Colorado Dreamin’

I don’t know what to say first about Denver, Colorado. It’s been almost exactly 24 hours.
Keywords:

What do you mean “The mile-high city?” – Isn’t that just an expression? – does that mean you join the mile-high club just by…in the environs? – altitude sickness: being so light-headed I couldn’t stand up – going to St. Mark’s and The Thin Man with Sarah Rose and not needing to drink a thing to act weird because I was so dizzy – having a hot chocolate miraculously cure all my symptoms – meeting a Moroccan businessman who assured me he had stayed in all the cities of the US and Europe and preferred Denver to all of them “because you can live a relaxed life-” heatedly discussing civic policy and smoking bans – talking about Judaism and Islam and what it means to be religious – faith, doubt – I can’t go anywhere in this country without bringing up Israel – sleeping on S.R’s red loveseat in her apartment on St. Paul Street –

And today: riding heated buses down Colfax Avenue, which Sarah Rose says used to be the old road all the way to the coast, yes, my coast, passing bars and clubs and coffeehouses, all independent – downtown and the 16th Street Mall – tea and nervousness – walking through the archway of glass of the performing arts complex and realizing I was getting closer to the “theater” end when I saw a folding table propped up against a wall – there’s never anywhere to store all those folding tables! – S.R. dropping me off like my first day of kindergarten –

-and the whirlwind tour of the actual DCTC, in two levels, from administrative offices to scene shops, paint rooms and costume props – meeting new people in every shop, in every department, all so friendly and welcoming, all shaking my hand. And the ROOMS. The Rooms of Rehearsal.

Beautiful, naturally lit rehearsal rooms, color-coded by door (we’ll be staying in the Yellow Room) enormous, unfathomably large, clean, white and brick loft-rooms like eyries, like artists’ studios, like chapels, like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter, the walls banked with pianos. I said to the stage manager, “I think I’m going to have a heart attack.”

I’m one of the few assistant directors this company has ever hired and I really want to do a good job so that they’ll feel interested in bringing future ADs back for outside directors. I know how lucky I am to be here.

Really lucky.

Getting my picture put on a badge. Memorizing codes and numbers. Getting keys cut. (The director and I have our own office that we share with the other visiting directors.) Being warned by an ex-cop about the dangers of walking down Colfax Avenue at night – being told Wild Denver stories about a beggar punching a car at an intersection and a gun being pulled – walking a mile in the cold to find a BofA ATM only to find it doesn’t take deposits – walking a mile back to Leela’s on 15th and waiting here, writing, to see Pride and Prejudice, if I can get walked in tonight.

High school students are drinking enormous mugs of hot chocolate. One says to another, “Just because it makes your teeth bleed to look at me doesn’t mean you can’t give me a hug.”

I love this town.

a propos of nothing, travel

Dispatches from the San Antonio Airport

(being delayedly posted from Denver, CO)

At Gervin’s Sports Bar at the San Antonio Airport, which has the soutitre “The Iceman Cometh,” you can Have Your Cake And Drink It Too, with a chocolate Tennessee/Jack Daniels Torte. This has to be my most favorite thing in all the airports of all this country.

The woman behind me is on a conference call. “How are you?” she asks, in a British accent.

“I’m fine,” I answer.

And it’s true. I feel great. I’m sad to leave Sari and Monica (who plays tonight at Luna, by the way) – sad to leave this great local music scene – but I got really excited strapping on my enormous Dakine backpack again.
I love to be going somewhere. And the uncertainty which used to terrify me is now part of the excitement. I’ve never seen or met the woman I’ll be staying with.

Sarah Rose asked me how to identify me at the Denver airport. I couldn’t think of what distinguishes me from the rest of the other girls wearing all black, but it’s definitely the backpack.

I walked into the Frontier terminal with a smile on my face like I’d just been handed the keys to the country. And now I’m eavesdropping on a conversation about international waste management. Or I think I am.

“I don’t understand,” the British woman says, ignoring me. “All the tasks are completed, the status is updated – what’s the holdup?”

She needs to start drinking some cake.

A family walks by, four football-fan kids and a dad, the two oldest boys wearing sweatshirts with flashing red lights on them.

A woman walks by, shrouded in a sweatshirt like she’s covering the severed head of her enemy beneath it.

