The Meaning of Art
3 Count Fade to Black. Sort of.
Thursday, August 12th, 2010 | Continuing Education, The Meaning of Art | 2 Comments
Lucy Dreaming closes tonight at The Factory Theatre in Boston. Produced by GAN-e-meed as part of FeverFest.
We’re operating on a shoe-string for this one. Well, technically, without a shoe string.
Plus, we got involved late in the game so I didn’t bother to pull in any designers. I figured I could wing it.
And I can.
Except when it comes to lights.
Because I’ve realized that, as a director, the design element that speaks to me the loudest are the lights. Costumes run a close second. The hard part being that I know plenty about costumes and virtually nothing about lighting.
I have visions of halos and shadows, colors and dimensions. But I can’t get it to come across with my meager knowledge of how to plug in a light and not to touch the bulb or it may explode in my face.
This realization is, quite literally, an eye-opener.
So, my next task….get the lighting skills.
Just what I need, right? More to do.
In Dress Blues
Monday, June 28th, 2010 | Women in Theatre | No Comments
I spent part of my morning in a NH National Guard uniform.
Dress Blues, to be exact. So I was told. I make no claims of knowledge about anything remotely war-like.
I joked, briefly, that I hoped my parents never saw me. They’re old hippies and such. I feel awkward when I find myself talking to someone who ever served in anything army-like. I just don’t know what to say. So I made the joke. And then I realized that the director was in the Guard (duh) and I actually had no idea who else standing in the room in a convincing costume was either.
Awkward silence while I tried to pry my foot out of my mouth.
But, it did get me thinking as I was standing out in the sun alternating between serious and smiling for the photo shoot that there is no guarantee that an actress will ever play a combatant whereas I am almost positive that every professional male actor has at some point played a military role on stage.
I have no point other than that I was thinking about it.
Sometimes I’m like that.
Me as Hamlet
Friday, May 14th, 2010 | Photography, Women in Theatre | No Comments
GAN-e-meed Theatre Project
Hamlet runs through May 30
To Change the World
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 | The Meaning of Art | No Comments
That’s why I do theatre.
To change the world.
I was reminded of it this week in two very different, yet parallel experiences.
Sunday night: 2 minutes to places. The basement of Gallery 119 which serves as our dressing room for Hamlet. About to enter a theatre with a mere 6 people in the audience, this cast of strong amazing women didn’t bat an eyelid. They continued their prep. Laughing, last minute touches to the eyes, a little powder on the those, shoveling down the last of dinner, making fun of each other, bending to squint into poorly lit mirrors. They were here because they wanted to be; because we had a story and we wanted them to tell it, and they know how and do it with flare. And I remembered why I began this incredible adventure called theatre.
Today, Wednesday afternoon: Girls, Inc. in Lowell. A classroom of peanuts. Three feet tall and five feet tall. Big and small. Round and straight. Every shade of brown, peach, pink, and tan known to man. And everyone of them watched with wide, anticipating eyes. They wanted to know who Hamlet is, is the story real, why is he fighting, why does Laertes say goodbye to Ophelia, is Ophelia still there, she dies without getting to love Hamlet, how do you do that kick, where does he go, what does he do. And one little girl “I guess it’s like how we learn things everyday without even knowing.” “Yes,” I said, “that’s a good way to put it.” These girls, our future, I tell stories to make their world a better place.
I am but one person. But I have the power to call together hundreds to put a story on stage. I have the power to arrest a classroom of children and teach them to know where they are in space. I have the power to make an audience sit up and pay attention. I have the power to help others do the same.
This is why I do theatre.
I like this kind of Rough Week
Thursday, January 28th, 2010 | The Meaning of Art | No Comments
I’m wearing the clothes I thought I’d be excercising in, but I never made it to my living room and its DVD player because my daughter arrived home an hour earlier than expected and had missed her morning apointment for a flu shot. So we went to the doctors instead of working on my cardio.
My hair was washed. Yesterday. It was also styled. Yesterday.
I had a taste of Hamlet rehearsals yesterday when we rehearsed a scene for a private fundraising party. So my head is stuck in Hamlet clouds.
