherded through the process of applying for a travel grant that would allow me to go to Brazil, introduced to Augusto Boal (then a Nobel Peace Prize nominee) and just happened to find a street map of Rio de Janeiro at a book store on sale.  About a week after THAT, I got the grant.  I said I wanted to go and, before I knew it, I was going.  Brazil just kind of happened to me. I won't bother with a travelogue as I've talked about my first trip to Rio before but, suffice it to say, it was magnificent.  I loved Rio more than just about anything.

This year, I happened to read a post on a Facebook page about a South American Improv festival to be held in Rio de Janeiro. On a whim, I replied to the post, saying how much I'd like to visit Rio and be part of this festival.  A couple of months later, while eating lunch in Maine, my phone buzzed. One of my lunch companions said "What happened to make you smile like that?!" I put the phone down.  "I'm going to Brazil.  I get to go to Brazil again." My most recent trip to Rio is another post for another day, but it, too, was magnificent.  Life-changing and brilliant and inspiring and RICH.

It seems magical.  It seems like all I've had to do in the past is whisper how much I'd like to visit Rio de Janeiro and the universe rouses itself to bring all of its best luck and happenstance to bear. On the off chance that this may be true, consider this my standing whisper, universe:  I want to go back to Rio.  I will always want to go back to Rio.  You just let me know when.

Malignant

One thing I hate is the terminology surrounding a person's death from cancer.  Do not say that they lost their battle with cancer.  That is a lie.  Did their cancer live after their own body's death?  No, of course not.  Therefore, they did not "lose."  Their fight may have been a suicide mission, however.

Playing Like a Coach

Let's start out with a piece of information that might seem kind of superfluous at first blush: On Saturdays in the fall, I get REAL southern. I am a University of Georgia football fan with all of the insane zeal of the newly converted.  Ask me to talk about Knowshon Moreno in the brilliant 2008 Sugar Bowl season and I'mma light up like a Christmas tree.  Oh, and if you're a masochist, say the name "Tebow" in my presence and just see what that gets you.   UGA and SEC football are my fall obsessions. I. AM. INVESTED.

So, why am I bringing this up now, other than the fact that it's football season and shit like this video makes me cry with my hand over my heart while singing "Glory, Glory to Old Georgia"? Why indeed...

Flash back to 2009, when Matt Stafford entered the NFL draft, leaving UGA's QB position open to Joe Cox.  It was...not a good season. Cox seemed uniquely good at throwing interceptions.  After the Sugarbowl season of 2008, I wasn't ready for my favorite team to suck so hard.  I was livid.  I went so far as to tell my Florida alumni friends that they had a better team that year.  It was THAT bad.  One day, after a dismal game full of interceptions, I listened to a post-game interview of Cox.  The interviewer asked Cox what his plans were after UGA -- was he going to choose to enter the NFL draft?  Cox replied that his ultimate career goal was to hopefully be a coach.  I believe I remember screaming at that point.  Screaming "THAT'S WHY YOU SUCK!  YOU'RE PLAYING LIKE A COACH! EVERY OTHER JERK OUT THERE IS PLAYING LIKE THEY'RE GONNA BE IN THE NFL! AND YOUR GREATEST CAREER GOAL IS TO HAVE A RECEDING HAIRLINE AND WEAR DOCKERS!"

After a recent Saturday game, my husband reminded me of the time in my household when we spit on the ground after saying Joe Cox's name. I laughed because, well, Aaron Murray and Todd Gurley.  But then I gasped in horror. I was the Joe Cox of my life.

I was playing like a coach.

I am an actor.  I love being an actor.  I am a teacher.  I love being a teacher.  I am, at the moment, auditioning for a lot of work for me as an actor.  I am also applying to a metric butt-ton of academic positions for me as a teacher.  Somewhere, though...  Somewhere along the line, I stopped being 100% an actor in auditions and 100% a teacher in my job applications.  I was teaching like an actor and acting like a teacher.  In no particular moment of my professional life was I 100% the person that was asked of me at that moment.  While sitting in the waiting room of an audition, I was thinking about the class I was going to teach that night or how I needed this job so much.  Consequently, when I went into that audition room, I wasn't doing my job as an actor, I was worried about a thousand other things.  I was concerned about GETTING the job, not DOING my job.  In applying for jobs at various universities around the country, I wasn't completely focused on submitting the best portfolio I possibly could. In every opportunity where I was called upon to step up and show what I've got, I hedged my bets.  I was thinking about my fallback options when I SHOULD have been thinking about being the best possible iteration of myself in that particular moment.  I was anticipating failure.

I was playing like a coach.

Not surprisingly, it hasn't worked out so good for me, either as an actor or as an academic. What encourages me is this:  the UGA team of 2009 is in the rearview and this year's team is exciting and wild and weird and winning.  It is never too late to stop being half who you were meant to be in any given situation.  I am not half a teacher and half an actor...  Half the time, I am 100% an actor and the other half, I am 100% a teacher. I will not be the Joe Cox of my own destiny.

Let's be real

I was in the middle of a very insightful HuffPo article when I had to stop and compose this blog entry.  Why?  Because it was literally the fifth piece I've read this week about image crafting.  We all do it.  Shit, this blog is part of my own image crafting.  There may be people out there in the world who have looked at my Facebook profile or my website and felt like somehow my life is better or more interesting than theirs. It is not.  And I feel kind of gross for embedding those links, just so you know.

Here's what we should all remember about Facebook: it is not an accurate representation of someone's life.  Facebook is a self-curated highlight reel.  Those Facebook pages that business owners and actors set up (because an actor is a small-business owner, do not make ANY mistake about that) are even MORE oriented to the "greatest hits" mentality.  Seriously, has any fan page you've liked on Facebook ever posted something less than stellar about their business?  One business page I liked did this once and it made me feel uncomfortable as hell.  So just know that when you're reading your friends' pages and getting wicked jealous, they are very likely doing absolutely nothing exciting, important or cool at all.  In fact, you might be reading someone's blog at the very moment they are sitting in their living room in elastic waist pants picking their nose and waiting for their take-out dinner to get delivered (ahem).

