THE PASSAGE OF TIME, theater

We were completely surrounded by critics

Dear Milo,

Raining? Sunny? Doesn’t matter; have no intention of going outside today, or at least, not beyond the courtyard. Today I have nowhere to be and I’m catching up on freelance work, cleaning off a desktop, doing laundry, taking out the trash, having space and time to reconnect the dots. I really needed this. Nothing makes you appreciate a day off like the exhaustion of rehearsal.

But it’s more than that; it’s the exhaustion of moving to a new country, the Polish language intensive, the graduation and the thesis, the final semester, the stress and sadness of leaving friends behind. I was and am well and truly worn out. Succeeding at something can be just as crazy as failing at it, and those two states can seem remarkably similar.

What’s the problem?

“I was trying to explain what the problem was, but what was the problem? I felt tears well in my eyes. We were completely surrounded by critics. The critics had opinions about everything, from the distribution of literary prizes to the advantages of a macrobiotic diet.

At some point we headed back into the rain. Although I had quit smoking six months ago, I paused to bum an American Spirit from a conveniently situated critic. “I thought you quit,” my agent said. ”

-That’s Elif Batuman, in the Guardian, on the stresses and crazinesses of having one particular dream come true; “Life after a Bestseller.” Via Explosion-Proof‘s site.

Getting what you want can be rough.

These bumps in the road are part of what the experience will contain, I understand, and I am getting used to it. I am grateful to everyone who’s been helping me navigate. You don’t have to look pretty in the ring; you just have to stay standing.

To get myself through said bumps, I have been writing lots. I did silly things, like creating (a year late) a properly designed triple-tracking submissions spreadsheet. I did some work in genres that have been neglected due to the prevailing influence of Planet Poetry. And I even found, under my computer cushions, an old post I’d been meaning to post since May.

So here’s something I wrote when I knew I was coming here but hadn’t gotten here yet. It’s a bit droopy, but perhaps you can understand, given the circumstances.

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Three types of failure-uity

Caro Milo,

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I haven’t learned anything. If there’s another thing I’ve learned, it’s that it never gets easier. If there’s one thing I’ve learned–see thing 1.

The blog has been silent for the past week while I’ve been taking G2’s workshop with SOTG. Although I have many thoughts on the exercises we did, they aren’t thoughts that are ready to share. Instead, on a quiet day off–all my friends from the workshops have departed Poland, the apartment is empty, and silence blankets me in Wroclaw–I thought it would be a good time to talk some about the Nowy Horizonty film festival and the idea of failure in the arts.

(SILENCE)

How do you feel about that? I feel about it roughly the way I do about the idea of someone beginning a yoga class by saying “We’re going to focus on core strength today.” Spinach!

[animated jpeg of cheerleaders: F! A! F-A-I! F-A-I-L-U-R-E! FAILURE! FAILURE! WHAT’S THAT SPEEEEELLLLL…? FAILURE!]

My friend D has been in town from Berlin for the past week, too, and while he was here we saw two movies at Kino Helios as part of the festival; “The Seventh Bullet,” a Soviet Western directed by Ali Khamraev, and Lost in La Mancha, which probably needs no introduction, but is a documentary about Terry Gilliam’s failed attempt to film Don Quixote.

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The less you notice them, the better it sounds

Friday, July 29, 2011

Dear Milo,

Good afternoon. I write, shamefully, from the newly installed Starbucks on the Rynek, an hour before I am to meet D. I shouldn’t be at Starbucks, but it is a cafe where I feel no embarassment about camping out with a laptop for hours. The behaviors seems impolite at some of the other, nicer cafes here.

It will be really good to see D. Fans of Parallel Octave know D. as one of the founders and core group members (and everyone’s favorite bicycle philosopher). He has traveled, of his own volition, from Berlin to participate in the next 5-day workshop intensive with me. I am impressed by his fearlessness. We are going to have a coffee at Lulu Belle before the fun (pain) begins—“Radical Actor Training,” led by G2. It will be good to see him.

Earlier today, I had salad with J. (US Artists Initiative founder, person responsible for bringing me to Wro. the first time) at a Spanish restaurant, and got a list from her of chorus-oriented directors I might seek out to interview. Earlier, spent the morning reviewing my texts for the workshop—Tamora from Titus (“Have I not reason, think you, to look pale?”) and Olivia from Twelfth Night. The Olivia is one I have known in my bones for a long, long time, since those scenes (“In his bosom? In what chapter of his bosom?”) were part of my childhood acting work at the Theatricum (an outdoor theater in Topanga Canyon in LA.)

I have an hour here, and it’s time for some catch-up blogging on the last two days of G.’s workshop and the day off. It will lack some detail. But I need to do it and be done with it. As a measure of the extent to which things have deteriorated around here, today’s quotes will be from Trey Anastasio. Don’t say I didn’t—well, don’t say I did, either.

