June 17, 2009

Happee Burfday to Me!!!!

Here's what I want:
  1. No drama
  2. Quality time with people who think I'm fabulous
  3. Cake - check
  4. Ice cream - working on it
  5. Raunchy times with Spock
  6. Airplane - check
  7. Pony

June 11, 2009

June 9, 2009

Courtesy of Matt Freeman

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Haaaaahahahahahaha! Ha! Haha! Teehee! Hee hee hee hee! Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho! Ha ha ha ha! Hahahahaha! Hee hee! Hee hee! Ha! Ha! Ha! Haaaaahahaha! Heeeheehee! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Haaaaahahahahahaha! Ha! Haha! Teehee! Hee hee hee hee! Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho! Ha ha ha ha! Hahahahaha! Hee hee! Hee hee! Ha! Ha! Ha! Haaaaahahaha! Heeeheehee! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Haaaaahahahahahaha! Ha! Haha! Teehee! Hee hee hee hee! Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho! Ha ha ha ha! Hahahahaha! Hee hee! Hee hee! Ha! Ha! Ha! Haaaaahahaha! Heeeheehee! Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Haaaaahahahahahaha! Ha! Haha! Teehee! Hee hee hee hee! Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho! Ha ha ha ha! Hahahahaha! Hee hee! Hee hee! Ha! Ha! Ha! Haaaaahahaha! Heeeheehee! Ha ha!

Where the Ladies Are

I can't believe I missed this!

Anyway, I should just get down to it and answer some of GreyZelda's questions there.
I've noticed, as of late, that it seems like only men get into the exchanges on a lot of the theatre discussions, particularly. Why is that? Why are we women backing off lately?. . . Where have all the lady bloggers and commenters gone? I know they're out there reading but they're staying mum and I'm not sure why. Any ideas?
I hadn't noticed, but that may be because theatre blogosphere comes off as a bit of a boys' club anyway. So I sort of expect mostly men to be the voices being heard. Not like I agree or think it's a good thing. As for why I'm backing off, read on.
I can only speak for myself but I've definitely backed off from getting into philosophical discussions with the guys online. I realized it was making me emotionally weary and, at the same time, bored and irritated . . . I was still reading the theatre blogs, but I didn't want to join in the discussions anymore. . . . I realized that my comments didn't seem to aid the discussion. The talks appeared to retread the same issues and, to be quite honest, started to reek of a lot of hot air and wind. . . . I wanted to focus on my family and my life.
This is it in a nutshell for me too.

I touched on this in a previous post as well.

Now my circumstances are such that I want to devote more energy to activities that reward me, so I'm devoting more time to Playsmiths, the big copywriting gig I'm working on, and doing more to prepare myself for a bat mitzvah.

Contrary to Scott's accusation that I don't want real interaction, I do enjoy genuine exchange. But the interactions I enjoy is not the kind that it seems people are interested in - at least not interested enough to actually engage in me with it. I'm introspective by nature. I'm most comfortable with focused, personal discussion that digs beneath our surface personas. I require a certain intimacy to feel deeply satisfied by interacting with others. Otherwise I just feel drained. From my experience, it's very difficult to get depth of discourse in theatre blogosphere. It's sort of like I explained in Beyond Religion 101:
I frankly think the way Isaac presents his post (particularly the part quoted above) is kind of a set-up. It presumes a lot about my reasons for calling myself a person of faith or the role religion plays in my life. It also presumes a lot about how I experience God, especially how it undermines the depth and complexity of that experience to one or two cliche variables. And from there, I'm forced to engage with the discussion on those limited grounds (limitations that don't necessarily apply to the people involved) or not engage at all. So, even without meaning to, the way he frames this discussion excludes and marginalizes the very people who could enrich it.
Now, in theatre blogosphere terms, I could easily say the same thing (albeit slightly edited):
I frankly think the way theatre blogosphere discusses things is kind of a setup. 'The talks appear to retread the same issues' (quoted from GreyZelda). And from there, I'm forced to engage with the discussion on those limited grounds (limitations that don't necessarily apply to the people involved) or not engage at all. So, without even meaning to, the way theatre blogsphere frams discussions excludes and marginalizes the very people who could enrich it.
Let's be frank: theatre blogosphere is not exactly a safe space for divergent perspectives. And by this I don't mean simple differences of opinion. I mean different ways of being - different ways of experiencing and understanding the world.

And before people start setting up false dichotomies, it's not that I want Don or Scott or Isaac to shut the fuck up. That's not it at all. But it would be nice to discuss smaller, more personal things a hell of a lot more often.

The fucked up thing is that this has been brought up before: by me (here and here), Laura (there and there), Adam, Mac, DevilVet, and Nick.

But, as always seems the case (especially in discussions about how gender, race, and class intersect with our day-to-day interactions), it gets mentioned but shit never changes.

Breakthrough (aka All About My Grandmother)

One of the struggles I've had with my play so far is making Orixa interesting. In a movement-based piece, you can't rely on witticisms and other verbal tricks. It's hard to convey quirkiness in a play filled with spirits, demons, ghosts, and other beings.

At first, I was kicking and screaming against the idea that my character had to want something, had to be a personality at all.

But as I was working on the play, I had a revelation. It started as I was sitting in the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble reading Jeffrey Sweet's The Dramatist's Toolkit. In it, he cautioned against making characters too autobiographical. "Change it up!" he says, in so many words. "A different age, different gender, different social class - find at least one way to make the character not like you!"

I resisted the notion at first, for several reasons. First of all, as each play is my own creation, there's nothing in it that's truly outside of me. And even when you do reach a point beyond yourself, you're still the starting point. Second of all, the idea sort of struck me as coming from a privileged perspective. It's easy enough to apply when you're dealing with a demographic that dominates today's theater landscape - but when it comes to authors whose voices are typically marginalized, it's a little bit harder to justify taking that advice full-stop.

But my resistance faltered as I was eating breakfast today and I suddenly - like out of the blue - thought about my grandmother. And I had so many questions! What was Grandma like? Not the Grandma I grew up with, but the one who raised my mother, aunt, and uncles? How did she see and interact with the world? These questions hounded me so much that I called Mom on her job to ask them.

The conversation was revealing in itself, but now I've solved my main problem with this play: I didn't know anything about my main character. As a result, everything seemed generic and nebulous. While what I had was imaginative and potentially very interesting, there was no visceral, emotional connection to it because it wasn't rooted in something concrete for me. So everything I wrote felt bland, trite, and meaningless.

All the feelings surrounding my relationship with Grandma - the joy of recognition, the sorrow at parting, the regret for things unsaid, the yearning to reestablish a connection, the love that needs no words, the humbling respect for a remarkable human being - suddenly surged and bubbled up to the surface, and it's so overwhelming I'm almost crying.

I now know who Orixa is. And her name is/was - Linda Ray Thacker.