So, I'mma be real.  This is a picture I took of myself that I like very much.  Here's why it succeeds:  I was lying on my back to get a gravity face-lift, the lighting is soft, I am wearing so much makeup a kabuki actor would find it "a bit over-the-top," and you can't see my hair which is frizzy and weird.

Cute, eh?  Well, here's me, making a face at a friend of mine on the train.

So, image crafting be damned, at least for the time being.  I have take-out to eat.

Maine

Leaving Maine never gets easier.  This is my ninth time working at Improv Acadia and my tenth goodbye.  My heart breaks a little bit every time I leave until I imagine it must be criss-crossed with fissures and scars.  I am hoping that maybe one day some astute Maine doctor will say to me, "I'm afraid you can't leave Maine again.  Your heart won't be able to take the strain."  I'd solemnly call my friends, my family, my various employers and say "I'm so sorry, but I have to stay here.  Doctor's orders."  Then, I would hang up the phone, do a jig and hum a happy tune while I perused real estate listings for a tiny house with just enough land for a vegetable garden.

I'd make jam.  I'd learn how to spin yarn.  I'd quilt.  I'd climb a mountain every day until I knew all of the mountains by heart.  And I'd never have to say goodbye again.

Dudley

Facebook, being the weird beast that it is, sometimes delivers bad news to a person in an unforgivably ham-fisted way.  You check Facebook, hoping to get up to speed on the latest BuzzFeed gif parade or register your liberal outrage by sharing an Upworthy post (hi Adam!) and then you run into a post by a stranger on an undergrad alumni page that gutpunches you.

"...any info on Dr. T's passing would be appreciated."

What?!  No. Dr. Thomas, dead?  Unacceptable.  Someone call someone because this is not actually possible and should be rectified.

Unbelievable.

No.

A little background: I went to a very competitive undergrad theatre program.  Crazy competitive.  I'm not going to get into details of how intense and sometimes insane this place was, suffice it to say that I was convinced that if I didn't succeed in this particular program, I'd never, ever work in the theatre ever.  I never felt at rest there.  I never felt good enough or smart enough or thin enough or pretty enough or talented enough.  I never felt ENOUGH.  Halfway through my freshman year, we had to pick a degree track and an advisor.  While most of my class' actors gravitated to our acting professor and our tech classmates drifted to our technical director, there was only ever one choice for me: Dr. Thomas.  If pressed, I couldn't tell you exactly why I chose him.  Perhaps it was the fact that, during my audition to get into the program, he was the only one who laughed.  Perhaps it was his patrician demeanor.  Perhaps it was the fact that he talked TO the freshmen instead of THROUGH them.  Perhaps it was a million things.  But part of it was definitely what the upperclassmen referred to as "THE class."

We all had to take "Survey and Analysis of Dramatic Art" with Dr. T in our first semester freshman year.  We learned, pretty quickly, that our pretensions and our artistic posturing were to be checked at the door because Dr. T would not put up with our adolescent shit.  He expected us to be serious and respectful and hard working and real because he just couldn't stand to see us waste our time on artifice. Still, the upperclassmen would corner us in the hallways: "How's Survey and Analysis going?  Have you had THE class yet?" We'd offer up the latest class topics, but were always met with "Oh you'll KNOW when you have THE class."  And then, finally, we experienced it.  THE class.

A play was being discussed in Survey and Analysis...  Since the class, many of us have tried to remember WHAT exact play we were discussing.  Various theories have suggested it was The Importance of Being Earnest or King Lear.  I think it could also have been A Flea in Her Ear.  Regardless, it was being discussed and Dr. T let us yammer on and on about our twee little 18 year old ideas of the central theme of this play.  We spouted rank nonsense like "Man's inhumanity to man" and used foreign words we didn't fully understand ("gestalt") and generally sounded like a bunch of twerps.  Finally, after an interminable amount of theatre-teen posturing later, Dr. T slammed his hand down on the desk at the front of the room.  The echoing boom of his fist on the desk shut our mouths and drew our attention immediately. Dr. T stood at the head of the class with thunder on his brow.  There was a collective intake of breath from the class, and then the storm broke.  "THIS PLAY IS ABOUT SEX, PEOPLE!  IT'S ABOUT FUCKING!"

Funny story, yes?  But in the years since that day, I have continually parsed it out for the underlying lessons it taught me.  Don't overthink the play.  Theatre is about basic human needs and desires. Stop trying to sound smart.  Shut up and listen.  Over and over and over again, Dr. T taught us those lessons.  Shut up a while.  Listen.  Don't think...feel.

I could tell you a thousand Dr. T stories.  About his thermos full of "coffee" during tech rehearsal and how one of his pieces of direction for me was to "Grab the wheelchair and just spin it the fuck around." About how he'd hold advising sessions outside when the university banned smoking in campus buildings and how he could smoke a cigarette in one drag if it was raining. About our Senior Seminar final which involved a mandatory margarita and bean dip component.  About how I saw him do a keg stand when he was 65 years old. About every time he used the word "fuck" in a way I had never heard it used before.  There are a thousand funny stories.  Pardon me, though, because I'm not feeling up to telling any of those particular stories.

