so I signed up for eight weeks of voice lessons this summer. it was kind of fun and random to enroll at the local community college and get a new email address and go actually check out their pretty Prescott campus.
it's nice. lots of cool sculpture gardens here and there. I was especially struck by this lovely little bench:
it hasn't been that long since I was a real student (and secretly/not-so-secretly, professorship is pretty much endless-studentship anyway), but it does feel like a long time. 4 years now I guess?
but now, for this season at least, I am a part-time, non-degree-seeking Yavapai Rough Rider.
{ image borrowed from a local news piece about the YC softball team }
I had my first lesson this afternoon: 50 very enjoyable minutes with Dr. Audis, who earned her doctorate at none other than Texas Tech University. (interestingly, but not really coincidentally given all the myths and legends of our shared western/southwestern contexts out here, Texas Tech has a really similar mascot... only theirs is red-flavored instead of green...)
anyway, the first lesson was a great time. I tried not to be too nervous; I hummed warm-up scales through buzzing lips and emulated an ambulance siren with my voice as fully as I could. that last exercise was scary-exhilarating and hopefully that small thrill will help spur me to practice it even if it will likely frighten the pugs a little.
then we sang through a few folk songs and a few show tunes, ultimately settling on these three as my summer repertoire:
- the classic Irish folk song, "Danny Boy"
- one of the more heart-wrenching songs from Fiddler on the Roof, "Far From the Home I Love"
- and "Show Me," from My Fair Lady
I'm familiar with all three in some way or other, but despite their seeming simplicity they'll each make for an interesting challenge in terms of range, pacing, tone, emotion, and style. not to mention forcing me to sing the notes and timing as written and not just as I remember from musicals or popular culture or whatnot.
for these summer classes, there isn't a formal recital or presentation at the end of eight weeks, but it sounds like I'll at least get to perform for the other voice students at some point. that should be scary-exhilarating and cool also.
side note! in my googling for that .gif file from "Show Me," I discovered suddenly that Mr. Freddy Eynsford Hill is played, in the 1964 film adaptation of My Fair Lady, by none other than Jeremy Brett.
Jeremy Brett? whose name I mostly only know because of my longstanding, if lazy, adoration of all things Sherlock Holmes?
there are magnolia trees, all over our neighborhood, with floppy blooms that are big enough to eat your face if they wanted to.
even as tightly furled blossoms they seemed humongous to me. almost bigger than both fists put together. almost weighing down the tree branches with the heft of their thick, velvety, white petals.
remember when we watched that film way back in 1999 or some such year, because the high school drama department was holding auditions for the play? I auditioned for it, with my small little non-face-eating, pansy-sized voice. I don't remember what passage from the script they had me read.
maybe I'll rewatch the film one of these days while we still live in the town where it was made. will I recognize some street corners? all the locals here seem quite certain that I will.
I have two of the loveliest friends to thank for originally exposing me to Hamilton: friend Liz, who teaches high school English around here, and friend Patti, who is a fellow Purdue rhetoric & composition scholar. they are both kindred spirits of sorts-- fellow English major geeks and appreciators of much beautiful and random culture. Liz and I go see Shakespeare whenever we can, and if Patti lived closer we would be religiously watching Elementary every week.
I clearly recall the day last spring-ish when Liz mentioned the fact that someone had made a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton and asked if I wanted to hear some of it. we had crafts in our laps and the soundtrack on her phone, hooked up to bluetooth speakers.
it's intense, this music. relentless, rushing, and deep. and smashed-full of intricate lyrics. if you haven't listened, you must. go listen.
Patti and I binged on Hamilton the whole drive to and from New York last summer. I remember being so excited to see the two-disc album in her sack of CDs. reading the liner notes while she drove gave me such headaches, but it was worth it as the price to pay for familiarizing myself with all the layers and nuance of Lin-Manuel Miranda's wordsmithery.
some months ago, on our trip back from the beaches of northern Michigan, I forced dear Jeremiah to listen to the whole soundtrack. he had been skeptical, and as a human who is often quite skeptical of the celebrated and the hyped, I cannot blame him for that.
luckily, once he heard the masterpiece he was in love with it too.
we decided to get tickets to see the show in Chicago. they were not cheap, but life is short, right?
there was quite the countdown from the moment of that decision to the night of the show. in the meantime I spent too much time reading through annotated lyrics. I discovered this ridiculously amazing tribute of a podcast series all about Hamilton (thanks friend Beth for that tip). and Liz and I got together to watch the Tony awards, to see the cast and crew and producers of Hamilton win lots of prizes.
last weekend, the day arrived at last. we took the train into the city, dined at the oldest Italian restaurant in Chicago, took selfies in front of the marquee, and climbed a lot of stairs up to the balcony of the theatre.
there were of course piles of merchandise for sale: totes, hoodies, program books.
what will I put in this tote bag? maybe it will be the tote bag I take to the library, for books and audiobooks and such.
right now all it has in it is the fancy program book and the less-fancy playbill. fancy glossy perfect-bound program book has excellent photo arrangements of the original Broadway cast. it's gorgeous.
the Chicago show was also gorgeous. being so familiar with the soundtrack already made for a very interesting and layered entertainment experience. the Chicago actors are not the Broadway actors, so they all put their own little garnishes on their parts. there was so much motion and energy in the performance--a visual-kinetic counterpart to the rhythms and dynamics of the recorded music by itself. I found myself drinking in all the lighting decisions, the ambiance of the whole stage. at almost any time, no matter where the spotlights fell or who was monologuing, we could see silent actors at the corners of the action, in the background, walking past or sitting patiently. they didn't always have parts to sing or back-up vocals to add, but they were very there, as watchers.
