Wisdom teeth removed.
Face rather puffy.
Lots of pain meds.
AND I'M ON MY WAY TO MONREAT!!!
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
Now spit!
I get my wisdom teeth removed this morning.
I greatly prefer morning surgeries, as I'm usually still so tired it takes them two seconds to put me to sleep. And I am actually not dreading the experience. I think I'll be fine. My body tends to recover well. The greatest unknown for me is the drugs, because of my synaesthesia, which goes INSANE when put in an altered state. (I naturally go through something I'm told is akin to an acid trip when I listen to Einstein on the Beach... I'd be terrified to see what would happen if I ACTUALLY did drugs. I did a 5 hour energy shot once and wanted to die.) So that's my biggest... concern, I guess, but it's actually less of a concern because it's such a controlled thing. It's my biggest curiosity.
(...my optimism astounds me. I'm going into oral surgery talking about my biggest curiosity?)
So yes. Prayers are appreciated. Milkshakes are also appreciated. So is Jello. My brother was up and about the next day, and we're hoping I'll be able to attend the memorial service tomorrow, but we'll see. ("I packed black clothing just in case." My mother: "Like you had to specifically pack black clothing." Me: "I packed NICE black clothing.") Hopefully I will recover speedily as I still need to finish the play proposals for next semester.
I greatly prefer morning surgeries, as I'm usually still so tired it takes them two seconds to put me to sleep. And I am actually not dreading the experience. I think I'll be fine. My body tends to recover well. The greatest unknown for me is the drugs, because of my synaesthesia, which goes INSANE when put in an altered state. (I naturally go through something I'm told is akin to an acid trip when I listen to Einstein on the Beach... I'd be terrified to see what would happen if I ACTUALLY did drugs. I did a 5 hour energy shot once and wanted to die.) So that's my biggest... concern, I guess, but it's actually less of a concern because it's such a controlled thing. It's my biggest curiosity.
(...my optimism astounds me. I'm going into oral surgery talking about my biggest curiosity?)
So yes. Prayers are appreciated. Milkshakes are also appreciated. So is Jello. My brother was up and about the next day, and we're hoping I'll be able to attend the memorial service tomorrow, but we'll see. ("I packed black clothing just in case." My mother: "Like you had to specifically pack black clothing." Me: "I packed NICE black clothing.") Hopefully I will recover speedily as I still need to finish the play proposals for next semester.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
I Live Like a Nun in a Cloister, Solitary..
Something's not right...
SOMEONE'S MISSING!
Gillian moved out on Monday. Since then, I've been rearranging, redecorating, and cleaning. The above picture is strange not only because it's an empty bed, but because there didn't used to be a bed in there at all. That room was our living room, the other room was the bedroom, for both of us. But with Gillian leaving, the spaces are being separated again. (I actually completely dismantled that bed, moved it into the next room, and reassembled it, by myself. I'm secretly a man.) So I've had to move around entirely as well. I'm keeping my room rather simple. One of my walls is staying almost entirely blank, the idea being that my room is a place of very specific visuals and sounds and smells that are comfortable and familiar and therefore can calm my senses when they start to overload. At least one blank wall makes sense to me. All of this moves towards lifestyle changes I'm making for next semester, primarily for my health and my faith. I told Stephanie when we were havin
g the "should we room together next semester?" conversation, "I anticipate that next semester I will be living much like a nun who makes strange noises." Working out so far. The rehearsal block with my prayer shawl over it in that corner will eventually become a more specifically devotional space.
Of course, now that everything is nice and organized and CLEAN (you've heard of St. George and the Dragon? Try Colleen and the Vacuum), I'm leaving. Tonight, actually, at 3am. I was very familiar with the 3am train from Penn Station to Richmond when I was in high school - it was one of the ways I could go up and see shows when I needed to be at school the next day. I'll probably head up to Penn around midnight and watch a movie on my computer until it's time to board. It's a bit of a pity, having JUST fully set up my new room, that I don't get to sleep in it tonight. Ah well.
I finished all school-related things yesterday. Turned in my last paper, had my last meeting. When it comes times to leave, I always get strangely emotional. But I'm ready for this break, and I'm looking forward to being in a place where a lot of things which are incredibly important in the environment I'm in now are not that important. That's a relief. It's very easy for me to start living with a skewed perspective when I'm here, so this break is largely about regaining that perspective, which I think is key for me, going into the next project. In the meeting I had last night, one of my teachers expressed again his observation that I'd poured everything I had into Tongues ("And if you disagree with me... you're wrong."), and he actually seemed incredibly worried that I wouldn't refill myself in the very short amount of time I have to do so. I think the key, for me is this perspective, so I'm glad to get away. I also really love train rides, and the stretch from New York to Richmond is a good one (even though I'll be asleep for most of it, God willing).
It's been a great semester. God has surrounded me with many blessings, mostly in the form of people. I'm so grateful for all of you and will miss you. At some point this break we'll get an email about curriculum and I'll run on here and post about how much I love and miss everyone at PHTS. I have no idea when I'm coming back to New York, yet.
Pray for my travels. It's actually been a blessing-in-disguise that I'm leaving so late, because had I left a few days earlier, I would have had an incredibly hard time traveling. I think I'm fine, though there were power problems at Penn Station earlier today, hopefully they've cleared
up by now. I purposefully chose the 3am train so that delays were less likely and so that if there were delays it wouldn't put me in too late... but I actually do need the train not to be ridiculously delayed as I'm heavily involved in both the 7pm and 11pm services tomorrow. (Where did Advent go?)
See you all in Virginia. In the meantime, I offer you a picture of the main decorated wall in my room. Clearly, John Calvin HAD to be the centerpiece of my dresser. I don't think he appreciates being next to that particular poster, though. At least if I come back and the poster is lying in pieces on the floor, I'll know what happened.
I also have Madame X on the closet door. Dressing inspiration, you know.
SOMEONE'S MISSING!
Gillian moved out on Monday. Since then, I've been rearranging, redecorating, and cleaning. The above picture is strange not only because it's an empty bed, but because there didn't used to be a bed in there at all. That room was our living room, the other room was the bedroom, for both of us. But with Gillian leaving, the spaces are being separated again. (I actually completely dismantled that bed, moved it into the next room, and reassembled it, by myself. I'm secretly a man.) So I've had to move around entirely as well. I'm keeping my room rather simple. One of my walls is staying almost entirely blank, the idea being that my room is a place of very specific visuals and sounds and smells that are comfortable and familiar and therefore can calm my senses when they start to overload. At least one blank wall makes sense to me. All of this moves towards lifestyle changes I'm making for next semester, primarily for my health and my faith. I told Stephanie when we were havin
g the "should we room together next semester?" conversation, "I anticipate that next semester I will be living much like a nun who makes strange noises." Working out so far. The rehearsal block with my prayer shawl over it in that corner will eventually become a more specifically devotional space.Of course, now that everything is nice and organized and CLEAN (you've heard of St. George and the Dragon? Try Colleen and the Vacuum), I'm leaving. Tonight, actually, at 3am. I was very familiar with the 3am train from Penn Station to Richmond when I was in high school - it was one of the ways I could go up and see shows when I needed to be at school the next day. I'll probably head up to Penn around midnight and watch a movie on my computer until it's time to board. It's a bit of a pity, having JUST fully set up my new room, that I don't get to sleep in it tonight. Ah well.
I finished all school-related things yesterday. Turned in my last paper, had my last meeting. When it comes times to leave, I always get strangely emotional. But I'm ready for this break, and I'm looking forward to being in a place where a lot of things which are incredibly important in the environment I'm in now are not that important. That's a relief. It's very easy for me to start living with a skewed perspective when I'm here, so this break is largely about regaining that perspective, which I think is key for me, going into the next project. In the meeting I had last night, one of my teachers expressed again his observation that I'd poured everything I had into Tongues ("And if you disagree with me... you're wrong."), and he actually seemed incredibly worried that I wouldn't refill myself in the very short amount of time I have to do so. I think the key, for me is this perspective, so I'm glad to get away. I also really love train rides, and the stretch from New York to Richmond is a good one (even though I'll be asleep for most of it, God willing).
It's been a great semester. God has surrounded me with many blessings, mostly in the form of people. I'm so grateful for all of you and will miss you. At some point this break we'll get an email about curriculum and I'll run on here and post about how much I love and miss everyone at PHTS. I have no idea when I'm coming back to New York, yet.
Pray for my travels. It's actually been a blessing-in-disguise that I'm leaving so late, because had I left a few days earlier, I would have had an incredibly hard time traveling. I think I'm fine, though there were power problems at Penn Station earlier today, hopefully they've cleared
up by now. I purposefully chose the 3am train so that delays were less likely and so that if there were delays it wouldn't put me in too late... but I actually do need the train not to be ridiculously delayed as I'm heavily involved in both the 7pm and 11pm services tomorrow. (Where did Advent go?)See you all in Virginia. In the meantime, I offer you a picture of the main decorated wall in my room. Clearly, John Calvin HAD to be the centerpiece of my dresser. I don't think he appreciates being next to that particular poster, though. At least if I come back and the poster is lying in pieces on the floor, I'll know what happened.