See, Dr. Thomas was the first person who believed in me as a theatre artist.  Eh, no...  That's not quite right.  He didn't have time for that kind of Oprah/Dr. Phil bullshit.  It's closer to truth to say he gave me a spine for the first time in my life.  I lived or died by how I was viewed in the theatre department and I believed it to be the ultimate indication of my future success as an actor.  When I was cast in a lead role as a junior, I put all of my hopes and dreams into this one play, this one role, believing it to be the ultimate test of my fitness as an actor.  At the opening night party, I found Dr. T and asked him what he thought of my performance, hoping that I'd hear good things and be validated in my choice of career.  "I didn't like it, Amy.  I didn't like you.  Not totally your fault, though.  Play's a little preachy.  I hate preachy shit."  I crumbled, tears in my eyes.  "Goddamn it, Amy, it's a fucking play.  Don't WORRY about it." Time and time again, he taught me the same lesson:  Do your job to the best of your ability and do right by yourself because there will always be some dumb motherfucker who hated you.  Good news is that there will also always be some dumb motherfucker who loved you.  You cannot rely on the motherfuckers for your sense of self worth for the simple fact that they are motherfuckers.  The only one who can decide if you are going to be an actor is YOU. Now get the fuck out there and do your fucking job.

I wrote to Dr. Thomas once, when I got my first real professional theatre job.  It was important for me to let him know that I was doing OK, that I was working, that what he taught me was vital to my current success...  I had to thank him for giving me the figurative balls to exist in the world of live theatre. I had just been cast at the Improv Asylum in Boston and he wrote me a lovely response.  The interesting thing about Dr. T, in my experience, was that he was blunt as hell in person, but waxed poetic in writing -- I saved most of my papers from his classes for the evocative grading notes he wrote in the margins -- so, when I told him that I was working at the Improv Asylum, the letter he wrote me in reply was all about the beauty of an artist finding their asylum, their place of rest and protection and freedom, their home...  It was beautiful and it was true.

I don't have much else to say but this:  I owe who I am to Dr. Thomas.  Every thing I've done as an actor has been influenced by him and a large part of the good things I've done as a regular human being are because of his instruction and mentorship. He taught me that the only way an actor can fail is by giving up.  He taught me to advocate for myself and be loud.  He taught me how to use the word "fuck" in all parts of speech.  And he taught me the best vocal warm up ever:  "She offered her honor.  He honored her offer.  And all the night long, it was honor and offer."  Where many people saw me as a chubby, shy girl from Minnesota who would never succeed as an actress, he saw me as a chubby, shy girl from Minnesota would would never succeed as an actress unless she stopped listening to assholes.

Someday, I'll laugh at the thousand irreverent stories I have of Dr. Thomas.  But now's my time for grief. I would be such a waste of a person had Dr. T not cared enough to tell me to stand up and be a woman, to raise my voice, to raise hell...

God give you glory, Dr. Dudley Thomas.  You chose to shout where lesser men would have whispered.

My birthday request

Several years ago, I asked friends, family and strangers to send me a picture for my birthday.  It could be of anything they wanted, provided they tell me a little bit about the picture.  I got a photo of a flock of running Wonder Women, a picture of my friend in a junior high letter sweater, the first snowfall another friend had experienced,  a smiling Dalmatian, a metal nun, the hand of a great grandmother resting on the head of her newborn great grandson,  etc.  When I first asked for photos for my birthday , I specifically asked for a hard copy because I loved (and still love) getting mail, but this time, I'd like to make my birthday request entirely digital.

My birthday is on Saturday and it's a big one. Please send me a picture.  ANY picture.  Tell me a little about that picture and a smidgen about why you decided to send me that particular picture. The picture doesn't have to have anything to do with me,  it just has to be something that matters to you in some wonderful/weird/fun/silly/monumental/inconsequential/inspiring/dull/unique/mundane way.  In other words, Dealer's Choice. And the description doesn't have to be long.  Or complete.  Or coherent.  Or anything at all.

Stymied on what to send me?  I'll give an example of what I'd send you, had you made a similar request: a picture of the Denny's sign in Evansville, IN.  I'd tell you about how I used to hang out either there or at a nearby restaurant with my friends in college.  About how we wound up exclusively patronizing Denny's because the other nearby restaurant was partially destroyed when a plane landed on/in it.  About the corner booth where friendships were cemented over the Sleepwalker Special and of the origin of the phrase "A lot of Binaca and no ego."

Send your pictures to birthdaypicturesforamy@gmail.com.  Let me know in your email if it's OK for me to share your picture on this blog.

Another favor:  send this request to your friends, too!  I want to see what people I don't even know will send me.  This is a long standing anthropological art project that I am deeply inspired by.  I am so looking forward to seeing what comes my way this year!

All of this being said, don't send me pictures you wouldn't show your mother/grandma/thesis committee/boss/priest/guru/sister.  Be classy.

Send me pictures, you lovely weirdos!  And share my request, please, if you are so inclined.

Pride

For the first time ever, I got to be a part of Pride in Chicago.  And I got to be a part of it in a big way.  I marched in the parade with pH Theatre and spent three hours today "Marching."  I put that in quotes because, at the worst moments, it was dehydrated shambling and, at the best moments, it was a big, silly dance party.

Here's my take-away from Pride:  There is nothing more joyful that the celebration of love.

Nothing.

To my LGBTQ brothers/sisters/folks that don't subscribe to a binary description of gender who are as close to me as family:  I love you forever. Thank you for letting me be part of your party today!

A few, brief thoughts on seeing "The Great Gatsby"

- Though I am usually not a fan of DiCaprio, I found myself charmed by the subtlety of his acting in this movie.  Probably because it was so vastly opposite Luhrmann's directing style of "Beat the Audience About the Head and Neck With Camera Tricks."  In Luhrmann's hands, Jerry Lewis would look like a nuanced actor.

- Nick Caraway in a Sanitarium is not acceptable.  Fitzgerald should be allowed to come back from the dead to nut-punch Luhrmann.  NOT.  ACCEPTABLE.

- Women who identify with Daisy Buchanan should be gently told that they're probably more like Myrtle Wilson.

- What happened to that dog?  

- In order for the term "Old Sport" to sound natural, one should not pause immediately before saying it.

- "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Oh God, it's true, isn't it?  We can't escape the past!  Our goals keep moving ever further away!  The green light is a sham! Is 2 in the afternoon too early to have a martini and go back to bed?

- Daisy Buchanan is a real piece of shit.