I could probably write a lot about each scene, each song. but I'll spare you too much gushing and touch on my favourite bits from each half. the favourite moment from Act I came in a trios of songs: "Guns and Ships," "History Has its Eyes On You," and "Yorktown." this is how the Revolutionary War was won. this is where we establish the theme of history watching from an unreachably far, high place. that theme haunts the rest of the show, touching each character in very different ways. the whole sequence was simply masterfully orchestrated-- bodies, music, voices, lines, colors, contrast, tension-- and then the Brits surrender and it all dissipates into relief, crystalizes into jubilation.
it's harder to pick favourites in Act II. the whole character of Jefferson is delightful in his unflinching high-mindedness. I loved the stark, tenuous feeling of Hamilton's impending mistakes in "Say No to This." and I trembled and cried a bit at the very end of "It's Quiet Uptown."
I feel very lucky to have been in that theatre, with the beautiful, pathos-infused results of so many fellow-humans' creative work. how lucky we all are, to be alive to see such stories crafted and told so marvelously.
for the past two weekends I have been whirring here and there to and from academic conferences. they were pretty fun, if a little nervous-making. the first one, two weeks ago now was in Washington, DC. having an excuse to go there was fabulous. freund Jeremiah came with me, I got to meet his most charming aunt and uncle, and when I was not conferencing, we saw as much of the city as we could drag ourselves around to see.
the brand new National Museum of African American History and Culture.
the treasury, and a statue of that Alexander Hamilton guy.
this dashing fellow, waiting with me for the streetcar to take us down H street, near Capitol Hill.
the gallery we wandered into had some interesting art.
we also took in some theatre; this is the playbill from a pretty hilarious 5-woman comedy.
an inscription on a statue outside the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. "The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination." I imagine the guy in the statue is the guy who said these words, but I didn't ever figure out who it was.
the next conference, last weekend, wasn't so much attended by fancy sight-seeing. are there sights to see in East Lansing, Michigan? if there are, I did not take time to see them. I only saw Michigan landscapes on our way there, the insides of conference rooms most of the rest of the time, one hotel room, one Thai restaurant, and one coffeeshop.
the Michigan State University conference center had this cool piece of art. I promise, it did look less gloomy in real life.
and in one of the conference workshops, I got to make this little double-walled basket out of reeds. I don't know what I'll keep in it-- maybe coins? or jewelry? or ... dried flower petals?
in conclusion, count me grateful that my life gets to have conferences and travel and art in it. I came away from both conferences with some pretty clear threads of inspiration, and now I'm gonna use the rest of the semester and year to make some serious scholarly things happen.
lines of cut grass. fluffed and fraying cloud-piles above the trees. rust along the rims of wheel wells on all the cars parked along this shady street.
it sounds like art, too. cracking twigs. singing birds. even the drill some guy is using to repair some bit of the third-story windows of the Purdue Memorial Union.
the artistry of all that is probably just in my head.
last Friday I went to go see a delightful outdoor performance of The Tempest. this play is such a lovely one. and the local young folk who put this show on did very well. it was funny, it was paced smoothly, and it looked beautiful. the weather was fittingly grey and the backdrop of trees and bike-trails very easily became a random Mediterranean island for an hour and a half.
one of the most interesting features of this performance had the sprite Ariel played by four actors. four young girls with braids and flowers and ribbons in their hair and fluttery woodland-ish outfits. they had great singing voices. every moment they were on stage they moved, swaying, dancing, creeping and flitting from here to there across the corners of the set. sometimes they spoke individually, sometimes in chorus. one of them played the violin a few times. very neat.
I'm currently reading a book called The Rook. one of its characters is also a supernatural being called Gestalt--either quadruplets sharing one mind or a single person sharing four bodies, depending on which way you want to think of it. three of the bodies are male (two identical and one fraternal), and one is a woman. they can be in multiple places and do four things at once, but it's really only one human, with one identity. weird.
it was pretty cool to encounter two fictional four-part people in the same week. I wonder if they'd be friends if they met. both seem to have a streak of mischief in them. but I'm only partway through The Rook. Gestalt is starting to look like a villain, but it's too soon to be sure.
I did mean to write yesterday, but the whole day rushed away around me and there was too much doing to leave time for writing. such is the glory of summer spontaneity. there was music and running-into-colleagues and chatting and sitting in the shade and running errands with dear neighbor Lena and meeting friend Liz for Shakespeare.
