January 2012

The Christmas decorations are boxed and put away. The comfort of home and family fully realized over the holiday in front of the fireplace and around the dinner table.

Now, the bright January sun announces the new year and with it comes yearning, curiosity, trepidation and an itch for adventure. With rapid fire successive thoughts I long to be on a boat, on the beach, in Tuscany, in Provence, in Hawaii, in New York, at the theatre, in a flat, seeing something, anything I haven't seen before - from Yosemite to Tibet, aboard a clipper ship or a train - wandering and letting the world seep into my being. I am a writer holed up in a loft, a cabaret singer at the Algonquin, a twenty-year-old actress schlepping off to an audition. I am a poet, a director off off Broadway, a memoirist on the New York Times Best Seller list. January stirs up a concoction of fantasy, regret, and possibility.

What dreams might still have a chance? What doubts, fears, and useless notions still stand in their way?
January is packed with questions and demands - hope and possibility. Contentment gives way to the restlessness. Restlessness to change.
January provides the opportunity for a new self image and the belief that identity is not fixed in cement. Change begins with thought.

Unlike summertime when laziness and sloth or'whelm my spirit, January's sunshine and brisk air ignite the spark of action. Creative energy surges through my veins and springtime looms prompting new life.
I'm not one to sit still, it's clear.
I need variety and challenge - new projects and endeavors.

January 2012 startled me awake.
In a month's time, I will turn the age my brother was when he died.
At fifty-three, I'm nowhere near ready to be done. And neither, I'm sure, was he.

What's left to do? What risks have I not yet taken? What lies have I believed that have prevented me from taking them?
What self-imposed rules do I need to break?
What new rules do I need to follow?

Rule #1: Try something different.

As the poet, David Whyte says:

START CLOSE IN

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people's questions,
don't let them
smother something
simple.

To find
another's voice
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don't follow
someone else's
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don't mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.

~ David Whyte ~
(River Flow)

Not Much to Say

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
George Bernard Shaw

Recently I've found that I have had nothing to say. Have you ever felt that way?

In conversation with others, I've had virtually nothing to contribute. Oh, an idea might flash, an opinion might come to mind - but the energy required to formulate the opinion into something more than half baked has been more effort than I've wanted to invest. Thus, the thought hasn't made it passed my lips. In a word, I've been lazy.

I've felt shallow. Boring. Uninteresting. Dull. Blank. My responses have amounted to a lot of "hmm's and huh's." Unfinished sentences left dangling. Questions left unexplored. Mental shrugs of "I dunno...."

For example, last night the question of why people research their ancestry arose. Why do people need to look into their past? I listened to the conversation feeling overwhelmed by the question. The answer seemed quite obvious to me. Our need to understand who we are - to come to know ourselves - is one of the driving forces of human nature. Identity and self may be defined in any number of ways - but coming to know our story - the narrative of our lives- the evolution of our family history within a greater context of time, place, culture, society, and circumstance gives us insight and perspective. The "then" is contrasted with the "now." By looking into the family history and genealogy, pieces of ourselves become clearer - our personality, our level of determination, our addictions, the patterns - Isn't this why adopted children go in search of their birth parents?

The diagram of a family tree, each branch bearing names and dates of distant relatives - strangers really, also contains their untold stories. The stories of survival and loss. The stories of joy and heartbreak. The stories of courage and cowardice. Their dreams, their hopes for a better future, their failures. Boom and bust. Black sheep and golden. Robust and sickly. The unlikely and predictable. The stories that shape the trajectory of a family against the back drop of chance, luck, fortune, opportunity, and instinct.

The desire to know begins, I think, with curiosity. It is sustained by a love of story. It is fueled by imagination. It is deepened by a need to understand.

I guess it is no surprise that I am to the core, a dramatist.

But last night, I didn't say any of that.

Sometimes, conversation is just too much energy. Thoughts emerge. The thread of one thought connects to the thread of someone else's. A debate may ensue requiring defending one's position, the parsing of words, the recitation of statistics, the retrieval of a fact buried deep in the recesses of one's mind - the frustrating feeling of "I used to know that."