Students

I have been a teacher (of improv, of reading, of math, of acting, of theatre for social justice) for many years now and it is one of the single most gratifying jobs I've ever had.  I take great joy in watching people learn something new or learn a new aspect of an old skill.  It's the reason I went to grad school, actually:  so I could eventually teach at a university level and get to watch people make extraordinary discoveries on a daily basis.  With paid vacation time.  The beauty of teaching for me is also the fact that every student I've ever had in any program has left a mark on my life.  Every one is so ineffably unique.  I remember something of every student I've ever had and I love that so much.  My life is filled with a thousand small stories that other people have shared with me, simply by dint of being part of a class I've taught.

So, today I was standing in a cafe in Bar Harbor, waiting on a take-out order (a fantastic, life-changing turkey melt sandwich from Sidestreet Cafe, which offers gluten-free bread on request, fellow celiacs!) when I happened to notice one of the other patrons of the restaurant who looked very familiar to me.  After I got my sandwich (seriously, it's SO GOOD!), I approached her and asked if she had taken classes at the Improv Asylum.  In the next few seconds, I watched recognition break across her face.  I had been her instructor for more than one class.  We squealed, we talked, we hugged, we had a grand old catch-up.  It was wonderful.

Students, your teachers remember you and care about you long after you've finished studying with them.  They wonder about you and hold you in their thoughts.  They care.  They wouldn't be teachers if they didn't.

BTW, my former student has a pretty kick-ass business now. Maine Foodie Tours.  Check them out if you're in Portland, Kennebunkport or Bar Harbor!

Drama

Recently, a chancellor for the university system in the state of Georgia called "drama" the "wrong" major to pursue in college. Suffice it to say, that was a huge lapse in judgement on the chancellor's part.  Witness this lovely editorial here.  Also witness this badassery.  As a graduate of the University of Georgia system with said "wrong" major, I feel the need to defend my course of study a weensie bit.  Moreover, I feel the need to give a shout out to a company that I am particularly interested/invested in and rooting for.

Defending live theatre as a profession/resource/valid course of study: http://www.tcg.org/advocacy/impact.cfm

A theatre company that is kicking butt and taking names:  http://www.penobscottheatre.org/

And another theatre company nearby that I love beyond all sense and reason: www.improvacadia.com

In short:  Go into the arts, if you are so inclined.  Dream if you must, because the rest of the world is counting on your vision to pull us through.

Walking (where we shouldn't have) in Memphis

If there is a supreme being in charge of bestowing humans with good road trip juju, raise up a prayer for yourself that you may be given a travel buddy like my friend Jessica.  Good fortune, luck, grace, miraculous coincidence and plain ol' joy stick to her like dog hair sticks to dress pants.  Traveling with Jess is like walking through Oz with Dorothy if the witch wasn't trying to kill her and if Dorothy wasn't homesick.  A few weeks ago, she called me to ask if I wanted to tag along on a trip to Memphis.  I learned a long time ago to always, ALWAYS say yes when Jessica proposes an adventure.  Saying "no" to something like that is just an invitation to lifelong regret.

Our trip started off the way our last roadtrip together did:  I got us lost and drove the wrong way down a one-way street.  To be clear: I GOT LOST IN MY OWN CITY.  Jessica handled our unplanned detour into no-man's land with aplomb.  She didn't get flustered or upset.  She just said "If we don't get killed, I will never let you live this down."  A fair bargain.

Suffice it to say, we made it to Memphis in one piece.  We checked into a motel next to a race track with a meth chef mascot and got down to the serious business of touristing.  On our first day in Memphis, Jess brought out her binder of itineraries and we chose to drive into town to visit the National Civil Rights museum.  In 1995, Jess met a woman who was protesting against the museum and spent the afternoon she had earmarked for the museum talking to the woman and hearing her grievances.  In short, this woman (homeless by choice to protest the gentrification of her former neighborhood) dissuaded Jessica from visiting the museum and bought her a popsicle. 18 years later, the woman was still there, still protesting and still just as vocal as Jessica remembered.  Jessica introduced herself again and said that she had a debt to repay.  She reminded the woman (whose name was Jaclyn Smith, no word of a lie) of the popsicle and asked what she wanted.  Jess bought her a muffin and brought a cup of ice.  Note to self:  Repay every debt. 

We went to the National Civil Rights museum, despite the protestations of Ms. Smith who asserted that the museum was just a very expensive memorial to James Earl Ray.  Respectfully, Jessica said that she needed to see the museum for herself to make up her mind and, equally respectfully, Ms. Smith concurred.  I have known, since a cut-throat game of Apples to Apples, just how much Jessica respects Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  What I wasn't expecting was to find myself equally affected by Dr. King's legacy.  I didn't expect to be standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was shot, in tears.  It turns out that Ms. Smith was right... The vast majority of the exhibits in the museum were dedicated to James Earl Ray, the assassin.  They even had the bullet that killed Dr. King in a hermetically sealed case which was, quite frankly, nauseating.  Ray's boardinghouse bedroom was on display as was the filthy bathroom from which he shot Dr. King.  It was suffocating.  It was...wrong.  We went across the street to the Lorraine Motel and walked up to the balcony where Dr. King fell. I wish I could adequately describe what I felt, standing there, but I can't.  I stood there for a long time, on the edge of tears that I didn't feel that I deserved.  I stood there so long that I lost Jessica in the crowd.  I found her again, speaking with Ms. Smith: debating, sharing, laughing.  That's one of the things I love about Jessica.  Nothing in the world gets in the way of her ability to connect with other people.  

Next on our itinerary was the Mason Temple, where Dr. King gave his last speech before his assassination.  Scratch that...  Next on our itinerary was lunch, but the Temple was a close second.  I was determined to drive to the Temple, but Jessica said "Why don't we walk?"  Internally, I balked, because it was more than a mile from where we were and I had a demonstrated track record of getting us hopelessly lost.  We wound up walking, though, and we walked through places where, if I was a resourceful serial killer, I would have thought to stash a body or two.  Industrial parks with razor wire and desolation...  Neighborhoods of boarded up windows and graffiti.  Long stretches of nothingness and blight...  We waded through mud and we walked through scary railroad underpasses.  We stopped in convenience stores with more bullet-proof glass than things for sale.  But Jessica was committed to walking to this church and I trusted her commitment.  I got us a little lost on the way but, in for a penny, in for a pound...