93.2% of the things friend Liz and I ever do together involve Shakespeare. that's just how things go. I love it.
last evening it was this performance of Antony and Cleopatra. I hadn't seen the play yet. I probably read it once upon a time but that hardly is the same. words on a page are no real preparation for the passion and humor and blood of live Shakespearean tragedy.
it was an interesting show. characters all impetuous and full-hearted, dancing, proclaiming, vowing and worrying and lamenting. all so mad with feelings. Cleopatra's dramatic, insecure devotion is both hard yet easy to relate to. Antony's love-born madness even harder, but so textured and ragged and tangible in its performance. from the first scene, the two of them looked so wrapped up in happiness and each other. but they are also wrapped up in war, and thus they become a little bit doomed.
today I'm thinking about feelings and stories.
no story is totally accurate. not a single one could ever be as detailed or as messy or as true or immediate as actual life. Marc Antony and Cleopatra were historical figures and they lived real lives. the story we saw on stage last night was not an echo of those lives, not a record or a reenactment. Shakespeare was not trying to be educational. and even if he were, accuracy and exactness are not really the point of stories. or of any kind of art. it's impossible. the idea of a true story seems almost an oxymoron.
I really like telling stories, and I've recently had occasion to wonder why this is. what is so satisfying about lining up moments and drawing little threads of narrative between them? why is piecing together this and that observation into a coherent beginning-middle-end so much fun?
no answers. but I suspect some part of it is because there is a power in it. telling stories is powerful. storyteller and audience both get some sense of mastery over what life might mean. making a story out of a complicated, unorganized set of memories becomes a way of controlling the vastness of the whole universe around us. I think we are allowed to expect some stories from each other, to expect to share and shape all the work of sense-making in whatever modes we can.
and when we can wrap and weave our feelings into these stories, and share some of that visceral, consuming emotional color with other people via some bundled beginnings-middles-ends, that's even more powerful. or it can be. sometimes it doesn't work. feelings are complicated and personal. they don't always translate well.
my own fits and flights of irritation and of delight sometimes fit into amusing and/or poignant stories. it's satisfying when they do. when I can write them and rewrite them and re-explain them all to myself on paper, in words, out loud. it seems very useful to me. I think I've written about this before, in a previous life, from a different sort of crossroads.
and when the feelings and the narratives don't quite seem made for each other, that doesn't stop me from trying. maybe with enough revision, enough rewriting, enough additions as my experiences expand, they will all make useful story-pieces someday.
I drove to campus today. there were things to carry, so I thought I'd let my car help me carry them.
and then as I left my office this afternoon, I walked to the nearest bus stop out of habit, and I stood there with my hands in my pockets for about six minutes, watching one bus go by (the bus that regularly comes right before the bus I usually ride), and then suddenly realizing that if I took the bus home, my car would still be parked in a random sidestreet on the campus-side of town until who knows when.
this realization came to me at just the right moment. thankfully I had already noticed this poster on the side of the bus shelter:
but thankfully the bus had not yet come to collect my auto-piloting self all the way across the river. yeah, my car and I probably would've both been fine spending a night in separate zipcodes... but it's probably better that I remembered her and brought her home.
more importantly, there is Shakespeare happening this week. some of my favourite Shakespeare, in fact. I think I will make space to attend, and perhaps embark on another summer Shakespeare project.
for 89% of this performance, I did not know what to think about it. but then the ending had all these resonant, echoey, pointed strings running through it and connecting to everywhere, so I decided I liked it despite it's very slow, very strange approach.
on Saturday, I walked through a light, slushy snow to Carnahan Hall for the other third of these two-out-of-three shows I'd picked to see. this one was called "No Place to Go." Ethan Lipton and his Orchestra were the performers. they have a quirky little website. there is also a review over here in The New York Times. they write some good reviews, don't they? did you notice, the 2012 Times looks different from the 2014 Times? I wonder why that is.
"No Place to Go" was much more fun. we have the introspective journey of an "information refiner" who suddenly has to move far away or give up his job. we have jazzy music and witty monologue.
this is one of the songs from the show. you can find the whole performance in video online if you look, but the versions I came across did not match the smooth and snappy live experience I enjoyed last week. on stage, under colored lights, it felt much more polished and comfortable and clean, to me, than the videos of performances from two or three years back.
or maybe the venue had something to do with it?
the work of the semester crowds and nags, but I will keep blogging. I want to blog more art. and about what I'm reading. and about the weather. and about this poem. don't let me forget.
traveling is a thing I very much love, and I've been pretty lucky to find a million excuses for indulging in it, so I am not surprised that the list of places where I've spent time is getting a bit long.
the length of the list does surprise some people though. Canada? and Budapest? and the UK three times now? Paris too? I don't think I mean to sound boastful about it all. everyone has their priorities, and moving around in the world seems to be one of mine.
a more noteworthy and thoroughly more surprising thing, I think, would be to find someone who has never moved around. someone who has lived in one place and soaked up everything of it over years and years and years. wouldn't that be something to boast of? keeping to one, neat, consistent, contained set of spaces?
a few weekends back I stayed in Oxford with the lovely Nicola, and got to see lots of old nooks and corners and pubs and museums and parks. one such museum was the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology (can we start spelling archeology like that all the time, eh?), where there were displays from almost every corner and time period of the world.