A man walks by. He looks damn pleased with himself. I couldn’t say why, but he looks…pleased.

“Waste Management Process, page 2,” the woman says. “At the top you have headers for the different environments, right?”

I need a header for all my different environments. Modified from Zeppelin: Going to Colorado with an aching in my heart.

I write poetry furiously until it’s time to board.

a propos of nothing, travel

“My bags are packed, I’m ready to go…”

As James Taylor says, “I don’t know when I’ll be back again.”

Some thoughts on wandering:

Packing is too easy now. I just zip up the backpack, put my computer away, and leave.

Sari and I were looking at ceramic pots in a shop in Austin and I was wondering if I would ever again be in a place to own ceramics. Jewelry boxes made out of cinnamon bark. Helicopters carved out of soda cans. And big green ceramic pots with matched lids. Moroccan leather wallets. Blue and white flowered tiles. I have to look at those things, take their beauty in, and just remember them. I don’t get to own them.

I don’t feel like I own anything any more. Even the possessions I thought I treasured don’t matter. I thought I had lost my watch in Los Angeles. This is a watch I bought with the first money I ever made from directing, in Germany, to remind myself that I could make a living at this job. It was expensive, a big black Fossil with an enormous leather strap.

Anyway, I didn’t care one way or the other about it being gone. Before I started all this traveling, before I had to leave behind all my books, and friends and family, I would have been really upset to lose it. But now, the fact that I am traveling around like this is proof of being a working theater artist – and with or without the watch, that can’t be lost.

I found it a few days later, at the bottom of my backpack, in San Antonio.

“Oh,” I said, “there’s my watch.”

I like feeling this way. I like knowing that I can’t really lose anything, or be lost. I like not having any keys on my keyring – just a red Cornell University bottle opener.

LaCona felt bad that I hadn’t unpacked my clothes into drawers the whole time I was there. But if you unpack, you have to pack. If you never unpack, you’re always ready to go.

As I was writing this, Kersti just called me, from her OSF educational tour with Todd – they’re wandering the San Juan islands of the coast of Victoria and Washington State, doing a two-person version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Another wanderer.

convergence, Lydia, travel

Goodye, Texas. Hello, Denver.

This is my last day in San Antonio. I fly to Denver tonight, to begin rehearsals for LYDIA. I’ll be working as Juliette Carrillo’s assistant director. I’m staying with Kersti’s friend Sarah Rose. Kersti is an actress I know from OSF, and she connected me with her. I live 3 miles by bus from the theater. I go in tomorrow to fill out paperwork and to see the Denver Center for the first time. Very excited.

Here’s the DTC’s blurb on LYDIA:
“A Mexican immigrant family is mired in grief, rage and guilt over a daughter tragically disabled on the eve of her quinceanera (15th birthday). When the undocumented Lydia arrives in El Paso from Mexico to work as a maid for the Flores family, her nearly miraculous bond with the brain-damaged girl elates, then angers and finally destroys the troubled family – and Lydia herself.”

I also had another Convergence teleconference yesterday. We’re going to be going after some grants for space rental, and we came to an exciting realization about how to best involve the local community. The Indy Convergence involves 4 types of workshops:
– Explorations (for all artists in and out of the Convergence)
– Open Studio/ Side Projects (smaller, more directed work on specific projects)
– Umbrella Project (for all Converging artists)
– Public Workshops (for community members)
and we’ve decided to make all the Explorations open to local artists. It’ll be a great way to meet people from the community and find out what kinds of artists are in Indianapolis.

We’re also going to offer, space permitting, the ability for local artists to teach their own Explorations.

recipes, travel

Banana-carrot muffins

Yesterday I baked the Ultimate Carrot Muffins, which I modified slightly, from Stephanie Jaworski’s recipe. I eliminated the coconut, apple, and vanilla, and replaced it with banana – and I used olive oil, because that’s all I ever use. I also didn’t ice them. But the proportions of liquid & solid ingredients are hers.

It produced a very liquid dough which I had to pour into the muffin cups. The muffins spilled out over the tops, making perfect, restaurantesque, soft, sweet muffins.

I wish I had used paper liners, though, because it was really hard to get them out of the pan. I had to cool them for a long time and then pry around the edge of the tops with a knife, and slide the knife into the cup to ease the muffin out. They were very soft.