ANASTASIO: […]Musicians come and go and they’re stewards of the music for a brief period of time. But once the music plays—it’s really between Beethoven and the listener at that point. The musicians are there to get their goddamn hands off of it. All that training! Thousands of hours! Sight-reading every day! All so they can get the hell out of the way because nobody gives a crap about them at all. The less you notice them, the better it sounds. I mean, it was the highest level of art in music that I’d ever seen, and it was performed by people who had spent countless hours of work just to be invisible.

BELIEVER: In music, you never notice that quality anywhere more than in the orchestra.

ANASTASIO: And the challenge of getting ninety people to play together! Try getting four people to play together.

-Trey Anastasio, interview w. Ross Simonini for The Believer. Via Longreads.

Yes, yes, yes.

So, the past few days. Here goes. These will be rushed recaps, because when I’m three days off blogging, that’s how it happens.

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acting, Poland, quotes, the chorus, theater

“Like most poets, I don’t know where I’m going.”

Monday, July 25, 2011

Dear Milo,

It’s Monday afternoon. I’m sitting in the front room of the dimly lit cafe Mleczarnia, at (I think) the very same table where I first sat with R. when I first came to Wroclaw, two years ago, eating a slice from the same walnut-encrusted cake. (Perhaps not exactly the same cake. But its brother.)

Mleczarnia is one of my favorite places in Wroclaw, and not just because its courtyard adjoins the White Stork Synagogue. It’s also beautiful inside. The walls are covered with black-and-white photographs. The people in the portraits, in black dresses with white collars, in wedding gowns and formal suits, remind me of the one photograph I’ve seen of my grandmother’s mother, Sylvia Schwartz. Candles as tall as rulers stand on tables, next to teapots of dried flowers. And in front of me, a line of actors and tourists and Wroclawians are ordering enormous glasses of Zywiec.

To my great happiness, R. is actually in town, and will be joining me in a few hours!
I have my laptop and my cake and some tea I’ve let overbrew. I have two days of training to tell you about, but first I have a quote. (“Now, sir, what is your text?”)

“Like most poets, I don’t know where I’m going. The pen is an instrument of discovery rather than just a recording implement. If you write a letter of resignation or something with an agenda, you’re simply using a pen to record what you have thought out. In a poem, the pen is more like a flashlight, a Geiger counter, or one of those metal detectors that people walk around beaches with. You’re trying to discover something that you don’t know exists, maybe something of value.”
–Billy Collins, interviewed in the Paris Review (http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/482/the-art-of-poetry-no-83-billy-collins)

If you read “the performer’s body” for “the pen,” then this quote also applies to our own training. It is necessary to enter the rehearsal room with no more preconceptions than you have when you picks up a pen. (Of course, you often pick up a pen with tons of preconceptions. But the best writing comes when you let them go.)

The only way you can get anywhere is to let yourself not know where you’re going.

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Poland, the chorus, theater

For what purpose, I cannot say yet

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Dear Milo,

Today was a day I’ve been waiting for for a very long time—the first day back in workshops at SOTG.

[recap of evening of 22nd]

Last night, my roommate L-from-London cooked a delicious vegetable curry (cabbage, eggplant) and we ate it with kasha and talked over our apprehensions about what today would bring. Roommate M. came home later, and we all three shared some fears and some hopes for the next day. It’s fun living with two other actors, going through the same experiences, but it also has the effect of having emotions be multiplied. Last night, what we were all going through was a bit of nervousness.

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Poland, the chorus, theater, travel

The Belle of Something City

July 20, 2011
Dear Milo, and everyone,

I’m sorry I haven’t called, I’m sorry I haven’t responded to your emails, and I’m sorrier that I didn’t get to see you before I left. But I have left, although I still have an hour or so left in the United States. We will not see each other for some time. But I am going to try to be writing here.

I am sitting at a cafe table in Newark Airport, waiting for a flight to Munich. From there, I will take a puddle-jumper to Wroclaw, where I will begin a year-long program with a Polish theater, Song of the Goat (Teatr Piesn Kozla). I will be doing their in-house MA in Acting program, and training with them. This study is being funded by a Fulbright.

None of this has sunk in at all, BTW. Last night I was working on a grant for a theater company I sometimes freelance for, and I was rattling off the facts of their announcements. So many performances, so many audience members, X, Y, Z. That’s what it feels like for me to write “I’ll be on Poland for a year, on a Fulbright.” It feels like I’m describing someone else’s life, rather than my own. Someone who has it together—someone who isn’t wearing socks and flip-flops.

But it’s me, together or not together. It’s me, following the trail of the elusive Greek Chorus Beast, as usual.