I found myself drawn to the pottery. so different on the surface, all these bowls and urns and cups and vases. but they were all made for a pretty similar purpose: to keep stuff in. for holding water, or preserving food, or arranging flowers in.
there were cabinets full of vases from Greece, Egypt, China, Japan. little plaques listed out the distinctive markings, the stylistic marks and the contexts that give them archaeological significance. I did not read all the descriptions--it would've taken so long. and besides, museums are not only educational. this one is not only for archaeology, but also for art.
Greece, Egypt, China, and Japan are place I haven't been to yet. looking at artifacts could never count as visiting. I might someday find excuses for visiting the middle east and the orient and other far-away realms. I might not. I might have used up my life's traveling quota too soon, too euro-centrically. I hope not.
the day after our stroll through the Ashmolean, Nicola and I saw this exhibit on the Great War at the Bodleian Library. there weren't urns and vases on display there, not this time. the cabinets were mostly full of paper and ink: stories from soldiers and politicians and workers from the first of that infamous pair of long-ago (but not as long ago as some) wars. reading them was eye-opening on several levels.
this war is one I've learned about in school, of course. there are dates and holidays and all that in my head somewhere. but mainly this first world war is framed for US citizens as a prelude to the second, and World War II takes up more space in our cultural memory, for some reason. Pearl Harbor, perhaps, ties us more closely and corporeally to the tragedies of that conflict.
seeing the Great War through a British lens or two or three was so different than seeing it through the lens I'd always seen it through before. I'm not sure I can explain well enough how it was different, but if you think for a moment, you might be able to imagine for yourselves. I don't need to explain that Britain was touched by this war much more deeply and brutally than my own country was. nobody needed to explain that to me, exactly... yet I hadn't thought about it, not really, before. all these manuscripts, bound up for holding memories, preserving moments, arranging experiences in--they made those differences real.
my final night in the UK this year, I got to see Henry V (second time this summer). the Glasgow acting company who's been performing it framed their performance with a 1915 end-of-year school festival, complete with songs of Flanders Fields and letters of condolence filling the silence during simple costume changes. the juxtaposition of the great Battle of Agincourt with all the battles of the Great War, so many on the same French soil, prodded my thoughts further in the direction of war, duty, bravery, and the value of sacrifices. it ended so sadly--Elizabethan armor transformed to early twentieth-century uniforms, the desperate enemies of English and French soldiers transformed to allied casualties.
I've thought before that almost everything we humans ever touch becomes a place for us to keep things. we build shelters and tombs for our bodies, shelves and closets for our things. we use pottery for holding water and poetry for holding feelings. and then we bind books, build museums, raise up theatres, and dedicate monuments to hold those things that do so much holding for us. we can look at all the layers of containment and be grateful, awe-inspired at the combined beauty and utility of them, glad that they do so well at keeping our places as we move through time towards an end we can't quite see past. some shapes and some structures are better for keeping certain kinds of stuff. some museums are less art and more archaeology, or vice versa. plenty of this pottery is different on the outside, but the general purpose seems close enough. these are our necessities, collected and revered, filled to their brims with stories.
my original summer Shakespeare project was born in 2010. eight whole performances lined themselves up everso neatly into that year, one for each month from March to September, plus November (October went crazy, so I was obliged to do without proper theatre that month).
no summer since has quite matched up to that first one, though every once in a while I get it in my head to try beating its record. in 2011 I managed six or seven in a few months, but after that my summers have pretty much starved for Shakespeare. Lubbock, Texas, doesn't have lovely enough parks for any Shakespeare, or something. or maybe I wasn't paying attention in 2012.
last summer I did get to see The Tempest at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. this year I had hoped to revisit dear Cedar City for more (they are even performing some Sherlock Holmes this season! why can't I be in three places at once?), but alas, there is other traveling going on that prevents me. (naturally I will do my best to find out if and where Scotland might host any Shakespeare-in-the-park. let us cross our fingers for that.)
here in 2014, four years and five states away from that very first string of playgoing, we have begun the season of Shakespeare well enough. As You Like It in the park the other week, and just a few days ago Henry V in Chicago with my new friend Liz.
other than Richard III, I haven't seen any other of the bard's histories. they have their own feel--a little less crazy-fun than the comedies and a little less inescapably-fatalist than the tragedies.
the Chicago Shakespeare Company has a montage of the performance:
but it's not half as good as seeing the full thing. ah, the magic of lights and set and sound. the movement of actors across the stage and through the aisles. the pleading shining-eyed members of the chorus, painting out the scenes that wouldn't fit on stage... like this at the opening of act three:
Suppose that you have seen
The well-appointed king at [Hampton] pier
Embark his royalty, and his brave fleet
With silken streamers the young Phoebus fanning.
Play with your fancies; and in them behold
Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;
Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give
To sounds confus'd; behold the threaden sails,
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow'd sea,
Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think
You stand upon the rivage and behold
A city on the inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical,
Holding due course to Harfleur.
