Exploring The Animal

I recently had a conversation about theatre that illuminated an interesting aspect of this complex animal… One I thought I’d share to see if anyone had any ideas about.

I guess, before I get in to all that, I should pose the question, why do we do theatre?  I don’t know the reasons why each of us, as individuals chose to hang out in the theatre, but I can tell you a few of the reasons I did.  Often times, throughout my life, I have felt that I wasn’t making meaningful connections with people.  Busy days lend themselves to feelings of isolation, and reading other people’s words and hearing other people’s stories is comforting.  Working with other people towards a joint goal feels good…primal somehow… human.  Relying on other people and having people rely on me is a necessity of mine.

I needed connection and support in a big way, and I stumbled into theatre at just the right time.

It’s been about ten years now since that fateful semester when I said fuck physical science/English and the lot, and filled my schedule with theatre classes… and it has served me very well.  I’ve met some amazing people, have been a part of some killer shows… it’s been wonderful and surreal and generally bad ass.  But there is also a part of theatre that’s bizarre and dark that I really can do without.  Something that undermines the aforementioned reasons I started doing theatre in the first place.

Because our community is so small, and so tight, gossip burns hot and runs rampant.  We all know everyone’s business: the good, the bad and the ugly.  We take sides or feel we’re betraying someone if won’t take sides… I think we bond with each other over the dirt-dishing, trying for that closeness, enjoying feeling like we have inside information… But I think this has a negative effect on our psyches, whether we’re aware of it or not.  I think there are ways to achieve the feeling of family that are in better alignment with the ultimate goal.  Ways that will push the peace forward instead of chipping slowly away at it.

Being aware.  Paying attention to when someone is overloaded, feeling insecure, or is just needing someone to listen to them … practicing non-judgment. 

Letting people know how awesome they are on a regular basis.  (It’s easy to think someone’s great and forget to say it… or choose not to say it.)

And a million other ways to uplift and empower…

Lord knows it ain’t easy… we’re all so used to relating to each other in a certain way… it almost feels like self denial to give up the gossip.

But I think it may be worth striving for.

I have done this experiment several times in the past (and have been largely unsuccessful) that is based on the idea that thought follows speech… So if you can refrain from saying negative things, you will, eventually, stop thinking negative thoughts.  If you can go forty days without negative speech creeping in, supposedly you can kick the habit.  I think I’ve made it to 23 days… if you screw up and scream obscenities in traffic; you have to start back at day one.  I’m going to try this again, and keep trying and keep trying until positivity becomes second nature.  Actually, until it becomes first nature.  If anyone else feels up to the challenge, come on… we can sweat it out together.  Maybe I’ll post progress reports, as being held accountable might help me along…

Your thoughts? 

100 posts and all of them moxielicious!

I can’t believe it…this is our 100th post on the MOXIE Blog!  Today as I perused some old posts, I reflected on some wonderful moments we shared.  Here are my top 3 MOXIE Blog Favorite moments:

1) Esther’s post on May 31, 2008 in which she has a somewhat schytzophrenic conversation with herself over a cup of coffee… On Art and Motherhood: The First, I’m Sure Not the Last and the long conversation which follows it.

2) Amy’s post on June 27, 2008 when “Spillage, directly to the crotch-al region.” prompts her to have an in depth discussion about learning to be in the moment.  thoughts like feathers

3) Esther’s tribute on August 31, 2008 to Delicia and Jerry’s Anniversary in which she relates how one of D’s children claims that democracy gives him the right to use adult language. Happy Anniversary, Delicia and Jerry!

And now…my multi-tasking mommy moment of the day…who says I can’t excercise, walk my baby and run lines at the same time?

The perfect stoller for actors!

The perfect stroller for actresses!

Kansas is Sexy

I know that we’re doing a play about war and bloodshed and sectionalism…  it’s heavy and timely, and beautifully written… beautifully human…

But damn.  This show is sexy.