Ultimate Carrot-Banana Muffins (modified from Stephanie Jaworski)
1/2 cup toasted pecans or walnuts (if desired – I burned mine, so I didn’t put them in.)
2 cups grated raw carrot (I used store-grated carrots, which are too big, and chopped them up into small bits – saved time and grating. Hate grating.)
2 bananas, mashed
2 cups flour
1 1/4 cups white sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt (I really put it in this time, and I do think it made a difference)
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 large eggs (yes, 3!)
3/4 cup olive oil

Preheat oven to 350.
Combine everything in a bowl. Should be a very liquid, sweet dough. If it doesn’t look liquid, add a splash of milk, or more oil.
Grease or line the muffin cups.
Pour batter into a pan with 12 muffin cups. (This is enough batter for 18 small ones, but you want 12 enormous ones with tops!)
Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees or until you can stick a fork in and it comes out clean.
Cool until completely cool, and ease out gently with a knife.
EAT!

And then fly to Denver with said muffins. Interesting to see what this whole baking at altitude thing will be like, I suppose.

music, theater

Things theater can learn from live music

1) Audience participation.
Last night at Atomix in San Antonio, watching Sari’s roommate Monica and her friend Chris King play live. Monica finished her spontaneous set with a cover of Amy Winehouse’s REHAB, and Chris and I clapped along to it. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, because I felt essential to the performance.
She started out by saying “I’m going to need you guys to clap like this -” and demonstrated the rhythm – and we started, and she helped, and only once our beat was established did she begin playing.
I’ve seen shows before where people were supposed to join in by clapping, but never one where there actually was no rhythm section – so that the musicians, or performers, were relying on the audience to be part of it. That was great. I’m going to have to steal it.

2) Bar participation.
After they both played, more of Monica’s friends showed up – Kelley and his girlfriend Alyssa – and they were talking about the dynamics of which bars wanted open mics on which nights, and how to plan the event, both in location and in timing in the week, so as to maximize the bar’s profits from the event. It was very eye-opening to me. The musicians play for free, but the bars get money from it – and the musicians get promotion and space.

When was the last time you heard of a theatrical event bringing money to a bar, instead of begging for donations from it? This is a financially vibrant interchange. I’ve thought before that any event that takes place at a bar is performatively successful.

I’ve also thought that I wanted to create an open mic night at a theater. When I saw the way Chris Covics at Unknown was having musical acts come into the space each night after the plays, to bring the theater money, that gave me ideas for one approach.

But the problem with that is the hassle of the liquor license. You get folks in the space, which is great, but a theatrical open mic at a bar would be even more dynamic. What I really want is a stage space with an integrated full bar. Which is what Atomix appeared to be. If I ever do start a company, it’ll be in a location like that, and we’ll only do shows that can be integrated with drinking.

And something we both need to work on:

3) Audience expectations.
Kelley told a story about an open mic he knew where the people running the show had alternated live artists with DJs. The problem was that the regulars in the bar started booing the live acts because they just wanted the DJ to play more dance music.

music, travel

Guitar straps with “Howdy” buttons, and other Texanica

Last night we went to the Limelight, a San Antonio bar and space for live music with a Sunday night open mic. Sari’s roommate Monica played, along with a bunch of other singer/songwriters. The standard guitars were acoustic, and the singers, even the boys who looked like indie rockers, had a really earnest tone of voice that touched on country even if it didn’t stay there. And you can buy three gin-and-tonics, one amaretto sour, and a can of beer for $14.

Maybe it was because we were with Monica, but all the artists who played were so much friendlier than anyone I would have met in LA. They played their sets, came and sat at our table, said hello at the bar. And they all knew each other, too – “I liked your new song,” and so forth. It’s a great environment. I think the Austin/Nashville scene spills over into all the smaller cities. If I were a singer/songwriter starting out, I wouldn’t go to LA or New York – I’d go somewhere more supportive first. Like this.

It’s basically the same lesson I’ve been learning about theater, that being the smallest fish in the biggest pond first isn’t always the wisest step – that you can get more experience more quickly in the regional scene.

politics, travel

San Antonio continued…”And the war…”

The first day I was here, we visited the Alamo and had nachos and margaritas on the river walk – a walled-in stretch of the San Antonio river which has the feeling of a Texas Disneyland. There were military cadets in bright blue uniforms marching along the water’s edge with their families and girlfriends, looking as clean and perfect as Disney characters.