I loved that. when they describe "the threaden sails, / Borne with the invisible and creeping wind," and then ask us to "stand upon the rivage and behold / A city on the inconstant billows dancing"--that's all the nudging my brain needs to wander off along a wide, sweeping, aerial view of some epic, imposing navy, its ships laden with so-called divine imperatives from the King.
act three, scene four was 99% in French, which was hilarious.
act four, scene one opens up all sorts of questions on the subject of those so-called divine imperatives, and how the costs and blame for the resulting war might fall when it ends. can each soldier fight with a clean conscience, knowing it is his king who'll be responsible if this war turns out to be unjust? does standing staunchly inside the lines of loyalty somehow absolve a man of whatever blood accrues on his own hands? for every soul that falls, will kings and generals be forced to make account at judgement day? King Henry, in disguise at this point, says no, since anyone could find some neat chain of excuses for their actions or ends if they tried hard enough.
"... you may call the business of the master the author of the servant's damnation. But this is not so. The King is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death, when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers."
the questions aren't really answered, but Harry does win France in the end, so we assume his cause was favored by heaven and all his soldiers honored for their parts in it, despite their spots.
I also noticed a theme of appearances vs. realities, surfaces against cores. (this might subtly show up on all Shakespeare's work--"all the world's a stage," etc.) what makes a true soldier when so many can play the outward part without actually risking their lives? do you need a truly fearsome army--do you need to fight at all--when lengthy, detailed lists of threats, thrown with wrath and spittle in your enemy's face, might subdue them just as successfully?
and speaking of love, is it enough to announce your desire and admiration? does giving your self to another aloud really mean you'll both be one? can love be made visible in these words, or even in actions? and if to love becomes politically expedient, does it still count as love?
does it matter, if or if not? some of Henry's last lines remind us that the victors get to make the rules (both written and unwritten rules):
"O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion. We are the makers of manners, Kate; and the liberty that follows our places stops the mouth of all find-faults..."
so fashions and loyalties and rights and wrongs all change as power shifts from hand to hand, crown to crown, voice to voice. what love and truth and courage look like--what love and truth and courage are--might change, too, if we find the liberty of using a different frame.
four years (or approximately fifteen hundred days) ago, I spent a bitof springtimein the UK. in about six dozen days, I get to go back. Manchester first, then Scotland.
leftover from that trip, I have eighty pounds--split into four lightly crinkled twenty-pound notes--tucked into a little pale blue notebook somewhere in my house. (other souvenirs include the recipe for tiffin and a nice grey skirt.)
who knows. I could spend it on chocolate instead.
seeing Great Britain in the summer will be new. I'll get to learn about postindustrial Scotland and see what kinds of things they eat and drink and wear and talk about in Dundee. I want to go climbing around highlands and countrysides and ruins. I'll write in many notebooks and try to remember to take photos with people in them. there will be plenty of walking and reflecting on where the year and the summer have taken me. I want to meet some Scots and come home with different hair.
but this is all still six dozen days away. I have papers to write and proposals to concoct and papers to grade before then. at least springtime is here to watch me do all those things.
so for now, I'll be glad it's not too hot or humid yet. read outside. watch for daffodils. start leaving my socks and jackets and scarves in the closet. sit in the grass. start saving for sun screen and ice cream. plan some camping trips. take time to nod at butterflies. make a list of non-academic books to read on a swing in the park.
Scotland and summer aren't so far away. they and their adventures will wait.
there is a large blue sticky note stashed somewhere with my old journals and calendar-books, with the words "try everything" written in scribbly capitals. (sticky notes seem to be the way I give advice to myself, I guess.) I don't remember exactly when I gave myself the advice to "try everything," but I think it was during a stretch of dull, empty job-searching. I wanted inspiration and courage. I wanted some confidence to push me out of that dull emptiness. it all seems a long time ago, and I don't know why I've kept that sticky note. my life is far from dull and far from empty at the moment, but a dose of capitalized confidence every so often and a nudge toward trying new things--those are still nice to have on hand.
one week ago, I hurried home from class, made pizza for dinner, and then walked through the lovely autumn dusk over to the local community theatre. it's not much more than a block away. I'd visited only once, the night before, to pick up the script I now carried under my arm. they were holding auditions for a Christmas performance of It's A Wonderful Life.
friend Shara and I had just been talking about that show and its level of sappiness. cheery, sweet holiday scenes and grand, fuzzy morals do not usually take up bunches of space in the films she and I are more likely to appreciate. in this case I didn't think it mattered. I wasn't planning or hoping or expecting to get a part. I only wanted to audition for fun, for the tiny pinch of adrenaline that reading a few lines on stage in front of scrutinizing director-people would give me. I'd seen audition times posted on the theatre's facebook page. I toyed with the idea and decided it wouldn't hurt. "try everything," I remembered. why not?
so I showed up. I read a few scenes, introduced myself and my next-to-nonexistent theatre experience, and went home again to a very normal phd-student evening of reading Toulmin and Latour. the director said he'd call everyone on Tuesday.
and he did. but instead of finding a short message saying "thanks for your audition, we don't need you this time, please volunteer as an usher or a stage hand in the future if you can," which is all I had written into my provisional mental script of the day--I was asked to call him back.
so I did.
and he must have appreciated my (so-called) NPR voice and list of poetry reading experience so much that he decided to give me a trio of very small parts, including some singing.