Long story short, we got there.  The church, on the exterior, looked unremarkable and I remember thinking that it looked like the Armory on the University of Evansville campus.  Slightly industrial and not unique.  We walked up to the door with masses of anticipation born of our perilous journey there and...it was locked.  I rattled every door, hoping that one would be open.  Standing there in frustration, I saw Jess standing still, serene. "It's locked.  We're skunked.  Might as well just go back."  Jessica looked at me and that one look said "Wait." So, I waited.

In a matter of moments, a gentleman hailed us from outside the iron fence ringing the church.  "We're closed to tours today, but you came all this way to see our church, we might as well show it off.  Let me make a call..."  Within a few seconds, the security guard came out of the church, waved to our interlocutor and ushered us inside.  He told us about the founder, Charles Harrison Mason, who was once jailed and (allegedly) prayed so hard that lightning struck the jail and caused every cell door to spring open.  He was clearly very proud of the temple and of its history.  And then we entered the sanctuary which was bathed in the amber light of a southern afternoon.  We were drawn to the pulpit which the guard said was original to the building.  I turned and he read my turn for the question that it actually was.  "Yes.  That's the pulpit that Dr. King used during his last speech.  Go ahead.  You can stand behind it if you want." And so we did.  And a splendid afternoon washed us with its golden light.  

Let's just break this down a little... If Jessica hadn't spent a long time talking to Ms. Smith outside the museum, if she hadn't insisted on walking to this church, if I hadn't gotten us lost yet again, we wouldn't have been at the church in time to run into the gentleman who got the security guard to give us a tour. Even though the timing was random and totally unpredictable, I can't help but believe that Jessica was somehow cosmically aware of the timing of everything. She was determined to visit the church.  She wanted to stand where Dr. King stood.  And that's exactly what happened.

Our time in Memphis was full of good things.  I performed with an improv troupe I have long admired, we ate serious barbecue, and we laughed like laughing was going out of style.  But none of this would have been possible without the grace attendant on everything that Jessica attempted.  In my journal on Saturday, I wrote "I lived the HELL out of today."  I pray that everyone I know will have the opportunity to say the exact same thing...  That, when faced with a chance to take a gigantic leap, we all choose to jump.  And that we are all rewarded with grace.  Moreover, I pray that you all have a Jessica in your life, guiding you to ever greater adventures.

Seeing and/or believing

My friend Peter just had some life-changing surgery.  The genetic lottery gifted him with cataracts as an infant that left him with compromised sight for most of his life.  Doctors repeatedly said that there was nothing they could do to correct the problem and he'd just have to accept the fact that he would always live in a world where everything he saw was two-dimensional.  Peter, my strong and brave friend, never took those doctors' words as gospel.  He recently had surgery that is allowing him to see in 3-D for the first time in his life and he's chronicling it in his blog Diving Into Depth.  His journey is fascinating and he tells his story very poetically.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go find a bunch of cheesy lenticular postcards to send him.  Any leads would be appreciated!

Boston

Someone with a lot of hate in their heart set off explosions in Boston today.  Boston, which happens to be the epicenter of MY heart.  I have posted a lot in response to tragedy about how the only response is to vow to love one another even harder than before.  Yeah.  That's still true and all, but someone went and fucked with MY GODDAMN HEART and it is NOT OKAY.

I worked in Boston's North End.  I lived in Southie.  I worked next to Fenway.  I visited friends in Somerville. I booked commercials in the South End.  I taught workshops in Dorchester. I wrote a play about the Freedom Trail.  I took groups of children to Copley Square for library field trips.  Name a part of this city and I have touched it.  I love it more than any other place I have ever lived and it's the only place except for my home town that I regularly visit.  My deepest friendships were forged in Boston.  The people that know me best and love me the hardest are from Boston. I cannot stress this enough:  Boston is my motherfucking heart.

And don't even get me started about the fact that this happened at the Boston fucking Marathon.  NO.  Marathoners are the kind of people who do what they do for something larger than themselves.  They are running for charity, they are running to affirm that they are able to accomplish what seems an impossible human endeavor, they are running to prove things to themselves...  Running is so close to being holy.  Fuck this sacrilege.

Yes, I still believe that love is the best course of action in the face of hate and tragedy.  Yes, I will try to love ever harder in the face of THIS tragedy.  But, if Boston has taught me anything, it's that when someone fucks with your people, you FIGHT.  So guess what, Hatred? I am not putting up with this shit anymore.  I'm not going to passively try to love you away.  I'm going to raise my voice and bare my knuckles and beat the everliving SHIT out of you.  YOU. DON'T.  GET. TO. WIN.

The things we make...

In undergrad, I had a conversation with a set designer friend of mine who was finishing a Shaker table for a period design class.  It was a lovely piece of furniture and, as I admired it, he said to me "I couldn't do what you do.  I have to be able to make something I can touch with my hands."  While I am ridiculously enthralled by the act and craft of performing onstage, there are few tangible things to take away from each show.  Playbills, ticket stubs, pictures, friendships...  Scrapbook fodder and memories aside, sometimes one longs to make something that lasts longer than six or eight weeks, 8 shows a week (2 matinee).

I'm not one to crow about my achievements because they seem kind of small sometimes.  I prefer to trumpet the successes of my friends (who are brilliant, talented, gorgeous, bound to change the world and have good taste in friends), but there is one thing I helped to bring to life that I am infinitely, extraordinarily proud of.  In 2007, a group of folks came together to put together an improv troupe on the University of Georgia campus.  In 2013, they are still going strong.  The group's alumni have gone on to success outside of the relative safety of UGA and some are professional actors and improvisors now, themselves.  They've won awards, they've performed before hundreds of people on and off campus and are a thriving group of dedicated artists.