I also have Madame X on the closet door. Dressing inspiration, you know.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Trust and Obey
Well, it's the fourth Sunday of Advent, and I am stuck at home with an awful cold. I'm sure it's been brought on not only by the season and weather change, but by the end of the semester. Gillian got sick over Thanksgiving. I think it's that when we give our bodies a break after working them so hard for so long, they just cease to function properly for a while.
I finished up my last show of the semester (which is indeed my last show of the decade, what?) yesterday. PHTS tech weeks are generally very intense, loading in Sunday, teching Monday and Tuesday, dress on Wednesday and performances Thursday-Saturday. It's a very condensed week. Well, this show, for various reasons, loaded in Friday at 9am, and had two performances that night - 9pm and 10pm. I was billed as "Lord of Sound", meaning that anything sound-related, I did. That was pretty intense because it was basically a concert, and even though we were in a space that didn't NEED amplification, the director wanted a move from amplified to unamplified sound through the piece. So this means that Friday, I disassembled the sound system from one theater, reassembled it in another theater, ran six microphones, figured out the switching patterns of how the mics moved around the space, did a quick sound check, and operated the board AND house managed for two shows. Last night, I reset the mics, set up the director's 4-track recording system (hooked up to both the board and a room mic) and attempted to simultaneously mix the show for the room and mix it on the recording for two shows. Then I struck the entire system from the space, and mostly reinstalled it in the space it came from. Mostly, because the theater managers in their infinite grace did not make me rehang the speakers. I love them.
To bring this whole blog full-circle, I would not have felt comfortable doing any of this had it not been for Montreat this summer. While I was into sound last year, I didn't know the first thing about systems and was terrified of microphones, so something this technical I would have ran away from screaming. While I still have a lot to learn, it's nice to know that I've got a lot of the basics covered.
Now that this show is over, I only have one paper and one meeting before the semester is a wrap. Most of what's been happening lately has been mining from what we've done this semester in order to help us move forward into next semester. My training starting this year in particular is moving from being about classes to being about projects (most of the classes I have are there to support the projects I'm working on), so it's less of the "semester ends, start over with new classes" feeling that I'd imagine normal college to be like (I've never been in normal college, so I wouldn't know), and more of a constant movement of using the previous project's lessons to further the next one. What's really nice is we have the opportunity to do more than one of these open-to-the-public shows. There are programs out there where you do a lot of "classwork" things and then you have your FINAL THESIS SHOW that's the first show that's open to the public... meaning you get one big chance to integrate everything you've learned. That's silly. It's the integration that's the hard part. And the best way I can see to get better at that is by experience, which you can very easily get at PHTS. I've worked on 20 shows at NYU so far, and I'd say that's pretty average for someone who's been at PHTS for five semesters. There are certainly those who have done more.
So, much like in the real world, the focus now turns to the next piece. I'm looking forward to it, largely thanks to a meeting I had yesterday where a teacher of mine gave me extraordinarily useful and thoughtful feedback, and helped reframe things I haven't known how to tackle in a way that they're possible and exciting. (I'M SO RIDICULOUSLY BLESSED.) I also have most of my design team tentatively lined up (tentatively due to the fact that we won't have a Production Calendar so people can't commit for certain until we do). I'm leaving this semester much more positively than last semester (as those of you who have been reading this for a long while might recall). And I got a comment in my post-mortem that I think illuminates why.
For these shows, we all have mentors who watch us in process and are there for us to voice our concerns and questions to on a more personal level than voicing them in class. Since they see how we operate in the rehearsal room and design meetings, they can give us specific feedback on what we're doing well and what we might want to think about as we move forward. My mentor mentioned how confident (but not cocky) I was throughout the process, and I nearly burst into laughter. Because I wasn't confident in myself. The moments before rehearsal were inevitably filled with me freaking out. However, throughout this process I did have complete trust in God that this was what He wanted me doing, so I did it. The two of those working together creates something very, very interesting in a room. Complete trust that God has given me these specific gifts and wanted me to use them in this way, so no matter how squirrelly I got, I'd obey. How freeing that trust is.
I finished up my last show of the semester (which is indeed my last show of the decade, what?) yesterday. PHTS tech weeks are generally very intense, loading in Sunday, teching Monday and Tuesday, dress on Wednesday and performances Thursday-Saturday. It's a very condensed week. Well, this show, for various reasons, loaded in Friday at 9am, and had two performances that night - 9pm and 10pm. I was billed as "Lord of Sound", meaning that anything sound-related, I did. That was pretty intense because it was basically a concert, and even though we were in a space that didn't NEED amplification, the director wanted a move from amplified to unamplified sound through the piece. So this means that Friday, I disassembled the sound system from one theater, reassembled it in another theater, ran six microphones, figured out the switching patterns of how the mics moved around the space, did a quick sound check, and operated the board AND house managed for two shows. Last night, I reset the mics, set up the director's 4-track recording system (hooked up to both the board and a room mic) and attempted to simultaneously mix the show for the room and mix it on the recording for two shows. Then I struck the entire system from the space, and mostly reinstalled it in the space it came from. Mostly, because the theater managers in their infinite grace did not make me rehang the speakers. I love them.
To bring this whole blog full-circle, I would not have felt comfortable doing any of this had it not been for Montreat this summer. While I was into sound last year, I didn't know the first thing about systems and was terrified of microphones, so something this technical I would have ran away from screaming. While I still have a lot to learn, it's nice to know that I've got a lot of the basics covered.
Now that this show is over, I only have one paper and one meeting before the semester is a wrap. Most of what's been happening lately has been mining from what we've done this semester in order to help us move forward into next semester. My training starting this year in particular is moving from being about classes to being about projects (most of the classes I have are there to support the projects I'm working on), so it's less of the "semester ends, start over with new classes" feeling that I'd imagine normal college to be like (I've never been in normal college, so I wouldn't know), and more of a constant movement of using the previous project's lessons to further the next one. What's really nice is we have the opportunity to do more than one of these open-to-the-public shows. There are programs out there where you do a lot of "classwork" things and then you have your FINAL THESIS SHOW that's the first show that's open to the public... meaning you get one big chance to integrate everything you've learned. That's silly. It's the integration that's the hard part. And the best way I can see to get better at that is by experience, which you can very easily get at PHTS. I've worked on 20 shows at NYU so far, and I'd say that's pretty average for someone who's been at PHTS for five semesters. There are certainly those who have done more.
So, much like in the real world, the focus now turns to the next piece. I'm looking forward to it, largely thanks to a meeting I had yesterday where a teacher of mine gave me extraordinarily useful and thoughtful feedback, and helped reframe things I haven't known how to tackle in a way that they're possible and exciting. (I'M SO RIDICULOUSLY BLESSED.) I also have most of my design team tentatively lined up (tentatively due to the fact that we won't have a Production Calendar so people can't commit for certain until we do). I'm leaving this semester much more positively than last semester (as those of you who have been reading this for a long while might recall). And I got a comment in my post-mortem that I think illuminates why.
For these shows, we all have mentors who watch us in process and are there for us to voice our concerns and questions to on a more personal level than voicing them in class. Since they see how we operate in the rehearsal room and design meetings, they can give us specific feedback on what we're doing well and what we might want to think about as we move forward. My mentor mentioned how confident (but not cocky) I was throughout the process, and I nearly burst into laughter. Because I wasn't confident in myself. The moments before rehearsal were inevitably filled with me freaking out. However, throughout this process I did have complete trust in God that this was what He wanted me doing, so I did it. The two of those working together creates something very, very interesting in a room. Complete trust that God has given me these specific gifts and wanted me to use them in this way, so no matter how squirrelly I got, I'd obey. How freeing that trust is.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
'Tis the Season
I'm rather exhausted. The semester is slowly drawing to a close and it is becoming more and more difficult to articulate. So, bullet points!
- Gillian, my roommate, who really appreciates that that is how she's referred to in my blog, is not going to be my roommate next semester because she's going to England. She's packing up and moving out and it's rather upsetting. Stephanie, another 3rd year at PHTS, is moving in next semester since her roommate is also going abroad. Stephanie and I are probably the oddest, most random pair of people to be roommates, ever. It'll be interesting. She brought in a knife set, so I think that's a good start.
- I'm in the stage where I'm having tons of meetings with teachers about my show. My post-mortem, the major scheduled-by-the-school teacher meeting is tomorrow, and I've been meeting (and will continue to be meeting) with a lot of teachers outside of this. The obvious reason is to get feedback that will help me articulate goals for myself as I move into my next project. The much less obvious reason is so that I can learn how to get the feedback that helps me, so I can learn what questions to ask. Phenomenal meeting today on that front - she gave me feedback that was not only really useful, but I could see WHY it was really useful. I am blessed to be around generous, smart people.
