Tuesday and decisions

The show was fun, in the end (Maggie Lee Showcase at the Pocket Theatre, part of Fringe Month.)  Not much of a house, at least as many performers as paying audience members, but I enjoyed watching everyone else.  I think there were four short plays and seven monologues, broken up into three sets.  I was in the last group.  Was so nervous before I had to go up, thought I'd forget everything, rush through, skip lines, freeze, shake, etc., but in the end, though I think I said a couple of wrong words ("fall" instead of "drop," etc.), it went alright.  People laughed a lot, it was probably the lightest of the monologues.  I think I'll keep it for auditioning, but I'd really like to work on it with a director.  I had toyed with the idea of looking at different audience members, but then nixed that after feedback from my scene class, but as it turned out, couldn't see anyway (because of the lights), so hopefully didn't let my eyes wander too much, an ongoing issue, though it's getting better.

The Chekhov scene is difficult, it's the opening scene of "The Cherry Orchard."  Why I say that is because the section we have, doesn't seem to have a "turn" in it (i.e., the characters do not change from the beginning to the end); and also, they aren't listening to each other, for the most part, they are just talking.  Will need to bring a strong action.  There is, however, plenty of humor in it, and the Lopakhin speech is loaded, pretty much sets up all the class changes of the era: the end of the gentry, and a rising up of a middle class.  I think of an innate desire to more than survive that drives people to do what it takes to thrive (or at least not go backward); you see this a lot in Jane Austen's stories (among others) and we tend to view those women as villains, but in the situation they've found themselves, they are working with what they have to get ahead (marriage), i.e, Lucy Steele, Isabella Thorpe, etc.  I see that in Dunyasha, and later in the play she bemoans that she can't go back to being a servant (she is a servant, and of the servant class, but has been pretending to be gentry, and getting away with it), and she has an offer of marriage, but it's less than what she wants, not who she wants, though she is keeping it as an option.  (Society is the villain; perhaps if social structure and laws governing rights were different, these women would still be villains, but they get a pass, from me.  Dickens, writing later, has real individual villains: the abusive headmasters, the Murdstones, Uriah Heep, etc., in addition to society playing that role.)

Have to decide if I'm gonna continue on in this group.  I'd like to, I find it immensely helpful: to be working on scenes, to get feedback, to be able to practice monologues for people, etc...just have to figure out the money situation, where I can cut expenses elsewhere.  I probably can, but it's pretty tight.  It's priority, right?  If I keep making the same choices, day after day, nothing will change, at least not something that I have agency in, toward my own good, my own future.  Outside, things I have little control over are constantly changing, but I'd like to act, and not just constantly wipe myself out by jumping here and there to react to changing circumstances, and never proceed in the general direction of where I say I want to end up.  Even if it's a little bit of progress, to move forward, and to see the destination ahead.

And I'm still trying to decide how I can take a vacation, in my head, sometimes I've already left.  It'll have been 5 years, but I still feel like a privileged ass sometimes for mentioning it, and yet, I can also feel myself festering for lack of travel.  I'll make it happen.

Back to earth, three hours into the workday, I realized I was wearing my shirt, backward, and inside-out.  It's fixed now.

And my friend is leaving town, moving to Philly, too expensive to be here.  Saw him last Friday for the last time, though, it's true we'd fallen out of touch, and so I appreciate his effort to say goodbye.  One friend I could talk about almost anything with (our conversations went everywhere, has been that way since we met, 17 years ago he reminded me, how is that possible?) and always feel safe there, could always be myself.  I find that's not the standard acceptable behavior.  He's spoiled me to everyone else.

Early

In the calm before the storm.  It's so quiet, no wind at all.  Never got super windy here yesterday, seemed to be between 10-25 mph all day, even after the storm was said to have passed.  It's already raining.  The trees are still in brilliant leaf.  I was thinking if more leaves had fallen in the storm yesterday, perhaps there would be less impact in the storm today.  They are so beautiful this year!  And I want to go for a walk, but there was a notice to stay out of the parks, due to falling branches and trees.  The ground is saturated, it probably wouldn't take much to push over a tree that was ready to go, and a lot of them are weak from two years of drought.

A blue jay breaks the silence, I guess I should get out of the house.  And cook, before the chance of losing power.  And I have rehearsal space booked in a few hours to get these words out of my mouth.  Seems to have become a problem, more so lately.  Like a fear of being heard.  Fear of being wrong?  Of being called out?  They aren't even my own words and I can't seem to say them.  The inability to take up space.  Have a week to work on it.

Also, new scene for class from "The Cherry Orchard."  I do love Chekhov.

All the possibilities of the day stretch out before me, and the time slips by while sitting here looking at things on the internet, accomplishing fewer and fewer.

Ah, the storm changed track, and the winds here look to be like yesterday (though, higher gusts.)  North of here is forecast to get slammed.  I think last time we had a storm this strong my parents lost power for a week.  Don't remember losing power at all.

Sunday evening

Another night, another soaking, and this one in just one block.  Missed the debate, somehow I thought it was tomorrow night.  At any rate, was attending a performance about magic mushrooms at On the Boards.  I got on a volunteer list last year, and so get to see shows in exchange for taking tickets or watching the door.  So, I signed up.  Didn't think I was all that interested, in that I don't do drugs, but in general, I like seeing the performances at On the Boards because of the mix of artistic disciplines.

Have to say, I was pleasantly surprised to love this show.  Probably my favorite performance of the year, so far.  Everything worked:  story-telling, movement, costume, embodiment, sound, lighting...it was everything I want in a performance.  I was also surprised to find tears running down my face at one point, and I think the woman next to me might also have been crying.  I couldn't tell you why or even where (though, in the first half); he's just a good story teller (Alan Sutherland, Little Brown Mushrooms.)  (And Douglas Ridings as the chicken...nailed the movement and behavior, without being a cartoon, he was a chicken.  Not actually sure why there was a chicken, but I liked it.)