Improv Athens, ladies and gentlemen.  I helped to make this.  And it's one of the best things I've ever done.  

Kim

For Kim, on the anniversary of parting:

“Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day.

Reflections on Easters past

Easter is one of those holidays, like Thanksgiving, that I typically don't get to spend with family.  Consequently, I have enjoyed some incredibly random Easter celebrations.

In college, right before the Easter break, there was a party that was so epic that I doubt anyone who ever attended said party would ever be able to run for elected office because of incriminating photographic evidence.  It was called the Saint to Sinner party.  You came to the party dressed as your favorite saint and left as your favorite sinner.  Without going into too much detail, I will say that there was a ritual chanting of the beginning of Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" and one year I woke up the next morning on an airplane to Minneapolis with no idea how I had gotten there.

Then, there was the year that I visited Boston from New York, staying with a friend of mine.  On Easter morning, as I walked out of her guest bedroom to go brush my teeth, I noticed a trail of jelly beans leading to my very own Easter basket.  In the middle of the night, her husband had made elaborate candy trails for she and I to find when we woke up.

In Boston one year, I had been out til all hours of the morning carrying on with a visiting friend from NYC and my roommate.  My roommate and I got home as the sun was coming up on Easter morning and passed out.  Nevertheless, every hour on the hour, my roommate dragged her hungover self out of bed to check on the pot roast she put in the oven as soon as we stumbled in to the apartment in our club clothes from the night before.  That was either the year before or after the Easter when I saw "Rent" with an ex-Marine who wore American flag boxer shorts.

When I lived in New York, I made my home in Astoria, Queens, which is home to a very large Greek Orthodox population.  One Good Friday, I had to have an emergency root canal and was lying on my couch, delirious with pain medication when a friend stopped by to drop off a package for me.  He handed over the package and said "Um, you might want to come see this." and led me outside.  The streets of my neighborhood were filled with people dressed in black, holding candles and silently walking.  It was my first introduction to the pageantry of the Eastern Orthodox religion and was quickly followed by the second.  At midnight that Saturday, the same people were out in the streets, shooting off illegal fireworks and dancing to a marching band proceeded by a flower-bedecked statue of Jesus. It was beautiful and strange and wonderful...especially when enhanced by Vicodin.

That same year, I tried to find a church nearby that was holding an Easter service at a reasonable hour.  This was before we used the internet for EVERYTHING, guys, and I was pretty much just walking around, looking at the announcement boards outside of various churches for the better part of an hour, increasingly footsore and discouraged.  Finally, I found a service that was about to start and I ran in, grabbing a program from an usher at the door.  Turns out, the service was entirely in Korean.  A very kind young woman pointed that fact out to me and I asked her if it was OK if I stayed.  She seemed bewildered why I would want to, but she said I could.  The highlight of the service was recognizing one of the hymns and singing along in English as the rest of the congregation sang in Korean.

You can keep your Easter parades and spiral sliced hams...  I prefer my Easters random, weird and preceded by debauchery.

Things that don't make me cry

In March, a lot of things make me cry.  Today, my perfume made me cry.  It's just how March is in Chicago.  This, however, did NOT make me cry:

http://storefrontcity.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/the-la-ronde-project/

Sitting in the dark in my underwear...

What we will do for theatre...

I have been a professional actor for eighteen years.  Add to that my college career and high school and the one time I played "Princess Division" in a play about math in the fourth grade and that makes a hell of a long time spent on the stage.  Over the years, I've played mostly character roles -- the crazy ones, the broken ones, the funny ones, the ones who look as if they smell like nickels and ribbon candy...  The ones you don't have to be "pretty" for.  I like those roles.  Those roles tend to invite the actors to step pretty far outside themselves for the sake of the play and it's nice to be asked to take a brief vacation from being yourself.

In those long years as an actor, I have only had to have a stage kiss five times.  Kissy roles terrify me.  Ask me to play a cyclops grandmother and I'll ask you if you'd like a dialect with that and which side you'd like my hump to lean toward, but ask me to kiss another actor and I turn into a puddle of fear and anxiety.  "You want me to play a NORMAL woman that other normal human beings find reasonably attractive?  And then you want me to KISS them?! Is it too late to go to law school?"  Inevitably, around first dress, the director will pause the rehearsal to say to me "Do you think maybe you could put the kiss in SOMETIME BEFORE OPENING NIGHT?!"  Once a director stopped rehearsal to tell me that no one was allowed to leave that day until I finally kissed the other actor as indicated by the stage directions.  I mumbled something about maybe possibly having a sore throat and there being worse places to be stuck indefinitely until the director just said "Do it right fucking now, Amy." I screwed up my courage and ran (yes, RAN) headlong into the kiss.  There was a terrific crash.  I lost a contact lens and the other actor got a black eye.

Right now, I'm in the mother of all kissy plays.  Sex happens in every single scene and it doesn't make a lot of sense for that sex to happen without at least one kiss as foreplay.  Also, my character kind of orders people to kiss her.  She is described as "exquisite," as well, which only serves to cause further anxiety.  "Exquisite"?  Me?  Pleasant, yes.  A good personality, yes.  Witty, yes.  But "Exquisite"?  No one who has appeared in public with her skirt tucked unknowingly into the back of her pantyhose with as alarming frequency as I have is allowed to be called "exquisite."

We jumped into rehearsals for this play without a lot of discussion prior to the actual rehearsal work, so I didn't get to make my usual excuses for why I couldn't kiss that day and what happened was simply astonishing.  My scene partners kissed me and I didn't burst into flame.  It just happened.  And it was no big deal.  Still, that "exquisite" lingered.