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thank you, season 5 of Burn Notice

for getting me through the screening and the last week of Polish class. Final exam yesterday; diplomas and singing party today; back to Baltimore tomorrow, where ParOct performs at the Creative Alliance; and then to Poland next Wednesday.

A longer post is in the works, but for now, here’s the info on the performance Sunday:

Parallel Octave
conducting an open session with the audience
on a selection from Ron Allen’s short play X RESTRUNG CORTEX
this Sunday, July 17 @ Artscape,
at High Noon, for One Hour,
as part of High Zero / Worlds in Collusion,
in the AIR-CONDITIONED COMFORT of
the University of Baltimore Student center, 5th floor (SE Corner Mt Royal & Maryland)
Admission: Free

The official blurb on the site says “Experimental Greek chorus sings unusual texts,” which is true, but we are going to sing them in collaboration with the audience, as usual. And I will distribute Purim noisemakers to everyone who attends. We’ll play selections from the ANTHOLOGY I video, too.

Longer blog update forth-hopefully-coming after this weekend.

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ANTHOLOGY I tonight, 7 pm, Creative Alliance

Tickets on sale now for the screening of ANTHOLOGY I tonight at the Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave. 7 PM. Tickets: $10. (410) 276-1651.
More information here and here and here.

Still from Adam Gray's film, "The Space Between Her Eyes and Mine," based on Hart Crane's poem "My Grandmother's Love Letters."

PRESS:
Baltimore Fishbowl
Music director Joe Martin interviewed at WYPR’s The Signal
Baltimore Urbanite

Another still from Adam's Hart Crane film.


We have an updated program:

EVENT PROGRAM

I: Opening short films:
by Jimmy Joe Roche, Meg Rorison & Julia M. Smith

II: Screening of ANTHOLOGY I,
a collaborative short film based on the poems of Stevens, Yeats, Herrick, Dickinson, Robinson, etc.,
including films, by these directors:
Jake Appet, Alice Bever, Ryan Edel, Adam Gray, Marie Ilene, Meg Rorison, Danny Schwartz, & Val Smith.

III: Audience Parallel Octave collaboration session
with Adam’s film of “My Grandmother’s Love Letters,” by Hart Crane.
(Kazoos will be provided at the event but other instruments and voices are greatly desired.)

IV: Live performances by Cricket Arrison, Bethany Dinsick, and Forks of Ivy!

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ANTHOLOGY I screens Friday, July 8th

So much news! We have trailers on YouTube, we have new press, we have an updated event listing! More info/tix: (410) 276-1651, or on Facebook, or the Creative Alliance site. Friday, July 8th, 7 pm. Be there or be an indignant desert bird.

The ten-second teaser, “Penguin Strike”:

The longer trailer, “Penguin Strike II: The Second Coming”:

Both videos were created by ANTHOLOGY I editor Ryan Edel from his short film “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” based on “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats.

We have more press, including a fab new blog post by Rachel “Fab” Monroe on Baltimore Fishbowl!

PRESS:
Baltimore Fishbowl
Music director Joe Martin interviewed at WYPR’s The Signal
Baltimore Urbanite

We have an updated program:

EVENT PROGRAM

I: Opening short films:
by Jimmy Joe Roche, Meg Rorison & Julia M. Smith

II: Screening of ANTHOLOGY I,
a collaborative short film based on the poems of Stevens, Yeats, Herrick, Dickinson, Robinson, etc.,
including films, by these directors:
Jake Appet, Alice Bever, Ryan Edel, Adam Gray, Marie Ilene, Meg Rorison, Danny Schwartz, & Val Smith.

III: Audience Parallel Octave collaboration session
with Adam’s film of “My Grandmother’s Love Letters,” by Hart Crane.
(Kazoos will be provided at the event but other instruments and voices are greatly desired.)

IV: Live performances by Cricket Arrison, Bethany Dinsick, and Forks of Ivy!

More info/tix: (410) 276-1651
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=172135622844128
http://www.creativealliance.org/events/eventItem2610.html
http://www.paralleloctave.com

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poetry

I’m not sure I want to do this

Instead of marrying the day after graduation,
in spite of freezing on my father’s arm as
here comes the bride struck up,
saying, I’m not sure I want to do this,

I should have taken that fellowship
to the University of Grenoble to examine
the original manuscript
of Stendhal’s unfinished Lucien Leuwen,

I, who had never been west of the Mississippi,
should have crossed the ocean
in third class on the Cunard White Star,
the war just over, the Second World War

when Kilroy was here, that innocent graffito,
two eyes and a nose draped over
a fence line. How could I go?
Passion had locked us together.

– Maxine Kumin, the opening stanzas of her poem “Looking Back in my Eighty-First Year.”

You can read the whole thing here. It’s a great companion piece for “Lucinda Matlock.” A dizzying last stanza.

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