- I'm also scheduling meetings with people in VA. You think I'd talk to people about hanging out, but no. I'm scheduling meetings.
- Remember that time I said I'd never work on six shows in one semester again? Yeah. I did six this semester again. I think I handled it better this time, though.
- I went through 36 cans of Cheerwine this semester.
- People in Virginia: I am getting on a train at 3am on December 24th, so the first time you'll see me is around Bon Air on Christmas Eve. I might be slightly dead because I will have gotten only train-sleep because I'll have to spend the rest of the day baking. I am then getting my wisdom teeth removed on December 28th. I may be going down to South Carolina, I may be stopping by Montreat, and I have no idea when I'm going back to New York, yet. If you want to visit me when I'm hyped up on drugs, I'm sure I'll be amusing.
- Today was the Holiday Party at PHTS. Every year we host a holiday party for homeless children. We went all out on the decorations this year. The day's always a blast and feels great and is a reminder of, again, how much love there is in that building.
- I'm nearly to the point of exhaustion where I want to burrow and hibernate and never speak to anyone. But, it's not the point of exhaustion where I never want to do theatre ever again, which is where I was at the end of last semester. I think this is a healthy exhaustion.
- If you know much about St. John of the Cross, the idea of the dark night of the soul, St. Theresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux, Mother Teresa, the theology of suffering, the ideas of religious obedience and submission particularly as practiced by those in religious orders, or extreme religious callings, we should have a conversation.
- Listening to The King's Singer's "A Little Christmas Music - Medley a la Mozart", I realized it makes perfect sense that I love strange vocal sounds.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
It was the glow of a light, it was the heart of a song...
Friday night, I saw Trans-Siberian Orchestra live.
GUUUUHH.
Trans-Siberian Orchestra shows are easily some of the most fulfilling theatrical experiences I've ever attended. As I mentioned in my post about getting my electric violin, I've been attending them off-and-on since middle school, and I am always thrilled. They follow the same format every year: the first "act" is their debut album, Christmas Eve and Other Stories, with the poetry-narration of the story read out loud. The second "act" changes a bit every year, and is more traditional rock show with hits from all of their albums. Thus, there is the traditional narrative experience of a theater piece, and the traditional hardcore sensuality of a rock show. Whenever I go to one of their shows now, I consider completely changing my career. Then I calm myself down by reminding myself that theater and rock shows aren't that different and that if I want to learn the technical side of sound well I should work with some bands anyway.
When I first saw TSO live, I was at a particularly rough point in my life and the concert had a great healing effect on me. Now, I'm not at a rough point, but am definitely at a place where I need to refuel myself and find experiences that will help me do that. By now, these shows are familiar but still surprising. By now, I not only know the songs intimately, but have a good grasp of the narration which I've only heard at the concerts. By now, that environment is so comfortable, and filled with positive past experiences that I could sit down in my really, really crappy "last row of the nosebleeds completely to the side" seat and feel my breath release.
And I'm sure it's a combination of all that that meant that in the first act, I was a blubbering mess.
There was the opening song, "Night Enchanted" from their new album, "Night Castle". Then they started the opening narration, and I think it was these lines:
In the moments of our lives
Both the joyous and the tragic
If the truth is to be told
We are all pursuing magic.
And instantly, I was gone. Lost. Eyes welling up and spilling over, nose turning red, brain thinking something about, "YESWEAREALLPURSUINGMAGICTHAT'SEVERYTHINGWESEARCHFORTHATGOODINTHEWORLDTHIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL", only far less coherent. By the first song from that album, "An Angel Came Down", I was sobbing while perched atop my chair (last row has some benefits), thinking, "What am I doing in theater? They've figured it all out here! Why don't I work to give the audience something this beautiful?! Everything should be this!"
And I kept crying for most of the album. The idea that wherever music plays there is hope? Cried. "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24"? Cried. Man who's had a fight with his daughter just wanting her home for Christmas? Cried. Said daughter wishing on the only star she could see, the light of an old bar in NYC, for help and money getting home? Cried. Angel-child coming into the bar and telling the bartender about the girl and the bartender paying for her plane ticket? Cried. Joy of father knowing his daughter would be home? Cried. Angel returning to God having seen the kindness that can exist between people on the earth? Wept. I was the corner of the "sold" seats, but since it was in a coliseum, there were seats wrapping all around the space so there were plenty of unsold seats next to me. I actually moved a seat away so as not to disturb the man sitting next to me.
Yes, I am the loser that cries through a rock concert.
To be fair, I'm not a generally weepy person. I don't cry at the drop of a hat unless it's Sweeney Todd, or, apparently, TSO. But by halfway through the concert, I'd gone through a complete emotional catharsis and was stepping newborn from the proverbial ashes. So there I am, emotionally vulnerable, sensually vulnerable and synaesthetic. And THEN, they take me into full-on rock show mode. Lights. Pyrotechnics. Fireworks. (I kid you not. FIREWORKS. INSIDE THE COLISEUM.) Not resolving one song so they could go directly into the next song without letting us breathe. LED screen-type projections (that I admittedly couldn't really see because I was so far to the side). Crazy stage antics. Playing in the sky. Lasers. Carmina Burana.
Not that they weren't doing these things during the first act, but during the second act, they bumped them up to eleven and the focus moved from character/story to entirely the performers and the show. Also, the second act was louder. Literally louder. Simple, genius. In my brain/body experience of sensory input, I overload easily... and there's the good kind of overload that is thrilling, and there's the bad kind of overload where I'm afraid to move. This was the good kind. COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR. Only once did the synaesthesia vs. stage lights thing become an issue (I'm sorry, but "O Fortuna" just ISN'T RED. It's GREEN). Instead, the show became a rollercoaster... and like a rollercoaster, where I scream not from fear, but from needing to release physical pressure that has built itself within me, I was clearly screaming and headbanging because all the input I was getting was so much good that I couldn't physically hold it still. It needed release. (This is not unusual with me. I physically spaz a great deal because of the physicality and sensuality of emotion. It's a good thing I tend not to go to concerts where moshing is popular.)
The second act in particular became a huge party of "LOOK WHAT WE CAN DO!" which I really appreciated. TSO is comprised of many accomplished musicians and performers. Getting to see them strut their stuff was satisfying, because I can't do that and don't know many people who can do that. This year they gave the electric violin a LOT of stage time. Yessss. Mark isn't playing with TSO this year as he's focusing more on his "Electrify Your Strings!" program with public schools, but I remember talking with him about how he was trying to get TSO to let the violin be more of a presence in the show as opposed to primarily leading the local string section. Well, they've finally got there, which is smart because electric violins are still relatively new instruments. There's a huge "wow" factor with an electric violin. (I used mine in my final project for Experimental Music Theater. It wasn't a great project, but a lot of people thought it was because I used an electric violin.) And Anna Phoebe, the electric violinist this year... phenomenal. Incredible. I want to play electric violin like that. (In this clip she appears at around 1:40. Chris hits his head on a glowing panel at 1:00.)
A show as huge as Trans-Siberian Orchestra shows could seem technically ridiculous. Their setup is insane, and I don't want to know how much it costs. Everything moves, everything shifts, things rise into the sky. And the beauty of it is that none of it is necessary. It's not life changing. It's not going to make me a better person. It's actually just awesome. It's incredible to watch. I'm not thinking about how this affects the world, I'm not moving to some higher plane, it's actually working to fulfill sensory desires, and celebrate the possibilities of the unnecessary things we can do. For an extreme example:
Yes, that's Chris Caffery and Anna Phoebe rising into the sky during the encore of "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24". It's over the top. It's ridiculous. It's unnecessary. It's AWESOME.
On a less extreme example, there's one effect that they've been doing for years, since I think the 3rd time I saw them... which is making it snow during the song "First Snow". They shoot out something over the floor section that I believe is a kind of soap, so soap-bubble clusters come down. They tend to dissolve right before they hit the audience. The first effect this has which is so genius, is it makes people in the audience look up in wonder, and reach over their heads to see what it is... which is a child's reaction to their first snow. Genius. Then, add in the lasers to the mix... and the bright specks that appear in the sky when the lasers hit the snow is glittering and gorgeous, and is simply, "Look what we can do with light!"