And then there was the small matter of the lingerie.  I had to change out of a dress, into a nightgown.  In another scene, I had to take off a costume to be revealed in a corset.  And I had to stay like that for the rest of the play.  In my unders in front of strangers in a rehearsal space with a nasty draft.  Since the kiss was taken care of, the exposure of my flesh took over the worry centers of my brain and I stalled as long as I could before I finally broke down and did the costume changes tonight.  It helped immensely that one of my scene partners gets super-naked naked in the scene, so a nightgown that hits at knee length is positively Amish by comparison.  The corset was another matter.  There wasn't enough money in the budget or time in the show for me to get to have a corset.  I would have to have done a quick change into the corset and there are no such things as quick changes into corsets...at least not with me. I mean, jeez, it takes me fifteen minutes to tie my shoes.  So the dilemma was finding something appropriately risque that looked different from the nightgown and could conceivably have been under the costume piece I change out of.  Consequently, I appear in a bra and half slip onstage, in front of actual people, and a boy kisses me.  If I could tell college freshman theatre major me that this would happen, she would have switched her major to business and I would have a summer home and a boat by now.

But I did it.  And I'm alive.  And no one lost a contact or got a black eye.  Of course, all bets are off once the show opens.

Future Oscar Winners.

Please enjoy the work of my friends who will undoubtedly be blushing and stammering grateful speeches on Oscar nights in the future.

ABIGAIL, the Web Series

Teachers

Bethany (episode, Caliente!)

Even MORE meta

So, I have a website and that website links to this blog.  So if you visit my website, you can just click on the Blog tab and get back to this blog!  And then read this entry and go to my website!  It's the circle of life!

Meta

I'm using this blog to promote my friend's blog.  My friend Patrick is writing a blog.  Why I want to share this blog with you is because I have never in my life had so much fun in a room full of people as when Patrick and I were standing in the corner, swilling wine and being bitchy.  His first entry is a bit of dramatic writing that I particularly enjoy.  I hope you will, too.

PATRICK'S BLOG

A Nine Year Old's Advice on Being Awesome

My friend's 9 year old daughter made an entire PowerPoint presentation on Being Awesome.  This is my favorite slide from the presentation:

French Toast Alert System

Boston's French Toast Alert System

What drives you?

So, I was having a conversation yesterday with a friend who has particularly vivid and well-articulated ideas of what drives his artistic life.  I asked him how he came to his conclusions with such certainty, how he was able to definitively name the force that motivates him.  He replied by saying that someone once asked Michael Jordan what motivated him about the game of basketball.  Michael Jordan replied that he was motivated by the spirit of competition and flirting with the idea of failure.  That's great and all, but how did Michael Jordan arrive at that conclusion?  Basically, he was asked to imagine a world in which basketball did not exist.  What, in such a world, would be the driving force in Jordan's life if the medium in which he excelled was not a factor?  Competition.  Flirting with the idea of failure.  That's universal.

So, I thought for a minute...  If theatre and improv didn't exist, what is my underlying motivating spirit? It took me a very long time to answer the question because my rational brain kept interrupting, saying "Theatre and improv DO exist.  They never would have NOT existed because it's a very human need to tell a story and share it with other people."  After a long while (and lots of NyQuil, to be brutally honest), it came to me...  I like puzzles.  I like to figure out solutions from seemingly insoluble situations.  In improv, you have no script, so there is a fantastically broad set of variables from which a solution (the scene) must be made.  I like Shakespeare because an actor must understand the way he used the English language in overt and covert manners.  Not only are there words to decode and unpack in Shakespeare, one must consider his use of metaphor and alliteration.  And scripted comedy is a math problem, when it is at its purest and best.  A plus B equals laughter.  SO MANY PUZZLES!

As a teacher, the people in any given class are also a puzzle.  How can I effectively teach an entire group of people with different skill sets and backgrounds?  How can I address the needs of the group while effectively ministering to the needs of the individual?  And, maybe more importantly, how can I continue to be there for the students after the class has ended?

It was an enlightening conversation, and one that I desperately needed.

Listen to the mustn'ts, child...

God help me, but I read O Magazine today.  It was a back issue at the gym, but that doesn't change the fact that I willingly picked up a copy of today's most platitude packed periodical and willingly READ said platitudes.  A brief word about my history with O Magazine...  At one of the jobs I've held, we took great pleasure in defacing each issue with Sharpies.  Imagine what a 12 year old boy might doodle all over that magazine if given free reign to do so.  We drew dongs everywhere.

That being said, it is January in Chicago.  It is a cold, dark, gray place.  In January in Chicago, despite the fact that we all know better, we forget that the sun ever existed.  We huddle in our scarves, our mittens, our down coats, our Seasonal Affective Disorder and we wait.  I found myself particularly vulnerable to Oprah's wiles on this January day.

Long story short, I read an article that went something like this: "Meow meow meow meow dreams.  Meow meow meow meow, intentions. Meow meow meow meow can you even remember specific times when you were happy?"  I scoffed, as I always do, but then I thought -- could I remember ANY specific times when I was happy?  It took me the rest of the afternoon and well into the night to remember.  And remembering WHY those moments made me happy took even more time.

I remember riding on the back of a motorbike in Rio, blasting up switchbacks on a hill.  We kept getting too close to the buses coming down the opposite way and my knees would scrape their sides.  I laughed and laughed.

I remember sitting on top of Acadia Mountain, eating a sandwich and taking in the view with my bosses and co-workers just a few hours before a show.  The weather and company were perfect.  The view of the ocean was glorious.  The sandwich had apples and brie.  Apples AND brie!

I remember standing in a classroom at the end of a semester when my students presented me with "a major award."  They pooled their money and bought me a trophy.  I carried it with me all day.  I showed it to everyone I saw.

