(Not) Well-Hung

Last night, my husband and I went to check out the oldest operating theatre in Lake Charles. Since I will be moving here to have the baby and will be here while I write my dissertation, we are looking for things I can get involved with here so that I don’t go into extreme culture shock.

I came across an ad for said theatre’s currently running show, the musical 9 to 5, and though the show itself would not usually inspire me to attend, I was pretty excited about the chance to see what Lake Charles has to offer. I read up on the history of the theatre and found that it was founded in 1965. A theatre that has existed that long in this area surely had something going for it.

Just walking to the theatre from the parking area was exciting for me. The venue, just off of I-10, was reportedly an old silent movie theatre. I am mesmerized by old buildings, old theatres in particular. This space was a tad rough. There were old rocking cinema-chairs in the house, held together with tape. There was a balcony, I assume for segregated audience members of years past. One lighting bar hung over the extreme back end of the house, just before the balcony, and two lighting trees stood on the apron, stage right and stage left. I’d guess there were about six instruments on the bar and four on each tree. None appeared to have gels and some looked as though they may be  non-functional.

Still, there were around 40 folks in the audience. Tickets were $25, so surely…

Now, I am AWARE that the surging hormones of pregnancy are no myth but I was entirely unprepared when, 30 seconds after the curtains opened and my brain wrapped itself about what was unfolding before me, I was overwhelmed with a nearly unstoppable urge to cry. I actually had to focus and breathe for a second to refrain from tears.

There are always good things to notice about a performance. There are noble efforts, shining moments and in this case there were certainly individuals who are to be commended for volunteering their time and energy. I want to say positive things here…

A few of the performers had lovely voices. A few of them also had some fine acting ability. I could envision using two or three of them in another show. That said, the resultant theatrical production from Waiting for Guffman would have been an unreachable summit for this show.

The band was placed on-stage, which could have worked had the lighting designers not lit them at the same level of the performers for the duration of the show. The musicians were perched atop a platform with mismatched stools holding up the keyboard and various instruments. A random group of singers would meander in and sing back-up when not on stage. There were three musicians who watched the show and seemed genuinely charmed by it, the rest sat glumly staring at their feet or the floor with pained expressions of tortured boredom on their faces. If anything can kill a show immediately, it is forcing the audience to stare at fully-lit members of the show team who ooze distaste for their own production. Though the theatre seems to run mostly on old musicals, the sound system was terrible. Ballads could be heard but the singers got lost in the drums and chaos whenever a large or loud number came up. Apparently there were two lighting designers yet there seemed to be no actual light cues, at least none where they were desperately needed. Shoddy set pieces and uneven scuffed stage blacks could have been softened, areas could have been delineated.

The actress in the Dolly Parton role was a fair actor but was lost beneath an extremely cheap-looking curly bleach-blonde wig which did nothing but make you marvel continuously at how cheap-looking her wig was.

I do not walk out of shows. I am pretty staunch in my feelings about that, but I’d had my fill at the end of Act I when the women put a parachute harness on the boss-character for no textually supported reason. I sat wondering why in the world these characters would be harnessing their boss when they were planning to spirit him away to his home to figure out how to get out of trouble for accidentally poisoning him. Then suddenly a hook was wheeled apologetically in from the fly loft, the man was attached and the last few notes of the final act-break song were sung while the man was inexplicably hauled about two and a half unimpressive feet into the air.

The audience was delighted.

I had to take a moment.

The dangling man was the last I saw of the show.

Muses and Questions I want to Answer...

Inspiration! I am taking the advice of my colleague,  Mz. M.D.J  and have pilfered a scene from my screen-play to use as the jumping-off point for my one-act.

CHEERS and much adulation to Muse MDJ!

Gonna attempt to add a Bacot-esque character to help me pass the Bechdel test this time around, as I so shamefully failed it with the screen-play. I’m just six pages away from my goal and am hoping to get done with it today so that I can read ahead for my Monday classes by this time tomorrow and then dedicate Sunday to my book and article précis which is due on Wednesday.

Depending on how the playwrighting goes, I may just flesh this piece out to a full-length and bypass writing a second one-act since my creative well seems to be filled with tumble-weed these days.

ALSO…something occurred to me yesterday and my thoughts are fragmented still, but I was thinking about possibilities for my second U.S. Theatre teaching week and was mulling over lots of ideas…

None struck me as overwhelmingly on-target, but I did get to thinking about an area of study where I haven’t seen much scholarship.

After living in Orlando and performing for the Orlando International Fringe Festival, I moved back to Louisiana for a while where I was involved in creating a small mini-Fringe in Covington, Louisiana. After the first year, I ended up letting the project cease because I was asked to return to Florida and serve as Assistant Producer for the OIFF. The following year, I took over and served as Executive Producer/Artistic Director of the festival. The board voted to have me stay on in the same capacity the year after that while I entered into my first year as an MFA student. But a few months into the program, I realized that it would not be humanly possible to pull off an MFA and a major arts festival with grace and sanity intact and so I stepped down from my position with the Fringe to devote myself to graduate school.