Something this particular TSO show helped me articulate is why I am drawn to heavy music. I mean, yes, it clearly goes back to my childhood and having a brother five years older than me who would blast In Flames and Meshuggah. But I started blazing my own metalhead trails away from his tastes with my discovery of Elvenking in 8th grade, and now while we do like similar music, we lean towards different facets of metal. I tend towards epic. Power metal, symphonic metal, folk metal, melodic death metal. Similarly, I am drawn to epic classical music. Stravinsky, Shostakovitch, Berlioz, Beethoven. Organ music. GIANT CHOIRS. The thing that scared me and excited me the most when I first saw Sweeney Todd was the giant choir standing up and singing the Dies Irae theme... and "City on Fire". (I showed people the 1982 version of Sweeney and they had no idea why that song gave me nightmares. Then I showed them the 2001 version with the massive choir and they understood.) I like epic. I like extreme, largely because I have very extreme emotions that I actively work to neutralize in daily life because showing that much emotion is not socially acceptable. Where are they to come out? Music.
Metal is about extremes. It's about extreme distortion, extreme volume, extreme emotion. This was enormously clear to me this time around hearing the introduction to "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24".
"Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24" is very easily Trans-Siberian Orchestra's most famous song, which you've probably heard. It's "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and "Carol of the Bells", starting with a single cello and moving into heavy, screaming guitars. TSO actually came to be because of this song. This was originally released on Savatage's album, Dead Winter Dead, a concept album about the Bosnian War. In this story, an old man returns to his hometown of Sarajevo to find it wracked by bombs every night. His protest is to play classical music on his cello in the ruins of the middle of the town, right in the middle of the warfare. (The song "Mozart and Madness" from that album exemplifies this - and this track was recently edited and rerecorded and released on TSO's latest album.) "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24" is the song representing the old cellist playing through the bombs on Christmas Eve. In the story of the album, a woman and a man from different sides of the conflict are listening, then hear the cello abruptly stop. They rush to see what happened, and find the old man dead, finally hit, with his smashed cello beside him. (This story was inspired by the playing of cellist Vedran Smajlović.)
"Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24" became such a huge hit, that some of the main people involved with Savatage decided to create Trans-Siberian Orchestra off of that concept. Many, many people, songs and lyrical phrases are shared between TSO and Savatage. TSO is bigger, more of an orchestra. Savatage is much rougher around the edges, more of a band.
How Trans-Siberian Orchestra contextualizes "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24" for their album is: the angel that is flying over the earth on Christmas Eve sees scars upon the people and the land. As he listens to hear what has happened, he hears people say they're killing for God. This shocks the angel, who, being an angel and all, has heard God speak often and knew that God never mentioned killing your neighbor. Drawing close to a recent battleground, he hears this song, and somehow the song still brought hope even in the most desperate circumstance.
Thus, this piece became an angered cry. And it NEEDED to be loud, and it needed to scream and Anna needed to play so hard that bow hairs started to break off because this was a protest. This was everyone with their own voice, be it guitar or violin or drums or keyboards or cello, crying out against the voices of conflict and hate. It was screaming for hope where everyone else had given up. Because the thing about hope is that no one can take it away from you if you insist on holding onto it. You can create it. This was creating the most extreme hope in the midst of devestation, and the NEED of that could only be expressed through the extremes of metal.
And every emotion throughout the show was that extreme. If it was happiness, it was unbounded joy. If it was sadness, it was complete devastation. If it was celebration, it was WILD. They actually did "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24" TWICE... once in narrative context, and once as encore, as the "this is our top hit song that you know and love" bit (which is when Anna and Chris levitated on that platform).
It was extremely emotional. It was extremely sensual. It was extremely moving. And Trans-Siberian Orchestra concerts always focus around hope and goodwill, and we all know how much of a sucker I am for that. I came out of Nassau Coliseum absolutely alive and buzzing, caught with the Advent spirit which has stayed. Last night I walked home, singing the whole way, largely Christmas Carols and TSO songs. "Promises to Keep" has some lyrics that ring very true to me:
And the dream is still alive
From that first December morning
And it always will survive
As long as we can see
That the dreams that we find in life
Are the dreams we tend to seek
And Christmas has its promises to keep
Christmas time and the moment's just beginning
From last night when we wished upon a star
And if this kindness this day is just pretending
If we pretend long enough
Never giving up
It just might be who we are.
It's a choice. A choice to treat people with love, and that doesn't have to be confined just to "the holiday season". Any magic we find at this time is magic we ourselves create. It's not like God comes out in December and bestows things on us. He's always there, if we'll just reach our hands up, like children wondering at snow.
Now I'm off to hear Britten's Ceremony of Carols at Grace Church. Yay Advent!
GUUUUHH.
Trans-Siberian Orchestra shows are easily some of the most fulfilling theatrical experiences I've ever attended. As I mentioned in my post about getting my electric violin, I've been attending them off-and-on since middle school, and I am always thrilled. They follow the same format every year: the first "act" is their debut album, Christmas Eve and Other Stories, with the poetry-narration of the story read out loud. The second "act" changes a bit every year, and is more traditional rock show with hits from all of their albums. Thus, there is the traditional narrative experience of a theater piece, and the traditional hardcore sensuality of a rock show. Whenever I go to one of their shows now, I consider completely changing my career. Then I calm myself down by reminding myself that theater and rock shows aren't that different and that if I want to learn the technical side of sound well I should work with some bands anyway.
When I first saw TSO live, I was at a particularly rough point in my life and the concert had a great healing effect on me. Now, I'm not at a rough point, but am definitely at a place where I need to refuel myself and find experiences that will help me do that. By now, these shows are familiar but still surprising. By now, I not only know the songs intimately, but have a good grasp of the narration which I've only heard at the concerts. By now, that environment is so comfortable, and filled with positive past experiences that I could sit down in my really, really crappy "last row of the nosebleeds completely to the side" seat and feel my breath release.
And I'm sure it's a combination of all that that meant that in the first act, I was a blubbering mess.
There was the opening song, "Night Enchanted" from their new album, "Night Castle". Then they started the opening narration, and I think it was these lines:
In the moments of our lives
Both the joyous and the tragic
If the truth is to be told
We are all pursuing magic.
And instantly, I was gone. Lost. Eyes welling up and spilling over, nose turning red, brain thinking something about, "YESWEAREALLPURSUINGMAGICTHAT'SEVERYTHINGWESEARCHFORTHATGOODINTHEWORLDTHIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL", only far less coherent. By the first song from that album, "An Angel Came Down", I was sobbing while perched atop my chair (last row has some benefits), thinking, "What am I doing in theater? They've figured it all out here! Why don't I work to give the audience something this beautiful?! Everything should be this!"
And I kept crying for most of the album. The idea that wherever music plays there is hope? Cried. "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24"? Cried. Man who's had a fight with his daughter just wanting her home for Christmas? Cried. Said daughter wishing on the only star she could see, the light of an old bar in NYC, for help and money getting home? Cried. Angel-child coming into the bar and telling the bartender about the girl and the bartender paying for her plane ticket? Cried. Joy of father knowing his daughter would be home? Cried. Angel returning to God having seen the kindness that can exist between people on the earth? Wept. I was the corner of the "sold" seats, but since it was in a coliseum, there were seats wrapping all around the space so there were plenty of unsold seats next to me. I actually moved a seat away so as not to disturb the man sitting next to me.
Yes, I am the loser that cries through a rock concert.
To be fair, I'm not a generally weepy person. I don't cry at the drop of a hat unless it's Sweeney Todd, or, apparently, TSO. But by halfway through the concert, I'd gone through a complete emotional catharsis and was stepping newborn from the proverbial ashes. So there I am, emotionally vulnerable, sensually vulnerable and synaesthetic. And THEN, they take me into full-on rock show mode. Lights. Pyrotechnics. Fireworks. (I kid you not. FIREWORKS. INSIDE THE COLISEUM.) Not resolving one song so they could go directly into the next song without letting us breathe. LED screen-type projections (that I admittedly couldn't really see because I was so far to the side). Crazy stage antics. Playing in the sky. Lasers. Carmina Burana.
Not that they weren't doing these things during the first act, but during the second act, they bumped them up to eleven and the focus moved from character/story to entirely the performers and the show. Also, the second act was louder. Literally louder. Simple, genius. In my brain/body experience of sensory input, I overload easily... and there's the good kind of overload that is thrilling, and there's the bad kind of overload where I'm afraid to move. This was the good kind. COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR COLOR. Only once did the synaesthesia vs. stage lights thing become an issue (I'm sorry, but "O Fortuna" just ISN'T RED. It's GREEN). Instead, the show became a rollercoaster... and like a rollercoaster, where I scream not from fear, but from needing to release physical pressure that has built itself within me, I was clearly screaming and headbanging because all the input I was getting was so much good that I couldn't physically hold it still. It needed release. (This is not unusual with me. I physically spaz a great deal because of the physicality and sensuality of emotion. It's a good thing I tend not to go to concerts where moshing is popular.)
