I saw, back to back, the Suzuki ELECTRA and the Song of the Goat MACBETH.

The ELECTRA’s highly choreographed staging was lovely. Everyone liked the on-stage drummer, the over-the-top drama queen Clytemnestra, and the Chorus in wheelchairs. But I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed in how controlled it was. I have come to think of all movement systems, including Suzuki, as training wheels to help the performers achieve a sense of release and spontaneity. I didn’t see that in this production, and especially not in the Chorus.

It made me think of how many productions I did with controlled choruses, albeit not nearly as well as this. It’s a type of work I am no longer interested in.

I went into the MACBETH with disappointment already in my brain, as a result – and although I love SOTG’s work, this time, I was much more critical. I spent the whole production thinking, “Am I really going to try to work with them? Really?” and, by the end, had almost convinced myself out of the whole thing.

I was back on the train of thought that I’ve had a first-class berth on for eight months – that all my chorus work is derivative. That I should just quit. That I don’t know what I’m doing and I should stop. And I felt, again, like sticking my head in a hole in the ground and never coming out.

It was at that point that I realized something. It doesn’t really matter whether I come to work with SOTG or not, or whether I take Step A or Step B in pursuit of the chorus. I could do any number of things. But when I think of the possibility of one day working with SOTG, I am inspired, and I have a reason to keep working. When I think that there’s no point in even trying, I am in despair.

I have to keep believing in it to keep believing in anything.

Ms. Sands sent identical scripts to artistic directors and literary managers around the country. The only difference was that half named a man as the writer (for example, Michael Walker), while half named a woman (i.e., Mary Walker). It turned out that Mary’s scripts received significantly worse ratings in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response than Michael’s. The biggest surprise? “These results are driven exclusively by the responses of female artistic directors and literary managers,” Ms. Sands said.

Ms. Sands was reluctant to explain the responses in terms of discrimination, suggesting instead that artistic directors who are women perhaps possess a greater awareness of the barriers female playwrights face.

– “Rethinking Gender Bias in Theater,” NYT

New stuff galore this AM. I think I’m really starting to figure out how to write about this.

Here is a story which is too weird for the official weblog of the US Artists Initiative.

I have hitherto not mentioned on this blog the sad fact that I lost both my wallet and my cell phone on my very first day in Poland, and I’m pretty sure they were stolen. I didn’t want to do anything official about it.

“Rachel,” I said, “my only goal in coming to Poland was to avoid any contact with the Polish police. When my grandfather left here, in 1937 (Rachel has been very patient about listening to all my stories that begin with “When my grandfather left here, in 1937”), I assure you that he did not seek out any kind of unnecessary contact with the Polish police. It goes against fundamental Weinberg principles to voluntarily go to meet with the police. Consequently, I am not going to the police station.”

“Well,” she said, “someone might turn it in. You never know.”

I let her convince me to go with a nice volunteer, Anna, to the station to fill out a report.

Anna, who has studied in Edinburgh but is from Poland, and was able to translate for me, was no more enthusiastic than I was about going to the police station, but she kindly helped me anyway. We took a cab to a different part of town, and entered an oppressive building painted in shades of decaying blue, with ceilings lower than ceilings should be. After going in one wrong entrance and then another, describing my wallet and phone to both Anna and a desk officer, and calculating the value of my phone in zlotys, we had to wait to file the actual report.

“There are three people ahead of us,” said Anna.

We sat down on the steps of the station, and waited. All the chairs inside were being occupied by other people who didn’t look too happy about being at the police station.

At length, Anna and I were ushered down a narrow, terrifying Matrix-esque decaying blue hallway, with the officer’s heels clicking on the tiles ahead of us like the second hand on a watch. We turned left into Room 6, which I thought was going to be a Law-And-Order style interrogation room, with two-way glass, a table, and a good and bad cop.

“Don’t leave me,” I whispered to Anna.

My fears turned out to be unfounded. Room 6 was an ordinary office with desks and carpet. The officer, a Polish woman with long fingernails and blonde hair, took my statement, one item at a time, through Anna. She was very thorough.

“What is your name?” said Anna.

“Dara Weinberg,” I said.

“Do you have any identification?” said Anna.

I thought that that was already getting weird, but I took out my passport.

“What are your parents’ names?” said Anna.

My parents’ names? I had visions of my entire family being harassed by the Polish police, or worse yet, my statements implicating them in some kind of “file,” like in that The Lives Of Others movie.

“Why do you need that information?” I said, in my best child-of-Sixties-radicals tone. The officer did not look happy, and barked something at Anna that sounded something like “Documentariat!”

“For the documentation,” Anna translated. I gathered that the computer wouldn’t let the officer move forward without entering something in that field.

I reluctantly gave her my parents’ names, feeling like I had betrayed the Weinbergs. I’m sorry, Mom and Dad. I didn’t tell her where you live.

The statement-taking moved forward with no further incidents. We were done in about ten minutes, and Anna and I escaped into the sunlight of a beautiful Poland afternoon. We walked back to the Festival Club, crossing the river along the way, for lunch.

I do not expect them to find my wallet.

I have about ten new posts, from three days in Wroclaw, Michalowice, and Legnica, live now at the US Artists Initiative weblog. Check it out – I’m afraid that to duplicate it all here would kill me. That blog is going to be much more active than Style Over Substance for the next two weeks, and you should turn there, not here, for the day-by-day blow-by-blow Poland Experience.

I will keep checking in here when I have stories to tell that don’t fit within the framework of the Initiative. I have many.

Blog, what happened to you? My sidebar is all wrong! I’m sorry I’ve been gone for so long. This is awful. Hang on a sec.

is it. It wraps itself around a central and hidden axis like the way our lives (by our I mean our) conform to forces over which we have no control. The text follows the shape.

Yes, I’m obsessed.

a WordPress theme that’s exactLY
what it is that I’m looking for –
but I’m not trying any more.
So this is how S.O.S. looks.
If you don’t like it, read a book.

(Trying.)