I went to a different fundraiser on Tuesday, for New Exhibition Room, and laughed so hard I cried. The night included irreverent love songs by a threesome who looked far too preppie and sweet to be spouting that kind of vocabulary, two pieces by my new favorite Goddess: UnAmerika’s Sweetheart, a burlesque dancer with more grace in her little finger than I will ever ooze from my entire being, hosted by a character actress whose specialty is playing an 87-year old ex-vaudevillian. Not to mention the Steamy Bohemians. I was going to stay for the first half hour and ended up being sad when I had to leave after it ended. I would have like to stay and play but my head was pounding for a visit to her bed.
I have entirely neglected my “day job” as I struggle to keep up with the marketing material for GANemeed.
And I’m about to be late picking up my child who’s angry at me for putting her in aftercare and sending her to her dad’s house extra this week.
It’s been a long week. I look like I’ve been sleeping in a sack.
But I am inspired. Excited. I can’t contain my wings.
Now, if I could only fit the whole sleeping, eating, exercising thing in, this Rough Week would be perfect.
To Do Good Stuff
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 | Lessons, Personal, Women in Theatre | No Comments
Mama: Okay, I’ll sit with you for three songs and then I’ll run downstairs and get my computer and sit in the big chair and work while you fall asleep.
Avi: What work?
Mama: I’m designing a postcard for my theatre company and I have to finish it tonight.
Avi: You go to the theatre?
Mama: Yes, I own a theatre company. We don’t have a building yet, but we are a company. I’m the boss.
She giggles and I smile.
Mama: Is that funny?
Avi: Yes. She giggles some more.
Mama: But you know what we do? We hire women and girls. We help them become better theatre artists, and stronger leaders, and change the world.
Avi: And Do Good Stuff.
Mama: Yes, And Do Good Stuff. Just like….do you remember who’s birthday it is today?
She points to herself and smiles slyly.
Mama: Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a great man who changed the world.
Avi: Why do we say it’s his birthday?
Mama: Because he was a great man. He worked very hard to help all people be treated well, no matter what color skin they have. And we want to remember him so we always celebrate his birthday.
Avi: And he was born this day?
Mama: Yes.
May we all remember this birth that changed the world, honor the women and men who continue and broaden his work, and honor the births of new movers and shakers.
Go Read ‘Living Oprah’
Friday, January 8th, 2010 | Personal, Women in Theatre | 1 Comment
It’s 10:30pm and I just finished Living Oprah by Robyn Okrant. I picked it up right around the new year. I had a couple hours to myself, the first in a while and I found myself, of course, at the bookstore attempting to convince myself not to buy anything. I failed.
And then I failed even more when I spotted Robyn’s book. I knew it’d be coming out. I’ve been reading her blog on and off since she started her social experiment. I was actually privy enough to be on her big email list announcing her new experiment. At the time, I thought to myself “what a fun idea” and “how nice to hear from Robyn, even by way of a mass email, because I really liked her and was always a little bit sad I wasn’t brave enough to get to be more than just a colleague.”
I feel lame writing that. Because now that she has graced a dozen or so TV talk shows, radio talk shows, newspapers, and magazines,I feel like I have to tell everyone how I personally know her. Like I can finally claim I know someone famous. This is a big deal. In a weird way. I think I’m the only person in professional show biz who doesn’t actually know anyone famous. I can’t even claim I’ve met a famous person. But, I “knew Robyn back when.” Although, she probably wouldn’t claim to be famous; I’m going to say she is, just for kicks.
Anyways, I was at the bookstore preparing to go pay too much money for my armload of guilty pleasures (one of which I’m currently sitting on so that I am at the proper height for my keyboard. go figure.) when I spotted her book. And, it wasn’t just sitting anywhere. It was on the second table as soon as you walk in the door, smack dab in the middle of the “New Year, New You” section. There she was, smiling up at me.
And now I’ve read her book. It was really good. As an objective reader, I can honestly say that if you like autobiographies and clever writing, you’ll enjoy this book. You’ll probably like it even more if you’re a woman.
As a biased reader, I can honestly say that I loved this book. I loved it because I knew Robyn before this all began. I knew her when she had frizzy hair that framed her entire head with a life of its own and it looked singular and gorgeous even when it was messy. She’d come off the Chicago street lugging that weird awkward yellow bag that she’d detached from the back of her bike. Her cheeks were always red from cycling, her eyes shone. She has a booming, raspy, deep, dare-I-say, sexy voice. The kind of voice I’ve always wanted because it is far more expressive than my tiny child-like soprano that gets tight and giggly at the most inopportune times.