I stopped into rehearsal yesterday, and was compelled to stay a bit longer than I had intended. First off, we have two beautiful women, getting their hands dirty in that Kansas soil; long skirts sweeping the ground, toting hardcore Sharp’s rifles… We have handsome men swaggering about,  cussin’ and shooting the red-eye, husbands whispering tenderly to their wives, card playing and knife wielding … and possibly the hottest showdown between abolitionist and border ruffian in the history of the war.

I’ll get my camera in working order so I can post some pics.

I arrived near the end of rehearsal, but the cast had been working hard all day.  They were running through the second act, the show is mostly blocked and is looking fantastic.  

I also got some good belly-laughs in, watching Jo Anne create smoke rings from her corn cob pipe, like she’s been at it from the cradle. Good times, m’friends.

I can’t wait for people to see this show, they’re going to LOVE it.

Thursday Inspiration: España edition

From Federico García Lorca, that passion-drenched, life-rich, desire-wracked poet of Spain. We theatre types know him for plays like Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba, although he would have preferred to be known for two surrealist masterpieces that I can never remember by name.  He died at the hands of the Fascists in the Spanish civil war in 1936. It is said that he was forced to dig his own grave, and also forced to write a note to his father asking him to donate money to the army.  His father kept the note in his wallet as a remembrance.  Lorca’s poems fairly drip with life and love and desire for life and love.  Here is one of my favorites. 

Gacela of Unexpected Love, translated by A. S. Kline.

No one understood the perfume
of the shadow magnolia of your belly.
No one knew you crushed completely
a human bird of love between your teeth.

There slept a thousand little persian horses
in the moonlight plaza of your forehead,
while, for four nights, I embraced there
your waist, the enemy of snowfall.

Between the plaster and the jasmines,
your gaze was a pale branch, seeding.
I tried to give you, in my breastbone,
the ivory letters that say ever.

Ever, ever: garden of my torture,
your body, flies from me forever,
the blood of your veins is in my mouth now,
already light-free for my death.

MOXIE does a photo shoot

There were so many slick and polished images to choose from, but this represents the day best.

MOXIE 2.0

 All our love and thanks to Kevin of Coast Highway Photography

Beecher’s Bible

Hello all!  Long time to see…  I have not been very theatrically active these past weeks, but now that Bleeding Kansas is in full swing, I figure I’ll give you a little update in the land-o-props.

My week has been spent scouring the internet, trying to get a better feel for the 1850’s.  I’ve been researching simple household items like envelopes, pencils, coffee pots, playing cards, and am attempting to make a corn cob pipe.

While that’s been incredibly fun and informative, my MOST EXCITING moment this week came as I was researching the Beecher’s Bible rifle, and found the drawings from its patent, issued September 12^th, 1848.  Basically, Christian Sharps, the inventor, created a  way to load the gun more quickly, through the breech side of the barrel instead of down the muzzle.

You guys, I was unreasonably excited!  I knew the patent date was Sept 12^th 1848, so I pulled up all of the patents from that day, (there were thirteen total), and just went down the list, opening each one.  Washing machine, bellows pump, various types of shingles… and maybe the sixth or seventh one, (I kid you not, my heart actually started beating faster), C.Sharps.  Breech-Loading Fire-Arm.  Patent number 5763.

What chilled and thrilled me, was looking at these mechanical drawings…  with their parts lettered and explained in beautiful handwriting… looking so innocent there on the page, so clean… and then making the connection that this particular gun was invented to diminish loading time, or in other words, to make the business of killing people faster. 

This object, with its levers and welded metal and ingenious design brought more terror to people than any of us can ever imagine.  And it started as a drawing.  

 I am in love with 5763.  And the U.S. Patent Office. 