rehearsals started the very next day. my name was announced with the official cast list. it'll be a radio play, nestled deep in the layered stages of our community theatre, which will be dressed up as a live 1940s radio studio, hosting voices and sound effects from Bedford Falls, New York. the whole golden-age-of-radio-vibe reminds me of my dad and all the old radio shows he always downloads from the internet archive. it'd be cool if he and the rest of the family could come see me perform, but he might have to settle for a recording, if I can get my hands on one at the end of the run.
a line from one of the plays I was lucky enough to see last month:
"They say a dog sees God in his master. A cat looks in the mirror." - Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead
which are we? dogs or cats?
tonight there was a bit of discussion about blindness (the spiritual kind.) it brought to mind a few thoughts I've been stirring around off and on, all sprouted from the strangeness of the word 'problematize.' sounds vexing, doesn't it? a verb that essentially means to make problems? why on earth would you? to go around creating problems? isn't that crazy?
problematization is a word academics throw around like candy. we just can't take anything for granted, see? we've got to pick everything apart (which metaphor reminds me of a song by that brilliant fellow Joss Whedon, which I remember hearing on the radio once, long before I'd ever heard of Dr. Horrible) and ask a million questions. the questions only spawn more questions. what are we really trying to do?
we could problematize mirrors (the camera, the glass, this screen, calm water). what are they telling us? why do we believe them? does it matter who the fairest one of all is, really? and we could problematize our masters (our day planner, our boss, our friends, our biology). what are their motives? who are they working for, or against?
I do love questions, but do I love problems? (is there a difference? hm.)
maybe problematizing doesn't mean creating problems, but unearthing them. (is there a difference? hmm.)
but problems that don't actually exist and problems that we simply can't see don't look any different, do they?
mirrors. gods. invisible cats. hmmm.
speaking of plays, my silly little one-act script was rejected and my consolation prize was ten minutes with three members of the theatre department faculty. I thanked them (in a hopefully gracious manner) for their feedback, which in case you are curious, included words like "maddening," "Seinfield-esque," "circular," and "obtuse."
but they did encourage me to submit again next year.
I need to keep writing.
this is my new notebook of graduate school research. I'm going to need $265 of application fees for my birthday, plus however much the ETS wants for sending my GRE scores to four new universities, plus however much my alma mater and my alma-mater-to-be want for sending transcripts all over the country.
why?
there are a million more unanswerable whys behind that one, so maybe it's best to leave the seemingly inexorable gravity of a phd un-problematized.
my review of Kenneth Goldsmith's Uncreative Writing was published last week in The Journal of Electronic Publishing. it's nestled very nicely into the bottom of their latest issue. this will count as my second official academic publication. if I don't die of teaching freshman English or procrastinating research proposals, there should be more of them, someday.
in other news, I submitted an abstract of my food photography research paper (from Visual Rhetoric last spring) to the Annual Arts and Humanities Graduate Student Research Conference, which will be happening this month... but my project was not selected for inclusion. ah well.
I've also worked up a short one-act playscript for the theatre department. every spring, they put on a series of one-act plays and call it the Raider Red’s One-Act Play Spectacular. that's RROAPS for short, apparently. there was a call for scripts thrown out in our campus email announcements, and I felt like responding, so I did. we'll see what happens. many pre-emptive thanks to friends Chris, Tim, Nic, Cathy, Mel, Morgan, Zach, Allison and Sarah for their praise, feedback, creative readings/interpretations, and title suggestions. I'll let you all know when and if I hear back from whoever it is judging and selecting and all that for the actual spectacular event...
what else? well, if I don't die of teaching freshman English...
1. more food rhetoric. freund Kolby just last night was telling me about this rather marvelous repository of video lectures from Yale University. there's a course from 2008 called The Psychology, Biology, and Politics of Food he thought I might be particularly interested in (wannabe food blogger that I am, right?). I started with Lecture 16, just for kicks. it's about food marketing and such, so it seemed most relevant. someday it would be cool to watch the Milton course. or some Philosophy. it's pretty awesome of Yale to put these courses online like this, eh? we'll see if this one can lend any insights to my rhetorical analyses of food blogs and videos for Dr. Baake this semester.
2. argumentation theory and copyright laws. I need to start working on a lit review and a research paper. what am I waiting for? a warm, quiet moment to sit down and devour the books I've checked out on the subject. let's cross our fingers that such a moment will arrive this week. perhaps tomorrow.
3. a 2000- to 3000-word essay analyzing my development in this crazy MA program thus far, reflecting on the ways my academic work might (somehow) enact, complicate, or contribute to current research and theory in the field. this one is sort of past due already. um. yeah. excuses are for the weak... I know...