She was a power house already. She oozed confidence and made me feel inferior in my inability to crack out witty comments. She seemed to know far more than me about pretty much everything. And the day I got pulled aside from rehearsal to “have a talk” about how I wasn’t really improving (we were doing an improv spoof) I turned bright red and almost cried because I wanted to succeed at this thing that terrified me more than anything. And she spoke to me with her deep action-taking voice while I shrunk into my chair.
I didn’t get fired. But she did push me in unexpected ways, like making us run the entire 1 hour show (okay, maybe it wasn’t the whole show but it certainly felt like it) and told me I had to be in every single scene no matter what. And still make sense. Oh, and talk.
This improv show…she created it, and it’s the show that changed the course of my entire acting career. I showed up to audition for a spoof of Lord of the Rings. I had some improv experience, enough to know I was pretty good at carrying a character but not so good a quick, witty comments. I felt confident at the auditions; I’d done my research. I assumed we’d be creating the script from improv in rehearsals and was ecstatic to get cast. The only woman in a cast of men, most of whom had a helluvalot more improv experience than I. We were, after all, in Chicago, the boarding school for modern improv.
And then I showed up and discovered that, actually, the entire show would be improv. All the time. Every night. I think I froze and forgot to breath for an entire minute.
I don’t get nervous before I perform. But opening night of this show, I thought I was going to puke backstage.
And here she is, smiling up at me from the center of a prominent display in Barnes ‘n Noble. A women I have admired since I met her.
And then I got to read about her year. And I understood with personal clarity the theatre life she described, the references to improv shows, her very tall and quiet husband, and her friend Scott. I know Scott too. And I learned things about her that I never knew since we were never really friends. She, of course, had no reason to tell me these things. So I read them in her book. And came to realize that, yet again, here is a woman I found entirely intimidating who is, in fact, just as human as I.
She has her pains, her loves, her fears, her shames. And, maybe, if I’d stepped back–or stepped in—or did something to recognize that she was just like me–maybe I could have been her friend.
This is significant for me because I’m currently very good friends with another beautiful woman who I met in college but was never brave enough to truly befriend until school ended. She was just so smart; I felt stupid whenever I listened to her because I didn’t know what she was talking about and didn’t want to admit it by asking. As we grew closer after college, I discovered that she, like Robyn, is just like me. She has her insecurities, her ego, her shame, her loves, her hates.
As it turns out:
It is not for me to judge myself in the eyes of others.
Interestingly enough, this is pretty much what Robyn discovered during her social experiment. If we spend all our time trying to live the life that others tell us, we’re too busy to be us. And we’re too busy trying to predict what others think of us. Our bodies, our brains, our successes, our failures.
I’d rather just be me. Just like Robyn would rather just be herself. Okay, well, let’s be honest, she got a book deal and national exposure. This may have started out as a personal experiment, but it’s much bigger. I wonder if anyone reading her book who doesn’t know any part of Robyn’s life will be as impacted. I’ll foist it on my mom and see what she says.
IRL vs. Web 2.0
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 | Lessons, The Meaning of Art | No Comments
My business life consists of two polar opposites.
A – Driving hither and yon to talk over tea with theatre artists of all types. Today I met with a Stage Manager after first meeting with a couple of administrators. Sunday, I met with a playwright.
B – Composing my life, eco-events, and theatrical processes in approximately 140 characters, witty copy, and interesting comments.
A – IRL
B – Web 2.0
A – This is all new to me. I am inherently shy. I lead well, but only when no one else steps up to the line. Striking out into the world means speaking eloquently, being myself, pausing, breathing, relaxing, honoring, and meeting some pretty damn fine people that I otherwise would have passed on by.
B – This is all new to me. I write. Now I get to stretch my writing skills. Now I have to read a gazillion blogs and tweets and articles to keep up. Not to mention the how-to books. I know a lot people, but I don’t know what they look like.
I think I like IRL better. But it is only through Web 2.0 that I have been able to fully begin to explore what it means to be actively engaged in meeting people and creating sustainable mutually beneficial relationships. Because reading others ideas, writing my own thoughts concisely, representing an idea in an image, this has been part of the process of finding me so that I might step out my door and seek others.
But, this leads to much deeper questions: with all the marvels of web 2.0 do we do what I have done? Use what we’ve learned to step out into the world? Or do we use it as an excuse to step away from people we face in order to tweet to the people we follow? Can the two worlds really be married?
