ITF Days 3-5

Today's photo features Wednesday night's load out of the set for The Pitman Painters.  There was a brief traffic jam, resulting in an amusing line of patient students.

This is a script that was new to me and tells the story of a group of painters who began their work in a class for miners in England in 1934.  These miners showed up for an art appreciation class and before too much time became artists in their own right, sparking much curiosity about the proper domain of art vis-a-vis the working class.

...pause...

And we're back!

Saw lovely productions of Over the River, and Through the Woods, [Title of Show], and Gruesome Playground Injuries.

Interesting to watch the cast of a production of Anatomy of Gray at the moment.  They are working really hard with diction and projection, which is cool as they are planning to do the show without microphones.  One of the issues for straight shows here at ITF is that they have to decide if they are performing with or without microphones.  Normally, one would say that microphones for a non-musical is not recommended; however, the students are not trained to project in spaces as large as the theaters here at UNL, so it can be a challenge to hear them if they aren't miked.  If a school does choose to go without microphones, then the kids really have to work diction, which can stand in the way of characterization for the young performer.  It's interesting to watch a group that has landed on the side of losing characterization in favor of being heard clearly, as the typical outcome is the opposite (characters that can't be heard or understood.)

Dad arrives here in Lincoln tonight, and we're off to Wyoming tomorrow to begin the next phase of the summer journey.  I'm not sure what internet access will be like as this next stage begins, so it may be that there will be less frequent posts that accumulate images and experiences...unless we get eaten by a bear, in which case we'll be done.  In any event, no more theater for a while.

Day 2 at the International Thespian Festival

RAHS production of The Crucible, May 2012

This morning we watched a production of The Crucible here at Festival.  Last night I was working backstage during a performance of Lend Me A Tenor.  It's interesting to start the festival with these two shows, as I directed The Crucible in May of 2012 and performed in Tenor in November of 2011...so both shows were fresh in my mind.

The experience put me to thinking about the difficulty of evaluating the quality of shows you see or participate in.  A person has little choice but to assume that their own experience of the production is highly biased, and the various sources of information about the show are equally biased.  As an example, I have seen Billy Elliot twice.  When I saw it on Broadway a few years back I was pretty unimpressed and generally felt like the show didn't hang together very well.  The next summer I had a chance to see a touring production in Minneapolis for free, so I did, and I really enjoyed it a great deal.  Were these two performances vastly different?  Was my own circumstance and attitude vastly different for these two viewings?  Where in the intersection of performance and viewing does the evaluation of quality lie?

One of the things about directing in the high school is that parents pretty much universally think that everything we do is fabulous...unless its non-traditional.  As long as they understand it, they will think their kids are great.  It is not an environment in which you can expect objective critique from the audience.  I have heard them rave about shows that...well, you get the idea. Community theater does have some of the same elements...though there is a higher likelihood that when the public responds favorably that it does indicate some level of quality.

Of course, at which point does the enjoyment of the audience become less significant in the evaluation of quality?  In the summer of 2011 I did a production titled Nineteen Cows Leaving Beirut that evoked a significant number of negative reviews.  Our favorite was the audience member who likened it to having a, "lobotomy by jackhammer."  The show was explicitly and intentionally harsh in its exploration of the ways in which the modern high school is like the book 1984.  Despite the audience response there were many elements of the show of which I was quite proud.

When I performed in Lend Me A Tenor I had lots of friends offer compliments, but that's not real meaningful.  I felt okay about the performance, but how do you really know?  This is part of why actors can sometimes be pretty sensitive about feedback...it is entirely subjective and a bit capricious.

Having said all that, there are some simple, identifiable and fairly objective markers for quality that are largely universal.  Directors here at ITF will usually agree when a student actor, "doesn't understand the words they are saying."  This is indicative of a flat delivery that comes from knowing the words, but not really understanding their import.  A show that has poor cue pickup and pacing is also generally acknowledged as having been, "slow".  In circumstances where you are not in the show, but are simply part of a community of audience members, there is a shared understanding of quality that can be identified.  When the feedback comes from audience to performer, however, that reliability is gone.  People rarely want to tell a friend or the child of a friend, "you didn't seem to understand what you were saying."  ;-)

Ultimately, one must trust one's own markers for success, and I was lucky enough to have a number of shows at Roseville of which I felt quite proud.  The Crucible was one of those and I have much gratitude for the gifts that the students involved brought to the production.