The second act in particular became a huge party of "LOOK WHAT WE CAN DO!" which I really appreciated. TSO is comprised of many accomplished musicians and performers. Getting to see them strut their stuff was satisfying, because I can't do that and don't know many people who can do that. This year they gave the electric violin a LOT of stage time. Yessss. Mark isn't playing with TSO this year as he's focusing more on his "Electrify Your Strings!" program with public schools, but I remember talking with him about how he was trying to get TSO to let the violin be more of a presence in the show as opposed to primarily leading the local string section. Well, they've finally got there, which is smart because electric violins are still relatively new instruments. There's a huge "wow" factor with an electric violin. (I used mine in my final project for Experimental Music Theater. It wasn't a great project, but a lot of people thought it was because I used an electric violin.) And Anna Phoebe, the electric violinist this year... phenomenal. Incredible. I want to play electric violin like that. (In this clip she appears at around 1:40. Chris hits his head on a glowing panel at 1:00.)
A show as huge as Trans-Siberian Orchestra shows could seem technically ridiculous. Their setup is insane, and I don't want to know how much it costs. Everything moves, everything shifts, things rise into the sky. And the beauty of it is that none of it is necessary. It's not life changing. It's not going to make me a better person. It's actually just awesome. It's incredible to watch. I'm not thinking about how this affects the world, I'm not moving to some higher plane, it's actually working to fulfill sensory desires, and celebrate the possibilities of the unnecessary things we can do. For an extreme example:
Yes, that's Chris Caffery and Anna Phoebe rising into the sky during the encore of "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24". It's over the top. It's ridiculous. It's unnecessary. It's AWESOME.
On a less extreme example, there's one effect that they've been doing for years, since I think the 3rd time I saw them... which is making it snow during the song "First Snow". They shoot out something over the floor section that I believe is a kind of soap, so soap-bubble clusters come down. They tend to dissolve right before they hit the audience. The first effect this has which is so genius, is it makes people in the audience look up in wonder, and reach over their heads to see what it is... which is a child's reaction to their first snow. Genius. Then, add in the lasers to the mix... and the bright specks that appear in the sky when the lasers hit the snow is glittering and gorgeous, and is simply, "Look what we can do with light!"
Something this particular TSO show helped me articulate is why I am drawn to heavy music. I mean, yes, it clearly goes back to my childhood and having a brother five years older than me who would blast In Flames and Meshuggah. But I started blazing my own metalhead trails away from his tastes with my discovery of Elvenking in 8th grade, and now while we do like similar music, we lean towards different facets of metal. I tend towards epic. Power metal, symphonic metal, folk metal, melodic death metal. Similarly, I am drawn to epic classical music. Stravinsky, Shostakovitch, Berlioz, Beethoven. Organ music. GIANT CHOIRS. The thing that scared me and excited me the most when I first saw Sweeney Todd was the giant choir standing up and singing the Dies Irae theme... and "City on Fire". (I showed people the 1982 version of Sweeney and they had no idea why that song gave me nightmares. Then I showed them the 2001 version with the massive choir and they understood.) I like epic. I like extreme, largely because I have very extreme emotions that I actively work to neutralize in daily life because showing that much emotion is not socially acceptable. Where are they to come out? Music.
Metal is about extremes. It's about extreme distortion, extreme volume, extreme emotion. This was enormously clear to me this time around hearing the introduction to "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24".
"Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24" is very easily Trans-Siberian Orchestra's most famous song, which you've probably heard. It's "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and "Carol of the Bells", starting with a single cello and moving into heavy, screaming guitars. TSO actually came to be because of this song. This was originally released on Savatage's album, Dead Winter Dead, a concept album about the Bosnian War. In this story, an old man returns to his hometown of Sarajevo to find it wracked by bombs every night. His protest is to play classical music on his cello in the ruins of the middle of the town, right in the middle of the warfare. (The song "Mozart and Madness" from that album exemplifies this - and this track was recently edited and rerecorded and released on TSO's latest album.) "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24" is the song representing the old cellist playing through the bombs on Christmas Eve. In the story of the album, a woman and a man from different sides of the conflict are listening, then hear the cello abruptly stop. They rush to see what happened, and find the old man dead, finally hit, with his smashed cello beside him. (This story was inspired by the playing of cellist Vedran Smajlović.)
"Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24" became such a huge hit, that some of the main people involved with Savatage decided to create Trans-Siberian Orchestra off of that concept. Many, many people, songs and lyrical phrases are shared between TSO and Savatage. TSO is bigger, more of an orchestra. Savatage is much rougher around the edges, more of a band.
How Trans-Siberian Orchestra contextualizes "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24" for their album is: the angel that is flying over the earth on Christmas Eve sees scars upon the people and the land. As he listens to hear what has happened, he hears people say they're killing for God. This shocks the angel, who, being an angel and all, has heard God speak often and knew that God never mentioned killing your neighbor. Drawing close to a recent battleground, he hears this song, and somehow the song still brought hope even in the most desperate circumstance.
Thus, this piece became an angered cry. And it NEEDED to be loud, and it needed to scream and Anna needed to play so hard that bow hairs started to break off because this was a protest. This was everyone with their own voice, be it guitar or violin or drums or keyboards or cello, crying out against the voices of conflict and hate. It was screaming for hope where everyone else had given up. Because the thing about hope is that no one can take it away from you if you insist on holding onto it. You can create it. This was creating the most extreme hope in the midst of devestation, and the NEED of that could only be expressed through the extremes of metal.
And every emotion throughout the show was that extreme. If it was happiness, it was unbounded joy. If it was sadness, it was complete devastation. If it was celebration, it was WILD. They actually did "Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24" TWICE... once in narrative context, and once as encore, as the "this is our top hit song that you know and love" bit (which is when Anna and Chris levitated on that platform).
It was extremely emotional. It was extremely sensual. It was extremely moving. And Trans-Siberian Orchestra concerts always focus around hope and goodwill, and we all know how much of a sucker I am for that. I came out of Nassau Coliseum absolutely alive and buzzing, caught with the Advent spirit which has stayed. Last night I walked home, singing the whole way, largely Christmas Carols and TSO songs. "Promises to Keep" has some lyrics that ring very true to me:
And the dream is still alive
From that first December morning
And it always will survive
As long as we can see
That the dreams that we find in life
Are the dreams we tend to seek
And Christmas has its promises to keep
Christmas time and the moment's just beginning
From last night when we wished upon a star
And if this kindness this day is just pretending
If we pretend long enough
Never giving up
It just might be who we are.
It's a choice. A choice to treat people with love, and that doesn't have to be confined just to "the holiday season". Any magic we find at this time is magic we ourselves create. It's not like God comes out in December and bestows things on us. He's always there, if we'll just reach our hands up, like children wondering at snow.
Now I'm off to hear Britten's Ceremony of Carols at Grace Church. Yay Advent!
Friday, December 11, 2009
I Will Joyfully Sing in the Morning
I do not have class until noon today, but at 9am I was in the PHTS office with my mini-accordion. Harrison wheeled a piano into the office, which Barbara sat on top of with her ukelele, and Amy leaned against with her kazoo. The Associate Director of PHTS danced around with a tambourine, Lindsay (and most of us) sang. The set list included rolicking versions of "Sweet Sue" and "When The Saints Go Marching In", a jazz version of "The Dreidel Song" (requested by the 2nd year directing teacher), a reprise of a song about one of our teachers that Barbara, Amy and I improv'd after class a few weeks ago, "La Vie En Rose" sung in French by one of the office workers, "O Holy Night" (requested by the school's Director), and "We Wish You A Merry Christmas", at the conclusion of which in walked one of the 1st year Voice and Speech teachers wearing a Santa hat. The crowd that had gathered in the office screamed, "Santa!"
...yes. Yes, this is where I go to school. This has been happening every Friday at 9am, apparently. I just found out about it last week while doing the novelty dance to "Build Me Up Buttercup" on the street. We'll be back on Monday, as well, since Monday is operating on a Friday schedule. The director of the school got a lot of pictures. It was pure joy. There is so much love in this place.
Also, there will be freshly baked cookies and muffins on Monday. Any requests?
...yes. Yes, this is where I go to school. This has been happening every Friday at 9am, apparently. I just found out about it last week while doing the novelty dance to "Build Me Up Buttercup" on the street. We'll be back on Monday, as well, since Monday is operating on a Friday schedule. The director of the school got a lot of pictures. It was pure joy. There is so much love in this place.
Also, there will be freshly baked cookies and muffins on Monday. Any requests?
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Glorificamus te
So. Tongues happened.
UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE YEAR!
Tongues went very, very well, and that doesn't begin to cover it. Tech week went incredibly smoothly and the reception the show got was phenomenal. I've rarely heard people so enthusiastic about a 3rd Year project. I've gotten extremely high praise from teachers, peers, people who see a lot of theater and know what they're doing.
I'll say that Tongues was a success in a few ways:
1) We put on stage what we wanted to see on stage. This is a much bigger deal than it sounds, because I've struggled violently with this forever, even believing for the longest time that it couldn't be done. It's funny that just when I gave up on the possibility of it happening, it happens. It is enormously difficult to get something that's in your head out of your head and into spaces and bodies.