In a sense, I feel like many communities in the U.S. are facing what the theatre faced with the advent of film: A new medium that can either snuff the real or make it stronger. I vote for it making us stronger, which is why I’ll keep racking up the mileage and coffee shop bills to talk face-to-face with all the very cool people out there.
Sharing the ‘O’ Love
Thursday, September 24th, 2009 | Women in Theatre | No Comments
I have a colleague from the past, who I absolutely loved working with. She was so wonderful that I was always somewhat sad that I would never truly get to be her friend. She was one of those ‘Intimidating Unattainables,’ at least in my young eyes. She was my senior by several years, far more established and mature, quick-witted, intelligent, clever, beautiful. I made up for it by attempting to befriend her other friend who seemed more catchable. A 6′8″ married man who also made me laugh really hard and was equally intelligent and beautiful, but he wasn’t as intimidating so I felt more comfortable weaseling my way into his friendship.
Well, I reconnected with her last year when she introduced her blog, Living Oprah. She lived the prescribed life of Oprah for a full year. A really fascinating social experiment, to say the least. She’s also an accomplished Theatre Artist, just so you know.
Her book comes out in January. Go check it out.
Risking Innovation Day Three: Perspectives on Reception
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 | Continuing Education, PictureBook Plays, The Meaning of Art | No Comments
Resistance Reconsidered: Feminist Theatre and the Challenges of Reception
Not surprisingly, the discussion started out strong and then branched back to the topic of women playwrights. I believe it is a result of Emily Sands study that has it in everyone’s minds, but I find it frustrating that we keep going back to the playwrights and leave no time for everyone else. Or, perhaps women playwrights are due for a good monopoly of discussion and I just felt left-out since I’m not one. Either way, that’s where it ended up. However, let’s start at the top.
First of all, the question was posed “How are we defining feminist theatre?” According to my notes, neither this question nor steps to answering it was visited for long. I found this somewhat disappointing because I run a theatre company that promotes the role of women in theatre, so does that make us a feminist theatre? Because we don’t exist to create one-woman shows about gender bias, or musicals about menopause. We exist to create dialogue and actively employ women so they can have career changing opportunities that will help them break through the glass proscenium. I’d like to know if people look at GAN-e-meed, think “feminist” and run away screaming.
The discussion continued to question whether specific marketing can devalue the content of feminist theatre and if feminist theatre is “unpalatable” to commercial audiences. Eventually, this led to the conclusion that it comes down to geography and local community: the context for audience reception. Which is the basis for building an audience in any theatre, not just feminists. Of course, no one said that. And then, of course, we came to the playwrights: It’s not about palatability, it’s about getting plays in the pipeline.
I have to admit, I think I tuned out a little as the session concluded because, as I noted earlier, a lot was said but very few Actions were proposed for making a difference. There was very little innovation in this session, although there were a lot of play titles being thrown about that I now need to go read. Huzzah.
Dramatic Lessons: Training Teachers in the Use of Theatre and Dance in the k-12 Classroom
To be honest, I looked at the first handout and almost left. But then it struck me that I could attend this session not as someone looking at publishing a book on pre-k theatre, but as a future professor who wants to teach this very topic. So I stayed. Learned some stats, played some games, and pretended to be part of the large intestine.
Here’s some stuff I learned and did:
- Goals for teaching pre-service teachers: 1 – Confidence in their own creative abilities, 2 – Help them become artists in the classroom, 3 – (Re)awaken their passion for teaching
- 93% of communication is non-verbal. What?! Really?! No wonder emails always get people into trouble.
- “Even the most reticent teacher will welcome a way to make their work more complete.”
- Know the curriculum for the school you’re in. Meet with teachers and find out what they need. Other arts teachers will be your biggest allies.
- Teachers are terrified of [theatre] and administrators don’t understand what we do and why it’s important. “They need the opportunity to learn the process.”
- Meet once a year and say “What do you need and what can we offer you?”
Risking Innovation Day 1: Directing, Debuting and Intelligencing
Risking Innovation Day 2: Nutshells and Photos
Risking Innovation Day 2: The Glass Proscenium
Risking Innovation Day 2: Writing & Falling Girls
Risking Innovation Day Two: Training Directors & Convincing Admins
Risking Innovation Day Three: Talk-Backs and Vulnerability
Next Up:
Day Four
SerahRose