While with the Fringe, I traveled to Canada for two Fringe Producer Conferences, I was involved in PR, grant writing, venue management, tech and staff hiring, volunteer relations, product design, advertising, fundraisers, scheduling and special events. I’ve experienced the Fringe as a spectator, performer and producer. While the Fringe was born in Scotland, it has become an international phenomenon with a particularly strong presence in the Unites States. And though it hasn’t been realized yet, there is (or at least WAS) a collective goal among the U.S. and Canadian producers to create a circuit that would ostensibly allow performers to cross state and province borders in an unbroken chain of performance opportunities. While Orlando is the largest and longest-standing Fringe in the states, there are others spanning coast-to-coast with a comparatively new one now finding its legs in New Orleans. Each of these festivals has a unique history and unique relationship to the political and artistic goals which first inspired the Scottish Fringe.

Shouldn’t someone be writing about this? Why isn’t there a proper history of the American Fringe? What a worthwhile project. As I said, I’m unfocused still, but I’m really excited about the idea of doing some research and scholarship in this area. I feel like my history with the festival might position me as a good (and passionate) candidate for this work.

Gears turning…

NOW.

　

Muses didn’t visit me last night and I am sitting here with a blank page and a ticking clock.

MUST write a One Act.

NOW.

Why on earth am I dry of ideas? Workable ideas? Is this block because I disagree with the form I am told a one act should take? Is it because my “creativity” is all focused towards my little girl? Is it because I’ve been too far-removed from theatre which I actually do find inspiring?

I make a point of keeping up with my colleagues across the states and abroad via Facecrack. I get production notices, show reviews, casting calls, and event invitations. I see production photographs and read posts about my artist family’s challenges, victories and other show-related musings. In this way I try to stay vicariously connected to work that is meaningful, high-quality and IN the MOMENT.

In some ways, this interaction is soothing. I am at least reminded that there are engaging things going on every day and that people I know, respect and love are at the center of these things. In other ways, the cyber-quality of my connection to these people and their art only serves to make me feel more isolated and further removed. It is a bit like looking at a picture of a feast…it looks fabulous but you know you can’t smell it, can’t taste it, can’t share in its preparation.

I would HATE to be disembodied. The senses are SO important.

So…blank page. Clock ticking. MUST write a One Act.

NOW.

Snooze...

So, growing a baby while rounding third on the ole PhD adventure…

I like to make things challenging for myself. Today, after class, I walked into my house too tired to bring my heavy back-pack upstairs, acknowledged the cat on the way to my bedroom and dropped to my bed without a moment of action between. Does anyone else have GOTTA DO MORE WORK anxiety like I do? I felt momentarily guilty about hitting the sheets but assured myself that it was OK to take a small break. Then, in a wave of generosity, I set my alarm, allowing myself a FULL HOUR for a nap.

TWO and a HALF hours later, I realized I’d been pressing the snooze button and re-setting my alarm for an EXTRA hour and a half. Oops. I think I was tuckered out. I woke up finally because I knew that if I didn’t rouse myself, I’d sleep through to morning and miss my daily blog-obligation (Blogbligation?)…that and I’m fast running out of time to re-write the playwright assignment lowering above me. I’ve gotten absolutely NOTHING accomplished on that front. All four of the ideas I had will not work in this particular class because my Prof feels that a one-act ought best be a single-location action piece, unbroken by transitions. My ideas…the ones I am moved by…aren’t abstract, but they do not fit neatly into what I know he is looking for. Again, I will save those ideas for a time when I am not performing for a grade. But WHAT to do in this fast-vanishing time?! I’ve never felt such a lack of creativity. My imagination is usually sharp. Not the case with this assignment. And at this point, having slept my afternoon away, I will need to rise early and just write through the day tomorrow until I have to leave for class.

Muse, oh MUSE…please O please visit me in my sleep.

HA! My baby-girl has the hiccups again. The night before last was her first bout with them. Once I realized what it was that first time, I couldn’t stop laughing. The sensation is sort-of…adorable. And it is a good sign, I read that the hiccups are caused because she is practicing the movement of breathing. I was unaware of how much rehearsing is going on with developing babies. I guess I just thought they hung out in a sort-of sleep state while their bodies grew. Not so…they practice breathing, they “walk” against your belly, they react to loud noises, they play with their toes (I saw Izzy do this when she was getting her 21-week sonogram), they suck their thumbs and they hiccup…

I have noticed that she is a night-owl like me. I also think her she senses her dad’s touch because she gets peaceful and still when he puts his hand on my belly…except for that one time when he was listening for her and she socked him in the ear.

I sing to her a bunch. In the morning, after I finish up whatever reading I am doing for class, I try to sit down with my guitar and play/sing her a song before heading to school. I also sing to her when I am driving. I also play Claudio Abbado and Vivaldi and Bach…

It is odd to be surrounded by colleagues and students and professors while this momentous interior thing is happening and not to be surrounded by family, outside friends or my husband.

BUT…we are at MID-term and my time here is coming to a close for a while.