The next several plays we will see are shows that I either have never seen, or in a couple of instances have never even heard of.  Should be fun!

Another Day at the International Thespian Festival...

Today's picture features the stage left wing of the Kimball Recital Hall at the University of Nebraska campus.  The Kimball is the second of two mainstage theaters hosting performances for the week long International Thespian Festival.  At the moment, the Thunder Ridge High School from Highland Ridge, CO, is loading in their set for tonight's performance of Lend Me A Tenor.

ITF is an amazing event for high school theater students.  About 3,000 students from across the country converge on Lincoln for a week of performances, workshops, socializing and learning.  Schools bring everything from individual monologues to fully produced major musicals.  The schedule begins with an early show or two on Monday evening, and continues every day through Saturday night.  This year, the two theaters are hosting Lend Me A Tenor, The Color Purple, Legally Blonde, The Crucible, The Pitmen Painters, Coram Boy, [Title of Show], The Elephant Man, Over the River and Through the Woods, 13, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Anatomy of Gray, Peter Pan, and Shrek.  There are also dozens of one acts and ten sessions of workshops.  Every night after the evening show there is a dance, and the adults are treated to a lovely reception with great apps (no alcohol for obvious reasons...don't want a bunch of drunk chaperones!)

I've been attending this event with the Roseville theater students since 2005.  We typically bring around 20 students and most years we bring a one act.  It's a great part of our theater program.  For the past four years, I have been one of the Theater Coordinators who help manage the Kimball theater, which mostly means I sit around and update my blog while other folks busily load in, perform and load out.  I'm here in case something goes wrong, which is super unusual.

For the kids, a typical day starts around 8 or 9 with a quick breakfast in the dorms, then off to the first mainstage show at 10am.  After the show we have a troupe meeting and then its off to lunch.  Afternoons have two workshop sessions and one acts in two venues.  Then its dinner and off to the evening mainstage show.  After the show, attend the dance or other social activities (Improv, FX Flying, hanging out in dorm) with curfew at 12:30 and lights out at 1:00am.  Get up in the morning and do it all again.  Within that we also have kids doing college auditions, individual performances, meeting with college representatives, participating or seeing the Playworks program, sitting by the fountain, taking a nap, drinking water, cooling off in the student union...it's a busy week.  Sunday morning they get on the bus and sleep most of the way home.

Since I'm working in the Kimball, I do catch a few one acts and shows, but mostly spend the week talking with colleagues and students.  Attending ITF is a relaxing, though hot, tradition that has marked the official end of the academic year for me for the past nine years.

I'm hopeful that I will be able to continue doing it next summer, though that will depend on what kind of internship or travel I end up with.  It's possible I'll convince MSU to send me as a college rep.

Meanwhile, this year we have new schools attending from Minnesota, which is exciting.  In addition to the usual schools who come down for ITF (Edina, Roseville, Blaine and Centennial) we also have students from Chaska, East Ridge, Burnsville, and Shakopee.  Hopefully it will keep growing!

More later!

And They're Off...

I offer two images today.  The first is a picture of a blue sky above my home.  A few clouds, but mostly just blue sky.  This is newsworthy.  It is exceptional, even.  We have had little of it this past Spring.  In particular, we have had very little of it the past 72 hours.  Friday morning there was a significant storm leaving many without power, Friday night there was another storm, this one leaving 200,000 folks without power as well as ushering in the end of an exceptional number of local trees.  There was no centralized event, like a tornado, that focused the damage on a particular neighborhood, instead there are widespread instances of lost trees and downed power lines.  Facebook is filled with updates related to the consequences of a lack of power.  Or updates that power has been restored.  We were out for twelve hours, others for 30, 48...others still waiting with the expectation that it will be Tuesday or Wednesday before things are back to normal.  No news regarding injuries or deaths, thankfully, but rather a shared experience of disruption, mostly leading to acts of kindness, generosity and support.