But then I met the war correspondent from Sari’s paper. He had just finished a 3-hour-long interview with a veteran from Iraq who had had both his legs blown off.

The reporter told us: “We sat in the restaurant for 3 hours and no one came up to the man to thank him for his service to the country.” (I was ashamed that I myself have seen maimed veterans and not done that.)

The veteran asked him: “How can I be a father with no legs?”

workstyle, writing

On writing and being wrong

I’ve been working on a fiction project which is pretty loosely fictionalized memoir. It’s drawn from my own life. It’s a catalog – Amina was doing a catalog story when I was with her in Ithaca, too.

Every time one of a particular kind of event happens, you write about it. But you don’t have to join them together. So you could do a catalog of the best meals you’ve ever had in your life, and write only about them. Or every time you’ve thrown up from drinking. Or every injury or major sickness.

I’ve been having a lot of success writing this catalog so far, but as I catch up to the present I find myself having a lot of trouble continuing it.

I tried to write in my journal first, but that meant acknowledging something had happened and it affected me personally, which hurt. So then I tried to write in the Word document on the computer, but that meant distancing myself from it, which felt cold and detatched. I don’t have the right medium in which to write about these things. Paper is too personal. The computer is too official.

And now I’m blogging about the difficulty of writing about it. Which feels like the perfect combination of journaling and typing.

If you don’t write about something, can you make it disappear from your memory? Does the absence of a record make it less real? And as a writer, do you ever get to forget? Will I ever be satisfied until I manage to write about this? Why do I end my blog entries with questions I already know the answers to?
(No, or at least I can’t. Yes, it does. No. No. And, to avoid answering them.)

animation, film, Golda, humor rhymes with tumor, israel, Judaism, travel

South Texas and South Israel Park

Sari and I drove out to Poteet today, south of San Antonio, so we could see the area she covers for the paper. It’s very spread out, sunny, open and hot. We wore tank tops and shorts. The land is a beautiful place, with big overhanging trees and wide streets. I can see why people love Texas so much. It has a grandeur to it, even in a small town, and the sky really does seem large. It’s open.

But there’s a lot of poverty. The paint on the buildings is old, and the homes look patched together. We went by a mobile home with “Keep Away” spray-painted in red on one of the windows. We also went by rows of glistening, brand-new tractors, next to houses with crumbling wood. The juxtaposition between Poteet and the prosperity in San Antonio – and even more so in Austin – is extreme.

It was a drive that makes you think, a drive of extreme class contrasts, extreme poverty. Naturally, I got into talking about Golda and TJT and Jewish politics. I gave Sari my 10-minute history of Zionism and the state of Israel. We talked about politics in Palestine on the drive both there and back. We talked about institutionalized racism versus gun-in-your-face, bomb-on-the-bus racism. Texas. Mexico. Israel. The US. Palestine. Europe.

She’s helped me to remember some of the animation I used to do (Sari did the voice for this little film called “Misfortunes Of An Arrogant Child” that was at the Stanford film festival, when I was a junior) and we talked about the possibilities of making short films, short animated Internet segments a la Muffinfilms, which would have Jewish content – which would create something of an Internet comedy/theatrical voice for intelligent criticism of the Israel/Palestine conflict. (Now that’s a tall order.) Something like the South Park of the Jews. Something like a more meaningful Quarterlife. American Jews, or short animated kids, trying to make sense of it all.

It wouldn’t even have to be criticism. It could just be comedy-reportage. I’m really into this idea, but it feels like way too much responsibility – making sharp comedy about this issue is so hard, and so charged, and I’d probably end up with a real bomb on my hands, to use an inappropriate metaphor. Anyway, I don’t need another project.

Maybe I can start by making short animated films about something else with Jewish subject matter. Like I really need another project, right? Especially one that’s going to make everybody angry? But this is what I would want to watch. I guess that means it’s what I have to make.

Then we went to the zoo, came back and made chili. We’re going to see her roommate Monica play at an open mic tonight.

We also discussed, yesterday, what in modern entertainment today is the real child of Beckett.

Dara Weinberg

writer // teacher // director // los angeles

Monthly Archives: December 2007