4. ten pages of reflection on my work for the Texas Tech University Press. I was musing just thismorning on how much I miss it there. teaching is good for me, I'm sure.... but doing my little bit to shepherd all those books-to-be through the publication process was so lovely.
so it looks like if I don't die of teaching freshman English, I might be severely wounded anyway by all these massive writing projects (curricular and extra-curricular). let's hope a bit of yoga and cooking and the fabulous weather we've been having will keep me alive.
last evening I had the most delightful pleasure of being accompanied to the theatre. it was the opening night of Molière's Les Femmes savantes--or in English, The Learned Women or The Learned Ladies. Molière wrote it in 1672. the version our theatre & dance department is putting on this weekend was translated from the French by its director, Jonathan Marks, and I loved it very much. it was hilarious and thought-provoking, which always makes for wonderful entertainment (here, just in case, is a pre-review sort of article about it). I wish I had more time to sit and blog about all its themes--the dichotomy of body and mind, the merits of philosophy over well-cooked food, the roles of women at home or in love, and what kinds of love are most worthy.
but I do not have time to blog about any of that. nor about my pinterest research project, our book history videos, writing group, my current job or the totally different one I will have once summer has come and gone, or even about the tortuous but titillating countdown til the end of the semester I have running in one corner of my sleep-deprived brain. just eighteen days until this trip to Europe... just eighteen days...
as consolation for all this useless I-have-no-time-to-blog fluff, here is the script of this litle Molière play. no, it isn't the same translation, disappointingly. let us all hope that someday Mr. Marks publishes his. I would like that, even though reading a play can never match being there to see one performed. this one is a much older translation (1877) by Charles Wall, with interesting interspersed footnotes and comments. Mr. Wall, incidentally, also translated Molière's The Imaginary Invalid, which features a character by the name of Toinette. I've heard the name in an adaptation but never knew how it was spelled. how interesting. French pronunciation is so wacky.
last year, for what turned into a 2010 shakespeare project, I started in March and steadily made it all the way to September, one play each month. this year, summer didn't come quite so soon. I missed the month of May, sadly, but June was full enough of Shakespeare opportunities, and July is looking to be overflowing with them also.
all three plays were very well done outdoor performances. I wish I could have gone down to see the grassroots shakespeare performance of As You Like It, too, but it didn't happen. I am looking forward to seeing All's Well That Ends Well in August, though. these little acting companies that do so much Shakespeare in the summer are wonderful. I hope they never die.
this week, (starting this very thursday, in fact), friend Allison, friend Mandy, and I will begin our Shakespeare Festival indulgence with Richard III. and then for friday and saturday we'll again sit through (somewhat more professional-grade) renditions of that most comical of all romantic comedies--A Midsummer Night's Dream--and that most tragic of all romantic tragedies--Romeo & Juliet.
adding to these three a performance of The Tempest in Midvale and a children's theatre version of The Taming of the Shrew, I'll have eight altogether (that's one more than last year, unless you count the slight cheating I had to do for october) in only three months. how's that?
here are Juliet and Romeo, posed so optimistically together, as if they have been resurrected them from their tombs in Verona and replanted in New York City, just before the turn of the century. a lovely couple, hm? so young. just a bit delusional. completely carefree. utterly doomed.
Brigham Young University staged their Romeo and Juliet in the Gilded Age, swapping Shakespeare's chorus slash narrator for an actual once-living historical figure: Samuel Ward McAllister. this southern gentleman greets us with the traditional prologue to the play--but as things start happening, he pauses to interject all sorts of commentary about what is fashionable and what is not. he's written a book, you see. a collection of memoirs called Society as I Have Found It. snippets from the book were strung together into a little monologue which framed the story of these famous star-crossed lovers.
it's always interesting to see what people do with the notorious timelessness of Shakespeare. a friend Grace, the other day, wrote a bit about how the point of Shakespeare is his language. the words. the poetry. everything else (costumes, setting, actors, props) can be traded or modernized or turned around or painted over. the words make the story. the words pull all these emotions out of us. and really, that's all we've got now. the details of how Shakespeare was performed in the beginning is kind of a matter of speculation now, isn't it?
along with the playbill for this version of Romeo and Juliet, there was an actual study guide for the play (and you can get the PDF here if you like). no doubt some poor fine arts students have been forced to write paragraphs and paragraphs of analysis using this lovely document. lucky them. hopefully they find insightful things to say and interesting ways to say them.
as much as I might wish I were a student in such a class that required such essays, I'm not. so you get this blogpost instead of some well-researched theatre critique. I'll leave you with two very memorable moments from the performance.
first: Mercutio dying, falling suddenly into his friend's arms, ranting bravely as he bleeds to death. Mercutio has always been my favourite for some reason. I was glad to see that in this production his Queen Mab speech was not chiseled away into nothing. yes, it's long... but it's also quite funny. Jason Langlois played an awesome Mercutio and I loved his gold suit and thin little mustache. why does he have to die? it's such bad luck. okay, not really luck--stupidity. and the torture Romeo puts himself through afterwards... it's heartbreaking.
second: Romeo, holding the not-really-dead Juliet in his arms, waxing jealous of death, promising to stay with her 'And never from this palace of dim night / Depart again,' while she, half-recovered from the not-really-poison, stretches and bends her arm, reaching up, barely moving, almost touching him, almost awake...
it was well done, if a bit long. very interesting and every moment beautiful.
this month is two-thirds over. my plans for Henry V on the ninth deteriorated due to lack of planning and lack of vehicle: the show was sold out; my car was being given a few new parts. my back-up Shakespeare was Pericles... but time is running out for me. and due to things like car repairs, money is running out also.
what am I going to do?
there is still a smidgeon of time. I can always hope for some random high school performance to show up on my Shakespeare-radar. I can go hunting for the perfect theatre when I'm in Boise next weekend...
or I could finagle some technically-not-live-theatre substitutions for month number eight of this project, and then see how things look in November.
