Category Archives: travel

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.

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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.

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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.

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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?”

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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.

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a propos of nothing, travel

Delayed dispatches from LAX (“Rest your back”)

I’m at the terminal, waiting for the flight to San Antonio, and I hear a guy with a purple shirt, cowboy boots, and a Texas accent talking into his Bluetooth headset (which looks like a piranha is attacking his ear). He says this, which I wrote down, word for word. I should start calling these things airport monologues.

TEXAN
I just sucked down two margaritas and chips and queso and steak fajitas.
Yep, two top-shelf margaritas.
By the way, I don’t like that school, the way it’s set up – her school – the parking – the kids just come out anywhere – there should be a front.
No, nothing against the school, just the parking.
So, I got the first-class upgrade. Basically, free liquor, that’s all I want.
I may not be able to drive when I arrive.
I don’t know if they have free mimosas.
Yeah, chicken-fried steak and cherries soaked in rum.
Nah, if I get home, wake up, and take four aspirins I’ll be fine.
It’s dehydration of the brain caused by consuming too much alcohol.
Wine?
(He seems disturbed by this idea.)
Well, if it’s wine, it’s a different kind of alcohol, you know, I’m not used to it…
Maybe if it’s a Zinfandel.
OK honey. I should go call (XXXXX). I’d love to see you tonight, but maybe rest…
No, you rest up.
Well, if you’re all worn out, I can’t have any fun with you.
No, I’m talking about a different kind of fun.
Yes ma’am.
Rest your back.

(And he hung up.)

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a propos of nothing, travel

In brevity,

I’m out of the whirlwind Los Angeles tour, and in TX with Sari. I have a delayed Dispatches from LAX post to put up, but I’ll just say this: we’re back in San Antonio, we went to Austin, hung out at Antone’s, and we discovered that Texans don’t dance to ska.

I’m on a real vacation. I’m not doing any theater whatsoever. But I did see the run of LOCAL STORY at NOTE on Weds, which was lovely. The old crowd.

I fly to Denver on Thursday, for LYDIA.

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the chorus, theater, travel

Dispatches from the Las Vegas airport

As if anticipating the excitement, over the Grand Canyon, a passenger went into medical distress. The flight attendants asked for doctors on the plane, and they clustered around him and lowered the cabin temperature. A woman in her thirties and a man over seventy confer over the patient. They lay him down in the aisle. We land and paramedics rush onboard.

We wait, and stare out at the skyline, and think about death. From the window of the plane: an enormous black pyramid wearing an Absolut logo over its triangular hips like a pair of designer jeans.

The first thing I see when I get off the plane is a bank of slot machines like docks in a harbor, with people anchored at almost every terminal – and an equally large wall of candy in plastic barrels, and children docked at those.

The sound of slot machines rings and arpeggiates through the air like crows mating. The sound of winning sounds like someone sliding the back of their hand up the keys of a reverby electric piano. It sounds like a smile. A big, fake smile.

A bottle of water costs $3.25, and an Odwalla $5.00. We’re not in Ithaca any more.

But, God, it’s a theater town! A spectacle town. I think about Dan and his year on the Blue Man show here. Posters for theatrical experiences plaster the sides of the moving sidewalks. I don’t see a single ad for anything but a show. Zumanity – Penn &Teller – Phantom – Chippendales – Mamma Mia – Spamalot – The Producers. The walls are bustling with the snarling, laughing faces of actors and dancers. And they look like they know they’re the only game in town. It’s sexy. I’m enthralled. All thoughts of email blasts begging for donations so that theater companies can survive are blissfully wiped from my mind. I’m in Athens – or perhaps in the antiAthens – and Dionysos is ruling the terminals.

I start staring at an ad for UNLV that says “Do you have what it takes to make it in performance art?” and almost trip over the woman in front of me. Do I what? In PERFORMANCE ART?

I feel like I’ve gone tripping back in time to a sleazy Broadway, like I’m walking down some numbered avenue in pinstriped trousers, humming “They say the neon lights are bright…” People come to this place to have physical experiences. To see things live. They come for the damn plays.

Despite myself, I start wondering what it would take to work here. The Red Death / The Story Of O / LOST GIRLS / Pompeii Prohibited : The Vegas Experience? “The show that’ll make you wish you’d never come to Vegas?” Would Alan Moore license his work to a theater company? Or Battlestar Galactica: The Vegas Experience? Or, really, it ought to be MAHAGONNY, or Titus, or Aristophanes. An updated Thesmophoriazusae.* +

Or the Bacchae. They’re building a performance culture here and it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to transfer a serious play, isn’t it? Am I out of my mind? Is there such a thing as off-off-Vegas? **

Next time I’m going to have to go through more than the airport.

* From Wikipedia: “Thesmophoriazusae (Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria) is a comedy written by the Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was first produced in 411 BC, probably at the City Dionysia. How it fared in the competition is unknown. In the fantasy, the character of Euripides learns that the women of Athens are secretly holding a trial of sorts to decide his fate. The female population is up in arms over the playwright’s continual portrayal of women as mad, murderous, erotomaniac, and suicidal (even as his most sympathetic protagonists). They are using the festival of Thesmophoria, an annual fertility celebration dedicated to Demeter, as a cover for their plot to hold Euripides accountable for his slanderous words.”

+ Comic choruses on the brain. Aren’t they more active than the tragic? Can’t you say that they affect the course of the plot, sometimes?
Last night Lauren and I were talking Nietzsche and choruses, and I think I need to do a bit more work on how the comic choruses fit into that – whether they fall into the same spectator dynamics.

** You say obsessive. I say persistent.

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travel, workstyle, writing

Don’t Be A Stranger

I fly to Ithaca this morning. Like Odysseus. I’ll never return to Ithaca without thinking about him, and the way that he takes so long to return. My pilgrimages aren’t quite twenty years apart, but every time I go back there, it feels like it’s been too long. I have nothing but pleasant anticipation about all of it, except for transferring between airlines when I switch planes.

Packing gets easier every time – if you never unpack, you never have to pack.

Here’s something interesting my Gmail text-ads popped up: Six Sentences, a weblog of very short stories. I’m going to submit one soon.

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moving, travel, workstyle

I’ll…Fly Away…

Yesterday I met with Professor Martin (we talked THE WASPS, Aristophanes, choruses, epics, Albert Lord…) and Katie at the Bechtel Center to discuss some scholarship applications. This morning I downloaded HIS DARK MATERIALS on audiobook. This afternoon, I’m meeting with Aaron Davidman one last time – hopefully to process the reading of A JERUSALEM BETWEEN US. I’m also going to try to sneak in a visit to Ellen if I can. And tonight, I fly to Indianapolis.

I’m very excited about November. I think I may finally be embracing this lifestyle, whatever it is. It was easier to pack than it has been in the past, and I woke up feeling good about the day.

I think the key is that travel days have to be days off, not work days – you have to do things that make yourself relax. It has to feel like a gift, not a chore, to be in an airport for 16 hours straight.

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