2) Technically speaking, the tech week and performances were very smooth. We had no real tech week disasters. The fabric came in late, but my set designer cared and found a way to work so we could still focus lights on Sunday and know exactly what needed to be done with the fabric when it came in. A lot of the houselights didn't work for various reasons so we ended up with a singular houselight but the audience was still lit. (My lighting designer said, "Colleen, God wanted this show to only have one houselight." I accepted that explanation.)
3) The combination of the two of these means that now, when I'm getting feedback, I'm getting feedback on the actual vision of the show. Not, "Oh, we couldn't get that to work in the space," or "Oh, that didn't do what I thought it would do." We got the show into the space as we envisioned it and were not victims of tech or anything like that. Thus the feedback I'm getting now is a lot more useful because people saw the show we wanted them to see. Sad to say, that is often not the case and that's only happened because the entire team (including the freshmen crew members) was engaged, invested, open, available, and caring. 90% of my job was done when I assembled this team, because they're all brilliant and work tremendously hard.
4) Many of the choices we made seemed to hit and affect the audience in the kind of ways we wanted them to. The room after very show was alive and buzzing. I'm going through the process of getting feedback and finding out what I want to about people's experiences of the piece, but the feeling of that theatre afterward, and the enthusiasm of people who have come up to me to talk about it, has felt like what I wanted it to feel like and that is HUGE.
A lot of things lined up beautifully for this show. We took a lot of risks and many of them paid off. Some of them didn't, but I'm glad we took them because it's more interesting. (When I wasn't sure about something, I went for the choice that might be more confusing but was definitely more interesting.) Our Collaboration teachers talk about presentations as trying to take the "luck" factor away... so that we do enough preparation and ask enough questions that we know what will happen when we get into the space, so it's not, "The fabric happened to work, oh thank God!" Yes, yes, I agree - however, when we're doing this for the first time, there IS a greater "luck" factor because we don't have as much experience to know how things work in spaces. Especially early on in directing, you're just making things up. I am, anyway. I'm just making things up and when things work I keep doing them. It happens that this process a lot of things I made up worked, so now my job is to go back in and figure out what made things go right and how I can grab a hold of that and use it consciously. And look at the things that didn't work, which were largely things that I just don't understand, and figure out how to work on those issues for the next piece (or figure out who to surround myself with).
Speaking of the next piece, I've been hearing, "Tongues was incredible - what're you doing next semester?!" a lot. I panicked for a while at this. I had ideas, but they flew out the window when Tongues actually went up. I plunged myself into reading plays and I think I've found one that's a good fit, and I have some exciting impulses that I've pitched to people who seemed to become enthused by them. The great thing about the success of Tongues is that I have a lot more people who actively want to work with me, which will hopefully make life easier for me next semester. The scary thing is that the bar is set higher for my next piece. It's set REALLY HIGH. Because just like staging a dance number, I have to top myself.
As I found myself becoming intimidated by my own work, I went back to what this process was before the "critical acclaim". I sat for two hours on Sunday and watched one stick of incense burn all the way down, to calm myself, reflect and meditate, because my brain was whirring incessantly by the end of this run. And what I determined was that this was the most honest thing I've ever done. This piece was me, sitting down with my passions and my fears and saying, "Okay. Let's do this." I am scared by the things I love the most. The things that interest me are also the things that I find terrifying. I think many of us are afraid to follow what we love because in loving something, there is always the possibility that you could get too close and break it. It's why intimacy is so terrifying - every string is more fragile up close than at a distance. One note I've gotten often is, "She loves this, she has this, she cares about this - why isn't she using it?" The answer is fear. Plain and simple. Fear.
And to be brutally honest, I am not a strong enough person to overcome that for myself. I could, yes, but I don't want to. I'd rather be comfortable, and that's something I've denied for a long time. But yes. I would rather be comfortable in middle-class obscurity than constantly going out on limbs I'm afraid will break underneath me, which is what directing often feels like. I actually don't like leading people, which is funny because people have been telling me my whole life that I'm good at it. (PEOPLE SCARE ME.) And if I was doing it for myself alone... well, I just wouldn't.
The secret that keeps me ticking is that I'm not doing this for myself. I'm doing this because God has called me to do this. I don't know why. I'm like Moses with his stutter. Send Aaron, he's more articulate. I don't get it, but I believe it. And the secret of these days of hearing mindblowingly glorious responses to this piece is that, while, yes, I'm as emotionally needy as the next person, yes, I freak out that so-and-so said it was one of the best third years they've ever seen... but the deeper joy is that all of those praises I get to reflect up. What I do is all for the glory of God.
I got into a conversation earlier this semester about thanking God in the director's note of the program... and the more I thought about it, the more I personally disagreed with that concept. Because to me, thanking God sounds like, "Thank you, God, for helping me carry out my plan." I'm not a Prayer of Jabez Christian. I'm even extreme enough to not be an, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," Christian. I will pray for strength to do God's will, yes, because many of the things He asks of me made me tremble and I cannot get through them without that prayer, but why should God strengthen me, if not for the glory of Him? I would rather disappear. The verse that resonates with me is, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Christ living in me means that God can use everything He has given me, the things that make me specifically me, that makes my production different than any other production. Use them for His purposes. If I try to use them for my own I run dry and implode and start hating everything. (I speak from experience.)
What I did in the Director's Note in the program to that end was have the phrase, "Omnis honor et gloria. Per omnia saecula saeculorum." It's quoting the Eucharistic Doxology, in Latin. Full text of that Doxology is, "Through Him, and with Him, and in Him, is unto Thee, God the Father almighty, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honour and glory, world without end. Amen." All honor and glory is yours. And what a deep joy it is to reflect glory to God.
Tongues was my two coins, my loaves and fish, all I had. One of my teachers told oneof his classes, "She needs to recharge herself because she poured everything she had into that piece." Give everything, and give it fully, and give it honestly. I think that's the key, for me at least. I do not know the path that is set before me, but it is God who multiplies the offerings we give. Not to dismiss the work that myself or anyone working on the team did, because it's only when you give of yourself so fully that God does His work. To phrase it in a more secular way: when groups of people come and work hard together, something is created that none of them could have dreamt up on their own.
I've got my work cut out for me for next semester. Right now I'm picking the brains of smart people about my work in ways that will (hopefully) help me move forward, and starting to seduce people for the next piece. I have come out of this process infinitely more confident in my ability to lead a group of artists, and it's very nice to have such a successful production behind me because it's easier to get people excited about the next one. I'll fight again to be in voice and speech, though I think it should be easier now that people have seen how I used it in Tongues. (That is one thing I'm very proud of. I think Tongues was a giant win for the Voice and Speech department. It's like I was saying for a year, "Guys, please, just put me in voice and speech, I PROMISE it's really important to what I want to do," and they trusted me or took a risk on me or thought, "I guess if she's so passionate/annoying about it...." and got me in the class against all odds... and with Tongues I could say, "See?! THIS IS WHAT I MEAN." The Voice and Speech teachers were all quite excited because I partially used this show to scream, "THESE CLASSES ARE RELEVANT!") I'll give myself time to recharge. I'll compose music because I think there's a vocal ensemble in the next piece. (Right?) And I'll be very aware that anticipation is high for my next piece and I'll have a lot of expectations to live up to... but ultimately, I think I need to approach the piece the same way. Giving my two coins, all I have, up as offering.
My cast gave me this necklace before closing night. It means more than I can say. A cross full of colors. Exactly me. I marvel at the shift that has happened in even just the past year. Since really this summer. I'm associated with color, not black. Today I was aptly described as being "sunny", which is a descriptor that would NEVER have been used for me in years past. I think the secret is the freedom in service.
Unbounded gratitude pours from me to everyone involved in Tongues. To the inspiring designers who fought me for things that made the show infinitely better, and their assistants who reminded me of the best kind of attitude to have during tech. To the hardest working actors I have ever encountered who gave every waking moment to this piece. To the on-top-of-everything stage manager who pushed me when I started getting uncomfortable and squirrelly. To the most supportive crew I have ever worked with. To every teacher and classmate who has offered advice, questions, or feedback to anyone on the team. To PHTS who made it happen, which is one of the greatest gifts. The smartest thing I did was surround myself with all of you.
UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE YEAR!
Tongues went very, very well, and that doesn't begin to cover it. Tech week went incredibly smoothly and the reception the show got was phenomenal. I've rarely heard people so enthusiastic about a 3rd Year project. I've gotten extremely high praise from teachers, peers, people who see a lot of theater and know what they're doing.
I'll say that Tongues was a success in a few ways:
1) We put on stage what we wanted to see on stage. This is a much bigger deal than it sounds, because I've struggled violently with this forever, even believing for the longest time that it couldn't be done. It's funny that just when I gave up on the possibility of it happening, it happens. It is enormously difficult to get something that's in your head out of your head and into spaces and bodies.