For myself, perhaps the oddest experience is the many intersections without functioning traffic lights, including some on major highways.  It was an eerie feeling Friday night to be at an intersection where folks normally travel at 50-60 mph and just heading across hoping for the best.

Before offering a second image, I have some news of the move updates to provide in a bulleted list.  I haven't posted in a few days, so for them that care, here are the updates.

• Packing is complete.  
• Yoda has adjusted to her collar.
• Katie has moved her stuff out of the house, and also sprained her ankle...leading to much drama and annoyance (on her part) about having to move about on crutches.
• My mortgage was refinanced.  Huzzah!
• I am now on a much stricter budget.  Hmmm....
• I am exploring what goecaching is all about.
• I decided that a 3.5" fixed blade knife was not a requirement of my camping gear.  Also have chosen not to pack pepper spray for bears.  Not sure if that is the best choice.

This is the art wall.

It is no longer art.

It is, in fact, Sienna Sand 8223M, which Hirschfield's was kind enough to match at $43 per gallon.

And while it is not particularly interesting, when taken as a part of the townhouse as a whole, which is not empty, but feels empty since everything is in boxes and the furniture stands idle, it is actually possessing of both beauty and significance.  

It is an empty palette about to take on the characteristics of new occupants,.

It is also a signal, a symbol, a metaphor (if you will) of the blank slate that is, at this moment, me.

Not that I'm a blank slate.  That's neither possible nor particularly desirable.  Merely interesting.

Yesterday I realized that today, Sunday, would be my last day actually living here.  That I leave on Monday only to return briefly for the purpose of physically moving my stuff to somewhere else.  After roughly sixteen months of process and preparation the moment of launch has arrived and yesterday that was a bit scary and daunting.  Today less so.

Yoda will be here holding down the fort.  She is, without knowledge, the constant.

Like Buddhist Sand Art

This morning we painted over the art wall that Katie created a few years ago.  She asked if we could splat paint on a wall and I surprised her by saying, "Sure."  We painted one wall in the living room white, and then she splattered black paint on the wall...and some of the floor and ceiling, but mostly on the wall.  I have a black and white painting that I like a lot which we placed in the middle of the wall, and the effect was pretty cool. The face on the right side of the picture was completely accidental.

With the need to rent and possibly sell the place, Chris (our broker) was pretty much clear on the idea that the art wall had to go.  It says something about something that I wanted the art wall to be a feature of the place, not something to be fixed, but that's real estate...neutral, neutral, neutral.

So, the art wall is gone...fortunately we remembered to take pictures before we painted it over.  Katie pledges to do it in every house she owns.

Another change today was we put a collar on our two year old cat.  She's going to be visiting other folks this summer while I'm traveling, and I may let her transition to being outdoors some when I'm in St Peter, so its time to make her wear it.  She is not happy about it.  She actually seems less playful.  To some extent, I'm projecting my own thoughts about the collar onto her, but she also is clearly not happy about it.  We'll see how it goes.

Its a funny thing about projecting your own thoughts and feelings.  I had someone observe recently that my concerns about a particular person not approving of something was just a projection of my own feelings...and it occurred to me that this is something I do rather frequently and deeply.  My first assumption is that folks do not think positively about me, and this is rather foolish.  Folks who don't do this have a distinct advantage socially.  Its sort of the same as how folks who just ask for what they want regardless of the likelihood of success have an advantage over folks who only ask when the answer is going to be, 'Yes'.

Goals...less projecting and more asking for what I want.

And this morning I have a pain above my ear.  I think I strained something in my neck while moving furniture on Wednesday and the consequence is this really odd sharp pain that radiates from my neck up and over the back of my ear.  I'm only 51, but the system is not as resilient as it was twenty years ago.  Better loosen up a bit more before the summer hiking begins!

Time for more packing!

Waking Early

The drawers are increasingly empty..waiting to be filled.

Clear is not blank, but has tints of yellow and blue.  I walk toward the colors...tones carrying messages and memories, and the light, traveling so much faster than I swirls over my shoulder to bring the tints to life.  It is clear.  So clear.