The performance begins with talk about space, about Sputnik.  And then about building a spaceship to travel to other worlds.  So a rocket ship is built on the side of the stage, and then the two dancers lure the chicken to it, and I suppose I thought they were just gonna send it off alone, but they loaded themselves into it as well.  It had to do with the idea of what would you take with you?  And a pet seemed like a good idea, and a pet chicken, even better, as they also lay eggs.  He later goes into the life-cycle of the mushrooms, and how they have evolved to grow around humans, their preferred growing medium being something produced by humans.

I was talking to someone about Paradisical Rites (St. Genet, 2013) before this show, Sutherland was buried on stage through the first two acts of that, and he referenced that at the beginning of the show tonight, saying that no one would be buried alive, or beaten, or made to bleed in this show (there was nothing violent about it at all.  There were children in the audience.)  The person I was talking to also mentioned that I should compare Ridings performance in that show, with his chicken in this one, and see what I think of his range.  I think all the performers are fully committed to what they are doing.

(I also mentioned that as much as I hated that show, due to things it brought up for me, things I carried into it, it stayed with me, and made me dig deeper, and that I think art should do that (though perhaps not always so violently so.)  He (the man I was talking to) said he thought about it for weeks after, as well.  He also mentioned that things such as drug abuse and assault shouldn't be glossed over, but should be violent and painful to watch, because that's closer to reality.  Perhaps we gloss it over (tv, movies, etc) because we are (rightfully, perhaps) frightened to face it head on, we'd rather it didn't exist, or at least not in the sphere where we live.  But it does, (I come across used needles on a daily basis now), and yet if it's invisible, we don't have to do anything to make it better.  If we have to look at it, maybe we will work toward real solutions, maybe we'll see someone we love, or someone like us.  There are a lot of traumatized people out in the world, the path we're on isn't really working, a series of bandaids, to push it down the line for someone else to solve.)

Saturday evening

Another night, waiting for a bus.  Students, back in town, populate the evening sidewalks, so no lonely waiting.  The sidewalk doubly-protected from the rain by both a walnut and a spruce tree.  From the safety underneath the branches, I watch the rain (really, more of a mist, though it looks dramatic as it swirls under the light, being moved in one direction, then another, on the whim of the wind) and it billows like snow, if it were only colder.  At any rate, the rainy season has returned: got drenched several times today.

The first gig tonight was an auction, the second, and organ dedication.  On the final movement of the last piece (Symphony No. 5 in F minor Op. 42 No.1, Charles-Marie Widor, the Toccata, to be specific), I had the urge to run to the aisle, and lie down to listen to the sound move through the space.  Somehow I imagine in this instance, it might be acceptable, but I don't do it.  Thoughts of paintings at the Art Museum that were meant to be viewed from below, and not at eye level.  How the docent suggested lying on the floor to view them, and how I did go back to do that when there were fewer people in the gallery, security unfazed by my action: I wanted to view how the artist intended.  And I think the organ, in it's fullness, was meant to be heard from the middle of the room (there are pipes in both the front and the rear of the space.  The ones in the back were out-of-commission for decades.)  We only sang one song in the actual concert itself, though more in the dedication part of the evening.

Still working on "Coal Miner's Daughter," as we opted for a rehearsal without camera last week, and I need to run my piece for the Fringe show in class soon.  I have a pretty good sense of context (it was written as a stand-alone monologue, so I had to make it up), but we were just told to pull it together on our own and show up before the performance.  The comment I get most of the time, is that I haven't made each thought distinct enough (in general), and I suppose it's because I was thinking that what I was saying was one thought, so I haven't been breaking them down enough as to what I want and how I'm going about getting it. Also, I think it's supposed to be two minutes, and I'm sure I'm running longer right now, so I'll need to cut out pauses, and make them more strategic: it's actually quite a bit of text.

I hope someone recorded the concert, would like to hear how it went.  I was on the end and could only hear the person behind me, and the person next to me.

Walking home

A Friday night, but no one around.  Empty streets, might as well be the middle of the night.  On one side of the street, the houses blocked by high walls, like a fortress, the other, an empty park.  I feel small, I walk briskly.  When I left the earlier party, a few furtive drops of rain touched my face.  Further along, two blocks, maybe three, I can see a shower under the street lights, which are few and far between.  I breathe a sigh when I get to a main intersection, with traffic and streetlights.  I cross to the other side, and then the bus passes by, going in my direction.  I suppose I could've tried to run for it, but my feet hurt, so I walk on.  The rain begins to soak through my jacket.

I remember as a preteen, or early teen, three of us sneaking out of a slumber party for the thrill of it, to see if we could get away with it.  Some story about needing a pillow, when everyone else had fallen asleep, we slipped outside, the air chilly, the streets dark, spooky and exciting at the same time.  A car of older teens pulling up beside us, and I was afraid, but one friend kept her cool.  They left us alone.  First we snuck into one of our houses, then mine, where we ate chocolate cake: I don't know how we didn't wake anyone up.  Then back to the party, and in through a sliding glass door.  In the morning, no one believed us.  We never did bring back any pillows.

Rain falls harder, the sidewalks glistens, puddles form.  People are sitting in the bus shelters, but I think the wait will be long, and it's late.  They are probably just trying to get out of the rain.  I walk on the other side of the street.  More walls, there is a loneliness to the night, a separation of those behind those walls, inside, and me, out here, gradually getting more soaked, and picking up the pace because it's late.

At home, I hang my jacket to dry, drenched through.  35 minutes door-to-door.  In the end, I guess I could've called a cab.