So why?  Why these moments?  Probably because I wouldn't have had them if I hadn't taken some kind of chance.  When I learned about Theatre of the Oppressed, I desperately wanted to go to Rio to study with Augusto Boal.  Then, one day, out of seemingly nowhere, I decided it was going to happen.  I saved every penny I got.  I bought a Portuguese phrase book.  I bought a foldable map of Rio de Janeiro.  Because I was so obsessed with getting there and studying with Boal, I talked about it all the damn time.  Because I talked about it, people talked to me about getting there.  Pretty soon, I was presenting at a conference where I met and worked with Boal.  The professor who asked me to help present told me about travel scholarships through the university.  Then, I got one.  Then, I wound up on the back of a motorbike, delirious with joy that I was even there and delighted that I was accomplishing a life goal.

I would never have had the opportunity to work in Maine with people that I love, trust, admire and respect if I hadn't taken the chance to audition.  And god knows what would have happened if I didn't have the good sense to realize that getting an opportunity is one thing -- protecting it and caring for it another.  I have seen too many people get an opportunity and then coast, thinking their work is over.  Hell, I've BEEN that person on more than one occasion.  And if I hadn't dared to audition, if I hadn't dared to take it as seriously as I could, I would never have had that magnificent sandwich on top of a mountain.

And then there's that class...  I loved all the classes I taught at the University of Georgia.  As much as I loved my own studies, I'm pretty sure I loved teaching more.  I would never have had the opportunity to meet my incredible students if I hadn't dared to think I could go back to school.  I took an exceptionally long lunch at my temp job to go audition and walked through a fluffy snowfall to get there.  I dared to think that I could pursue my MFA and that I could get a tuition waiver and assistantship.  And damned if that isn't exactly what happened.

There are plenty of self-help books, articles and fortune cookies that will tell you that all you have to do to succeed is hone your intentions and put them out in the 'universe.'  There is so much more than that, though.  Talk about your dreams because people who can help might be listening and you may wind up at a prison for the criminally insane in Rio, watching a play about the nation's flawed mental health care programs (okay, my dreams are a little different than yours, but still...).  Protect your opportunities and realize that they are not your goals, they are just the chance for you to achieve them.  Dare to believe that you deserve some things.  But here's a hint: if you haven't worked for them, you probably don't.

I realize that there may be a few people who will read this entire blog post as "Meow meow meow dreams.  Meow meow meow intentions.  Meow meow meow prison for the criminally insane."  That's fine.  But today I let myself be genuinely motivated by a magazine I usually make fun of and I didn't turn into a giant idiot. I guess inspiration really CAN come from anywhere.

"...listen close to me...Anything can happen, child.  Anything can be." -- Shel Silverstein

For the cure...

As I mentioned earlier in this blog, I lost my best friend last Easter.  She was the one person on earth I felt I couldn't afford to lose, and I still lost her.  She was my favorite co-conspirator, my inspiration, my mentor, the baddest of my bad influence friends, my heart... She died of breast cancer at age 37.

You'd think that her illness and subsequent passing would make me a crusader for breast cancer charities.  You'd think that I would be living a life absolutely awash in pink ribbons.  I am not.

See, I'm too angry, still.  Furious, actually.  All throughout the month of October when the checkout person at the grocery store asked if I wanted to donate a dollar to breast cancer research, I always replied with a curt, "Nope."  I didn't even have the courtesy to say "Not at this time, thank you."  Just a dead-eyed "No."  If someone had asked me why I couldn't spare a dollar, I would have said "Because they didn't cure it in time."

I know that's petty.  I look forward to the day when I can shed the burden of my anger and engage with the people who are trying to eradicate the disease that took my heart away.

An old chestnut

Misfortune and sadness have occupied this blog of late and, despite recent life developments, I refuse to give any more blog space to melancholy right now.  So, I've resurrected an old, old, old blog post that I enjoyed:

Starbucks? Really? That's all you have to complain about?

Yesterday, I was reading an article in a paper whose name rhymes with the Schmatlanta Schmjournal-Schmconstitution and I happened upon an article by a woman who longed to leave the city for a bucolic country life.  She extolled the virtues of hanging her wash out to dry on a clothesline and meeting neighbors who talked about things other than traffic and their next promotion.  Then, she proceeded to drag out the most well-worn trope of the frustrated city dweller.  Starbucks. 

I should say that she maligned fancy coffee in general or, rather, the people who drink fancy coffee.  With barely veiled scorn, she ran on for sentences about the "soy chai latte, half-caff, venti mocha frappachino" crowd and how ridiculous it was to want coffee this complicated.  Complicated!  Horrors!  Someone should tell her that the last time this kind of rant was funny was 1989.  That was the year that "LA Story" was made, a movie which showcased the first AND last time ridiculous coffee ordering was actually found humorous by the public at large.

This poor, maltreated city woman wants to belly up to a diner counter where she could pay a quarter for a bottomless cup of regular joe and chat with the locals for hours on end.  Here's the thing...  There is no place in the world where you can get a cup of coffee for a quarter anymore.  Also, getting a cup of coffee in the country means that she'll probably wind up in some greasy spoon with abomidable food and hideous service which is still in business because it's the only restaurant in town and the senior center buses shut-ins there to get a hot meal.  Therefore, the locals she talks to will probably be a lady who thinks she's her daughter (and/or a pony) and the local crazy dude who was discharged from the home for the criminally insane (budget cuts) and walks around in a stained brown parka 365 days a year, muttering something to himself...something that sounds an awful lot like "Half-caff double venti soy chai latte."  Oh, and that coffee?  It'll taste like crotch and give her the permanent runs.

How do I know this?  I'M FROM THAT TOWN!  The incomperably sane residents of that town drive up to an hour to get a decent cup of coffee.  Sometimes they bring a thermos and order a "grande" so that they'll have some to take home.  They dry their clothes in dryers, just like anybody normal, and they drive 15 miles to eat at Applebees because it means they don't have to endure a shitty meal at the hands of the fry cook at the greasy spoon whose best dish, truth be told, is crystal meth.  "Country" people are a myth.  The folks that live in rural areas are just city people with backyards and more parking.

Don't worry about that columnist, by the way...  I've got a double caff, venti skim soy chai shut the fuck up already ordered for her.