Yoda is interested in it all, but doesn't see what I see, and I do not see what she sees.  We dance together as if we see one world, but there are many and they vary from moment to moment, day to day.  Mostly she lives a life pretending to be a fierce hunter, but we have changed her context so that she is largely make believe.  I live a life pretending to be...what?  Perhaps it is an inability to pretend that pushes me to constantly seek out new journeys.  The perception of a life, a career, a relationship, is not sufficient or sustainable but rather there is a need to seek out something more than perception.  Something more than a semblence of a life.  Something with more than just tints of yellow and blue in an opaque field.  Some clarity of the alignment of purpose and activity which is clear, and rich in color.

Perhaps that is why there is a greater comfort in a context where the future is unknown and the task is undefined and new.  Without the pretense of a moment there is the possibility of more than just a semblence.  Questions are more real than answers.  Seeking is more spontaneous and hopeful than finding.

The journey is all.

It's a Text Only Day...

Katie and I are sitting in the living room getting ready to start packing.  Yoda is chasing flies.  I just returned from a final doctor visit before my health insurance explodes and I become part of that statistic of people who don't have insurance.  I'll be in some weird quasi insured land where I have free access to campus health care, which I imagine will be great as long as I don't have anything more than a cold to deal with.  I can get a major medical plan to supplement that...so I will.  Thank God for my Veba and HSA, both of which can be used to reimburse deductibles and which have about $18K in them.  You need an advanced degree to navigate healthcare in America.

The list for the week gets shorter, the pile of packed boxes gets larger, I leave for Nebraska in five days.

Oh, right, the news for the day.  I got a variety of emails from the school yesterday.  For my Graduate Assistantship I will be teaching a section of Acting for Everyone, working in the box office five hours per week and working on PR for five hours per week.  For classes, I have Theater Speech, Stage Combat, Theater Research, and Designing for Directors.  The design class is a series of courses which focus on the various design areas.  This Fall I will be doing scenic design.  I have no idea what theater research will be, other than what the title suggests.

Time to start moving furniture.  No time for reflection today.  ;-)

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Packing continues, and visiting, too.  Got a map of the some camping and hiking options for the Gallatin from Rich Soule while enjoying a lovely meal with Rich, Deb and Leah along with Katie and Mike.  Watched the US Open, which I rarely have the time to do.  Watched three teenagers splash in a parking lot lake during a rainstorm.  If I were really unplugged I would have joined them...but that would have been a little weird for them, I guess.  Had a super fabulous party hosted by Jo Holcomb where I talked to lots of friends.  Called the old man in Philadelphia for Father's Day but got his machine...have to connect with him today.  La, la, la...

I have had a couple conversations about bears, which is kind of funny and also not.  It is interesting the things we choose to worry about.  The odds of being mauled by a bear go up considerably when one chooses to hang out in their territory, but those odds are still ridiculously low given the cultural mythology around bears.  You should worry about your English teacher more than a bear.  Of course, if you go to bed with a fish treat in your pocket, the whole thing gets more complicated.  In any event, it's something that a person chooses to worry about not because it's likely, but because that's just how our brains work.  It even occurred to me that a handgun might not be a bad idea for protection.

There are a lot of thing we could worry about when we get up in the morning.  Crazy drivers, rabid dogs, nuclear winter, immigrants, sushi...lots of things make lots of folks uncomfortable and anxious.  There are ways to be prudent, but beyond that its a waste of energy.

So, bring on the bears...and if its just a black bear I'll try and get a picture of me standing on the mountain banging pots and acting crazy.

“With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.”
― Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

Responsible Living Will Doom the Economy

Friday morning started at 6:45 at the Toyota dealer because my car was making a whump, whump, whump noise in the vicinity of the front left tire.  Turns out a bearing was bad, covered by warranty, three hours and a $100 deductible later, off to my day.

The waiting area at the car dealership was sort of like a lounge at a nice restaurant.  Several large tvs as well as a row of cubbies with individual tv sets so you can watch something different.  Lots of chairs, free fancy coffee as well as donuts and cookies, all presented in an attractive little dining area.  Very comfortable.  Lots of comfort.  Stacks of newspapers.