Have a look:

 

Thursday Inspiration

On this Thursday in September of this election year, women’s votes are under discussion everywhere I turn. Since it is so interesting and “newsworthy” to split the world by gender–although in my inconsequential experience I so frequently see partners voting together, even across gender lines–I thought I’d have a little fun with it myself.  Personally, I’m looking forward to standing alongside the rest of penis-free America in being blamed for whatever happens this November.  We can take it.  We’ve taken so much worse.

Here’s some brilliant doggerel written in that long ago era before women got the right to vote. Oh, wait, not so long ago. Sixty-five years AFTER the era of Bleeding Kansas, less than a century ago, Alice Duer Miller wrote Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times. Here are just a few of her cheerful jabs. 

I’m inspired.

******

Our Idea of Nothing at All
(“I am opposed to woman suffrage, but I am not opposed to woman.”- Anti-suffrage speech of Mr. Webb of North Carolina.)

O WOMEN, have you heard the news
Of charity and grace?
Look, look, how joy and gratitude
Are beaming in my face!
For Mr. Webb is not opposed
To woman in her place!

O Mr. Webb, how kind you are
To let us live at all,
To let us light the kitchen range
And tidy up the hall;
To tolerate the female sex
In spite of Adam’s fall.

O girls, suppose that Mr. Webb
Should alter his decree!
Suppose he were opposed to us-
Opposed to you and me.
What would be left for us to do-
Except to cease to be?

*****

On Not Believing all You Hear
(“Women are angels, they are jewels, they are queens and princesses of our hearts.”- Anti-suffrage speech of Mr. Carter of Oklahoma.)

” Angel, or jewel, or princess, or queen, Tell me immediately, where have you been?”

“I’ve been to ask all my slaves so devoted Why they against my enfranchisement voted.”

“Angel and princess, that action was wrong. Back to the kitchen, where angels belong.”

Making the case for slavery

Several of my fellow cast members in Bleeding Kansas have their work cut out for them tonight.  They are playing pro-slavery characters in the show and last night our dramaturg Jeff Smith gave us all an assignment that will be harder for some than others.  We each have to make a case for why our characters came to Kansas.  I am playing an abolitionist who moved to Kansas to try and influence the vote and win the Kansas territory over as free soil in order to tip the balance in favor of the north.  While I am making a case against slavery on behalf of my character Hannah, Chris Buess (last seen at MOXIE in Blubonnet Court) and Mark Petrich (last seen at MOXIE in Devil Dog Six) will be arguing on behalf of slavery…no small task.

Abolitionist Anna Dickinson - A source of my inspiration

My job will be not to argue that slavery is wrong but to make clear the unique and specific perspective of my character which isn’t without flaws.  Hannah comes to the Kansas Territory because she believes she will help the ignorant heathens of the frontier see that slavery is against God, and therefor wrong.  I don’t believe Hannah would feel entirely comfortable with a black man at her dinner table though… I think it is the idea of abolitionism that she is attracted to.  I’m beginning to think the sheer excitement of the adventure of picking up and leaving civilized Boston for the unknown wilderness of Kansas is half of what brought Hannah.  This quote which Jeff shared with me last night from Jane Smiley’s book The All True Travels and Adventures of Liddie Newton seems to get to the heart of Hannah’s journey and indeed all the characters in Bleeding Kansas.

 ”I thought of Susannah Jenkin’s own observation that K.T. had coarsened her. But that made it seem as though how K.T. changed you was all bad. In my opinion, K.T. made you see the world as it was. Your actions followed that.”

Wish us luck tonight folks!

Head Count

Just for fun, the roll call at the Bleeding Kansas production meeting: 

Adults, ten.  Kids, six.

That’s how we roll.

Thursday Inspiration

While MOXIE’s intrepid technical director, Dustin Long, is figuring out how to bury the Diversionary Theatre stage in Kansas dirt for Bleeding Kansas, I’m thinking of Pina Bausch’s dance in dirt, Le Sacre Du Printemps.

For those of you who can’t get enough Pina Bausch, here’s the whole piece.