There's a lot to talk about these days. The economy. The achievement gap in education. The budget. Nutrition. Technology. The state of healthcare. There's a lot to feel bad about. How one parented. The choices one made. The passage of time. Getting old. Whether to get a colonoscopy or not. People getting sick. Terrorism.

I just don't want to talk about it.

To Sleep Perchance to Dream

As a teacher, every summer about this time, I stand on the threshold of a new school year, partly filled with anticipation, anxiety, excitement, and a tinge of dread. Every school year is different. Every school year presents a new set of challenges and a new combination of students. The line between the nervous anticipation of beginning and the desperate desire to cling to my summer freedom becomes increasingly visceral. A controlled panic begins to set in.

There on my desk sit two scripts of plays I will be directing; Dead Man Walking and Children of Eden. These scripts represent a significant chunk of my life for the next ten months. Once I open those texts and dive into their all consuming depths I know that that they will dominate my creative energies, set my heart a blaze and my mind to restless sleeplessness.

The sleeplessness is not actually insomnia. It is a creative space in which a magic alchemy of ideas and inspiration occur. It is as if my very being merges with the creative process and becomes one with it.
In this dream-like state, my subconscious has been known to stage entire production numbers.

Yesterday, I spent my entire day in what will shortly be my new artistic home at Santa Margarita Catholic High School. Within the four walls of the black box theatre, I sorted and organized costumes and props. I separated shirts from blouses and skirts from dresses, matched shoes, and boxed boas. All the while the black walls of this room were silently penetrating me. I was passively becoming familiar with the theatre. A lectio-divina-like experience -only rather than with scripture - with a performance space. The process of savoring, meditating, and developing a relationship with scripture is similar to the process a director goes through with a theatre space. I will spend countless hours in this dark, black, dream-like universe where the imagination alone will transform and transcend. It is mysterious. It is spiritual. It brings me closer to God.

It is Peter Brooke's Empty Space. It is Robert Edmund Jones' Dramatic Imagination. It is infinite. It is where my self and my creative energies will merge and the alchemy will begin. It is my gift.

Without cracking the script, last night as I slept, in my subconscious, those black walls breathed. They spoke to me and I saw and heard the opening of my fall production, Dead Man Walking. As I awoke, this morning, I knew that those hours spent yesterday were more valuable than merely accomplishing an organizational task. It was sacred time. The artist, the self, the work, and the space have merged. We are one.

My dread and anxiety over beginning has transformed into creative energy. The script on my desk, no longer a dreaded, lifeless project, passionately calls to me. The blessed unrest that Martha Graham speaks of has begun. It is Theatre on Purpose.

Creative Overload

How did it get this way? To even get my fingers onto the keyboard of my laptop computer, I had to pile up paper, mail, calendars, cards, and CD's and then shove the pile to one side of my desk in order to create a small enough space on which to set my laptop. In the pile are two wedding invitations, an order form for my son's graduation pictures, a health insurance re-enrollment form, a photo copy of an article on early parent loss, three school calendars, my personal calendar, and an empty gift bag with red and yellow tissue paper. To the left of my desk, perched on a wooden TV tray I set up in desperation to catch some of the creative overflow - is a stack ( over one foot high) of drafts of that play I was attempting to write, five journals and notebooks. At my feet, there are three canvas bags. One is full of my memoir class materials. The other full of my theatre class materials for my new job, and another is crammed full of stuff from the desk of my classroom from the job I just finished. On the floor, there is a Nordstrom bag full of VHS tapes of all my past productions, three crates full of books and files and a backpack that frankly I'm afraid to look in.
On the counter to the right of my desk is a pile of six binders - each with vital information about various classes I have taught or will be teaching. A red binder contains the script of the musical I plan to direct next spring. And then there is the stack of manila file folders for every hand out I've ever created for every drama class I've ever taught. Twenty-one years worth of hand outs.
Not to mention the dividers designed to keep me organized, stuffed with unopened mail, bills that are calling out for my attention, expired coupons, a roll of ribbon from an abandoned wrapping job and two inspirational CD's on leadership.