I recently finished a piece of historical-fiction called The Secret Confessions of Anne Shakespeare. it's an in-depth, exhaustively researched, highly speculative 'autobiography' of the woman who married the greatest English writer of all time. it was a long but very enjoyable story. the lives of these two people are told fascinatingly, and Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest, seems to have so much meaning in it. so many subtle tangling ties to the actual people Arliss Ryan has recreated from imagined events behind the scenes, beyond the recorded scraps of history that have survived from four hundred years ago.
so when I'd finished the book, I wanted to see The Tempest. really, really wanted. like last month's Hamlet, it isn't one I've ever seen on stage. I've only read it, heard it quoted, and seen a few cheesy, juvenile adaptations.
unfortunately there are no stage productions of The Tempest scheduled during the next two weeks that happen to be within anything like a reasonable distance of my life here. so I have been forced by these circumstances to scour the local libraries for recorded performances. and now I've got three, sitting happily together on my bookshelf. two are straight Shakespeare (from the BBC and some other less-notable production company), the third a somewhat ridiculous-looking modernization.
I kind of wish I could time-travel and go see this version. it looks pretty fantastic.
anyway. the only question now is how to make time for these five hundred and nineteen minutes of Shakespearean video?
I'm not sure. but I'll try. and that will just have to do.
I could've gone to see The Taming of the Shrew last weekend for much less money, but... Hamlet.
it was awesome to see Hamlet on a real stage. the ghost was very cool, all blue and sparkly. but do we believe his story? after all... he was sleeping when Claudius supposedly murdered him. what if it was a dream?
anyway, these people review the play tons better than I could here. Ms. Larson is right: the set was awesome, the acting was mostly great, and the story absorbing.
since our show was a matinee, we stayed afterwards for a short discussion. the director appeared and answered questions while the actors trickled back onstage, leaving their wigs and make-up and Victorian costumes behind.
someone asked about the challenge of playing an unsympathetic or villainous character. Claudius answered first, since he was the central villain this time. he said you must find at least something to like about your character, no matter how evil he is. if you as the actor cannot stand up for that character and make him real, no one will. Hamlet confessed that it can great fun playing the bad guys because sometimes they get the best lines. and then Laertes explained that as an actor, you serve the story. there is a reason for the unsavory characters. the story needs them. and it needs them to be a little bit mean. a little bit heartless.
I have been thinking about that idea all weekend.
I know no matter what Shakespeare might say, life is not just a story. we men and women are not mere players.
my grandmother lives around the corner from this beautiful university, where every summer they feast on pure Shakespeare, garnished with a smattering of other fine theatrical productions such as Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations. I grew up looking forward, every time we visited, to taking the very short walk across campus and spreading ourselves out on the lawn. we'd giggle at puppets and envy the dancers, and beg mum and dad to buy us tarts. { photo from this kind soul on flickr. }
this month, if all goes according to at least one of the various tentative plans I've got tucked in my pocket, I will attend my sixth Shakespeare performance of the year. this spontaneously suggested and serendipitously followed quest of mine has been really cool. and not as hard as you might think. Shakespeare is everywhere, even if you aren't looking very hard. here's a quick review:
March 6. Macbeth at Brigham Young University, Idaho
(gosh. completely gripping. very worth driving five hours there and back just to see it.)
April 23. Twelfth Night at Salt Lake Community College, Utah
(odd. good thing Shakespeare can take a few eclectic additions and still be lovely.)
May 1. A Midsummer Night's Dream at Murray High School, Utah
(probably the most hilarious and energetic high school performance I've seen in a million years.)
June 5. Much Ado About Nothing at Bingham High School, Utah
(they set this version in Vegas, complete with an Elvis to perform the weddings. awesome.)
July 24. Othello at Luther Burbank Park, Washington
(it plodded little by little towards its everso dramatic ending. perfectly tragic.)
for August I had hoped to revisit that old family tradition down in Cedar City, but I'm not sure I can afford the tickets now that I have to pay rent and, now that EFY is over, spend money on food. luckily, I've just today come across this little company of Shakespeare enthusiasts. perfect timing. and this way I don't have to settle for seeing a play I've already seen. how is it that I haven't been to a stage production of Romeo and Juliet before?
how long will this monthly Shakespeare project last? there's no telling. when I first made the suggestion to myself I had not counted on it being so simple. but for six months I've had the bard falling into my lap. sometimes I go all by myself. sometimes I drag others along. sometimes it's amazing, other times it's a little strange. you never know. the most I've spent on any of these is $7. a few of these shows haven't cost me anything. it's beautiful, all this. and now that I'm about to cross this significant milestone of six whole months, I guess I should blog about the project a bit more seriously. how would that be?
if you know of any other performances this fall, especially in the Salt Lake area, by all means tell me about them! and if you're ever up for a little Shakespeare yourself, I'll totally take you with me.