Now back to other work for me…

Night at the Theatre

Tonight I saw a production which was directed by a colleague of mine, and while I wasn’t precisely sure what was happening throughout the entirety of the performance, I appreciated the work that was put into it. The piece was a patchwork of scenes and a monologues focusing on the Cuban experience. The show opened with an ensemble piece. I am ashamed to say that I left the program at home (FREUDIAN SLIP there…left it at the OOFICE) and so I cannot reference the piece by title but the language was poetic and fragmented and conveyed a mood and general sense of subject-matter but followed no recognizable narrative form. The blocking was balletic. Some of the performers seemed more at ease with the dance-like movement than others which made for a mildly clunky start. I found myself wanting the movement to have a stronger literal connection to the words but also became acutely aware that non-linear text would not be best served by overtly literal movement.

The second episode involved a monologue by an actor who I feel should get more stage-time. Ensemble members entered into his story in a similar way as Dr. Euba’s recent production of Brothers Size. This was followed by a female ensemble piece that was very similar in style and staging to the opening piece. The show closed with a two-woman scene. In this final piece, a screen was used to translate the lines of one woman who predominately spoke in Spanish and the vignette was book-ended with lip-synching.

The use of space was interesting. I found it to be visually stimulating. I felt there was a communal feel to it, gritty, broken and struggling.

I am interested to discuss this production with my Intro to Theatre students. Our discussion about Free Man of Color was particularly fruitful and engaging. My students seem adept at breaking productions down and really examining the input and work of collaborative practitioners. I am eager to see how they react to work that is so stylistically different to what they are accustomed to. I anticipate the discussion of the show’s technical elements to be fairly straight-forward but I foresee some real questioning happening in terms of theme, structure, objective and thought. Wonder if I could convince the director to visit our class discussion? I do LOVE bringing artists into the classroom.

On a side/closing note…I wish I had had the opportunity to really direct something of my choosing at LSU. I knew when we missed the notice about the call for directors and found out about it the day proposals were due that I had missed my chance to actually work on the LSU stage. Ah well, looking forward to the next work of art. Wherever it surfaces…

　

Lost

Back to the drawing-boards.

My play idea for Playwrighting class is a no-go. I’ve decided to start from scratch and save what I have done for a non-school related project. I’m giving myself 24 hours to allow my brain to marinate some stuff and will commence writing some time SHORTLY after that.

Have any GOOD plays come from class assignments? I mean, I am sure there are plenty assigned plays which have general merit, but are any of our well-known, oft-produced plays the result of homework?

I can’t think of any. I invite folks to bring any to my attention that I may be over-looking.

On another note…

I got lost in the library again on Sunday afternoon. This happens to me semi-regularly. I find myself distracted by book-binding, titles, collections and individual books. It is nigh impossible for me to pass by an antique-looking book without picking it up and leafing through it. I have to concentrate on not focusing on the books sometimes as I am mining the stacks for particular call-numbers. I blur my vision, focus on the numbers taped to the aisles and plow ahead. My success usually depends on the urgency of the project I am working on. If I am finishing something that is due the following day, I am more successful at keeping myself away from the shelves of temptation…but if I have a week or more for the project at hand, I am extremely vulnerable.

On Sunday, I really had a pretty staggeringly-long to-do list. I managed to get to the aisle and shelf I had gone searching for but once I had the book that I needed in hand, my eyes drifted and suddenly I found myself sitting on the floor in the middle of the aisle. THIS is a dangerous place for me to be. When I SIT in the middle of an aisle, I haven’t got the foundation of a desk to facilitate project-style reading and writing. LUCKILY, I caught myself after only about half-an-hour of luxuriating in non-work related reading. Getting off of the floor was actually a challenge for me…this is something that has NEVER been the case before. It seems that my belly is now officially obstructing my movement. 

Guess I will have to stick to desks for the rest of the year. 

I suspect this will help to keep me on track.

Derrid-ugh

I find no joy in Jacques Derrida. I had hoped that Archive Fever would offer inspiration to me in my search for DISSERTATION INSPIRATION but I find myself back in that uncomfortable place of wondering exactly how all that I am spending so much time reading and discussing and writing about is actually going to serve me in my work. As I read, the whispers of unresolved issues grow louder and louder.

Here are some that won’t be silenced:

1. Am I supposed to be able to follow this materially gracefully?

2. If I am not supposed to be able to follow this material gracefully, am I supposed to grapple and toil with it until the clouds of opacity break? In other words, is this like going through a tough workout at the gym? A workout which isn’t inviting…one where you want repeatedly to give up but one that the dedicated will plow-through and end up rewarded for brooking in the end?

3. Should I be able to see how this is applicable to my work as a practitioner? As an educator?

4. Is this information something I should prepare to pass along? My guess is that the answer to THAT question is YES and if it IS yes, how do I learn to love the material enough to help students find it interesting and vital?

5. Does the fact that I would prefer to return Derrida’s book to the library never to lay eyes upon it again mean that I am less of an academic?

6. Why do encounters with this type of writing always send me into deep contemplation over my choice to pursue a PhD?