2) Technically speaking, the tech week and performances were very smooth. We had no real tech week disasters. The fabric came in late, but my set designer cared and found a way to work so we could still focus lights on Sunday and know exactly what needed to be done with the fabric when it came in. A lot of the houselights didn't work for various reasons so we ended up with a singular houselight but the audience was still lit. (My lighting designer said, "Colleen, God wanted this show to only have one houselight." I accepted that explanation.)
3) The combination of the two of these means that now, when I'm getting feedback, I'm getting feedback on the actual vision of the show. Not, "Oh, we couldn't get that to work in the space," or "Oh, that didn't do what I thought it would do." We got the show into the space as we envisioned it and were not victims of tech or anything like that. Thus the feedback I'm getting now is a lot more useful because people saw the show we wanted them to see. Sad to say, that is often not the case and that's only happened because the entire team (including the freshmen crew members) was engaged, invested, open, available, and caring. 90% of my job was done when I assembled this team, because they're all brilliant and work tremendously hard.
4) Many of the choices we made seemed to hit and affect the audience in the kind of ways we wanted them to. The room after very show was alive and buzzing. I'm going through the process of getting feedback and finding out what I want to about people's experiences of the piece, but the feeling of that theatre afterward, and the enthusiasm of people who have come up to me to talk about it, has felt like what I wanted it to feel like and that is HUGE.
A lot of things lined up beautifully for this show. We took a lot of risks and many of them paid off. Some of them didn't, but I'm glad we took them because it's more interesting. (When I wasn't sure about something, I went for the choice that might be more confusing but was definitely more interesting.) Our Collaboration teachers talk about presentations as trying to take the "luck" factor away... so that we do enough preparation and ask enough questions that we know what will happen when we get into the space, so it's not, "The fabric happened to work, oh thank God!" Yes, yes, I agree - however, when we're doing this for the first time, there IS a greater "luck" factor because we don't have as much experience to know how things work in spaces. Especially early on in directing, you're just making things up. I am, anyway. I'm just making things up and when things work I keep doing them. It happens that this process a lot of things I made up worked, so now my job is to go back in and figure out what made things go right and how I can grab a hold of that and use it consciously. And look at the things that didn't work, which were largely things that I just don't understand, and figure out how to work on those issues for the next piece (or figure out who to surround myself with).
Speaking of the next piece, I've been hearing, "Tongues was incredible - what're you doing next semester?!" a lot. I panicked for a while at this. I had ideas, but they flew out the window when Tongues actually went up. I plunged myself into reading plays and I think I've found one that's a good fit, and I have some exciting impulses that I've pitched to people who seemed to become enthused by them. The great thing about the success of Tongues is that I have a lot more people who actively want to work with me, which will hopefully make life easier for me next semester. The scary thing is that the bar is set higher for my next piece. It's set REALLY HIGH. Because just like staging a dance number, I have to top myself.
As I found myself becoming intimidated by my own work, I went back to what this process was before the "critical acclaim". I sat for two hours on Sunday and watched one stick of incense burn all the way down, to calm myself, reflect and meditate, because my brain was whirring incessantly by the end of this run. And what I determined was that this was the most honest thing I've ever done. This piece was me, sitting down with my passions and my fears and saying, "Okay. Let's do this." I am scared by the things I love the most. The things that interest me are also the things that I find terrifying. I think many of us are afraid to follow what we love because in loving something, there is always the possibility that you could get too close and break it. It's why intimacy is so terrifying - every string is more fragile up close than at a distance. One note I've gotten often is, "She loves this, she has this, she cares about this - why isn't she using it?" The answer is fear. Plain and simple. Fear.
And to be brutally honest, I am not a strong enough person to overcome that for myself. I could, yes, but I don't want to. I'd rather be comfortable, and that's something I've denied for a long time. But yes. I would rather be comfortable in middle-class obscurity than constantly going out on limbs I'm afraid will break underneath me, which is what directing often feels like. I actually don't like leading people, which is funny because people have been telling me my whole life that I'm good at it. (PEOPLE SCARE ME.) And if I was doing it for myself alone... well, I just wouldn't.
The secret that keeps me ticking is that I'm not doing this for myself. I'm doing this because God has called me to do this. I don't know why. I'm like Moses with his stutter. Send Aaron, he's more articulate. I don't get it, but I believe it. And the secret of these days of hearing mindblowingly glorious responses to this piece is that, while, yes, I'm as emotionally needy as the next person, yes, I freak out that so-and-so said it was one of the best third years they've ever seen... but the deeper joy is that all of those praises I get to reflect up. What I do is all for the glory of God.
I got into a conversation earlier this semester about thanking God in the director's note of the program... and the more I thought about it, the more I personally disagreed with that concept. Because to me, thanking God sounds like, "Thank you, God, for helping me carry out my plan." I'm not a Prayer of Jabez Christian. I'm even extreme enough to not be an, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," Christian. I will pray for strength to do God's will, yes, because many of the things He asks of me made me tremble and I cannot get through them without that prayer, but why should God strengthen me, if not for the glory of Him? I would rather disappear. The verse that resonates with me is, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Christ living in me means that God can use everything He has given me, the things that make me specifically me, that makes my production different than any other production. Use them for His purposes. If I try to use them for my own I run dry and implode and start hating everything. (I speak from experience.)
What I did in the Director's Note in the program to that end was have the phrase, "Omnis honor et gloria. Per omnia saecula saeculorum." It's quoting the Eucharistic Doxology, in Latin. Full text of that Doxology is, "Through Him, and with Him, and in Him, is unto Thee, God the Father almighty, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honour and glory, world without end. Amen." All honor and glory is yours. And what a deep joy it is to reflect glory to God.
Tongues was my two coins, my loaves and fish, all I had. One of my teachers told oneof his classes, "She needs to recharge herself because she poured everything she had into that piece." Give everything, and give it fully, and give it honestly. I think that's the key, for me at least. I do not know the path that is set before me, but it is God who multiplies the offerings we give. Not to dismiss the work that myself or anyone working on the team did, because it's only when you give of yourself so fully that God does His work. To phrase it in a more secular way: when groups of people come and work hard together, something is created that none of them could have dreamt up on their own.
I've got my work cut out for me for next semester. Right now I'm picking the brains of smart people about my work in ways that will (hopefully) help me move forward, and starting to seduce people for the next piece. I have come out of this process infinitely more confident in my ability to lead a group of artists, and it's very nice to have such a successful production behind me because it's easier to get people excited about the next one. I'll fight again to be in voice and speech, though I think it should be easier now that people have seen how I used it in Tongues. (That is one thing I'm very proud of. I think Tongues was a giant win for the Voice and Speech department. It's like I was saying for a year, "Guys, please, just put me in voice and speech, I PROMISE it's really important to what I want to do," and they trusted me or took a risk on me or thought, "I guess if she's so passionate/annoying about it...." and got me in the class against all odds... and with Tongues I could say, "See?! THIS IS WHAT I MEAN." The Voice and Speech teachers were all quite excited because I partially used this show to scream, "THESE CLASSES ARE RELEVANT!") I'll give myself time to recharge. I'll compose music because I think there's a vocal ensemble in the next piece. (Right?) And I'll be very aware that anticipation is high for my next piece and I'll have a lot of expectations to live up to... but ultimately, I think I need to approach the piece the same way. Giving my two coins, all I have, up as offering.
My cast gave me this necklace before closing night. It means more than I can say. A cross full of colors. Exactly me. I marvel at the shift that has happened in even just the past year. Since really this summer. I'm associated with color, not black. Today I was aptly described as being "sunny", which is a descriptor that would NEVER have been used for me in years past. I think the secret is the freedom in service.Unbounded gratitude pours from me to everyone involved in Tongues. To the inspiring designers who fought me for things that made the show infinitely better, and their assistants who reminded me of the best kind of attitude to have during tech. To the hardest working actors I have ever encountered who gave every waking moment to this piece. To the on-top-of-everything stage manager who pushed me when I started getting uncomfortable and squirrelly. To the most supportive crew I have ever worked with. To every teacher and classmate who has offered advice, questions, or feedback to anyone on the team. To PHTS who made it happen, which is one of the greatest gifts. The smartest thing I did was surround myself with all of you.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
He was honored.
More detailed post later, but for now:
More photos from Tongues can be found here.
We finished striking the show by 9pm tonight. The responses we've gotten have been beyond anything I'd dreamed. I have never heard the word "specificity" used more in my life. (Luckily in a good way!) Now I get to start the process of getting tons and tons of feedback. (Which I am seeking out. Like crazy. I'm having meetings with my directing teachers from the first two years. And pretty much the entire voice and speech faculty. Duh. As well as anyone else willing.)
Lots to say. Going to go re-read Tennessee Williams' essay on success. That seems appropriate.