And let's not even talk about the garage. Well o.k. let's. White file boxes transferred from my classroom, to the trunk of my car and then neatly stacked in front of the freezer so that I can't open it, filled with - yes you guessed it - more teaching files.
And the giant box of Tri-School Theatre show sweatshirtsI have preserved and took out of storage so that someone could make a quilt sits in the middle of the garage floor. Unopened.
I've gone bloowey.

SOS. I'm officially drowning in my creative endeavors. "Uncle." I'm hollering "uncle!"

This morning in the OC Register there is an article about a service that "de-clutters" and helps home owners get organized. I almost picked up the phone but it was 6:30 on Saturday morning.

Unfortunately I don't have time to dig into any of it because I leave Monday for the IB Training in Florida where I will no doubt begin filling more notebooks and files for my IB Theatre classes starting in the fall.

I have to be "o.k." with living with stacks right now because there is a domino affect. Before I can move the stacks from my desk area and garage at home, somebody has to clean out the office I'm moving into at my new school. I just finished doing this in my former classroom. Labeled all the filing cabinets, made sure there was a departmental handbook and a monthly "at a glance" task document so that things could run smoothly next year.
The irony is that I am actually an extremely organized person. But too much is just too much.

The playwriting class put me on tilt. I will admit it. Draft after draft after draft ....and I haven't yet gotten the opening right. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, I have to start over.
I have lost some appetite for the project and have even questioned its value. Clearly I need a break from that project for a while. Maybe after I get back from Florida and have some down time, I will have a clearer head and will be re-inspired.
For now, the stack of scenes will just have to stay put.

My email has gone unanswered. My daughter's two boxes of summer clothes sit waiting to be shipped to NYC. I've dropped more than a few balls in my personal life. At some point I have to take time to get my life back together. Today, I have to remember pick up my dry cleaning and do my laundry for this trip.

Starving Artist

A perfect day. Rain. A fire in the fireplace. Seventeen bean soup simmering on the stove. A new play in the works. Time to write it.

In my flannel nightgown.

Why have I denied myself this indulgence for so long? I love being holed up. Not having to go anywhere. Full absorption. Immersion into the creative process. Deeper. Deeper I go. Emerging only when absolutely necessary.

To stir the soup.

At fifty-one I am finally giving myself permission to be about my art. Not that I haven't been engaged in the creative process for all of my adult years. I have. But it has been about someone else's art. My job was to make my student's dreams come true. My job was to interpret and produce plays that someone else had written. My job was to critique other playwright's ideas on paper and give them voice on stage in developmental readings. At last, it's my turn. And I'm dead serious about it.

I don't remember ever being this hungry.

These last few years have been like an artistic fast. I've been bound to work other than my art. Devoid of creative fulfillment. I have been like fruit withering on a vine. Clinging too long to the branch. Over ripened. The season for picking seemingly long past.

It is only in my memoir workshop with some writers well into their eighties that I find genuine satisfaction. Not just because of the writing that comes out of it, but because I realize when I am with them, that withering is a choice. A choice they have not made. Ripened to perfection, they feed my creative soul and inspire me.

Hungry, I devour theatre like a starving refugee. I can't seem to get enough of it. But my focus now is on how the story of the play or musical is being told. I am putting myself through an intentional tutorial on dramatic story telling.

For so many years I've functioned as a director. Analyzing plays backwards and forwards. Striving for clarity. Moment to moment interpretation of the playwright's intent.

I am now thinking like a playwright. But all the years of directing and analyzing plays is working in me as I attempt to write my own. It feels like the most natural thing in the world.

I stand on fertile ground. There is a choice. The season for picking has come. No, I say, my pen, like sword warding off a dangerous dragon. No. I will not wither.