Which allowed me to read more about the farm bill the Senate passed recently.  It is hard for me to understand how a Democratic controlled senate will pass a farm bill that increases support for large corporate farms while cutting food supports for the poor.  It was a sad commentary on priorities, which, of course, was heightened by my sitting in this luxurious support for more conspicuous consumption.  In the same newspaper was an article in which a reviewer extolled the benefits a $250,000 Bentley sedan without irony as if it were a vehicle that we all should desire to own.  13 mpg and $250K.  Really?

I was reading a trashy historical fiction novel set during the French Revolution and its hard not to see a few recurring patterns.  Of course, we have progressed to the point where, for the most part, the poor and downtrodden are not living well, but are also largely not starving to death.  They may not have good healthcare, they may not have comfortable housing, they may not receive equitable justice, but the bottom end seems like its high enough for the system as a whole to avoid revolution.  At the same time, the eroding of the middle class is a significant systemic problem.  If you assume that the folks who are the most successful are at least partially successful due to competencies, then you would expect that they would have some interest in the system as a whole being well organized for the success of the system as a whole.  That would operate more dynamically if the problem were more immediate, but for now the growing inability of the middle class to consume sufficient product to sustain the system is increasingly fragile, but not completely lost.  So, little change occurs.

Meanwhile, at a more micro level, I keep getting rid of stuff.  In my own little way I am contributing to an economic decline by choosing to consume less.  Sorry!

Packing is Chaos

Packing, which involves taking everything out of the nooks and crannies into which they have been carefully tucked and forgotten, placing them in plain view, considering their utility or sentimental value, and then redistributing them into trash, recycling or boxes for relocation to new nooks and crannies where they can be carefully tucked and forgotten anew.

It is a process filled with chaos, rather than order.  You would expect that taking your things and putting them in boxes would seem orderly, but it is not.

      “Chaos in the world brings uneasiness, but it also allows the opportunity for creativity and growth.”

 Tom Barrett

      ““Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.””

Chuck Palahniuk

                       

      “Chaos is a friend of mine.”

 Bob Dylan

      “Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.”

 Henry Miller

      “It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order”

 Douglas Hostadter

                                   

      “Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.”

 Steve Martin

                                   

      “Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.”

 George Santayana

                                               

      “Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos”

 Will Durant

                                   

      “Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit”

 Henry Brooks Adams 

Don't You Want My Stuff?

The picture of the day features two bags of books on their way to Half Price Books, a bin of dry-cleaned dresses on their way to the AHA All Stars theater costume stock and my golf clubs.

I was surprised how little I was paid for my two bags of books.  I had pulled what were the better books (in my opinion) from my shelves to see how the book buying program worked.  There are lots more books that I still have to unload.  In any event, they gave me $4.  There process is to purchase and shelve anything they think they might want to sell, and the rest get recycled.  While I'm glad that the books get recycled, it's a lot of great books to just get turned to pulp.  Ah well, so much for stuff.

I'm having similar results listing furniture on Craig's list.  Again, I just started and all I listed was a set of chairs...but so far no bites.  It might be harder to get rid of my stuff than I thought!  I don't really care if I get anything for the few pieces of furniture I need to unload, but I do need to clear things out!  My place looks like its been rented for July 15th, so packing and moving must proceed!  Despite the fact that getting rid of stuff isn't quite as easy as I had thought it might be, simplifying remains the primary goal!  We truly use so little of the stuff we have.

Pithy comment of the day is brought to you by the recent explosion of multi-media social networks that I was unaware of until yesterday.  There is a funny moment in The Internships involving the site Instagram, and last night my daughter was explaining keek.com and vining to me.  Both of these latter sites involve sharing short videos with friends in a facebook type environment.  Keeking involves creating 6 second looping videos, which sounds kind of cool.  I actually am pretty consistent around checking out my facebook feed and seeing what people are up to.  I am slowly removing the feeds from people who share with me how their bunyons are aching and narrowing it down to folks who are sharing interesting news and insights from their world and beyond.  I have a few friends who tend to share things from the other side of the political fence, which I like as it keeps me aware and I hope they continue to watch and respond to my posts, as that keeps me honest.  The idea of curating my social network feed is kind of a new one for me and seems essential in making the whole social network thing work.