More photos from Tongues can be found here.
We finished striking the show by 9pm tonight. The responses we've gotten have been beyond anything I'd dreamed. I have never heard the word "specificity" used more in my life. (Luckily in a good way!) Now I get to start the process of getting tons and tons of feedback. (Which I am seeking out. Like crazy. I'm having meetings with my directing teachers from the first two years. And pretty much the entire voice and speech faculty. Duh. As well as anyone else willing.)
Lots to say. Going to go re-read Tennessee Williams' essay on success. That seems appropriate.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Gloria tibi, Gloria tibi, Gloria!
The only accurate description I can think of to describe what I am going through right now is that I should have the Widor Toccata playing behind me right now. And constantly.
(and if you listen, you should listen all the way through, because the most accurate bits are the part that happens around 3:30 and the ending. But they don't land if you just skip to them.)
Thank you thank you thank you to everyone involved with tonight, including audience members. Tongues was received phenomenally. I am struck dumb.
Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso, est tibi Deo Patri omnipotenti in unitate Spiritus Sancti, omnis honor et gloria. Per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen!
(and if you listen, you should listen all the way through, because the most accurate bits are the part that happens around 3:30 and the ending. But they don't land if you just skip to them.)
Thank you thank you thank you to everyone involved with tonight, including audience members. Tongues was received phenomenally. I am struck dumb.
Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso, est tibi Deo Patri omnipotenti in unitate Spiritus Sancti, omnis honor et gloria. Per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen!
When we open tonight....!
Tongues opens tonight.
Aaaah!
Actually, it's not "aaaah!", I have very little reason to be anxious. This tech week has gone extremely smoothly. My set designer worked some miracles on Sunday so that we could plug in the major set piece easily when it arrived on Monday. Our crew has been outstanding - we have a lot of them and they work hard, so even if I try to help with things like clean up, there's not much for me to do because they're so on top of it. My actors continue to be joys, the assistants on this team are vital and have great energy. It's a wonderful group, and I have been humbled watching their attitudes throughout this week. They teach me how to be open, available, and flexible.
I think we have a good show. We were able to get a few people in for dress rehearsal last night, which was hugely helpful. Learned a lot just by having other people in the room. When we did our first full tech run on Tuesday, I chatted with the crew a bit afterward about their impressions, since they'd been hearing us talk about the piece but had no idea what the piece actually was about (this is a very difficult piece to verbally explain). An interesting thing is that one of our crew member is actually a good friend of mine from high school who is now a first year at PHTS. She's known me for my entire "directing career" thus far, as she came to ARGS just when I started to go crazy about directing. She was also cast in the play I wrote for the ARGS One Act Festival 2006 (which I did NOT direct). She made a comment after cue-to-cue: "I wasn't surprised to see that poor guy running around and throwing himself against walls, because of that time I hung-and-dropped from the scaffolding to get a sound for the show you wrote." And suddenly I remembered that I was really intense about having the sound of two bodies dropping at the top of the play I wrote, but the actors plunging onto the stage wasn't loud enough, so the solution was to have her drop from scaffolding (only a couple feet!). (This was also the play that included the two actors throwing themselves against the proscenium arch for an entire scene. I'm notoriously awful to actors.) This was four years ago, when I did not care about sound like I do now and never, EVER thought I would find myself designing sound. Hilarious. There are threads in life that you can't see without some kind of distance. I love how they interweave. What's also blowing my mind is how tangled up I was in PHTS without even knowing it BEFORE I came here. My friend Emily, and Carolyn, in fact (Carolyn being this crew member high school friend of mine), went up to New York I guess it must have been my senior year, and saw a production of Hair that Sam, another high school friend of ours, was in at NYU. I was sickeningly jealous that they got to see this, not only because Sam was in it, but it was this crazy version of Hair where everyone wore all white and shaved their heads. I thought that must be the coolest thing of the world. Little did I know that the director of that production would become one of my teachers (and honestly, I consider him a mentor of mine by now). Or that Sam would end up TAing a class I was in at PHTS, or that Carolyn would go to PHTS as well (though by that point I was applying to NYU as PHTS-or-bust). The director of that production and Sam are, I believe, both coming to see Tongues tonight. I love all of this. This is why I do feel there is a design, there is some kind of pattern to the world.
Anyway.
Tongues. Got some encouraging feedback Tuesday and last night. It's strange, we're doing crazy things, and I know when we do critiques in Directing Seminar that when we get to the question, "What was the story you saw?" there will be wildly varying answers... or silence. (secret: I'M NOT INTERESTED IN STORY FOR THIS PIECE. Journey, yes, story, no. We've done a lot of work to craft the story not so the audience can know but so they can trust us and follow.) But I saw someone immediately after dress yesterday who just said, "I had the best experience," and THAT'S the point. Some will probably love it, some will probably hate it, but this is what we have to offer. I love it. I am thrilled with how it turned out. (I have theories of why it did, which are probably largely unpopular.) One of our teachers asks a question that I hate for so many reasons: "Did you get what you want?" I hate that question, but yes. Yes I did. I can't tell if the world is going to accept it or not, but it's out there.
Or will be at 7pm tonight.
Honestly, I'm barely nervous. I'm healthily nervous and supremely excited.
Aaaah!
Actually, it's not "aaaah!", I have very little reason to be anxious. This tech week has gone extremely smoothly. My set designer worked some miracles on Sunday so that we could plug in the major set piece easily when it arrived on Monday. Our crew has been outstanding - we have a lot of them and they work hard, so even if I try to help with things like clean up, there's not much for me to do because they're so on top of it. My actors continue to be joys, the assistants on this team are vital and have great energy. It's a wonderful group, and I have been humbled watching their attitudes throughout this week. They teach me how to be open, available, and flexible.
I think we have a good show. We were able to get a few people in for dress rehearsal last night, which was hugely helpful. Learned a lot just by having other people in the room. When we did our first full tech run on Tuesday, I chatted with the crew a bit afterward about their impressions, since they'd been hearing us talk about the piece but had no idea what the piece actually was about (this is a very difficult piece to verbally explain). An interesting thing is that one of our crew member is actually a good friend of mine from high school who is now a first year at PHTS. She's known me for my entire "directing career" thus far, as she came to ARGS just when I started to go crazy about directing. She was also cast in the play I wrote for the ARGS One Act Festival 2006 (which I did NOT direct). She made a comment after cue-to-cue: "I wasn't surprised to see that poor guy running around and throwing himself against walls, because of that time I hung-and-dropped from the scaffolding to get a sound for the show you wrote." And suddenly I remembered that I was really intense about having the sound of two bodies dropping at the top of the play I wrote, but the actors plunging onto the stage wasn't loud enough, so the solution was to have her drop from scaffolding (only a couple feet!). (This was also the play that included the two actors throwing themselves against the proscenium arch for an entire scene. I'm notoriously awful to actors.) This was four years ago, when I did not care about sound like I do now and never, EVER thought I would find myself designing sound. Hilarious. There are threads in life that you can't see without some kind of distance. I love how they interweave. What's also blowing my mind is how tangled up I was in PHTS without even knowing it BEFORE I came here. My friend Emily, and Carolyn, in fact (Carolyn being this crew member high school friend of mine), went up to New York I guess it must have been my senior year, and saw a production of Hair that Sam, another high school friend of ours, was in at NYU. I was sickeningly jealous that they got to see this, not only because Sam was in it, but it was this crazy version of Hair where everyone wore all white and shaved their heads. I thought that must be the coolest thing of the world. Little did I know that the director of that production would become one of my teachers (and honestly, I consider him a mentor of mine by now). Or that Sam would end up TAing a class I was in at PHTS, or that Carolyn would go to PHTS as well (though by that point I was applying to NYU as PHTS-or-bust). The director of that production and Sam are, I believe, both coming to see Tongues tonight. I love all of this. This is why I do feel there is a design, there is some kind of pattern to the world.
Anyway.
Tongues. Got some encouraging feedback Tuesday and last night. It's strange, we're doing crazy things, and I know when we do critiques in Directing Seminar that when we get to the question, "What was the story you saw?" there will be wildly varying answers... or silence. (secret: I'M NOT INTERESTED IN STORY FOR THIS PIECE. Journey, yes, story, no. We've done a lot of work to craft the story not so the audience can know but so they can trust us and follow.) But I saw someone immediately after dress yesterday who just said, "I had the best experience," and THAT'S the point. Some will probably love it, some will probably hate it, but this is what we have to offer. I love it. I am thrilled with how it turned out. (I have theories of why it did, which are probably largely unpopular.) One of our teachers asks a question that I hate for so many reasons: "Did you get what you want?" I hate that question, but yes. Yes I did. I can't tell if the world is going to accept it or not, but it's out there.
Or will be at 7pm tonight.
Honestly, I'm barely nervous. I'm healthily nervous and supremely excited.
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