There was also a reference in The Internship to the idea of facebook envy, and that's an interesting phenomenon as well.  Its obviously not just a social network thing...people have been envious of friends who ramble on about their accomplishments long before we could do it virtually...but the fact that it can intrude itself onto us while we're sitting alone in the privacy of our homes is a new thing.

Envy is a hard thing.  With the exception of the challenge of actual chronic poverty, most folks have equal access to happiness.  Life can be hard, but for the most part its up to us whether or not we choose to meet it with aplomb.  Most of us know people enduring illness or bad times who are still cheerful and resilient, while we know others who seem to have had an unending string of successes who only seem to see the parts of their lives that are not what they might be.  That being said, it can be easy to fall in to the comparison trap when someone else is sharing their own successes pointlessly.  I think you would need to unpack this idea of "pointless" to really get at what I mean by that.  Sharing happiness is a wonderful thing, and it would be a shallow life if we couldn't experience joy for others.  At the same time, there is a subtle difference between sharing and bragging that is central to the way that the success is experienced by others.  Hmmm....now I'm rambling.  There is something here but I'm not getting at it this morning.

In any event, it's great to hear what friends and family are doing and to share in their joy, yet there is an extent to which we can experience a wide range of reactions to their news.  Self-doubt is vulnerable to the comparison trap, and sometimes a joyous response is a choice.

Along those lines, another quick thought.  Recently I have had a number of instances when I have been experiencing impatience, then thought...what's my hurry????...and slipped into a place of amusement and happiness.  Seems like a good choice...perhaps I'll learn to make it before I get frustrated rather than after.

Unemployment!!!

Day One of the Actual Sabbatical!!

Last Friday was the last day on the job at Roseville Area Schools.  Strictly speaking, I am under contract through June 30th...but I have already fulfilled all of my required working days for the contract, so for all intents and purposes I am done.   After a busy weekend of having Katie graduate, a little golf lesson with Martin, Katie's grad party, a quick colonoscopy, and...Boom...it's Tuesday morning and I have begun the process of working through the final checklist.  So far this morning its mostly been cleaning up around the house to get things up to snuff, but I threw a couple of bags of books together and posted some chairs on Craig's list.  After my morning post I'm off to close a bank account, arrange for mail to be forwarded, stopping by Half Price Books to see if they want my books, using up some gift cards at Golf Galaxy, and then off for a round of golf with Mitch...hopefully the sun will shine.

My goal and format for this site from here forward will be to post a picture and a thought each day.  A little info about what's been going on, maybe a few pithy comments, definitely the height of literature.

For today, the picture is just Yoda in her usual spot with another grey day in the background.  It was sunny this morning when I woke up, but by 7:30 the clouds were pretty much a blanket and now it's dripping sporadically.  I would complain about the weather but that has become such a commonplace thing to do in MN this year that it's starting to sound like senseless whining.  The sun will return someday.

Meanwhile, my thoughts for the day are sponsored by a selection from William Least that my father shared with me this spring.  In it, Least observes the danger(?) in focusing too much on the there when considering the journey from here to there.  He says

"Every journey begins with a here and lights out for a there; but to a traveler bent more on the there -- on destination -- a here often receives little exposition beyond a name; yet within every there and elsewhere and somewhere and anywhere hides a here."

And for the moment, my here is here.  When folks ask what I'm up to, what they mean is, "What is your there?"  But really, to reflect and observe is to stay in the here.  So for the next two weeks, while there will be a range of observations about spending time in the here getting ready to go there, the focus will be living in the here.

An observation about here:  We are not so central to our world as we think.  The response to an exit is quite far ranging, but really everyone lives within their own lives and are primarily responsive to the exigencies within.  It is good to be missed and appreciated, but even better to be reminded that we are free to make a rather extraordinarily wide range of choices without consequence of life or death.  There are exceptions, largely related to immediate family, but even there you can look about you and see instances where someone left, however suddenly, and the unit continues.

Tomorrow perhaps more about the current here.  Right now my here is down at the bank and the post office.  If you have a higher power, you could ask about the weather.